Conversations With Dead People

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, my mind often wandered; to places I’d visited and to places I still wished to venture. It was a strange and unsettling time, where there was nothing to do but wash your hands, stick swabs up your nose and test your fragile senses on homemade banana bread. If the cornonavirus didn’t get you then the cabin fever would, and at my most delirious I started daydreaming about somewhere completely unexpected: Paris.

Back then I’d been to Paris precisely three times before. The first to visit Disneyland as a child, where I’d taken ill during the parade and crouched queasily on the floor of an overcrowded train back to town; the second to deliver my unsuspecting mother to a surprise birthday party; and the third on a short layover mostly spent in gridlocked traffic. In fact, it took so long to journey from Orly into the centre and then back out to Charles de Gaulle that I would’ve missed my connection had it not been cancelled.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore France. Nice is a city I’ve revisited on no fewer than four occasions, first to meet friends from university and then to dog-sit for them while they were away on business. And I always look forward to hearing the French language wherever it’s spoken—whether that’s in the country itself or outside its borders in Monaco, Luxembourg or Switzerland. But Paris is different; Paris is the opposite. Paris is pretentious, polluted and overpopulated. Every time I’ve visited, the city’s been overcast, crowded and congested to the point that I couldn’t wait to leave.

But in lockdown—and especially after three lockdowns—desperation set in. As the third finally relented I would’ve happily gone anywhere. I’d walked just about every road in Dundee at that point, and as the restrictions had fluctuated nationally I’d exhausted several other Scottish cities as well. In my impatience, trips were conceived and then cancelled as circumstances changed, devastating dreams of Bucharest, Zermatt and Gibraltar. But it had always been worth the disappointment just to have something, somewhere to look forward to.

Into this deprivation and burgeoning despondency stepped Emily. Netflix had been a godsend in lockdown, one of those digital innovations—along with Twitter and Zoom—that made the isolation less intolerable. As much as I tried to fill my time with home-working, creative hobbies and walking long loops around my postcode, I also turned to streaming when tired or forced to rain-check. Although never exactly compelling, the series did cast a certain charm. And while Emily’s Paris bore absolutely no resemblance to mine, its propaganda was so persuasive I found myself asking if our two versions of the City of Love/Hate could possibly co-exist or perhaps cancel each other out. Was mine as unrealistically negative as hers was positive?

Even more influential during this time, however, was Instagram. It wasn’t so much the ubiquitous attic apartments, street cafes and Eiffel Towers that caught my eye but a specific account I’d started following a few months into lockdown—that of Benoît Gallot, curator of Père-Lachaise, a vast necropolis in Paris’ 20th arrondissement celebrated for its celebrity internments, grandiose mausoleums and—ever since Parisians locked down with the rest of us—a family of urban foxes who, post-pandemic, were thankfully granted leave to remain.

Keeping vigilant in the company of the contagious living, I’d found solace among the dead of Dundee, in graveyards I knew such as The Howff and Balgay as well as some I didn’t, from the forgotten Old Mains Churchyard in Caird Park to the previously out-of-bounds Old Burial Ground in Broughty Ferry. They also provided destinations to aim for when regulations allowed, starting with long walks to Vicarsford Cemetery in Fife and later Greyfriar’s Kirkyard in Perth, Old Calton Burial Ground in Edinburgh and Allenvale in Aberdeen. They were resting places—final or otherwise—and thanks to increasingly abundant wildlife a refreshing reminder of what it was to be free.

Still reluctant to dedicate an entire trip to a destination I didn’t honestly expect to enjoy, I waited until I had an opportunity to nip in from elsewhere. And so, when I found myself in Brussels with some time to spare and a storm to shelter from, it seemed like an obvious decision to make the €15, four-hour FlixBus journey. After all, I’d spent similar time and money last year travelling from Faro in Portugal to Seville in Spain and hadn’t grudged or regretted it for a second. In the event, however, four hours only took us as far as the ring road, with an additional 30 minutes spent inching from the suburbs to Bercy-Seine bus station.

Despite this unexpected delay, I still had all afternoon to explore my destination—having set off as early as I could stomach given this was effectively my summer holiday and I’d specifically timed it to avoid a week of 6am starts. First, however, I had to navigate the Métro. I tried the nearest station only to encounter not so much a queue as a scrum, as Parisians jostled to make reservations for the most important meal of the day: lunch. Naturally, I thought I knew better and tried Gare de Bercy instead, only to return ten minutes later, ticketless and with my tail between my legs—lest it got trampled on in the chaos. One hour in and it was clear the characteristic congestion and overcrowding hadn’t improved.

Once paid up and admitted through the Mètro barriers, I considered my options. I hadn’t eaten since leaving Brussels and so didn’t want to head straight for Père-Lachaise and risk disturbing the dead with a rumbling stomach. When weighing up whether to revisit Paris, another attraction that’d caught my eye was Musée d'Orsay, as famous for its eminently Instagrammable clock window as for any of its exhibited art. Sadly, it was closed on Mondays—the only day open to me before I travelled northeast to Antwerp—and therefore would have to wait until another pandemic planted another seed and prompted another surprise return. And so, after scanning the other stops on Line 6, I set off for Trocadéro.

I’d yet to see the Eiffel Tower under a brilliant blue sky—and still haven’t—but as the carriage trundled over the Seine there were discernible cracks in the cloud cover. Backlit from Trocadéro, I recrossed the river on foot, taking the multilevel road/rail bridge that featured so memorably in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, and circled the tower from the street. Any thought of paying for admission was put to bed when the rain arrived and drove me back inside—as I wished I too could bend the city to my will to hasten my escape. At Bir-Hakeim, one of the network’s many raised stations—a favourite—I set out for Gare du Nord. It was time for lunch.

Ever since my first trip to Nice and its own Gare du Nord, I’ve sought out the bakery chain Paul at every available opportunity—both inside and outside of France, with international branches in London, Luxembourg City, Faro and most recently Brussels. Here, as ever, I ordered my usual: tomato, mozzarella and pesto on olive bread, a slice of flan naturel and a large latte macchiato. I’m a creature of habit and, along with Coffee Fellows and Brezelkönig, it’s one of my favourite cafe chains on the continent. Visiting the station also gave me a chance to reconsider my route back.

I still had hours left in Paris until my bus back, but while I had no intention of rushing the cemetery I’d come so far to see I’d already exhausted the few other things I wanted to do. La Chapelle, the nearest Métro station, was on the same line as Père-Lachaise, and taking the train back to Brussels would not only cut my travel time by two thirds versus the bus but give me the option to stop along the way. Amiens and Lille stood between the two capitals, and over lunch I settled on an evening in the latter. It was also considerably cheaper to buy an immediate departure using the machines than it had been to book an advanced ticket on Trainline.

Certain I’d made the right decision, I finally set off for Père-Lachaise. The cemetery is Paris’ largest—covering 110 acres and comprising 97 divisions—and can also be reached via stations Phillip Auguste and Alexandre Dumas, all on Line 2. But y he eponymous station is iconic, and before I escaped the crowded streets I stopped outside the main entrance to photograph the signage over the top of the stairs. Hector Guimard designed all of the original entrances but these days only a fraction remain intact, with his distinctive lettering—since dubbed Style Métro—and organic, cast iron structures seeming to sprout from the street. Lamps on stalks illuminate the arching Métropolitain signs overhead. I can’t explain why but they’ve always brought to mind War Of The Worlds.

I found a bench just inside the nearest gate and stopped to finish my coffee, waiting for a tour group gathering around the information board to disembark before consulting it myself and choosing a path of my own. I had a list of graves and monuments I wanted to see, eschewing celebrities such as Édith Piaf, Oscar Wild and Gaspard Ulliel to instead focus on the statues that had achieved an infamy of their own. As the heavens ominously opened, I sought out George Rodenbach, who appears to be climbing out of his own headstone; Fernand Arbelot, who is holding his own severed head; and the Raspal family, whose mausoleum is stalked by Death himself.

I never did find Aberlot’s grave, or indeed the family of foxes teased on Instragram and showcased in a small but inspiring exhibition on Avenue Principale. It’s a wonder I found anything in the maze of mausoleums, more than once arriving abruptly and unexpectedly—but never impatiently—at roundabout Casimir Perier when I thought I was in a different quadrant altogether. Far from cursing my bad luck or sulking over the suboptimal weather conditions, as I might normally have done, I was in my element—the driving rain bringing the necropolis to life as the solemn statues appeared to weep real tears.

In the end, my favourite grave wasn’t even one I’d come looking for. Close to where Aberlot should’ve lain, I came across a pair of anonymous nudes slouched nonchalantly on an unmarked plinth. With anguish etched on so many stoney faces, their conversational air and relaxed body language felt worlds apart. I could completely relate to their ease in the midst of such overwhelming sadness. In addition to being places of mourning and remembrance for the dead, cemeteries are also tranquil and restorative spaces for the living—and I was relieved that this was as true of one of France’s most popular tourist attractions as it was of some of the more unsung kirkyards back home. I thought of how lucky I was to still be visiting different cemeteries and not to be a permanent resident of just one.

From Gare du Nord, a beautiful station in its own right, I took the train to Lille-Flanders, making the journey with OUIGO—which translates as “yes, go” and reads “we go”—a low cost subsidiary of SNCF Group which sadly lacks the parent company’s joyful jingle. Bone dry and with the cloud promising to clear, I liked Lille immediately. Free from the rush and crush of Paris, I felt able to stop and savour my surroundings. I found a branch of Paul just outside Grand Place, beside the Lille Opera, and watched the more manageable, more coherent hustle and bustle at close of play as people left work and thoughts turned to pleasure.

It was a beautiful evening and Lille proved a perfectly lovely place to spend it. After sourcing a third-storey view and a few minutes of phone charge from McDonald’s, I set about exploring on foot, starting at Theatre Place with the spectacular, polychrome chamber of commerce. Housed in the Neo-Flemish Nouvelle Bource building, it’s a highly decorative confection complete with towering belfry and gilded clock—as though a patissier had taken an expert hand to Aberdeen Town House and piped it with delicate creams and decadent fondants.

From there, I circled outwards, taking in Vieille Bource, the stock exchange’s previous, ever-so-slightly less ostentatious home; Palais des Beaux Arts, the city’s ornate art museum; and Porte de Paris, a monumental arch atop a roundabout. It was a far cry from the chaotic Arc de Triomphe, though this was probably because the road had been dug up and the traffic rerouted. Its thunder was also somewhat stolen by Beffroi de Lille, a bell tower that was as remarkably tall as it was slim. I longed to climb to the top and look out over the city, especially now that the sky had brightened just as sunset beckoned. Alas, at this hour McDonald’s would have to do.

And so I returned to Belgium. Somewhere in the multiverse, I caught the train and made it back within minutes of that original FlixBus. But as it happened, I missed it and had to entertain myself for 90 minutes in an incongruous Westfield shopping centre with only a carton of Carrefour chouquettes for company. I’m always sad to leave France but on this occasion knew I’d soon be back: my annual, now decade-old tradition of trying a new Christmas market would this year take me to Strasbourg, via Basel and Freiburg im Breigau. But while the same still couldn’t be said of Paris, Emily wasn’t finished with it yet and Père-Lachaise wouldn’t be going anywhere either—despite Monsieur Rodenbach‘s best efforts to escape.

Belgian Waffle

Any attempt to frame a week in Belgium as a key component of my year of nostalgia would be disingenuous, tenuous and retroactive. The truth is I was priced out of the alternatives—the Côte d’Azur, where I’d dog-sat on a number of occasions in my twenties, and Lake Geneva, around which I’d returned repeatedly in my thirties—but had already secured some leave and was reluctant to let it go to waste.

It is also true, however, that Belgium and I do have history. While travelling around Germany and the Netherlands this winter, I skirted the Belgian border on more than one occasion and left the continent wishing I’d had time to cross it, as my family had regularly done while living at Brüggen. Any dalliance would have felt indulgent, however, and I opted instead to spend the time more meaningfully in neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia and Limburg, regions I knew much more intimately.

While Liege—at the time our nearest major Belgian city, in Wallonia—had become a bit of a family joke and never inspired a second visit, there had been several other noteworthy trips to towns and cities across the country, namely to Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges. We also for a time had family friends living in Brussels, though I hadn’t accompanied my parents when they reconnected in the capital. Instead, I’d travelled with school friends to Six Flags in nearby Wavre. So maybe not that much of a reach after all.

In fact, once I’d booked my flights and overcome any initial disappointment at not revisiting France or Switzerland, I started to think about just how influential Belgium had actually been. Dundee-born, I’d been raised on Scotland’s iconic and idiosyncratic comic strips, receiving annuals for Christmas each year featuring the misadventures of Dennis & Gnasher, The Broons and Oor Wullie. By the time I moved to Germany, however, I’d outgrown Beanotown and instead started building out another comic book collection, one started by my father during his own childhood: Tintin.

