GERMANY – On another short holiday in Berlin (little knowing that I would move there a mere three months later), I decided to continue my exploration of the surrounding countryside. So I picked another random destination that looked nice on Wikipedia (Neustrelitz), borrowed my friends bike and took a train there. In contrast to my…
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GERMANY – Wuppertal (population: +/- 350,000), which as the name suggests, lies in the valley of the river Wupper, is a town I had long wanted to visit for two reasons. Firstly, “only” 40% of it was destroyed in WW2, making it good place to see what other towns in the heavily industrialised Rhine-Ruhr region – most…
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GERMANY – In August 2017, a friend of mine had to spend two nights in Cologne for his job. As his Airbnn was pretty big, he asked if I felt like a short holiday. And who would say no to a free holiday? I had passed through Cologne before, and thought I’d give it another…
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ROMANIA – While Cluj-Napoca is the most varied city I visited on this trip to Romania, and therefore my favorite, the most beautiful were undoubtedly Sibiu and Oradea. Sibiu is special for being a well preserved medieval town, but Oradea (the capital of Bihor county, pop.: 196,367), is special for another reason that I think…
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ROMANIA – Towards the end of the five hour bus ride from Sibiu, the bus turned a corner revealing a magnificent view of my next destination: Cluj-Napoca, which has 324,576 inhabitants, making it Romania’s second largest city. So, thinking of how to start this thread, the first thing I did when I had borrowed a bike…
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ROMANIA – A scenic six hour train journey from Timișoara – including a change in Arad, which I considered visiting as well – took me the 330 kilometers to my next destination, Sibiu, which I liked immediately on arrival, at about eight in the evening (I’m not showing these photos in the order I took…
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ROMANIA – Situated on the plain near the borders with Hungary and Serbia, Timișoara – where I arrived at the airport and spent two nights – is a university town of 320,000. It is called Temesvar in Hungarian, Timisvar in Serbian, and a variation on the theme in various other languages. Pictures made on 2017-07-16….
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BELGIUM – When I worked as a freelance language teacher in Liège, I sometimes taught adolescents in the village of Dalhem. As it was a good 17 kilometers uphill from my house, I would often go there by bus, and back using my folding bike (which was mostly down hill of course). I made pictures…
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ITALY – Whereas nearby Milan is know for fashion and finance, its neighbour to the east, Turin (IT: Torino), is known as a hard-working industrial city. It is most notably the home of car manufacturer Fiat, and one of the most important economic centers of the country. But it is also much more than that,…
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BELGIUM – Hidden in the wooded hills of the eastern Ardennes, lies the backdrop for stories by Aghatha Christie, a town where the rich and famous (including kings, queens, tsars and tsarinas) used to meet on their holidays. That town is Spa, the place that gave us the word for all resorts with thermal springs….
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ROMANIA – Almost 2,500 kilometers from home, the Romanian port city of Constanța was the furthest point of a trip through Eastern Europe I went on with a friend in the summer of 2009. This city of about 400,000 on the Black Sea also…
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BELGIUM – A walk with my dad in Ittre, a picturesque village at the exact geographic center of the country.
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ITALY – From the age of 9 (in 1991) to 18, my favourite part of the year was the summer holiday, which we spent in the village of Montepescali, in the southern Tuscan region of the Maremma. The Maremma plain used to be marshland, …
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FRANCE – Coming from Grenoble, my next stop was Marseille, where I spent most of the time walking around with a Russian I met at the hostel I was staying in.
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FRANCE – In this series, I will take you on a trip through France I went on in July 2008, visiting a number of friends on the way.
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ROMANIA – Also known as the Paris of the east, Bucharest could also be called the Pyong Yang of the west, the Rome of the new world, or the Buones Aires of the old world (not that I have ever been to Pyong Yang or Buones Aires). Or it could also just be called Bucharest. It has both the allure of the capital of a (surprisingly new) ancient empire …
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BULGARIA – An enjoyable night talking to our Serb neighbours (and not sleeping very much) on a sleeping train brought us from Belgrade to the Bulgarian capital Sofia. I have nice memories of Bulgaria, a picturesque country with friendly and helpful people, …
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SERBIA – I didn’t make very good pictures of Belgrade, but it I want to show you some anyway because of the huge contrast with the two former Yugoslav countries we had visited before. After Bosnia, the Serb capital Belgrade seemed rather northern European, almost like we had arrived back home.
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BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA – Though I’d like to, it is impossible to write a post about this region without mentioning the 1991-1995 Yugoslav war, the worst war in Europe since 1945. This is only increased by actually remembering seeing our next destination, Mostar, being shot to pieces on TV news only a decade and a half earlier. And indeed, the scars of war seemed much fresher in Bosnia than they did in Croatia.
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CROATIA / ITALY – In this series, I will take you on a trip along a variation of the tourist trail through the Balkans, which I traveled with a friend in the summer of 2007. I didn’t put much effort into photography on this holiday, but have reworked some of the photos so that I can show you my first impression of this very varied and picturesque region, where it is also very easy to meet locals.
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