To whom or what you might ask?

I left the lovely place I called home for a year just as the season they call summer started to change into the chillier winds of the upcoming autumn. For the longest time, I’ve hesitated to put feelings into words into this entry just days after I had handed in the biggest work of my life (s0 far!) partly out of sheer laziness, but because of the overwhelming sadness and the newly minted loss that’s churning deep in the tummy at the moment as I type this in yet another place which I should know like the back of my hand but is still to me  so foreign.

The happier memories keep coming back still – the recent and most vivid yet was the day TC and I decided to take a leisurely drive across along the Fife eastern coastal trail some time last week or so.

It was a neat, compact trip just as we planned it that took us onto the Forth bridge and onto the East Neuk. Poor TC had to endure my whims for stopping time to time just so I could use his camera for a shot that seemed somewhat picturesque. We breezed through the quaint and pretty fishing villages under angry looking skies and bluestery winds (those make fantastic pictures under the rare and occasional burst of sunlight) and finally made a photo-stop in Pittenweem, which somehow landed us in a chocolate cafe with a cup of unbelievable hot chocolate and a huge box of pralines to go.

Well, then – who knew Cocoa tree Chocolate also had self-catering holiday flats?

Anstruther was literally a stone’s throw away in the rented but rather trusty Astra, where apparently the most famous Fish and Chips store in the UK could be found. It got TC’s finicky and reluctantly-given approval after a couple of bites, so it *must* be worth something, nevermind the press reviews.

St. Andrews was our last stop and a little walk down its main streets was sufficient. The Scottish equivalent of Cambridge as I would call it, minus the snobbery of the upper class. Or maybe that was just not evident in the summer absence of the abovementioned.

And then it was my turn behind the wheel of the car: riddled by mini squabbles, a rushed 20 minutes in Dunfermline, unmarked country roads, and the most infuriating traffic I had ever encountered in the space of 45 minutes in the Edinburgh city centre.

My last week was spent in a frenzy of non-stop packing, rushing to Fringe Festival activities between the free slots of time, returning library books and just simply….trying to live. The crowds on the High street and the Royal Mile were obviously insane, but there were always the beloved crag trails if TC and I needed to escape the summer crowd. Climbed them again, we did, if only just to look at the sprawl of the city for the last time.

And then it was all over. We piled as much as we could into a rented red Nissan March and headed for Glasgow Airport, navigating through the treacherous road signs that confused us tremendously. But somehow we made it, with several directional scares along the way along city bypasses.

I remember little after that. The flight was just never-ending – understandably so if you fly across half the world – with loads of screaming children, crowded terminals and the Dubai duty-free. Then came the reality check – the hot, humid weather, the unfamiliar familiarity, and the rush of fatigue and the tangled emotions that accompany every long trip.

What do I write about now, 3 days later after I’ve landed? There’s still too much to process, too much I don’t quite want (or dare) to do, but those must be done. I’m piled with just such questions, and my answer is must necessarily remain evasive:

“I don’t know.”

I’m talking about my poor brolly at least, that took a fair amount of beating in the blustery winds and heavy rains that accompanied my visit down south to Newcastle – a less than perfect backdrop for the famous 7 bridges across the River Tyne.

Newcastle, suspiciously run-down and dreary from the train on a sunny day, looked like an industrial wasteland whose construction was abandoned in the 1800s after the Revolution in the rain and cloudy weather. But a step out from the Central Station and onto Grainger Street where the urban centre begins and the atmosphere as I imagine it would be minus the bad weather, would have been nothing short of electrifying.

Newcastle’s brilliant, as the Brits themselves would say. But now that its FC has been relegated for the next season, I wondered if the thrill’s diminished somewhat, judging from the tragically empty stores selling the club’s gear.

The urban square is confusing at first, and the sheer number of shops, interlooping shopping malls can drive one crazy. But the river Tyne provides instant navigation access, and soon I found myself trudging across the famous Tyne Bridge while wrestling the high winds and an increasingly flimsy umbrelly in the hopes of visiting Baltic, the converted warehouse now a contemporary art gallery sitting at the foot of the Millenium Bridge. Essentially a glassed-up white cube many storeys high overlooking the river and its bridges, the Baltic’s views and its rotating exhibitions of the most famous names in contemporary art left me overwhelmed.

