http://jaymes.net/wordpress Paul escapes London and the UK to tour the world Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:42:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en "An excellent choice sir", said the waiter, using an English phrase he'd probably picked up from some film*. I'm sitting in Moskva ("Moscow"), an upmarket Russian restaurant in central Sofia, with my mother and Ray. The carpet is thick, the tablecloths are immaculate and the elaborate chandeliers hang from a pristine ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/179 The Bulgarian waitress shakes her head. It takes me a few moments to remember that here, this means yes.She is going to get us another beer. I'm sitting in Angelina's restaurant in the Bulgarian mountain town of Etropole. Yesterday, under a hot Bulgarian sun sitting in a crystal sky, my ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/178 "We want to escape the cigarette smugglers", the young Norwegian girl says to me, worriedly. Her friend, a Polish girl, says that they study together in Italy and explains that she can understand about 30% of what the people in her compartment are saying because Serbian and Polish are similar. "They ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/177 "Ask that man if you can stroke his hedgehog", chuckled Sarah. She and her friend Becci are music teachers from Stourbridge, and we're sitting in the midst of the Belgrade beer festival with Paddy from Melbourne. For reasons that will always be a mystery to us, a local character is carrying ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/176 "Nye, nye Pivo", the Serbian barman says to me resignedly, before continuing in English, "Would you like something else? Brandy? Wine?" I'm surprised. The train has run out of beer, and despite the heavy night in Munich, ten hours of travel has left me hankering for refreshment. "Vodka?", I reply hopefully, and ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/175 "Bavarians have a special beer they drink for breakfast", explains Ozzy, our Canadian-Bavarian Munich tour guide, "It's very filling, a litre is he equivalent of eating a loaf of bread." Ozzy is herding a group of some 40 travellers, from places as eclectic as South Africa and Georgia (that's the country, ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/174 It's hot here in Belgrade. Too hot to write anything creatively, so it's going to be a plain old run down. I left London on Sunday on the Eurostar to Paris. The evening TGV to Stuttgart was full, so I had to book onto the overnight train to Munich and spend ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/173 What was your favourite country? I've been asked this question repeatedly over the last three weeks and I hate it, because it's so hard to answer. I tend to try to split it up - the place I have the most vivid memories of is Cambodia, every day there was an ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/164 Leaving Berlin on ICE 952 for Koln (Cologne)And now the end is near And so I face the final curtain My friend, I'll say it clear I'll state my case of which I'm certain I've lived a life that's full I've travelled each and every highway and more, much more than this I did it my wayAt ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/163 I can see it in the distance as I walk down Friedrichstrasse; around me are hordes of tourists reading the museum-style displays that line the street. At the junction with Zimmerstrasse, a double row of cobblestones in the road marks where the wall once was, and on the other side ... http://jaymes.net/wordpress/p/162