In many ways, Herge’s books served as my introduction to Europe. At this point, I’d already lived in Australia and visited Denmark, Hong Kong and Indonesia, so I knew the world to be bigger than Britain, but through Tintin I started to explore the continent—and countries further afield as well—in a slightly deeper and more mature way. For the most part, The Adventures of Tintin combined a more realistic artistic style with keenly researched visual references and complex narrative devices. Far from The Beano’s childish hijinks or Marvel’s simplistic superheroics, the stories dealt with real world history, politics and culture, albeit with fantastical and sometimes farcical embellishments.

And so, as I boarded my train at Charleroi, having headed into town to see another Belgian mainstay—André Franquin‘s Marsupilami—at Yernaux roundabout, Herge’s style was very much on my mind, invoked by the clean lines of the station building, the colourful statue at its door the and exaggerated silhouettes of the SNCB train conductors—their wonderfully antiquated caps a particularly characterful flourish. I don’t want to labour the point, but there is a spatial and temporal ambiguity about Belgium that belies its small size as well as its geographic and political position at the centre of Western Europe. Outside the train, I could work backwards to it through a process of elimination—too clean and uncongested to be France, too hilly and good humoured to be Holland, too suave and stylish to be Germany—using caricatures of my own.

I hadn’t been expecting much from Brussels and so had only arranged to spend my first two nights there, earmarking my only full day in the city for a frankly preposterous excursion to Paris—a city I didn’t even particularly like. But I wanted to see Père-Lachaise cemetery and, with terrible weather forecast for much of the border area, thought I might as well spend the morning and evening sitting on a bus. It would also give me an opportunity to stop in Lille, somewhere I’d never been and which I hoped might provide a more appealing counterpoint to Paris. But as I approached Brussels’ main station, bathed in unexpected sunshine, I started to have second thoughts about my plans to skip town.

I did ultimately catch that FlixBus the next morning, at 7am, and enjoyed my day very much. But as I arrived in Brussels, I resolved to approach it with an open mind and make the most of my time on the ground. I don’t know what had caused me to underestimate it. Perhaps it was every tourism website I browsed apologising for its lack of big ticket items, baffled responses from friends when they found out where I was going or—most disturbingly—an unconscious internalisation of the anti-Brussels bias bandied about by Euroskeptics during the Brexit referendum. I saw the Leave campaign for exactly what it was—English exceptionalism and political opportunism—but there’s no denying they framed the debate. The EU had its defenders and champions, but few of them extended their support to the European Commission’s headquarters.

Either way, I should’ve known better. I love global cities—whether it’s Geneva, Strasbourg or Monaco—but have often found myself defending them against accusations of sterility and superficiality. These centres of diplomacy, bureaucracy and finance are often clean, safe and civil, handsomely landscaped and well maintained. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy culture, edge and character as much as the next person, and am happy to accept a degree of chaos and overcrowding to do so, but I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world and feel most at home surrounded by embassies, university students and indeed gravestones—shared spaces, melting pots and worlds unto themselves. It’s not for nothing that I grew up on overseas military bases, high commissions and joint headquarters, and is likely part of the reason I’m so suspicious of sovereignty and isolationism.

Anyway, it’s a moot point because Brussels is so much more than the Berlaymont building. After a well-timed pilgrimage to the Brussels Comic Strip Centre to avoid a short but sharp shower, I caught part of a performance at the Jazz Weekend in the aptly named Grand-Place, appreciated the splendour of St Michael and St Gudula’s Cathedral inside and out, and explored the botanical gardens in the shadow of Schaerbeek’s skyscrapers. Even after 40,000 steps, having been on the move since 2am in new shoes that were torturing my feet, I couldn’t seem to stop exploring, or dipping into every branch of Paul that I passed for a latte macchiato and flan naturel. Nor could I resist staying out for sunset, which I watched from a sparsely populated terrace near Place du Congres.

As grand and agreeable as Brussels might be, it wasn’t what had drawn me back to Belgium. Instead, I’d chosen to base myself in Antwerp, 30 miles east and closer to Holland than to France—both geographically and linguistically. Known variously as Antwerpen and Anvers to Dutch and French speakers respectively, it’s a city that had beckoned for some time and one I had considered visiting in February on a characteristically hare-brained detour between Aachen to Eindhoven Airport. Despite living near the Dutch border for four years, my grasp of the language is decidedly limited. Written down, it can often read like misspelt English or German; but there are some confounding exceptions—slagroom for cream—and the spoken form can be much more of a struggle.

According to family albums, only one photograph remains from our holiday to Antwerp—or perhaps was ever taken—featuring my pre-teen self standing on a road bridge in heavy fog, with a sign for the city the only other discernible feature. As a family, our collective memory is equally clouded, just one Holiday Inn among many from frequent city breaks around Europe. This struck me as odd given that every image I’d seen of Antwerp in the years since suggested it to be a place that would be difficult to forget. It’s the country’s second city after all; and to some who live there is often considered the first. I can only assume that the fog never lifted.

Curiously, I never found the bridge on which that photograph was taken—the lack of a mile marker suggesting to me it was relatively close to the centre. One of the remarkable things about Antwerp is that not a single bridge spans the Scheldt, at least in sight of the riverside. With the second-busiest port in Europe and a riverbed of soft clay, city planners instead favoured tunnels to connect its banks. Not that I spent that much time looking. As with Brussels, I arrived to glorious sunshine, and not wanting to squander a surprise spring day set about taking in the sites and sights that did actually exist.

Antwerpen-Centraal is sometimes described as a railway cathedral, and it certainly feels like hallowed ground, albeit with a slightly steampunk aesthetic. Never has a city made such spectacular first impression, and as I ascended the escalator from the basement platforms to the raised train shed it got more and more astonishing. As amazing as the entrance is by train, however, it’s the foyer that is truly out of this world. I could have admired it for hours, happily watching the changing light pick out new details, if it weren’t for the blue skies beckoning me outside and the school-tripping teacher encouraging his class to photobomb everyone with a camera.

There really is nothing quite like a clear sky. As the last of the clouds evaporated overhead, I made my way down Schoenmarkt in the direction of the cathedral. I planned on visiting it later in the week, when the storms inevitably materialised and the contrasts in light diminished, but knew that it overlooked Grote Markt, my destination. The hour was still early, as I’d hoped to see the square before it filled with delivery vans and other unsightly clutter. As impressive as the square is itself, surrounded on three sides by tall townhouses and guildhalls, many with colourful beer gardens at their feet, and of course overseen by the cathedral, it’s the Stadhuis and Brabo Fountain that truly dominate.

I had seen pictures of the fountain on Instagram and had been keen to photograph it myself. Yet to be turned on for the day, I was able to examine it up close and in detail, switching between my various camera lenses as I worked to capture it from every angle I could. Unlike many water features, it foregoes a bowl and instead appears to erupt from the cobblestones below. Mounted on jagged rocks, it’s both dramatic and dynamic, telling the story of Silvius Brabo, the city’s fabled founder, as he braces to throw a giant severed hand into the river, standing atop a boat held aloft by mermaids and while being pursued by a dragon. There are whole civilisations with less compelling foundation stories.

I liked Antwerp very much, and over the next few days explored as much as I could. As mentioned, I walked along the river, stopping to admire Het Steen fortress en route to the docks, where I spent a cool and cloudy afternoon in Museum aan de Stroom, a ten-storey monolith. I kicked myself for not visiting the panorama on a nicer day, but could enjoy the exhibitions on World War II, freight and homemaking without wishing to be elsewhere and stow my camera for a few uncharacteristic hours of presence. I also spent some time in the zoo, one of the oldest in Europe, searching for a kookaburra that had either died or been relocated since the website was updated, and returned dutifully to the cathedral before it closed.

I suppose if Belgium has a tourist hotspot, it’s Bruges—and I couldn’t go all that way without taking a second look. Only a couple of years separated our family outings to Antwerp and Bruges—and in the album, only a few pages—but the differences are marked. There are more photographs for starters, taken in winter instead of summer, but also a conspicuous growth spurt on my part and the first signs of spotty puberty. Trying not to think too much about what I looked like now, twenty-five years later, I was surprised by just how familiar it all felt. I’d sometimes struggled to connect with the cities I’d revisited in Germany and Holland, but I could sense discernible echoes as I walked Bruges’ cobbled streets. I wondered if it was because we’d only visited once. Perhaps I’d known Roermond and Düsseldorf so well that I’d stopped looking, whereas Bruges had made a more lasting impression through novelty alone. Or maybe the day itself was just especially memorable.

I stayed longer than planned, eating dirty fries beside the spotless canal, climbing the belfry and taking a look around a showroom of Salvador Dali-inspired works. But I wanted to stop in Ghent on my way back to Antwerp and so left while there was still time to do it justice. Despite previously visiting as part of that same trip, Ghent had become unstuck in my mind and associated instead—somehow—with a separate holiday to Barcelona, placing it many miles away in Spain, although I think this has more to do with adolescent egocentrism than Belgium’s knack for evoking other countries. For my parents, on the other hand, Ghent had been even more memorable than Bruges, and I soon saw why—its magnificent cornucopia of cathedrals casting long shadows in the late afternoon sun. I desperately wished I’d arrived in time to look inside, and casting around for a better vantage point had to settle for an upstairs window in Burger King. I had to laugh because I’d recently made a similar mistake in Lille and found myself on the third floor of McDonalds.

But Antwerp was the reason I’d come and, as my trip came to an end, Antwerp was why I was most reluctant to leave. It’s my kind of city: pedestrian in the best sense of the word, often with pavements wider than the roads they flank; multicultural, with an Albert Heijn for every Carrefour; and well connected, with Eurostar linking it to more important cities with less impressive stations. Antwerp felt like a destination in its own right, for shoppers, drinkers and architectural enthusiasts, but pleasingly unpretentious, too. I also loved my hotel. Staying with Citybox for the first time, it was as clean, comfortable and convenient as any hotel I’ve stayed in, and more exclusive than even the best Swiss hostel. When ordering coffee, the cafe also had an endearing habit of serving spoons and sugar on a waffle instead of a napkin.

As I ate my umpteenth complimentary waffle, hoping to soak up at least one of the previous night’s Belgian beers and postponing checkout for as long as possible, I thought back to those incredulous responses when I’d said I was going to Belgium. “Why?” Well, for many reasons, it transpires. For the comic strip murals of Brussels, the mythology of Antwerp, the bustle of Bruges and the collegiate charm of Ghent, with an option to detour to Paris or Lille on a whim. You can skip the Manneken Pis—wilfully or unwittingly, it’s easily overlooked—but there’s a reason that Tintin always returned home at the end of every adventure. Belgium has plenty to offer, too.

Moving On

The only problem with trying to relive four years in five days is that, well, it simply can’t be done. I’d packed a lot into my week so far—arriving in Aachen, visiting Maastricht, touring Bonn, Köln and Düsseldorf, and catching up with a friend in Roermond—but I had originally hoped to see even more.

There were two cities in particular I would’ve liked to revisit—one in Germany and one in Holland. The train from Aachen to Düsseldorf hadn’t terminated there but continued on to Dortmund, just shy of an hour away. It was somewhere I’d only been once before, on a school trip to the Christmas market, but which I had enjoyed very much. I was sure I’d find just as much to admire as an adult.

An alternative, having already spent most of Wednesday on the Rhine, had been to continue downriver into Nederrijn, the Dutch Lower Rhine, and visit Arnhem. As the home of my favourite zoo, Royal Burger’s, it was somewhere I knew much better—having visited on a number of occasions with either my parents or neighbours we’d been particularly friendly with. Arnhem is obviously famous (or infamous) for other things as well.

Most of all, however, I was disappointed not to have made it to Belgium. Aachen sits on the tri-border, and in different circumstances I’d have loved to spend an afternoon there, a country I’d neglected in the years since leaving the continent. Maaatricht, too, borders Belgium—and together with Aachen it forms a Euroregion with the city of Liege. However, Liege wasn’t somewhere I was desperate to return to, our one uninspiring visit enough to make it the butt of family jokes ever since.

At Three Country Point, though, the only thing stopping you from having a foot in Germany, Holland and Belgium wasn’t geography or politics but basic biology. I’d brought my telephoto lens with the hope of photographing green woodpeckers in whichever country they landed, but late winter didn’t seem the optimal time to visit a country (or three countries) park. Instead, save for photographing a cormorant in Köln, I hadn’t used the heavy lens since arriving.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. Despite my hotel room being comfortable enough and free from many of the discomforts associated with my more traditional dorm life, it had been too hot at night and I’d struggled to sleep. As such, my early starts were never as early as I’d hoped, and waking after dawn I hadn’t wanted to waste too much precious daylight travelling. Everywhere I’d visited had been close-by, whereas Dortmund and Arnhem would’ve almost doubled the distance and travel time.

Most frustrating of all, however, had been the forecast. As I packed my bag on the last morning, I still had a full day ahead of me before my flight home from Eindhoven Airport. I’d plotted an elaborate detour to Antwerp that, if I departed Aachen early enough, would have given me the best of the day. One of my favourite photographs had been taken in Antwerp, of my teenage self on a foggy bridge—the only other feature being a signpost for the city. And yet the album contained no other evidence of our visit. A real shame given how beautiful it appears to be.

