Strasbourg is quilted with snow. We were supposed to go hiking in the mountains yesterday, and we got up early to dress ourselves in layer upon layer of old ski gear. When we got to the train station, however, we found our train cancelled due to some trees having collapsed onto the tracks.
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Strasbourg | Cathédrale pt. 2
Coffee is my kryptonite, except it’s worse than kryptonite because at least Clark Kent doesn’t wake up every morning going ‘Oo a tell thee, a wouldn’t mind eating a nice shard of old krypto’. My relationship with coffee is a testament to the blasted duality of Dan: I love it, I love it so much, and yet it slays me. It ruins me. It gives me powerful, throat-punching acid reflux, and it kickstarts my anxiety with the rumbling force of a shifting tectonic plate. I know all of this, I experience it every single day, and yet… I just cannot say goodbye to my lovely, warm, bad-breath-making drink.
Continue readingStrasbourg | Cathédrale pt. 1
What’s the most elegant place you’ve ever had a panic attack?
Continue readingStrasbourg | COVID and Literal Burglary
Terribly! That’s how my first week in France has gone. Terribly!
Continue readingStrasbourg | Agape
Strasbourg | Un peu de Tranquilité
I’m drinking a freshly squeezed lemon juice and looking out of the window, past the great weeping willow in the garden, to the pale blue sky over Alsace, where a trio of parachutists twirl towards the Earth.
Continue readingBristol: HIT THE NORTH!
I think there are good things to come, you know. Just an inkling!
Now, if you’d asked me about the colour of the future on Sunday evening – Continue reading
Paris: Muggings and Riots and Notre Dame Engulfed in Flame
After Chiang Mai came two sweaty nights in Bangkok. After Bangkok came Paris.
Jeanne and Justine got an earlier flight out of Thailand, and I arrived in the city fourteen hours after them, in the evening. By the time I arrived Justine had already left the city for Orleans, an hour or two south. Won’t be seeing her for a long time now. After a year of perpetual company and a merry-go-round of familiar faces, suddenly Jeanne and I were all that remained. Weird. Continue reading
The Berlin Dairies – Time’s Almost Up
It’s the 19th of February, and these dairies have been running on for 18 months now. They’ve become less frequent, sure, partly because I’ve got used to life in the city and therefore am less inspired to write a 3000 word dirge fresh off the heels of yet another evening’s ketamine and kebab consumption, and also partly because I have, through no fault of my own (honest) been drunk a LOT. We’re not talking Oliver Reed or Shane MacGowan levels of astoundingly ever-twatted, there’s no need to worry, but certainly enough booze quaffed over a 6 month period to reopen Bärenquell Brauerei for a long weekend. Continue reading
Prague Day 3: I Did Something Terrible
MEGA QUICK RECAP: On Day 1, Alfie, Dave and I were forced to sleep rough. On Day 2 we irritated some Australians.
*****
It was our last full day in Prague, and so far our breezy trio had seen not one jot of the city – save for the various doorways and alleyways that we shivered in trying to snap up a wink of sleep in the midst of the bellows of Storm Herfna or Heroshi or whatever it was called. Crap storm anyway. I’ve had more ferocious bouts of wind. Goodness, aren’t I rather forthcoming and jubilant today? That’s what happens when I have my first coffee in a week. Better than crack. Not that I’ve ever smoked crack. As far as I know.
ANYWAY. Continue reading