Welcome

This blog starts from the time I spent in Baghdad 2006 to 2007, when I wanted to record some thoughts and give friends the inside mail on a crazy environment. Since then, after some time out from a broken ankle and between times working in London, I've been on the road again around eastern Europe, NZ and South America. So far. This continues with the hope of telling anyone who's interested about the new places I'm seeing and the people who make them interesting.

On the right you can find links to previous posts. I need to figure out how to get the order of current posts right. Maybe having used this for a few years it's the kind of thing I should have sussed...

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Final Thoughts

So, here I am back in London at the end of it all. Eastern Europe is amazing. Beautiful, interesting and fun - and that's just the people. It's hard to say I had a favourite place as I liked different places for different reasons. I guess I liked the Baltics for the women, Kiev and Budapest for stunning cities, Slovakia and Poland for the scenery, Bosnia and Serbia for surprise packages and Croatia for the partying. So it was all good.

It's amazing how easy it was to get around. Almost everywhere, anyone under 35 speaks good English. It wasn't as cheap as I'd anticipated, and after a while I abandoned my budget and decided to just enjoy it.

The recent history of so many places was pretty sobering. Around 1989 - 1992 there was so much change all over eastern Europe. The fall of communism, the USSR and Yugoslavia were massive and I guess it's pretty amazing how quickly it all happened, and around the same time. Almost overnight, so many new countries on the map. The people are so outward looking and just keen to get on with their lives. Which I guess is human nature.

Now, I'm heading to Bangkok, Sydney, New Zealand and finally South America.

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