-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
I decide not to take the 4pm train to Mostar, choosing the pre-booked bus instead. I mean, I can always meet JA and that Scandinavian guy at the station, right? But fate has intervened this time. As I am savouring an astonishingly scenic route, some young guy who has just boarded the bus plonks right…
You look a little bit like Jack Kerouac, is how I strike up a conversation with a guy unwrapping little bottles of rakia and mixing their content with concentrated orange juice. At closer inspection, any similarity is fleeting: his smile is different, more unhinged, the ears do not fit the size and the shape of…
Banja Luka is the first town I visit on my way across Bosnia, and it’s also the angriest town I have seen so far. In Polish, the expression plesc banialuki means to talk balderdash, but when I leave the bus station I realize the city and its name are no laughing matters. I can’t be…
U is Dutch, or so says the pin on his backpack, a blue-red-and-white De 4Daagse sticker. We don’t really interact much, and yet, since both of us are on the second-longest H trail of the park (and only because the K trail is allegedly flooded), we become each other’s unofficial pacemakers. We meet for the…
Extend them, says O and grabs the palms of my hands. His fingers are warm and sturdy, the kind that I would somehow expect from a marine engineer born in West Africa. O’s way with words is frugal, but never without a hint of hope; his version of Christianity remains much more personal than the…
Ljubljana is welcoming me with open arms, and this time, my first time as a tourist, I cannot escape her charms. She is calling me once more for a proper farewell, not like the previous time when I knew I would not return to the office in the Črnuče district. Back in 2023, it went…
Klimt’s Kiss is a bit of a letdown, but at least it’s bigger than I thought. Unlike its many prints that follow an elongated, rectangular shape, it actually has a square base of about 1.8 metres by 1.8 metres. The painting is constantly surrounded by a throng of museum visitors; half of them are rich…
I am standing in front of the Banco Casino in Bratislava and the blood is rushing to my head. There was a time, not so long ago, when I believed my destiny was in the cards. It’s not that my future could be deduced from reading them, I was not the despondent Robert Ford trying…
“My colleague is trying to tell you that you validated your ticket slip from the wrong side,” a controller says sternly while I am already calculating how much a fine will set me back. “But you are ok,” he finishes, so what? All I can see is my tram disappearing behind the corner, never to…
The stag trophies are looking at me with silent outrage; they didn’t choose to be here, unlike me. I would have probably picked a different place if I had known that I was not their target audience. The vintage machismo decor, the motorcycles behind a glass panel, stuffed animal heads hanging from the walls, an…
Luke, around the world. 