The walk back across the river was equally excruciating and I passed a mix of Geordies (you are either cursed or blessed with that accent, depending on whose perspective you are speaking from) revelling in the rain, or looking plain miserable. From a distance, I saw a man start to strip. A stag-night party  looked as though it either started early, or ended really late when a group of males (not men) made the presumably-groom-to-be run around in the wind and rain clad only in black briefs. He returned soaking wet to hoots and cheers and most probably, yet another pint on the house for such bravery.

I boarded an incredibly filthy National Express East Coast train on the way back (coming up from London Kings Cross) where the seats in front of me were taken by American surfer-jocks who yakked non-stop in the Quiet Coach.

They were stunned speechless by the waves of the North Sea hitting the rugged coastline, and expressed it the only way they knew how:

“Wow!”

“That’s cool. That’s so cool.”

“I dare you to swim in that!”

Since I was in that sort of atmosphere, I simply toed off my shoes, peeled off the wet socks, dried my clammy toes and prayed that my feet smelled bad enough to make them pass out.

That, most unfortunately, didn’t happen.

Technically this is a travel blog and shouldn’t have anything else in it. But then, I need a place to store all the online shopping links that I’ve found oh-so-useful.

So here goes:

Topshop

Asos

Next

Bluefly

Boohoo

The Naughties

Promod

Mandee

I found out not too long ago from a quick perusal of the trusty Lonely Planet Guidebook that the Black Country was another name for the West Midlands area of England, the blue collar championing area where the ‘real’ people toiled and laboured at work before celebrating hard in a pub with tons of beer, and spoke (according to some websites that had forums) with the ugliest accents.

A last-minute journey required me to go all the way to Walsall via Birmingham and I practically pounced on the opportunity to do something else other than travel the eastern Coast as I’ve been wont to do so much these days.

The train tickets were so costly, but still less than Flybe that went into Birmingham International – for this nearly 5-hour journey. Only when the train passed Oxenholme, Preston, and the stations in between did I realise I was so close *so close* to the Lake District but couldn’t stop there.

I was collected at Walsall’s train station by my host, an Orthodox priest who had kindly arranged accommodation for me, and insisted on paying for everything else – not normal in the country, or in the Western world, as he deemed. Walsall was anything but familiar. A high percentage of immigrants who led simple lives, working in their corner of their world.

“To die naturally is all I can ask for,” said the manager of the Indian Restaurant when we went for dinner. “After seeing my father die, my grandfather die – all of illness, best to go naturally. Best way to end life.”

It was not a perspective I am familiar with once again – dying ‘naturally’ as he said, somehow had always occurred to me as going gently into the good night. Conditioned from goodness knows where to rage against the dying of the light, this rather placid view seemed to call for all-round defiance.

The place I was to stay in for the night was an old Victorian house just behind the church, tucked away neatly deep into Walsall.

It had a staggering number of rooms (many of them for tenants), and a slowly but surely decaying interior that made for fantastic shots. I learnt that the room swere specifically meant for people doing church work, or had some connections with the Parish – to them, I was probably the curious outsider who did not know how to respect people’s personal stuff.

Much of the time for the best part of the 2 days, was spent just listening to the wealth of information this priest had to tell me of the Orthodox tradition and its practices. He spoke a lot, and I wondered insanely at times, if discipleship in the ancient days of the philosophers meant doing the same exact thing, just in togas and sandals.

I left for home the next day via Birmingham New Street station. The length of transit time wasn’t long, but permitted me a quick walk through the jaw-dropping shopping streets – now that was unfortunately something I could relate to better after the Walsall experience – shallowness and superficiality. But it was also overwhelmingly cosmopolitan, modern and sleek, and packed with people and the comfort of anonymity.

An exhausting trudge through the streets lugging a laptop and my overnight stuff (enduring unpleasant verbal abuse from a mad man out of nowhere as well) later, I felt more than ready to return to Edinburgh.

Now a tiny diptych of the Theotokos and the Christ Pantokrator now sit on my work table, courtesy of my host – in faded colours, a reminder not just of these icons meant to contain the presence of their prototypes, but of the surreal experience of the Latin West meeting the ‘mysterious’ East.