In the event, the forecast was for clouds and rain, and the thought of spending hours on a succession of coaches or a fortune on expensive trains only to be rained indoors just didn’t feel worth the time or money. What’s more, I still felt I had unfinished business in Germany and Holland. The dull days had resulted in disappointing photographs and I wasn’t ready to give up and move on just yet. What if I could have another chance at seeing Roermond in a better light?

In Aachen at least, conditions had improved. And so, after retaking all my pictures of the Altstat under a brilliant blue sky and waiting for the bookshop to open so I could have one last slice of cheesecake, I made my way to the train station—and then to the coach station, for the line was still closed from last night’s storm damage. Suddenly the previous evening’s inconvenience seemed like a blessing in disguise, as I knew exactly what I needed to do. That said, taking the bus to Heerlen would eat into my remaining time.

Roermond wasn’t any brighter that afternoon but it was still nice to be back. Approaching the afternoon with fresh eyes and a genuine desire to appreciate the town’s remaining merits rather than holding any changes against it, I found both churches to be handsome sights, while the designer outlet that had so depressed the high street was nevertheless well presented and equally well attended. It also took me down to the river, where I sat contemplating the recent past, alternative presents and possible futures as the sun burnt its way through the clouds above. Given more time, I might even have seen it.

But I didn’t, and as I travelled north to Eindhoven the clouds won out and the heavens opened. Accepting reality, I made no frantic, ill-fated attempt to see more of the city and instead spent the last of my time in the station, at Coffee Fellows. I’d been on the lookout for branches since I’d arrived, it being my favourite European coffee chain after France’s Paul, but always seemed to spot them as I was racing for a train—in Köln, in Düsseldorf and here in Eindhoven.

And that was that, at least for the time being. I love Germany and know I’ll be back at some point, whether it’s to reconnect once more with friends, another break to Berlin or a trip to one of the cities I’ve still yet to visit. In fact, if everything goes to plan, I’ll be back on the Rhine in December, at Strasbourg Christmas market, likely travelling through Freiburg to get there. This wasn’t the end; as I said in a previous blog, this supposed nostalgia trip had already morphed into an exercise in renewal.

Shortly after returning home I caught the Oscar-nominated Past Lives on Netflix—a story about a woman who, having left South Korea as a child, reconnects with it in later life, eventually hosting a childhood friend in New York—which stirred up many of the same feelings as my recent trip, not just in relation to Germany but all of the places I’d previously lived. I knew the hold the past could have and the melancholic weight of nostalgia. One line in particular stuck with me, however: “It's true that if you leave you lose things, but you also gain things, too.”

And I had lost something when I left Germany: cherished friends I’d wept over on my final night, soon to be relegated to Facebook; the security that came with living and schooling on military bases, bound instead for a civilian school in Stevenage I’d barely recognise; and continent-wide horizons, my world to subsequently shrink to fit the borders of the British Isles. But much of this would have happened anyway, simply as a result of growing up and the world changing around me.

Perhaps more had endured. It turned out the people, places and even person I’d been were still there, not exactly as I remembered them but recognisable enough that we could pick up where we left off. I couldn’t relive four years in five days but I didn’t have to. It was still my life, and I was still living it.

All That Remains

Since declaring 2024 my year of nostalgia, I’d been wrestling with semantics: is it really a homecoming if you never actually go home, or can’t? After all, many of the houses I’d previously inhabited would now be home to someone else, while others would have been repurposed or replaced entirely. Accepting this fact, and not prepared to intrude or trespass to satisfy my own curiosity, I’d resigned myself to simply skirting memory lane, or indeed straß.

A case in point: the school reunion this was all building towards wouldn’t take place at the boarding house—now effectively closed—while several of my past addresses had BFPO postcodes that no longer existed or to which I no longer had access. This was especially true of Brüggen, which had lived almost as many subsequent lives as I had, first as an RAF base, then Army, before being returned to German control and used to house refugees. It’s since been bought by a company looking to create an energy and technology campus on top of the old married quarters.

But as I travelled around North Rhine-Westphalia, in orbit around the cities that once marked the outer reaches of my young universe, passing signs for satellite towns like Monchengladbach, Oberhausen and Venlo, I felt the gravitational pull of the little village at the centre of it all: Elmpt. I was getting closer, too. My next stop was Roermond, less than ten miles away and just over the Dutch border, a town I’d frequented for years and felt a deep affection for. Could I really come all this way and stop just short of going home?

Unlike some of the places I’d recently revisited, I recognised Roermond on arrival. Hamstraat, for years the site of my nearest McDonald’s, felt especially familiar—though the branch in question was sadly closed for a poorly timed renovation. Much else had closed, too—unfortunately never to reopen. The cinema was shuttered, the department store was boarded up and the shop from which I’d bought my very first Pokémon cards lay vacant. The streets weren’t deserted by any means, but it wasn’t exactly bustling either.

It seemed the intervening years had been a bit unkind to Roermond. Vroom & Dreesmann—said department store—had been the town’s beating heart for decades, especially at this time of year, in the months leading up to Carnival and Easter, when it was stocked with extravagant costumes and colourful chocolates. Since V&D closed its stores nationally in 2016, the site had sat empty—a constant and conspicuous reminder of happier and more prosperous times. Always more glamorous within than without, it now resembled a multi-storey car park, an unsightly scar on the otherwise picturesque main square.

I couldn’t help but pin some of the blame on Britain’s withdrawal from RAF Brüggen—or Javelin Barracks as the Army later rebranded it. The base had once boasted a sizeable military and civilian population, and as I walked around Roermond there were noticeably fewer English voices to be heard. In reality, though, the designer outlet that opened as I was preparing to leave had drawn business and investment away from the city centre. It had been an international success, especially on Sundays when shops in Germany were closed, and attracted visitors from even further afield than that—although evidently a pretty self-contained one.

I’d arranged to meet an old school friend by the bandstand, and found myself walking behind her and her son en route. We’d met at primary school on Brüggen, progressed to secondary at JHQ Rheindahlen and spent countless weekends rollerblading around Elmpt together. After leaving, a disruption to my education that lead to me repeating a school year, we reconnected briefly when she started university near to my boarding school—before our paths again diverged, seemingly for good. Even then our childhood escapades seemed like a lifetime ago; by now they felt like ancient history.

We ordered some lunch on the square (the French onion soup again came highly recommended) and by the time we’d finished eating had caught each other up to speed on our time apart, finding we still had more than enough in common. If I’d been left cold by some of the places I’d revisited, cities that had grown beyond recognition and towns that were shadows of their former selves, spending time with an old friend had the opposite effect. The memories—until this point unforthcoming—began to flood back, and as we left the restaurant present-day Roermond felt like a friendlier and more hopeful place; more like the Roermond of old.

I’d been talked into making the short journey to Elmpt after all—there was no longer a direct bus service but the offer of a lift made it too convenient to resist. Having seen Roermond, though, I worried what awaited me in Elmpt—and had been forewarned to prepare for the worst. We crossed the border into Germany and took the old road along the perimeter fence, reaching the camp gates before I’d had time to properly steel myself. Military bases—like any institution—are rarely welcoming places, but they’re generally well kempt and encouraging of community. Now, though, overgrown and unloved, it looked downright inhospitable. My heart sank.

We followed Alter Kirchweg into town, past mutual friends’ houses, the school bus stop and yet more businesses gone bust: the ice cream parlour, the Chinese restaurant, the supermarket. Parking at the kindergarten, we were standing on Grünewaldstraße and staring up at my old house before I could even begin to get my bearings. I immediately felt a lump in my throat and for a moment wished I’d come alone. But then my friend’s son asked me to play in the park opposite and I was soon glad of the distraction. It was overgrown and half its original size, having ceded land to the kindergarten next door, but was otherwise unchanged. As we ran, the park—and the past 20-odd years—disappeared in a blur.

There were sadly other shocks in store that afternoon—the swimming pool was gone, a second park had been built over and the NAAFI had been fenced off, graffitied and forgotten—but before I could dwell on any other disappointments I was happily sipping shandy in my friend’s living room and flicking through her son’s Pokémon card collection. I hadn’t expected to stay into the evening—she’d mentioned she was expecting friends over for Germany’s Next Top Model that night—but it was after seven when we finally set off back to Roermond, time having momentarily lost all importance. What’s two hours between friends? What’s two decades?

Not quite ready to leave, and having not eaten anything since lunchtime, I decided to try to the Oranjerie on my way to the train station. Although the RAF had put us up in a nearby hotel with other departing Forces families—most, like us, posted back to the UK—my parents had wanted their last night to be spent in Roermond and splurged on the penthouse suite of the fanciest hotel in town. To this day, of the many moves made before and since, leaving Germany remains the most painful of all, though my brother’s last morning was traumatic for another reason entirely—a pigeon had got in through the window and painted him where he slept.

It was a longer journey back to Aachen than expected. A fallen tree had blocked the line and all trains to Maastricht had been cancelled, leaving me to find a bus as far as Heerlen instead. But it gave me the time and space I needed to think—about what I’d come for and what I’d be taking away. I’d wished to remember: every street, every second, everything. Now that I was there, however, the details seemed less important and the disappointment at not recognising them less acute. I was forced to accept that much of this week would be forgotten in time, too. That’s just how brains worked. It didn’t mean it hadn’t meant something in the moment.

Besides, I may not remember—but I was remembered. I’d been so preoccupied with what was missing that I’d almost missed what remained. I still had a friend there, and if the last few hours had reminded me of anything it was that, no matter how many years have elapsed or how much seemed to have changed, new memories could mean just as much as old ones. You don’t still have to live somewhere to feel completely and eternally at home. Perhaps it wasn’t to be a year of nostalgia after all. What if 2024 could be a year of renewal instead?

Auld Lang Rhine

When I first started travelling solo, I tended to pick a destination and stick with it. Early excursions to London, Rome and Prague were just that, self-contained city breaks. But over the years, I’ve endeavoured to see more, to explore further and to be a bit more ambitious in scope. I no longer look for destinations, but for jumping off points.

Ideally, I like to spend at least a day in a place to get a proper feeling for it, to photograph it in its best light—essential as most of these early jaunts were to places new to me. But this was different: I’d already spent ample time in the cities I was planning to visit and this trip was intended only as a refresher, an indulgence, a coda. And so it was that I set out to tour Bonn, Köln and Düsseldorf in one afternoon.

Although modest in size compared to Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, they’re still big cities, and closely clustered along the Rhine they can at times feel like neighbourhoods in one sprawling metropolis. At the planning stage, to save on time and money, I’d intended to take the path of least resistance, tackling them in sequence as I travelled downriver, but in practice I would have to double back on myself, transiting Köln three times in the process.

Consulting Trainline, I planned to pick up the Eurostar at Aachen, but for some reason tickets weren’t available through the app. Nor did they appear as results on either type of machine at the station—despite displaying on the departure board—leaving me with no alternative but to approach the desk and ask a human. “That’s too expensive,” she insisted without divulging the actual price, instead booking me on a regional train that left half an hour later and took twice as long. “So I have to say thank you and wish you a nice day.”

I sat at a table with a large family, joining them just as the youngest child discovered a clump of chewing gum stuck to the sleeve of his T-shirt. He spent almost the entire journey trying to pick it off, all the while bickering with his brother in a seamless mix of German, English and a third language I couldn’t identify. Then, with spectacular comic timing, just as the announcement came that we were approaching Kölner Hauptbahnhof, he found yet more stuck to his jacket. “Come on, man! Come on, man!”

You see Kölner Dom—Germany’s most visited tourist attraction—before you even leave the station, a great Gothic colossus overshadowing the glass-fronted foyer. With the exception of a school trip to the zoo, all my memories of the city were centred on the cathedral: Christmas market coach trips and games of chase-tag around the Domplatz with my brother. Immediately, however, it was clear that the square had changed dramatically since I was last in town.

It had been reconfigured in the 2010s to update the area, remove its more brutalist design features and improve its perception after a period of decline and disrepute. The Domplatte, a literal plate, had been inserted in the 1960s, boxing in the mound and creating an enlarged pedestrian platform, but ironically making it less accessible (or visible) from street level. First, a wider and more open staircase was installed, before the plate was modified, access streamlined and the cathedral allowed to dominate from its pedestal once more.

I queued at security in order to take a look inside, my bag packed to bursting with camera equipment, then attempted to climb the tower for a better view of the city. However, short on time and instructed at a second checkpoint to stow my rucksack back at the train station before proceeding, I changed my mind and took the road bridge over to the other bank of the river instead. Why climb Kölner Dom when the whole point of visiting the city was to look at the cathedral? Especially when visibility was so poor and the wind so strong. I returned to the station along the iconic Hohenzollernbrücke—the thousands of glinting, engraved padlocks surely doubling its weight.

