Squeezed into an Indian train
Bombay’s main railway station is vast, Victorian and teeming with people. I stood there feeling at a loss as to how to navigate through the crowd. Bombay is the biggest city in India and I didn’t have the energy to …
Africans in Bulgaria
I only stayed four days in Romania but it felt like months. I was glad to be sitting on the train to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to be gradually moving on. Laurentiu and Cristina had brought me to the …
Why you go Romania?
Next on the agenda was Romania, the biggest country in that part of Europe. I had been interested in Romania since university because it never appeared in the media. All the other Communist Bloc countries got mentioned now and again, …
Pretending to be an artist
Professor Fastl seemed like a kind man. He was tall, handsome and pre-occupied. He had renovation projects going on all over Austria and wasn’t going to look too carefully at this scruffy applicant. He had no reason to not believe …
Meeting Princess Diana in Vienna
– You want a job? Here? In Vienna! Are you mad? You don’t even speak German!
My new friend Andras was most amused. He was short, athletic, handsome and spoke fluent English. His family were obviously rich; he had his …
Cheating the system in Poland
I finally made my move and got a train ticket to Warsaw. After a few minutes the train stopped in East Berlin’s hauptbanhof (main station). There was a wild bustle of activity as hundreds rushed for the carriages, clouds of …