Ian

I must admit, I was a bit worried when my wife came to me a few months back and mentioned that a couple of friends that we don’t see very often had invited us to accompany them on holiday this summer. My first thought was, “Why us? I guess no […]

This is more of a post to show that I am still alive, but I also wanted to comment on the wondrous title of a news article I saw on the home page of the BBC News site this morning. This article was found under the Science/Nature section of the […]

The first major snow of the season has fallen over the past three days, and it looks as though there is no sign of it letting up … at least not today. It is good to see the flakes starting to fall in mid-November, especially considering how bad the last […]

Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part IV – Return to Oslo I would like to take this moment to prepare some of you, because I know that I am going to upset a few people with the next comment, but please continue reading, and I hope you will understand why […]

Six years ago I made my way around northern Italy with a friend of mine during the Christmas season. I was going through a bad patch of depression due to situations with a married girl I was leading astray, and with whom I actually worked as well (a double whammy), […]

Just read a blog from a good friend of mine today concerning the small stuffed cow that he has been travelling the globe with for quite a few years now. If you are interested, you can read about it here: http://www.julianpegler.com/?p=162 Well, the point being that JuLes and his cow, […]

I am old enough to remember when email became a big thing and people began to lament the days of letter writing and the use of a pen or pencil. There was something much more personal about a handwritten letter … the time put into writing, the individual styles of […]

Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part III – Rudolf or Bust One thing became apparent as we crossed over into the land of the Finns … things were cheaper! Not necessarily cheap, mind you, but cheaper. We knew our stay in Finland was limited to maybe one day of driving […]

If anyone has read BBC News lately, then you might have heard about the bus full of Polish tourists making a pilgrimage in France that careened off the road, plunged into a ravine and burst into flames killing 26 passengers this past Sunday. My heart goes out to the families […]

First and foremost, I have to state that the Czech Republic is a country that I will always have a true love for. I lived in a town called Uherské Hradiště (it took me nearly 3 months to pronounce that correctly) in the south-eastern corner of the country and about […]

Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part II – Nordkapp to Karasjok Night drew to a close the end of another long gruelling day of traversing the roads of Scandinavia, and the four of us humans, along with Balthazar and Ed the Sock, found ourselves in the Sami town of Karasjok […]

Reprinted from a previous story I wrote for my friend Jonathan’s website www.owilybug.ca Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part I – Oslo to Nordkapp “Well, the only way to see what we want is to rent a car.”Two weeks, over 4000 km from Oslo to Nordkapp and back and a […]

Verification yesterday that the times, they are ‘a changin’ …. and not necessarily for the better. When I arrived in Kraków seven years ago, it was still a relatively quiet place in terms of tourism. Parts of town were still in a state of neglect, the main market square still […]

I was recently speaking with a friend of mine about things that seem to be missing here in Poland. We came to the conclusion that one major issue is the lack of a good breakfast. Now, my friend Andy is from the UK, so we agreed that a proper breakfast […]

Here in Kraków we have been celebrating 750 years of the founding of the city. Well, I say celebrating in the sense that the city put a few stages on the main square (Rynek Głowny) and organised a few events. On Friday evening, some of these events were televised on […]

I have been asked numerous time what it is like to live away from “home” for so long, so I have decided to start this blog to share some of my experiences and opinions on the world in which I have been living for nearly ten years now. I would […]