From Köln, it’s only 30 minutes to Bonn—once the capital of West Germany and, between 1990 and 1999, the seat of government after reunification. I wasn’t as well aquatinted with Bonn as I had been with Köln—or for that matter its successor, Berlin—but I recognised it instantly, even identifying the specific street on which we’d parked decades earlier. I’d recently read about Bonn in Ben Coates’ The Rhine, about his travels from sea to source, and was keen to spend time in the city he’d so enthusiastically endorsed.

It was suitably grand and impressive, though the compact centre struggled to match the sprawl of stately suburbs I’d passed through to get there. I was too early for the cherry blossom, the pavement cafes were as bare as the trees and the colourful buildings were darkened with damp, but wild parakeets flew overhead and if I hadn’t photographed so many in Seville the previous year I could’ve happily wiled an hour away in their company. But with the sky only darkening, I decided to once again focus on the cathedral.

Which left Düsseldorf. There was a very real threat of rain at this point, but I was able to make my way to the city’s handsome Altstat before the first drops started to fall. I’ve always had a soft spot for Düsseldorf, and while I might have spent a spring day dining out in Little Tokyo or admiring the 21st century editions to its skyline, I wanted to use the little daylight remaining to reacquaint myself with the historic quarter. The Rathaus and Basilica are both beautiful, but my attention was grabbed by something else.

Bert Gerresheim‘s Stadterhebungsmon was commissioned to commemorate the city’s 700th anniversary and does so with a ghoulish depiction of the Battle of Worringen—the cavalry riding skeletal horses and the soldiers stalked by Death himself. I waited patiently for a local camera crew to finish recording, hoping to quiz them on its detail and design, but they were more interested in reminiscing about past assignments in my native Scotland to say much about the statue. They’d been particularly taken with Lewis and Harris, but I had to confess I’d never been.

It was raining heavily now, but I decided to leave the relative shelter of the Altstadt and walk a section of the promenade, watching a never-ending stream of freight being shipped up and down the Rhine. Once upon a time, I’d done much the same—my brother and I teaching ourselves to rollerblade from one end of the esplanade to the other. I’d considered renting a pair as I’d once done in France, on Nice’s sun-dappled Promenade des Anglais, but I was older and colder now and thought better of it. Besides, it wouldn’t be as much fun on my own.

As I waited for the next train back to Aachen, I couldn’t help but feel a little lost and alone. Once again, I’d expected vivid flashbacks on each stop of my journey only to greet them with a vague sense of familiarity. Ultimately, though, the true test was still to come. For the next day was going somewhere I’d definitely remember. Home, no less—or one of them. And what’s more I’d have some company and a memory aid. I was to meet a childhood friend in Roermond—someone I’d never forgotten.

The Motherlands

“You’ll have to go to Maastricht for some French onion soup,” my mother had insisted upon hearing my plans to return to the Dutch-German border where we’d lived from 1998 until 2002. I must admit, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind when I was putting together my itinerary, but then I was more concerned with reliving my own memories than those of my parents.

Back then, my brother and I would’ve rather used weekends to visit Dreiländereck maze in Aachen, Royal Burgers' zoo in Arnhem or Bobbejaanland theme park in Lichtaart—Germany, Holland and Belgium all within an hour’s drive. Instead, my parents insisted on taking us to Intratuin garden centre, Handelshof cash & carry or IKEA. However, in the event there weren’t any errands to run, their preferred pick was Maastricht.

I fancied that the memories shared with family were the most likely to have survived intact, having since become anecdotes and been fairly well rehearsed in the intervening years. By contrast, those shared with estranged childhood friends or, on the few occasions I branched off alone, known only to myself were the ones I was keenest to rekindle on this trip into the past, having long fallen out of everyday use.

It wasn’t part of the plan, then, when I found myself booking a return ticket to Maastricht Centraal on my second afternoon in Aachen. I’d spent the morning photographing interiors at the Dom and Rathaus, but keen to take my camera outside I decided to search the surrounding area for a more promising forecast. Maastricht, it transpired, posted the only sunny result for miles around. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a blue sky.

Even though there’s no obvious border to cross or special announcement to be made, it’s immediately apparent when you’ve crossed into the Netherlands—in this instance just minutes after leaving the city limits. Not because there’s suddenly a windmill standing on every street corner, though there are still a striking number, but because it’s like you’ve entered a tabletop world of scale models and static scenery; if it weren’t for the cyclists crisscrossing the landscape, I might’ve been travelling on a miniature railway.

The Netherlands is a cute and characterful country of handsome houses and tidy lawns. The ubiquitous red and white brickwork extends even to the churches, lending them a diminutive air in keeping with the flattened landscape and keeping communities unified if not strictly uniform. Like Germany, the state was clearly struggling to keep up appearances—through dirty windows, I watched flooded fields and overgrown parklands whizz by—but individuals clearly did what they could and it made all the difference. The Netherlands still looked like a charming place to live.

As I approached Maastricht Centraal, an astonishing array of tracks began to converge and combine. If memory served, Maastricht was a modest market town, quaint and compact, and yet all evidence appeared to the contrary. The departure board showed services to Aachen, Liege and Venlo. Even more surprising was how familiar it felt, the glossy red and green tiling striking a chord. I’d never travelled from the station before, but had perhaps greeted a visiting relative at some point in time. Unless, of course, I was mistaking its red brickwork and Arcadian arches for somewhere else—maybe for a miniature Hackescher Markt?

This sense of familiarity evaporated on exit. As I walked down Stationsstraat, in the general direction of the river, I didn’t recognise my surroundings at all. Instead of the sleepy stream I was expecting to find outside the old walls, I emerged onto the bank of a busy shipping channel bisecting the city—the mighty Meuse no less. I thought everything was supposed to look smaller in adulthood? Crossing the river and encountering one market square after another, I gave up all hope of finding the restaurant favoured by my parents decades before.

I could picture it in my mind, but the rest of the scene failed to take shape. I certainly didn’t remember the city’s Stadhuis standing in the middle of it, or recall for that matter sitting in the shadow of Saint Servatius Basilica. In fact, beyond the medieval defences I couldn’t recall Maastricht having any notable landmarks at all. Some features were undoubtedly new to me, such as shopping centres Mosae Forum and Entre Deux, but others clearly dated from long before the 1990s. The city seemed too historic, too interesting to have made such little impression.

Thankfully, I had an entire afternoon to rediscover its forgotten treasures. I started on Vrijthof, a square strongly associated with Carnival and which hosts a cluster of five colourful installations inspired by the festival, eccentric in design and anthropomorphic in shape. Inside the basilica, the man on the ticket desk proudly proclaimed Maastricht to be the most beautiful city in all of the Netherlands and, no longer certain I could rely on my piecemeal memories of Amsterdam and Utrecht to adjudicate, I took his word for it, paying the entrance fee. If nothing else, I found it hard to imagine either having as fine a building as this.

Next, incurring roaming charges to consult a map, I tried to locate the watercourse I’d had in mind. Leaving the city centre, I found what I was looking for—Jekerkwartier—outside of the southeastern gate, Helpoort, just as I’d predicted. Walking upstream, back along the wall, I was stopped in my tracks by a woman mourning a dead giraffe. It took longer than it should have to realise I was looking at a life-sized replica, a macabre memorial to the bear pit that had once occupied the space. Other animals were immortalised, too—though curiously the bear, Jo, sat outside the metal bars, a short distance away on a park bench. Reparations, I presumed; though somewhat undermined by the petting zoo and aviary still in operation elsewhere on the Jeker.

After exploring the old fortifications, visiting the university and admiring the statue of d'Artagnan, the Musketeer who met his end in Maastricht, I decided to take a chance on another church—not because it was especially impressive to look at but because it seemed so inexplicably busy. Many churches in the area, either side of the border, only opened to the public after a period of dedicated morning prayer, so it seemed curious that this one should draw such a crowd in late afternoon. However, upon entering I realised the congregation were in fact customers, the church having been deconsecrated decades before and rechristened as a bookstore in 2006: the much vaunted (and indeed vaulted) Boekhandel Dominicanen.

In no hurry to return to my hotel and conscious I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, my thoughts turned to dinner while my mum’s words echoed in my ear. I found a restaurant with outside seating and requested an English menu, relieved to see that French onion soup was still as popular as ever with the Dutch. I asked for a bowl and some beer, then watched as children played amongst the Carnival quintet on the far side of the square, finding it suddenly easy to imagine my brother and I in their place. I sat for some time after I’d finished, enjoying the atmosphere. I had to admit, Mum and Dad might have been onto something.

Double Deutsch

It was 1998, Geri had just left the Spice Girls, and worse, after finally settling in at school I was to be leaving Scotland after eighteen months and moving to either Germany or Cyprus. The decision made for me, I arrived in North Rhine-Westphalia mere weeks before the end of term, surrounded by kids that seemed maturer and more worldly than those I’d known in Elgin, and facing the prospect of high school after the summer holidays.

Now, in 2024, circumstances couldn’t be more different. The days of adolescent heartbreak and upheaval seem as distant and alien as Spice World, replaced with a calm and continuity that I couldn’t have imagined as a child. Rather, I was in my mid-thirties, I’d lived in Dundee for over a decade and I was more likely to fret over politics than pop music. What’s more, whenever I return to Germany, it’s on my own terms.

I hadn’t moved back—after Brexit, that’s not really an option—but rather I’d come as a tourist, a traveller in both space and time, albeit with only as much baggage as Ryanair would allow in the cabin free of charge. I’d come to see Aachen, where we used to explore the maze; Düsseldorf, where we’d rollerblade the promenade; and Köln, where we’d visit the Christmas markets. My first stop, however, was Eindhoven, where we’d, well, occasionally go swimming. Every journey has to start somewhere.

Naively, I expected it to still seem relatively familiar. I’d lived in close proximity to the Dutch-Germany border for four years and thought I knew the Netherlands reasonably well, if not the language. But as the airport bus wound its way to Eindhoven Centraal I felt like a first-time visitor. I tapped in but not out with my debit card, incurring some unknown fee. I couldn’t work out how to transit the train station without a ticket so found myself circumventing it at unnecessary length. And finally arriving at the cathedral, I found it to be closed without explanation. Before I could find my feet, never mind Tongelreep swimming centre, it was already time to move on.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was—and would continue to be—approaching this all wrong. I was used to exploring the area by car, dependent on parents and endlessly distracted by whatever book, game or song was the obsession of the day. I wouldn’t know the bus and train stations, the suburbs and districts, the details and directions. I also hadn’t fully accounted for the decades that had passed. As I travelled first to Heerlen, and then across the border into the outskirts of Aachen, I was brought soberingly up to date. I wasn’t the only one looking a bit tired and out of shape.

This wasn’t my first trip back to Germany since returning to Britain in 2002. I’d been back to Berlin a number of times, but just as London is a world unto itself it seems Berlin’s singularity had masked changes to the wider country. Like the capital’s Europa-Center, the once impressive ICE trains crisscrossing the country felt out of time and place, as though they’d been built for an alternate future that had never come to pass—one where the hope and optimism of the ‘90s had carried over into the new century rather than being curtailed by 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and a global pandemic.

I reminded myself that nowhere looked its best in February, and noted that the weather wasn’t doing it any favours either, but as the train approached Aachen Hauptbahnhof I was reminded of similar scenes of neglect in countries traditionally considered far less wealthy. Maybe I’d just spent too much time in Switzerland, or perhaps I simply hadn’t noticed before, but Germany (at least West Rhine-Westphalia and neighbouring Limburg) didn’t feel as prosperous, proud or presentable as I remembered, nor did it seem as resilient in the face of contemporary pressures as I’d anticipated. In many ways, it looked as battered and bruised as Britain.

Still, despite the signs of deprivation, the depressing weather and my own disappointment at not recognising everything I passed, I felt immediately at ease in Aachen—I always did where the German language was spoken—and I was eager to explore. I wouldn’t be visiting the labyrinth at Three Country Point on this occasion, where Germany borders the Netherlands and Belgium—I was much too old and, besides, the maze was currently closed—but I looked forward to reacquainting myself with the city, the region and the country at large.

I arrived in the early evening, and by the time I’d checked into my hotel the winter sun had set and rain had started to fall. I found a cafe on the ground floor of a bookshop, Mayersche, took a seat next to the window and ordered a slice of cheesecake and a beer. Outside, streetlights didn’t just keep the darkness at bay but transformed what had been a rather dull and dispiriting day into a warm and welcoming night, the drizzle soon subsiding. If I craned my neck, the gilded spire of Aachener Dom was just visible over the glistening rooftops of the Altstadt. The day was done but the night was still young—as indeed, I decided, was I.

Memory Lanes

In my travels so far, I’ve sought to strike a satisfying balance between visiting new places and rediscovering old favourites. Until now, however, there has been a tendency to favour novelty over familiarity, with even return trips prioritising new sites and sights in an attempt to expand my worldview and grow my photographic record. If I can tick off a new country in the process, all the better.

This year, I’ve decided to make an effort to address this imbalance and dedicate more time to naked nostalgia and shameless sentimentality. Early rumblings of a school reunion—currently earmarked for December–got me thinking about the places I’d once known and the lives I’d once lived. After all, we hadn’t just gone to school together; we’d boarded together. And yet, it already feels like a lifetime ago—maybe more.

