Stories from travels in

Budapest

2013 Grateful 11

When I arrived in Budapest all those years ago, with two suitcases, two framed pictures, and an assortment of mental and emotional baggage, Keleti Station

From the Danube to the desert – a church on the move

Before the aura reader told me that I should visit the solar plexus vortex, I’d already been. I can’t say I was strangely drawn to

The ABC of ABQ

Back when I was working in a peroxide plant in Longview, Washington, I decided to move. It wasn’t the smell from the paper mill across

A new take on traditional

Life in the ‘hood is certainly taking a turn for the better. Despite repeated warnings by all and sundry when I first moved to Budapest,

Point Percy at the porcelain

Notable by its presence I was in Riga, Latvia, last week and it was quite the experience. I know now a lot more about the

The hedgehog in the fog

I don’t think I’ve been this far north in Europe before. Yes, I’ve dipped my toes in the Arctic Ocean but that was in Alaska.

A bookie’s money is only ever on loan

Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal

So … I might have been wrong

For years I’ve been rather mean to the city of Prague. Not because of anything it did to me or because of anything bad that

The difference that daylight makes

There was a time when Szimpla Kert was my last port of call on a night out. When I first arrived in Budapest, it fascinated

The separation of person and passport

My greatest fear, as a traveller, was realised last week. For years, I’ve broken out in a cold sweat when hotel receptionists ask me for