travelling

The Berlin Dairies – Time’s Almost Up

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

minimalism-1519045758340-3448It’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 →

Waiting On India

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This image has absolutely no relevance to the article. Great album cover though, right?!

Seven fucking weeks and I’m getting giddy, man. I don’t have a long winter stretching ahead and the slow climb into summer and living tree branches – I’ve got this gorgeous gleaming severance, a runaway, a hop and a skip and a great big fuck off all the merry long dance to sunny Elsewhere.  And it’s this that’s keeping me going through this cold sad winter – filling every day with dreams of hostel beds and foreign bars, mountains and heat cracked motorways and all of it, all smashing together, clacking like marbles, clacking like judging tongues. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – Seven Weeks Left

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Fifty one. Fifty one days is all that remains of Berlin. I ain’t coming back here once I leave, you can’t do that. I’ll never live in Newcastle again, never Sheffield, never Berlin. Happy memories in all, of course – and that’s the way I want to keep it. If you meddle too much with the cheerful snapshots that crowd your mind, you risk tarnishing them with your greasy daft fingerprints. Continue reading →

How Many Resolutions Did Dan Fail in 2017?

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

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A year ago I wrote an article titled ‘A List of Shit I’m Going to Do This Year Unless the World Ends, Which It Probably Will, Because Donald Trump is a Moron’. If you would care to join me now, I am rather curious to revisit this list and assess how well I performed over the past 12 months. Of course, there’s every chance you couldn’t physically care less about my personal goals and ambitions, and that is fine. Good day to you. To anybody still reading, let’s creep our peepers over the bafflingly long and wildly optimistic list I made, one year ago today… Continue reading →

Prague Day 1: Sleeping Rough (or, What Happens When You Rely On Dave To Book Your Hostel)

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

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Dave had been prodding me in the ribs and asking about Prague for a couple of weeks. Petra and Leslie were driving down there for one night over the bank holiday weekend, and he wanted to road trip down with them. I wasn’t super keen – seemed like a long way to go for one night. However, a week or so ago I went for a beer with Hannah, and she mentioned she was heading down as well on the same weekend. Well, this was starting to sound more like a party. I told Dave next day and we booked a coach to Prague on the Saturday. We would dick about for a couple of nights, and Leslie and Petra would meet us on the Monday.

I was originally going to end that introduction with the tired old hook, ‘what could go wrong?’, however if you know me or have read anything at all on this site, you’ll know that really, that question is redundant. Of course everything went wrong. Of fucking course it did. Continue reading →