If my year was to culminate in a school reunion, I wanted to build up to it by carrying that theme through the rest of 2024 as well. I lived in Ashby-de-La-Zouch between the ages of 15 and 18, but before that I’d called other places home, too: Elgin, Canberra, Brüggen. What if I could revisit them all? I hadn’t been back to School House in over a decade, but I hadn’t returned to my German and Australian stomping grounds for much longer than that.

This dislocation had in many ways defined my early years and yet it was something I’d never really reckoned with. Regularly uprooted and replanted elsewhere, I’d lost touch not just formative with places and people but parts of myself. Over time, my connections to these past lives began to wither and the associated memories started to fade. I could always reminisce with family, obviously, but that meant reliving only the experiences they’d been party to. It wasn’t the whole story.

Worried I might one day lose the plot entirely, I wanted to re-find my place in the narrative and tie up some loose ends; to jog memories by revisiting old haunts, reconcile past lives by reconnecting with estranged acquaintances and perhaps even lay some ghosts to rest or revive lapsed dreams along the way. Not time travel per se, but still a rolling back of the clock. A walk down memory lanes.

At first, I thought about working through these chapters chronologically, but, prevaricating, I’d left myself insufficient time to plan a spring excursion to Australia. I’d wanted to see Canberra in the autumn, to photograph Lake Burley Griffin and Black Mountain in their fall, but would have to leave it until the seasons had reversed. That’s if I could afford to go at all, or secure enough time off work to make it worth my while.

Instead, I decided to prioritise Germany, and thus booked five days in North Rhine-Westphalia. I wouldn’t be doorstopping anyone and asking to see my old room, however. Elmpt isn’t exactly a transport hub and I’d sooner base myself somewhere better connected. Rather, I planned to visit Aachen, Düsseldorf and Köln, peripheral cities that I’d once shopped in, rollerbladed around and largely taken for granted; to orbit and observe my old world rather than attempt to inhabit it.

Nevertheless, I longed to make some kind of contact. I reached out to a childhood friend still living locally and arranged to reunite across the border in Roermond, another town that had served as a backdrop to my boyhood and which, unlike Elmpt or Brüggen, helpfully had a train station. Our friendship had meant a lot to me, but my memories of our adventures were limited and lacking in detail, so I was excited to compare notes and swap stories—to be reminded of in-jokes and deep-cuts.

Will it work? Might exploring the past help to reframe the present and inform the future, leaving me feeling more rounded and content as a person? Or could the experience backfire, serving only to alienate me further from a life that cannot be relived and make me question whether people, places and experiences were ever really as I remembered them? I guess only time will tell.

For The Bird

I always suspected the eventual collapse of Twitter would hit me harder than most. Over the last fourteen years, ever since I first heard Stephen Fry extolling its virtues on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, I’ve not only embraced microblogging as a medium but allowed Twitter to become so central to my life and outlook that I genuinely struggle to imagine a future without it. I’ve changed a lot since 2009, as has the world, but Twitter has been a valued constant.

I set up my first account in second year at university as a counterpoint to Facebook, which had only recently supplanted Bebo and MySpace. But while my friends could be easily exported from one platform to another, it became apparent that the Twittersphere wouldn’t be so easily replicated. Very few of my friends were on it, and there was no realistic way of keeping a running tally of the thousands of accounts I followed or guarantee that anyone following me might do so elsewhere. Luckily, Twitter endured, even as others didn’t.

I’d been attracted by the opportunities Twitter promised for personal and professional development. It represented a chance to define myself, to distill ideas into 140-character digests and record my thoughts, inspirations and opinions for posterity. I could make connections across different disciplines, continents and even levels of celebrity. There was a chance I might expand my reach, amplify my voice and grow my influence. Logging into Twitter each day felt as important as attending lectures or gaining work experience.

I quickly connected with journalists and started writing film reviews and feature articles for various websites, securing an internship and accreditation to film festivals and press screenings. Then, when my interests changed and I started a second profile curated to better reflect my passions for photography, travel and wildlife, I found a new community that followed me on my journeys, joined in weekly Twitter chats and agreed to met-ups in Glasgow and New York. It was a constant companion I could carry around in my pocket.

I got my news from Twitter, made friends through Twitter, shared things I found interesting on Twitter. Even as I habitually checked Instagram and Facebook, I spent the vast majority of my screen-time on Twitter. Where Meta’s offerings felt superficial and perfunctory, one full of filtered influencers and the other loaded with friends I’d largely fallen out of touch with, Twitter continued to feel vital, engaging and useful—whether chasing refunds, crowdsourcing information or scouting birding locations, the potential was limitless.

Not that my relationship with it was always productive, or even particularly healthy. I’m as guilty of mindlessly scrolling and fretting over metrics as anyone, but while all social media platforms invite procrastination and encourage compulsive tendencies, Twitter does much more besides. Every flick through my feed exposed me to new books, movies and music, introduced me to new writers, travellers and academics, alerted me to competitions, events and job opportunities. It’s been a window, a doorway, a prism through which to view the wider Internet.

It’s perhaps because I’ve never had a tweet go viral or attracted any real attention that I still have such a positive perception of it. Many people are ambivalent about Twitter, treating it as a work obligation or marketing tool, while almost as many have long since soured on the experience altogether—some years before Elon Musk slid unsolicited into their DMs. For me, Twitter has always been a warm, welcoming and rewarding environment, largely untroubled by trolls or their vitriol, where I could still share my love of soup, seals and Switzerland. The blue bird remained a reassuring sight, Jack Dorsey a benevolent spectre.

Over time, I’ve seen Twitter come together to celebrate Eurovision and the Olympics, I’ve seen it rally to offer support and sanctuary to victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks, I’ve seen it mourn the deaths of idols, the destruction of icons and the defeat of causes. Trump’s presidency, Britain’s exit from the EU and the coronavirus pandemic felt ever so slightly less desperate because the grief and anguish was shared. Was it an echo chamber? Perhaps, but also a safe haven. And when Twitter did act as one—although occasionally cruel, misguided or counterproductive in its methods—it could be a genuine force for good in the world.

But that’s changed. Just as Twitter once promised a new beginning, its tweets a dawn chorus reverberating around the Internet and its dominant wing fixed firmly to the left, it has recently become something else, something darker. Elon Musk’s bastardised version, apparently called X, feels like a complete and comprehensive corruption of everything I thought Twitter to be—or at least everything I believe it could have been. Valued news sources have been unverified, uncensored hate speech has proliferated and some of the worst offenders have not merely been encouraged but subsidised with a share of its advertising revenue.

Ever since Musk’s takeover, I’ve been prevaricating about how to proceed. Many have flocked to new communities such as Mastadon and Bluesky, further tilting the direction of discourse on Twitter to the intolerant right. Now even the innocuous name and branding are to be changed, from sky blue to pitch black, making you wonder once again why Musk bought Twitter in the first place if determined to change everything about it. With half the staff, a fraction of the users and a completely new identity, what is actually left but the algorithm?

I’d hoped that Meta’s own Threads might come to the rescue, and there’s a chance that it may yet recapture some of that early Twitter magic. I’ve set up a profile, claimed my username and followed many of the same people, but it turns out the algorithm’s more important than I’d wanted to believe. It’s fun and diverting, sure, but without a linear newsfeed, a search function and direct messages it isn’t much use—especially when the feed remains stubbornly and mystifyingly free of the accounts I’ve chosen to follow. But it’s early days and the exodus from Twitter only looks set to continue, while updates and new features for Threads are promised.

For me, I think the time has finally, unfortunately come to quit Twitter—while indeed there’s still a Twitter left to leave. A nostalgic at heart, I’ve clung to the iconography, the terminology, the history; desperately hoping Musk might tire of his wanton destruction and move onto spoils new, leaving something diminished but still salvageable behind. But if Twitter, tweets and the little blue bird itself are truly destined to follow the Fail Whale into the recycling bin then there doesn’t seem to be much worth sticking around for.

Maybe it’s better this way. A clean break with no option to reverse course. Maybe it’ll spare my increasingly conflicted feelings about Twitter, preserve my happy memories of its heyday and spur me to reset my relationship with social media more generally, without the distracting push notifications and depressive doom scrolling. Whether given time Threads can stitch X up or eventually unravels itself, life will never be the same without Twitter. The world already feels smaller, quieter, heavier. The bird has flown the nest, never to return. But with any luck, we can still flock together elsewhere.

A Walk on the Rewilded Side

Every year, Aberdeen turns a small number of its famously grey facades over to an ever changing roster of street artists to do with them what they will. They do this as part of Nuart, a festival the Granite City cohosts with Stravangar. Since 2017, a diverse array of paste-ups, murals and other installations have built up across the city, not just brightening the urban environment but bringing world class art out into the open for all to enjoy.

This June was no different, with another 13 internationally recognised artists contributing works in a wide range of styles, but where 2023 did distinguish itself was in its theme: rewilding. You might therefore be forgiven for expecting an animalistic bent to proceedings, with rewilding traditionally being used to describe the reintroduction of lost species such as eagles and beaver; and indeed hedgehogs, flamingos and goldfish join the existing leopards, seagulls and unicorns. But it turns out the brief is much bigger than that.

This being a street art festival, Nuart Aberdeen, alongside the artists with which it’s partnered, is much more interested in other forms of rewilding, especially in terms of human nature and expression. Another word, though less emotive, might be reclamation. After all, graffiti has become synonymous in the eyes of some with trespass, vandalism and antisocial behaviour, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that those who practice it might want to reclaim the word and have their say.

As such, in addition to natural vistas and exotic critters, political in their own way, the works this year are of a particularly antiestablishment persuasion. A naked judge frolics flippantly through The Green, evoking the protagonist of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are—a book ostensibly about monsters but which is actually concerned with the wildness of childhood. But this is just the start of it. The wild rumpus has only just begun.

Even the animals are complicit. Across the road from HMV, another icon of this year’s festival, Hacker Hedgehog, gets to work from his new home astride a concrete block—no doubt pirating movies between illicit hacks. Not far away, a pair of clueless looking ostriches carry a pair of equally clueless looking police officers. And the goldfish? Well, it’s tagged its plastic bag with an anarchic “A”—just around the corner from the police station, no less.

At the other end of Union Street, Aberdeen’s now partly pedestrianised high street, a window display goads: “Hello Mister Police Officer”. This is The Print Room, which throughout the festival held a small exhibition on street art in Tartu, on those breaking the law to make the city “more meaningful, fun and personal”, as well as prints for sale of Tartu native Edward con Longus‘ judge and hedgehog, among others. Outside, on the side of a bin, Oor Wullie beams with pride. In fact, you can imagine those words coming from any number of Beano characters, more closely associated with Dundee but intellectual property of a company with links to Aberdeen, too.

This year’s official trail was signposted by rabbits, in what was inevitably a reference to Alice in Wonderland, and perhaps The Matrix. Visitors follow the white rabbit not down a rabbit hole but into parts of the city they might never have thought to explore, or perhaps presumed they never had access. Along the way you might notice a series of tree prints, hidden in doorways and on inaccessible walls. These are just thatches, however, the full forest of Stanley Donwood‘s paste-ups covering the boarded-up windows of the abandoned hospital at Woolmanhill. Enter at your own risk.

Most of all, though, Nuart seeks to rewild art. Aberdeen Art Gallery and Aberdeen University may have made much available online during the Covid-19 pandemic but for the most part still keep the artworks in their respective collections behind closed doors. Nuart, however, places art firmly in the public domain—inspiring, confronting, awakening—whether locals want it there or not. At first it kept to the fringes, artworks tucked away in car parks and down alleyways, but each year it grows bolder. Indeed, this year children were handed crayons, welcomed into Marishall College and invited to draw on the floor of its quadrangle.

Of course, there’s a limit to how transgressive a festival can be when it’s run in conjunction with the city council, but while the visiting artists may be commissioned and the primarily artworks curated, there is a treasure trove of smaller tags by local artists that remain outwith the official map and marketing materials. These, together with the many surviving installations from previous years, make for quite the treasure trove, and indeed treasure hunt. There are still pieces from past years, let alone this year, that I’ve yet to find—even in areas I think I know well.

And although rewilding might be this year’s theme, it’s one that can be seen retrospectively in previous years’ work—whether it’s Isaac Cordal‘s little grey men escaping invisible offices on Guestrow, not unlike Keane Reeves’ Mr Anderson before he became Neo; Strøk‘s figures free-running on Rosemount Viaduct, veritable Lost Boys defying gravity forevermore; or simply Elisa Capdevila’s hand reaching for a curtained window and the natural light beyond, from a year when “reconnect” was the name of the game. In fact, it’s hard to think of any street art that doesn’t in some way remind us of the irrepressible animal within—ready to escape, play, live.