Yet another train journey, in a pale, pale imitation of Paul Theroux’s penchant for them. Only that this left me with an aching bum (never mind the rather nice countryside obscured greatly by fog that lined the North Sea east coast of Scotland), and a lingering bit of train feebleness (read: motion sickness). It was however, fantastically quiet in the Quiet Coach – that’s not really the norm by the way – and I tried to pacify myself by bringing a large book to lug around in the hopes that some academic distance might be gained in recompense for taking a day trip when it seemed just unnecessary.

“Did you read about us?” trilled the lady inspector as she made her way down the carriage. “We’re busted. The government’s got us.” A fantastically fatalistic way of beginning a journey to the Granite City – or Aberdeen.

Then came the train driver, who made a woefully funny announcement which I think only tickled my funny bone as the train pulled into Inverkeithing.

“Ladies and gentlemen…passengers in Coach B are requested to alight from other coaches. This is due to the national express train being longer than the platform.”

Britain is in the middle of a sweltering heatwave, and for some insane reason,  a city as far north as Aberdeen wasn’t spared the heat and humidity, made worse by granite, granite and more granite. Stately buildings vy for visual priority, and seem determined to create an urban jungle sort of beauty on its own aesthetic terms. It makes for a strange feel though, almost Nordic, but not quite.

Travel guides don’t seem to be able to know what exactly to say about its atmosphere, industrial, made rich and thriving by its night life and North Sea oil industry. Union street is where the visitors naturally head for, a long, long shopping street to indulge every fashionista – but without the crowds of London or Edinburgh or Glasgow. To my disbelief, I had never seen Primark so empty. H+M was in comparison, dull with the lack of people around. People seemed to have forgotten that Topshop was smack in the centre of it all.

But I loved it! There wasn’t much to do except to duck in and out of shops, wandering in the tiny streets off the arterial one, and popping into the Art Gallery. Somehow that passed the 5 hours rather easily that I had there.

Maybe it was the journey itself that really mattered in this most cliched case.

Will Newcastle be the same way, I wonder?

The airport bus was late, so the irate faces of the would-be passengers told me. The driver however, did apologise for the lateness, on the grounds of “people who could not drive properly”. And then it was yet another 50 minutes from London Stansted to the town centre.

Cambridge seems to typify the posh bit of the so-called ‘Englishness’.

I found that its open spaces achingly beautiful, its grounds almost sacred (almost like Edinburgh with Hyde Park built in) but infuriatingly elitist, its city centre small and after a while…dare I say..boring.Punting is the highly-rated pastime and the order of the day. One punter tried to imitate a Venetian gondolier’s sense of romance (and failed miserably) by singing a cloister song in Latin.

Maybe boredom really does drive one to do crazy stuff.

Many colleges were closed because of exams and the more famous ones like Kings College and Trinity College, now charge for admission because of the wealth of history they carry and the number of tourists who regularly flock to soak it all in – those buggers.

But with so much history and such academic vibes floating around, the tourists keep coming and will definitely pay, at least that’s what Archway Bed and Breakfast’s owner Mrs Skingley says. I was given a room that overlooked their gorgeous garden, courtesy of her husband. It was definitely nicer than what I had expected, and rightly so, seeing as the hostel I was supposed to be putting up at, had actually caught fire the day before  in a case of suspected arson.

By the time the next day rolled around, I had probably covered its centre 4 times by foot, and have entered and exited its circular core as many times as it has its entrances. (The heavy rain made it even more Englishly unpleasant) But this trip was after all, meant to be a research trip and there I was, standing at the cusp of …well, I hoped desperately that I wouldn’t embarrass myself after having caught a bad throat infection the day before. I croaked loudly miserably – it was toadlike, I swear – , testing the voice many times during the morning, wishing for some kind of a healing miracle.

I resolutely marched down to Huntingdon Road (where the famous professor RC and his equally famous wife live, both of whom teach in Cambridge’s department of classics), only to find the interview interrupted by a security set-up man. Their house had been burgled and in Cambridge, so said the prof, “they go after computers”. I was ushered into his study – an amazingly large room with wall to wall bookshelves and a harpsichord (!) – and was surprised to see how spry he was with a computer despite his advanced age. He said he was just starting to learn the harpsichord, and had to practice everyday.

