Actually, I’m on assignment for a Lonely Planet Poland guidebook, but I was waiting at Poznań’s main train station for a train to Gniezno, with a few spare minutes on my hands. I decided to try a real-life “related product” experiment. Amazon always has those “Products related to this item” alongside books you’ve searched for…
Category: travel
From Falco to Mozart
These two Austrian musical figures have more than a few things in common – and their legacies live on. By Anthony Haywood Many thanks to Lonely Planet for permission to republish this essay from the Austria travel guide. WHEN THE END came, it was sudden and made the headlines worldwide. He died too early, at…
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (or I’m in the Wrong film)
Many thanks to Lonely Planet for permission to publish this short story here. It was first published in Unpacked Again, an anthology of travel writing. Scene One:Zagreb. Hot day. Our Man stands with backpack and unknown purpose on central square. Market. Crowds mill, loud cries. Trams rattle busily down thoroughfare. Disgorge passengers. Middle-aged women carry…
High Seas Pleasure Seekers in Siberia
Ever since European Russians settled Siberia from the 16th century, eccentric travellers have been drawn to the subcontinent. Some of these were Russians. Others were foreigners. As the 20th century approached, a wave of foreign explorers and tourists set out along Siberia’s northern coastline. In 1894, while German-born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine…
Hiking Lake Baikal – The Muscovites
Outtake from Siberia, A Cultural History, published by Signal Books (UK) and Oxford University Press (USA). From the late 1960s or early 1970s, a Russian environmentalist movement sprang up that fit in well with the idea that nature begged conquest by an all-powerful Soviet system. The movement attracted ecology or outdoor minded people, such as…