But while rewilding might perhaps fittingly be a hard word to claim, for me it still comes back to nature. I love viewing street art for the same reason I love encountering urban wildlife—and it’s likely why my favourite piece from any iteration of Nuart remains Hama Woods’ leopard on Crooked Lane. It speaks to something primal and true. As with Alice or Neo or Max, it transports us somewhere unpredictable, irrational, extraordinary. Nuart may be over for another year but its mark has been made and it will one day return. Meanwhile, The Big Hop Trail—hares rather than rabbits this time—may be substantially less subversive but still promises to take visitors on a journey down the rabbit hole, to where the wild things are, in and around Aberdeen.

An Ode to City Quay

If you’re ever looking for me, a good place to start would be Victoria Dock. Alongside Camperdown Dock, it’s one of Dundee’s two remaining historic harbours, once integral to the city’s jute trade and whaling industry, the others having been long since infilled to make way for what is now Discovery Point, Slessor Gardens and the offramp for the Tay Road Bridge. It should be easy enough to spot me as I’m sometimes the only person there.

However, this is not because I live on Marine Parade, regularly dine at Porters Bar & Restaurant or frequent the Frigate Unicorn. I have no real business being at City Quay, but for the last few years have derived a great deal of pleasure from it. Others may visit the dentist or cafe, or for the inflatables at FoxLake, but I’m there for something else: to photograph the incredible and all too often overlooked wildlife that calls it home.

In truth, it took me years to discover what City Quay had to offer. I first visited shortly after the modern retail complex opened in 2002 to buy already discounted X-Files box-sets from The Works, then swiftly forgot it even existed. I was living in landlocked Leicestershire at the time and quickly conflated the memory of it with various other retail parks I’d visited, so much so that when I later returned to Dundee and resolved to seek it out I couldn’t remember how to get there.

It was Pokemon Go! of all things that brought me back. I’d heard a Gyarados had been caught in the area and had by that point exhausted the water-types geolocated in Broughty Ferry. I wasn’t the only one, either —but while other wouldbe trainers stuck largely to the entrance, exploring no further than the North Carr Lightship, I started to do laps. I never did capture a Gyarados, but I did find a cormorant crucifixing on a partially collapsed pier in the middle of the dock.

I’d never seen anything like it, at least not consciously. It was massive, much bigger than the gulls and pigeons that surrounded it. It amazed me that something so large and alien could exist in a place like Dundee, and that it wasn’t drawing more attention. What else had I missed while staring at my phone? I’d underestimated Scotland — not for the first time and certainly not for the last — and wondered what other wildlife City Quay might be home to.

In the years since, it has never stopped surprising me. The more time I spent at City Quay the more I started to see. That first cormorant had been no fluke of nature, and each morning more could be found sleeping on top of lampposts or drying their wings on the various ropes and riggings. Around them flew an astonishing array of small birds — iridescent starlings pulled worms out of the grass, chittering goldfinches undulated overhead and oystercatchers shrieked from above. In summer, aerobatic swallows sortied through the streets and rested on the handrails

It wasn’t just birds, though. The first time I saw a seal in the water I thought I was hallucinating. I couldn’t for the life of me work out how it got there and called the SSPCA to report it, only to be told it happens all the time and the seal would likely see itself out. The gate to City Quay doesn’t work, but on further inspection I realised that high tide saw the water levels rise until they just about covered the bottom rung of the gate — creating just enough space for a seal to slip inside. But why?

I started seeing them more often, especially in winter when they had the water largely to themselves — the inflatables having been retired and boating clubs suspended for the offseason. One in particular — a seal with damage to its left eye — returned regularly, using the corners of the dock to trap fish. As I watched it feeding, it pulled an endless assortment of food from the water — crabs, eels and starfish, again transforming my understanding of the health and productivity of the water within the quay.

There’s nothing quite like staring into the eye of a wild animal, and especially an intelligent mammal like a seal. Every so often it would surface at my feet, sometimes heralded by a disturbance on the surface or amorphous shape beneath the waves but sometimes taking me completely by surprise, and rather than retreating it would hold my gaze, swimming along the quayside before diving out of sight—only to reappear at the other end of the dock or not at all if it had crossed undetected into connected Camperdown.

I also heard of otters visiting City Quay in the early hours, over-landing from the river into the dock not through the gate but via the street. A video online showed one darting across the carpark at the end of Gourlay Yard. I’m not usually around before dawn, and would likely tear my hair out if I encountered an otter but didn’t have the light needed to photograph it, but I did eventually cross paths with one in early 2021. Or rather, I cought it sleeping in the winter sun, curled up in the corner of an exposed kelp-covered platform at the side of Thorter Row. It was just after noon and the esplanade was busy with pedestrians, but the otter nevertheless went unnoticed by everyone but me.

It’s the chance of more encounters like these that keep me returning week after week, if not day after day. I’ve only seen the otter once since, later that month fishing along the riverside, but I hope to one day see it again. I’ve photographed them in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Perth, but it’s nice to know I have them on my doorstep as well. And the surprises keep coming to this day. I recently heard that a porpoise had been discovered in Camperdown Dock and had to be herded back out at the next high tide — ironic, perhaps, given Dundee’s whaling past. It’s hard enough to reconcile the presence of seals with the awkwardness of the opening, let alone a porpoise.

But change is coming to City Quay. Eden Project has transformative plans to redevelop the site of the former Dundee Gasworks across the road and railway from City Quay —but with offshoots that connect to and encroach on Camperdown Dock. This may well involve repairing the gates and once again opening the marina to the outside world, providing access to boats and improving leisure opportunities, especially for the watersports companies already in situ.

There is of course potential for positive change, with greater investment, accessibility and attention rightly recentering City Quay as one of Dundee’s premier attractions. It’s a beautiful part of the city, with breathtaking views of the Tay from Marine Parade, access to HMS Unicorn docked at South Victoria Dock Road and a street of sensitively restored harbour buildings along Chandler’s Lane. The plans are bold and exciting, and the artist’s impression incredibly eye-catching. A Quay that is as green as it is blue, and water that looks considerably cleaner.

But part of City Quay’s present charm is its ramshackle quaintness. Selfishly, I quite like having it to myself, but I also worry about the effect increased traffic and footfall might have on the wildlife I currently get to share it with. Parts of the Quay are fenced off and inaccessible, unsightly vegetation grows out of the walls and pavement and parts of it are used only by idling delivery drivers. But left alone and often overlooked, birds nest, seals fish and otters snooze. Sparrowhawks prey upon distracted pigeons and domestic cats settle territorial disputes. Fill in the cracks and cut back the weeds and you risk displacing the animals that live there.

But to focus on what City Quay could be — for better or for worse — is to ignore what it is: an oasis in the heart of Scotland’s fourth largest city, in the shadow of V&A Dundee and RRS Discovery, one where you can track oystercatchers, cormorants and sparrowhawks across the sky or scan the glassy surface for rippling seals, otters and porpoises. It has a long history and a bright future, but for me City Quay is where I prefer to spend the neglected present.

Second Time’s The Charm

And just like that I was back in Faro, standing on the same nondescript spot I’d been gratefully plucked from almost a week before. I’d been trying to psych myself up for the last three hours from Seville, hoping to overcome my initial misgivings and open my mind to second impressions. We’d got off on the wrong foot, Faro and I, but there was no reason we couldn’t still turn things around. Back on the ground, though, my carefully constructed confidence faltered. It was exactly as I’d left it.

While Faro’s cultural and culinary attractions had been found wanting, however, there was another avenue I wanted to explore on this follow-up visit: specifically Ria Formosa Natural Park. I’d glimpsed it from the plane on our approach, an expansive wetland comprising countless islands, shallows and tributaries that stretched for miles long the coast. If there wasn’t anything left to see in the city, as I suspected, then I would just have to walk until I found something on the fringes.

I deposited my luggage—by which I mean bag of dirty clothes—at a mixed-use portacabin next to the train station and made a beeline for the marina. I arrived at eleven in time to see two boats departing, and checked the whiteboard for the rest of the day’s scheduled sailings. The romantic sunset cruise would likely be wasted on me and the next sealife tour wasn’t until 8:30 the following morning—timed to coincide with the fishing fleet and capitalise on any feeding frenzy. So I tried to shop around.

There were various other operators promoting tours along the promenade but none that worked with my budget or schedule, their own dolphin-watching tours relegated to later in the week and dependent on enough people prebooking to make them viable. I decided to save my money for the next morning’s departure. Depending on checkout times and airport links I might be able to squeeze that original 8:30 trip in before my flight. This left me with a couple of hours before I could check in to my hotel and an evening to try and fill.

I ordered an omelette for lunch, spent a very generous five minutes milking a minimalist tile museum and checked my phone for the umpteenth time since arriving. 11:45. Great. Confident that nesting storks stood a better chance of holding my attention than uncaptioned paintings, I took to the streets and tracked a pair down to the clocktower above the tourist information centre. There seemed to be people on the roof terrace so I set about finding a staircase that would grant me access. They must have got up there somehow.

This is how I found myself buying a ticket to a Portuguese guitar recital in the tourist information centre, due to start momentarily in a small chapel on the first floor. I’ve done some strange and spontaneous things in my time to gain roof access but this was a first for me. I was directed up the stairs and out onto the terrace, where I was instructed to turn right for the show and, once it had finished, left for the clocktower housing the storks. I hestitated at the top of the stairs, but turned right with a minute to spare.

I’d never heard Fado music before and, if I’m completely honest, I’m not sure it’s really for me. The guitar sounded jangly and disjointed to my untrained ears, but the guitarist was a capable storyteller and had concocted a multimedia experience with his computer savvy daughter in lockdown. At points he interacted with himself onscreen, a bit like John Hammond in Jurassic Park, duetting with the recording and soundtracking a series of educational videos and government-subsidized shorts—including an impressive timelapse of a mural being created atop one of the old walls and a boat-shaped guitar bobbing in the surf.

His love of Fado and Faro shone through and both were genuinely infectious. Footage of him performing around town and in the nature reserve persuaded me to go exploring the latter after check-in, and his insights hinted at a side of Faro that hadn’t been immediately apparent: its musical tradition. But diverting though the experience was I never forgot why I was really there, and when the concert finished fifty minutes later I was the first out the door and up onto the roof. From here I could see colourful rooftops, a cloudless sky and—peering over the sides of two enormous nests—a pair of suspicious storks.

It had been a very pleasant surprise when I arrived in Faro and found storks flying overhead. I’d tended to associate them more with Germany and Switzerland than southwest Europe, and had especially fond memories of watching them building nests in Basel and Zürich. I’d seen them in Spain that week, too—not in Seville or Cádiz but in the surrounding areas, perched precariously on top of almost every electricity pylon I passed. This, though, was the closest I’d ever been to them. They’re big, formidable birds, and when a third flew in to join them I decided not to push my luck by getting any closer.

It turns out Faro has something to offer after all. Once I’d collected my belongings from the station and laundered them at the hotel, I crossed the train tracks and headed northwest. It wasn’t especially picturesque—I walked past derelict factories, a caravan park and a children’s playground—but it was full of life. Swifts and swallows proliferated, signs warned of crossing chameleons and the streams feeding the nature reserve were teeming with fish. I’d left it a little late and brought too little water to walk the five miles to the Ludo Hiking Trail but was happy with the distance I’d already covered.

Dirt tracks branched off from the cycle path but they could only be followed up to a point. The airport was an inescapable presence and “privado” wasn’t exactly difficult to translate. I walked as close to the boundary as I could, however, and was rewarded with a spectacle I never thought I’d see in real life: wild flamingos flamingoing wildly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I don’t know why I was so surprised by their presence, but they’re birds I’ve always associated with remote wilderness—not a sliver of makeshift habitat between railway and runway. Steadying myself against one of the signs, I watched them contentedly through my telephoto lens as they waded through the shallow water.

Back at the marina that evening I was in for another surprise: Aplysia fasciata—the mottled sea hare—a curious creature that caught my eye when it surfaced by the steps. It was soon joined by more, until the whole harbour seemed to be inundated with them. Flapping their frilly parapodia, they danced across the surface—oddly reminiscent of the flamenco dresses I’d seen ruffling in Seville. It was a surreal scene, made even stranger by the giant stage to my side and the sound check getting underway just as the sun started to set. It was beautiful. I realised I hadn’t checked my phone in ages. I was no longer counting the minutes. I was savouring the moment.

The next morning, after checking, double checking and triple checking the timezone saved on my phone, I turned my attention to my remaining currency. I had €50 left—the exact cost of the dolphin tour—and still needed to buy breakfast and a bus ticket to the airport, where I could easily blow the leftovers on lunch at Paul. I didn’t actually mind; I hadn’t booked so there was no guarantee there’d be space in the boat, and even if there was we might not see any dolphins anyway. I’d made my peace with Faro and didn’t want to risk ending the trip on an unnecessary note of disappointment.

So I left Faro for the second time with a much more positive opinion of it than the first. Live music and urban wildlife can work wonders on a place. While I’m not exactly in a hurry to return, there’s no denying it served its purpose as a transport hub and gave me a long-overdue taste of Portugal. And besides, does it really matter what I think when I know a guitarist and at least three storks that like it just fine? I don’t suppose it does.

A Holiday Romance

I fell in love with Seville by degrees; building by building, parakeet by parakeet, squeak by squeak. Having arrived at the concrete coach park beneath Plaza de Armas in the early evening, tired and tetchy from a long day of travel, I’d be lying if I said it was love at first sight. This is occasionally the case—as it had been for me with the likes of Monaco, Geneva and Berlin—but more often than not there’s a certain amount of wooing that must take place first: a few sunsets, at the very least a cup of coffee. This is true of most cities I now adore, not least my beloved hometown of Dundee.

As usual I’d dropped my things at the hostel on arrival and set off for a quick reconnoitre, but much of that first evening was devoted to finding a towel and a padlock rather than searching for hidden gems. All I could find were Carrefour Expresses, which supplied me with toiletries and snacks but little else. In the end I returned to the hostel and rented both from reception—something a less sleepy me would have done to begin with. Exhaused, I skipped dinner and went straight to sleep. Seville would have to wait.

I awoke to blue skies and a Spanish sun, but even though my mood had improved my map-reading abilities hadn’t. My first port of call was the cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest Gothic church in the world. You might expect—as I did—that this would make for a pretty useful landmark. But rather than orienting me in the plaza the building’s dizzying dimensions had the exact opposite effect, while a vortex of screaming swifts served only to disorientate me further. I kept losing track of which side I was on and how many corners I’d turned. So I went in instead.

Given its scale, perhaps the most amazing thing about Seville Cathedral is that it still manages to feel bigger on the inside. I suspect this is partly due to the fact it’s split into so many sections while still accommodating vast open spaces. The Main Chapel feels like a church within a cathedral, while the various remnants of the original Almohad mosque almost double the complex’s footprint. These include the Giralda, a minaret-turned-belltower that’s ascended via ramp rather than staircase (ideal should you wish to ride your horse to the top) and an ablutions courtyard that’s now full of luscious orange trees.

Unfortunately I hadn’t brought my wide-angled lens with me, making it a struggle just to capture a coherent picture of the space—let alone comprehend it. Again, you’d imagine such a strikingly asymmetrical shape to be easily navigable, but every time I tried to map it in my mind I couldn’t make the sections fit together. Still, it was captivating. I especially loved the doors, from the detailed and dominating Door of Assumption to the plainer but no less imposing Door of Forgiveness, a horseshoe gate inherited from the old mosque. It wouldn’t be until much later in the trip that I’d happen across another door, across the square, which would lead to a staircase and then a terrace that would let me appreciate the cathedral in all its multifaceted, multifaith glory.

My next date was with the Real Alcázar, another sprawling complex with Islamic and Christian influences, only this time a royal palace that still serves as the king’s official residence in Seville. Incredibly colourful due to its elaborate tiling and bright paintwork—never more so than in the gilded Hall of Ambassadors—the Alcázar also houses tapestries, texts and artworks from around the world and throughout history. More recently, it doubled as the Water Gardens of Dorne in Game of Thrones, which should give you some sense of its opulence. None of this, however, compares with the walled gardens themselves.

I’d been aware of the monk parakeets building nests in parks and gardens across the city, their cries audible even over those of the swarming swifts, but the size of the trees in places such as Parque de María Luisa made it difficult to see them up close. This wasn’t the case in the orchards of Jardín del Marqués de la Vega-Inclán. All around, birds crashed into orange and lemon trees, chewing through twigs and stems in an unending search for building materials. The peacocks and peahens were even louder, though their displays didn’t seem quite as ostentatious as usual next to the ornamental outbuildings. I went for the morning but ended up staying for much of the afternoon.

However, Seville’s pièce de résistance—or pieza de resistencia given we’re in Spain—somehow tops both the cathedral and the palace. Plaza de España, sometimes nicknamed “the Venice of Seville” (already an improvement on the Italian version if you ask me), is a Moorish paradise that will keep you coming back for more. What helps distinguish it from Seville’s ticketed attractions is how lively it is, how vital, how free. Most horse-drawn tours terminate by the Vicente Traver fountain, daily flamenco performances reverberate throughout the ground-floor portico and would-be boaters paddle beneath the bridges over the crescent canal.

I couldn’t stay away; I visited multiple times each day, then again at night. Buskers would perform from the staircases, serenading those on the balconies above. Along the concave outer wall runs 48 colourful alcoves, each painted to represent a different Spanish province. Ceramic bookcases are installed beside each, some stacked with second-hand books for others to take away and read. On Sunday the complex is flooded with women in traditional dress—traje de flamenca—in costumes as elaborate as anything worn by Natalie Portman in her guise as Queen Amidala of Naboo, when Plaza de España stood in for Theed Palace.

However, it was by night that I loved Sevile most of all, and once the crowds dispersed and the performers retired I had the plaza practically to myself. Well, save for the taxi driver feeding stray cats from his car on Avenida de Isabel la Catolica. I walked the city’s squeaky streets for hours every night. Squeaky clean, sure—if it weren’t for the rotting oranges and horse manure everywhere Seville the cleanest city I’ve ever visited, with armies of street sweepers deployed every night—but also squeaky sounding. I’d arrived just after Semana Santa (or Holy Week) and the processions had left the cobblestones coated in wax. For once it wasn’t my Converse that were the cause.

Before I knew it my love for the architecture and the wildlife and the culture had grown to consume the rest of the city, too. I had my first-ever Michelin-starred meal at Ovejas Negras, whiled away an evening listening to the Hang being played in the shadow of the cathedral and watched a traffic-jamming horse-drawn procession past the bullring and over Triana Bridge. I even started to find my way around, venturing further afield to the aquarium, the train station and The Mushrooms—the largest wooden structure on Earth. Seville certainly didn’t do things by halves, and I was all in.

Ticket To Ride

I couldn’t face another marathon bus journey. I just couldn’t. Even after spending a self-propelled day on the ground in Seville, ambling leisurely and aimlessly from cafe to cafe, the thought of another day on the road didn’t appeal to me in the slightest; which was a shame because by all accounts Ronda—a mountain town bridging a gorge in the neighbouring province of Malaga—wasn’t to be missed.

I was nearing the end of my time in Seville and already facing up to the prospect of a FlixBus back to Faro and a Ryanair plane back to Edinburgh, but having only previously visited Barcelona and Gran Canaria in my teenage years I still wanted to see a bit more of Spain while I was here. Of the three satellite destinations I’d considered this left two—Córdoba and Cádiz—both of which where thankfully accessible by train. The same train, in fact, though sadly not in the same direction.

I cannot tell you what a difference this makes. After years spent travelling in Germany and Switzerland I’d become accustomed to the relative ease and simplicity of train travel. Even the rickety Italian line between Milan and Locarno had its charms. While this would still mean travelling an hour north or ninety minutes south respectively, it would be a more direct and scenic route—free from the traffic and other trappings of motorways that blight the landscape and dominate the view. It might even be pleasurable.

It occurred to me, though, that despite being in town for several days and covering a fair amount of ground I hadn’t seen any trace of a train station. I knew there was one somewhere but I hadn’t so much as spotted a set of tracks—save for those carrying trams between Plaza Nueva and San Bernardo. I decided to investigate the evening before, starting at Plaza De España and walking for what felt like hours to Santa Justa railway station. It wasn’t the most efficient or attractive route but at least I now knew how not to get there the following morning.

I knew next to nothing about Cádiz, save for the fact it featured in the Europe edition of Ticket To Ride, a board game I’d discovered prior to the pandemic and an app that’d helped me through the resulting lockdowns. I’d already visited numerous cities on the map (well, 13 of 48 and counting) and was keen to add another. This isn’t the reason it won out over Córdoba, incidentally. As beautiful as the Instagram-ready mosque-turned-cathedral looked, the forecasted temperatures tempted me back to the coast.

I arrived feeling fresh and enthused, and with a fully charged phone for the first time since I’d left Edinburgh—thanks, Renfe! I accidentally crashed Mass at Iglesia Conventual de Santo Domingo but stuck around for a while and watched the various rites and prayers with quiet confusion. I like visiting churches but rarely see them in action; and even when I do witness a service it’s never quite as impenetrably alien as this. Pardoned, I presumed, I climbed the tower over at Cádiz Cathedral and looked out over the ocean. Then, tired of crowds and congregations, I walked along the esplanade and causeway to Castillo de San Sebastián.

I love wildlife but would be the first to admit that crustaceans are something I often overlook—save for one surprise encounter in a cafe toilet in Broughty Ferry. This wasn’t so easy to do in Cádiz as, after discovering the fortress to be closed, I sat on the rocks below and watched locals and holidaymakers alike dip in and out of the exposed rockpools. In the one nearest to me was a small crab, and as soon as I spotted it I began to pick out others in the cracks and crevices all around—some much larger and more colourful. I sat until I’d drained my can of Coke and soaked up as much sun as my Scottish skin could handle, then I doubled back to have a look inside the cathedral proper just as the wind dropped and a plague of flies descended.

Given how bright and impressive Cádiz Cathedral was from the outside I was a little underwhelmed by how dark and plain it was within. Unsightly netting was strung across the ceiling to protect the upper reaches from pigeons—I presumed—but with the unfortunate side effect of hiding much of it from view. That said, dark and plain are much more desirable attributes in a crypt, and I would’ve happily paid the entrance fee just to explore this one. Shadows crept, footsteps echoed and portraits stared. It was easy to imagine secret passageways, occult meetings and sleeping vampires—at least until you read of the tomb’s actual inhabitants: poets, composers and playwrites. No wonder painted eyes seemed to wander.

My original plan had been to spend the entire day in Cádiz, but I’d heard that Sundays were something of a special event in Seville and decided to cut my outing short so I could people-watch at Plaza de España and perhaps catch the last of the flamenco. Even in Cádiz people were turned out in their Sunday best—the women in colourful frills and the men in tailored blazers. I bought a coffee, boarded the train, took one look at the exception I was supposed to sit beside and slipped into the empty row behind instead. This was definitely the way to go—at least until I was displaced by the seat’s rightful owner. Back on tracks and amen to that.

Ready to Rock and Roll

There is an epitaph in Vicarsford Cemetery in Fife, Scotland that reads: He didn’t do rush. My mother often remarks that the same could be said of me, a loving dig every time I put something off or find myself running late. But while I appreciate where she and the inscription writer are likely coming from, they’re not entirely accurate in what they say. After all, one downside to being slow is that you’re forever finding yourself in a hurry. It’s not that I don’t do rush, it’s simply that I prefer to travel at my own pace.

It was with real reluctance, then, that I booked a coach tour of Gibraltar. I’d looked at making the journey under my own steam, but the local bus between Seville and La Linea de la Concepcion—the closest stop on the Spanish side of the border—ran only four times a day and took four hours each way. In effect, taking the first available bus would mean reaching Gibraltar at around 13:30, while the last bus back again was scheduled to depart at 16:00. Factoring in the border crossing, this would likely mean two hours in town.

This meant parting ways with £104—the same price, ironically, as my original flights from Edinburgh to Gibraltar that had been cancelled by easyJet, thus necessitating this convoluted detour via Faro. Visiting the Rock was, however, the primary purpose of this trip, so I consoled myself with the fact that the journey would be considerably more comfortable by coach. It would also guarantee visits to Europa Point, St Michael’s Cave and Apes Den, which likely wouldn’t have been the case if I’d had to sprint from La Linea. Save for staying over and sacrificing a day in Spain, I couldn’t see another way.

I met the bus at 8pm outside Hotel Bécquer as my hostel wasn’t listed as one of the four prescribed pick-up points, stopping en route for coffee and a croissant. Food and drink wasn’t permitted on board, a sign at the door alerted me, but I managed to slip by the driver unnoticed while he was deep in converation with our guide for the day, Roberto. We then proceeded to spend an hour criss-crossing Seville in rush hour traffic aboard a bus without WiFi, without charging points and without a toilet, before only then beginning our 2.5 hour journey to Gibraltar. So much for comfort and convenience.

It seemed I wasn’t the only person on board that day who didn’t do rush. Sitting across from me was an older Spanish woman, the last to board, who held us up at every available opportunity—at the final pick-up in Seville, at the random toilet stop en route and again at the coach park where we were to begin our tour within a tour. It was thrilling to cross the border, past the airbase and over the commercial runway—all the while watching the Rock of Gibraltar grew taller and more spectacular with every step. But it was also slow progress: we paused first for a headcount, then to arrange a rendezvous point, and finally to transfer onto a pair of minibuses. I made sure that the Spanish woman was on the other one.

Thankfully, our new driver was as keen to make up time as I was. He took us on a kamikazee tour of the Rock, racing through his spiel with wit and enthusiasm as sped around tight corners and darted through even tighter tunnels. Our first stop was Europa Point, the southernmost tip of Gibraltar with views of the Mediteranian Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and, across the strait that separated them, Africa. It was an incredible sight, as was the reverse view of the Rock itself, but with only ten minutes to explore—we’d spent more time at the coach park— there was no time to visit any of the surrounding buildings, including Ibrahim-al-Ibrahim Mosque, Europa Point Lighthouse and, equally enticing if much less exciting, Europa Point Cafeteria.

From there we were rocketed further uphill to St. Michael's Cave, one of 150 caves riddling the Rock. This time we were allotted twenty minutes, assigned wrist bands and ushered through turnstiles into the grotto for a light show that rendered the stalactites and stalagmites in purple and gold. The tourist trail takes you past the so-called Angel of Gibraltar rock formation and out through the auditorium, once visited by Queen Elizabeth II, twice by Jimmy Carr and yearly by hopeful Miss Gibraltars competing in the beauty pageant. At this point I was getting really quite hungry, and those who had skipped breakfast or observed the signage ever more so, but the gift shop stocked only ice cream and we were warned against buying even those in case the monkeys cottoned on.

For our next stop was Apes Den and a handful of Gibraltar’s 300 Barbary macaques had been spotted there earlier that morning. In order to make the most of the measly fifteen minutes we’d been given I made sure I was first off the bus, jostling unapologetically to the door and taking two steps at a time down to Prince Ferdinand's Battery, where two macaques had already drawn a small crowd. I’d spent longer the previous day photographing a rat and a parakeet squaring off in a tree, but tried to put the ticking clock out of my mind as I watched the pair—and those that joined them—in contented disbelief. There is nothing quite like making eye contact with an animal, and it is even more special in the case of monkeys. I watched for as long as I could, stealing an extra five minutes safe in the knowledge that the second minubus would be even later.

That left one hour to see the rest of the city before I had to be back at Casemates Square, but by this point I was so hungry that I sacrificed half of it to eat fish and chips on Main Street. I ate as quickly as I could, before taking the first staircase I could find back up the Rock. I only made it as far as the Moorish Castle before my alarm went off, telling me my time was up. But it was enough just to spend a few minutes in my own company and walk a few metres at my own pace. I looked down over the Ocean Village and back towards Spain. I wasn’t ready to leave yet but I had at least seen what I’d come to see. Gibraltar was a beauty—more dishevelled and chaotic than I’d anticipated but still something of a revelation.

Gibraltar’s city status might have been reaffirmed by the UK Government last year but, really, it doesn’t feel like theirs to bestow. Gibraltar feels more like Monaco than Lichfield—two cities with comparable populations. There are certainly more mosques and synagogues than your average British city. More macaques as well. Sure, you can find fish and chips, Costa Coffee and a red phone box, but you can also eat Spanish-made tapas, attend Notre Dame school or take a boat to Morocco. I loved it.

So that just left the journey home—only without the toilet stop this time. Rather than wait until Hotel Bécquer, the first pick-up but the final drop-off, I alighted early at Hotel Derby and set off in search of Setas de Sevilla, aka The Mushrooms, the largest wooden structure in the world. And I found it, too, eventually. In my own time.

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

I’d made it almost exactly 24 hours in Spain when I realised the time zone on my phone hadn’t changed—meaning I’d been running an hour behind since I’d crossed the border. At over three years old, my iPhone battery has a half-life of about four minutes, and having been unable to recharge it at the Starbucks in Faro, on the bus to Seville or from my bunk at the hostel—the only one in the dorm without a dedicated socket—I was scared to use it unnecessarily, failing to notice the hour I never lost after diligently resetting it the day before.

Looking back, the signs were there all along. I’d been surprised to find the lights off and everyone asleep when I returned to the hostel on Wednesday evening. And the next afternoon, while seeking shade at Seville’s modest aquarium, it had struck me as odd that the reception desk were so insistent that they closed at 6pm when that was still two hours away—especially as I flew through it in less than 40 minutes. If only I’d stayed a little longer, I might have noticed them locking up behind me.

The penny finally dropped about an hour later. I’d booked the last remaining timeslot at Real Alcazar at 18:30 and had stopped for an iced latte after the aquarium to pass the time. I arrived to find an exodus of visitors and a guard blocking the empty entrance lane. I showed him my booking—more than once—and explained that it couldn’t possibly be closed when there was still one hour to go. Confusingly, he accepted there was indeed a 18:30 batch of tickets sold but explained that it was in fact those ticket-holders leaving now. I was just about to show him my booking again when it clicked.

Suddenly my 11am start that morning seemed more than a little leisurely. I’d been tired, sure, but to sleep until midday on my first full day in a new city seemed wasteful in the extreme—as now did the hour spent idling over coffee as I waited for an appointed time that was presently elapsing. In any case, it was now 19:30 and I had no idea what to do. I had planned almost my entire day around the Real Alcazar, squandered a dozen or so euros on the entry fee, and now the disappointment was threatening to define my whole day.

So I walked, and as I did I tried to keep in mind all that I had achieved in that first full afternoon. I’d visited Seville Cathedral and climbed the tower (ramps rather than stairs, unusually), I’d photographed nesting parakeets in Parque de Maria Luisa (including one fighting a rat in a tree) and I’d navigated my way to Plaza de Espana (or Theed Palace as I kept thinking of it, having first encountered it as Naboo’s royal residence in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones). I’d packed a lot in despite a late start and abridged finish. Besides, it was surely better to realise now and lose €13.50 than to have carried on oblivious and missed the much pricier tour of Gibraltar I’d planned for the following morning.

And then, just as my meander brought me back to Real Alcazar and threatened to remind me of my earlier error, I heard the unique and unmistakable sound of the hang—a Bernese handpan that has quickly become one of my favourite instruments. Instantly entranced by its tones and vibrations, I lost another hour in almost exactly the same place—only on this occasion it was a pleasure to do so.

Are We There Yet?

I’d already been awake eight hours when I touched down in Faro, at 10am, and the few hours’ sleep I’d stolen the night before were already wearing off. That might explain the cloud of confusion that hung over me as I stepped blinkingly into the sun outside the terminal building. I’d had enough presence of mind to order a coffee and croissant from a concession stand in the foyer but the bus terminal had me beaten.

It was just one stop but none of the passing buses seemed to serve it. Standing there and watching Jet2 passengers being corralled onto a fleet of queued coaches, I waited and I waited for a local bus for non-package holidaymakers that never materialised. I checked the ticket machine to no avail, not knowing the Portuguese for “city centre” and not wanting to end up even further from town than I was now. After half an hour or so, the rest of my flight had reclaimed their bags and a crowd started forming around me. My spirits lifted as a bus finally honed into view. “Faro?” the driver asked a few moments later. “Faro,” I answered. And just like that, I was on my way.

It was only a short ride into town, which I suffered impatiently as I awaited my first taste of Portugal proper—but as the minutes passed we never seemed to be getting closer to any kind of population centre. First we stopped at a train station, but it was so small and desolate I presumed it must be a secondary one—for commuters already settling into their offices. But then we pulled into an equally unpromising bus station, the bus emptied and I was left to follow my fellow passengers out onto the empty streets of Faro. Already flagging, my enthusiasm started to wane, too.

Unable to find any signage and stubbornly refusing to accept roaming charges so early in a trip, I continued the bus’ trajectory away from the airport and hoped for the best. I knew there was nothing in the direction it had come from, but no matter how far I walked I never seemed to arrive anywhere. No matter which way I turned, it was impossible to tell if I was heading towards or further away from the centre. When I finally came across a map, it became clear that there just wasn’t that much to find. I was already here, in the city’s Old Town.

I stopped at the cathedral, Igreja de Santa Maria, climbing the tower and exploring the courtyard with a scattering of other tourists. I went to the municipal museum and admired the exhibits, mostly archeological, and watched a pair of storks nesting on one of its highest reaches. I even circled back to the train station and sat long enough to watch a train pull up at the platform. Then I checked my phone and saw I still had two hours until my FlixBus to Seville. I decided to go and scout out the stop in anticipation—no longer concerned that the layover might not be long enough.

With no option but to roam, I checked the email confirmation for an address and searched it on Google Maps. It was a twelve minute walk, opposite a hospital and just before a roundabout, so I set off for a quick reconnaissance. I must have walked that street four times before I found it, checking GPS every time I arrived back at the station or the out-of-town shopping centre to try and work out where I’d gone wrong. In my defence, it didn’t look much like a hospital—at least not one you’d want to be treated in—but a previously unnoticed 13C on the wall and a temporary bus sign gave it away.

With nothing else to do, I returned to the shopping centre in search of some lunch and somewhere to charge my phone. I promise I tried to find somewhere Portuguese to eat, but not in the mood for a Burger King and reluctant to retrace the same street again for one of the abandoned cafes I’d overlooked earlier, I settled for a Starbucks so I could use the WiFi. I also had a look at the supermarket, but as I didn’t fancy taking a full pig’s head on the coach I picked up a four-pack of pastele de nata instead.

And that was that, I think. I boarded the bus at the hospital and within moments we’d left Faro and its various satellite resorts behind. Had I missed something? Am I being unfair? Was there more to see? Well, I hope so. Because I’ve got a full day in town at the other end of the trip.

And Away We Go

It’s 6am and I’m at the airport—but I’m not flying to Gibraltar. Not by design, but because easyJet cancelled my flights and discontinued the route for good measure, throwing my first trip of 2023 into disarray and leaving me scrambling to make alternative arrangements. I briefly considered redirecting to Aachen, Neuchâtel or Annecy, but ultimately doubled down and decided to find another way to the Strait instead.

This is how I find myself boarding a Ryanair flight to Faro—almost 300 miles short of my final destination. There are obviously closer airports, but at such short notice they were either unavailable (easyJet has helpfully stopped flying Edinburgh-Malaga as well) or unaffordable (£133.77 one way for Seville). So it is that I’ll be bookending my trip in Portugal, basing myself in Spain and, eventually, busing it to Gibraltar.

This, I realise, begs an obvious question: why go to all this trouble to visit a British Overseas Territory? I’ll admit, it’s a question I’ve been finding it increasingly different to answer. I first set my sight on Gibraltar in the early days of the pandemic, after I’d been forced to cancel trips to Romania and Switzerland and as countries were imposing a patchwork of custom travel restrictions. By contrast, Gibraltar seemed like a safer bet—and it only became more appealing in the months that followed as Covid, Brexit and Russia conspired to disrupt supply chains, push up prices and fuel inflation. Besides, it has monkeys.

But this is 2023 and safe bets are basically a thing of the past. Rebooking at short notice and with slightly different dates meant I was forced to filter hotels out of my search and resort once more to hosteling; a preference pre-pandemic but a compromise in the years since. Flights, too, were more expensive than I was used to, with ever-shrinking baggage allowances devaluing them yet further. Apple tried to help, bless them—an earpod broke prior to departure and my iPhone was already at half battery by the time I got to the airport—but sacrifices still had to be made to accommodate a telephoto lens. Those macaques weren’t going to photograph themselves.

But I’m here now, between the Rock and the hard place, and there’s no room in my rucksack for regrets. I’m ready to make the most of it: I’ve never been to Portugal before, I’ve heard only great things about Seville and the shift in focus opens up several other opportunities to explore Andalusia as well. There will still be monkeys, but now much more besides, too

New Beginnings

Recently I have found myself a travel blogger without a blog, estranged from WordPress and content instead to limit any writing to 280 character tweets and the odd pun on Instragram.

That’s not to say I haven’t missed it. In fact, I’ve pined for something to opine about. I was inspired to begin that original blog while teaching English in the Komi Republic and later used it to document thru-hikes of the West Highland Way and Great Glen Way. It encapsulated a certain chapter of my life—my twenties—a disjoined decade in which jobs, friendships and interests rarely lasted. Everything felt new and exciting because it was, at least to me. And I was still young and naive enough to think that’d automatically be the case for readers as well.

But as I waited for my next adventure the posts became less frequent and the updates less urgent. Even when I dogsat for friends in the Cote d’Azur, started volunteering at my local nature reserve and travelled to Poland, Luxembourg and Switzerand I couldn’t seem to find the words. So I found those of others instead—people who’d gone further, gone native, gone professional. Suddenly I wasn’t in the company of bloggers anymore but of authors, editors, influencers, podcasters and journalists. Where once I thought my experiences and opinions were intrinsically interesting, I started to believe they were anything but. I was just a thirtysomething hobbyist on holiday, and who wanted to read about that? I wasn’t even sure I wanted to write about it.

So what’s changed? Why begin again? Well, because why not? I’m a different person now and, if nothing else, that deserves a rebrand. A global pandemic can change a guy. Politics can become personal, raise questions about national identity and impact not just the perception of travel but the practicalities of it. Hell, the world’s second richest billionnaire could bankrupt Twitter tomorrow and deprive me of the only platform I have left. Everything feels different now. Not new, exactly, but fundamentally altered. I’ve travelled since Covid, since Brexit, since Russia invaded Ukraine, but each subsequent trip has felt increasingly precarious, expensive, complicated. Now that I’m due to depart again, next week, on a trip that would once have seemed second nature, I’m instead having second thoughts.

I’m unprepared, apprehensive, even a little bit reluctant. I thought I’d found my niche, at least where travel was concerned—easyJet, rucksacks, hostels—but now I’m not so sure. It’s a new normal, a strange sensation, an inciting incident. And maybe one that’s worth writing about. So I’m once again a travel blogger with a blog, but do I still want to travel?