Talking to him was like talking to an encyclopaedia. I just couldn’t imagine the amount that his mind holds, and how much the years of study have added on. His wife, a sharp-tongued, somewhat brassy and confident, well-spoken middle-aged (and rather intimidating) woman with no qualms about swearing, walked in half-way and demanded his opinion about the security man.

I think I am starting to become her tentative fan. Let me read her blog first and then decide from there.

I find it odd that a mere 1-hour time difference between the UK and the continent still has some sort of effect on my droopy eyelids. And even odder that just this morning I walked the length of the Lapad Peninsula in Dubrovnik, and type this late at night back in the UK.

Sometimes it is too much to process. I set off early from the Pension in the hopes of catching the airport bus, only to have a taxi pull up at the buss-stop at the same time, offering the same price to the airport. It sounded too good to be true. But I hopped in, along with another couple whom I met just a week ago taking the same airport bus with me into Dubrovnik when we both arrived. What coincidence. It turned out that the taxi driver needed to pick some people up from the airport and thought of sending passengers there as well. Mutually beneficial, so he said.

That couple who were also in the taxi waxed lyrical about Dubrovnik, its sun-soaked atmosphere and the friendly people, while the driver seemed pleased to hear it. The mutual sentiment amongst them was that Montenegrins have sold their souls when they sold their lands to the Russians.

“You have done a good job,” the woman said. “Everything is so nice, so well-done.”

I did not say very much thoughout their animated chatter. Tiredness prevented me from reflecting too much, which, I suppose, in hindsigh,t is probably a good thing. Will I miss the spectacular scenery? Certainly. The daily dose of gelato? Sure. The sun? Well…perhaps, despite the outbreak of hives and a rather bad sunburn on my back and shoulders. The people? I’m mixed.

I’m glad to be back here actually. The blast of cold air that hit me in the face was rather welcome, despite the loud complaints from the other passengers. So that’s it folks, and until the next time my feet bring me some place else.

Only after buying a return bus ticket to Dubrovnik did I learn from Rezi that a little-known service that does door-to-door pickup from Korcula to Dubrovnik costing the same amount as the bus, with fewer people and at a sane hour existed. So I was still stuck with needing to catch a bus back at 6.45am, and spent most of the day indoors to prevent the hives from getting worse.

Yet the scratching continued, least helped by the next early day-tour taken to Mostar, a town nestled deep in the mountains and valleys of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which, away from the coast, boasted soaring spring temperatures that hit near 30 degrees. I was told that Mostar is one of the warmest regions in the Mediterranean (so they claim it is indeed a Mediterranean climate), but frequently gets 40-degree summers.

It felt unreal entering Bosnia, a place that I vaguely remember in my teens as war-torn, and politically divided, and needing prayer, according to a teacher who said so during morning school assembly. Back then, we scoffed and laughed, and wondered about its relevance. But I wouldn’t have thought that I would, years later, step foot in the region, only to see the tragic scars of war on Bosnia-Herzegovina that remain. Reconstruction and rehabilitation continue at a snail’s pace for Bosnia. It remains an incredibly poor country with a 30% unemployment rate, and gypsies litter the surrounding streets of Mostar asking for money.

The bus went by the Neum corridor, a 9 km long stretch of Bosnia-Herzegovinian territory (border-checks included!) that is 60km from Dubrovnik, and then slipped back into Croatia once more, before driving into the mountains and the Neretva Delta. Before long, the “proper” border-formality and check-point came into view once more.

It seemed that no one knew if my passport was valid for entry. But it was. (I checked many times with much paranoia!)

Mostar, for all its Ottoman influence, feels like a miniature Turkey, stunningly familiar in some senses after having seen Istanbul twice. Its food and architecture are foundationally Turkish, a consequence of six hundred years of Ottoman rule. Its famous bridge that spans the Neretva river is much a symbol of division as it is of unity between sides, and guides are quick to point out the coexistence of multicultural groups rather than its tensions. (Men jump into the river for cold, hard cash and simply to amuse tourists who live out their thrill-seeking alter-egos by paying these men to do it.) Erring on the side of caution, the german-speaking guide chose instead to point out particular spots of significance and its origin, but glossed disappointingly over the complexity of the war’s surrounding circumstances. I wanted to ask burning questions – how was it like as you grew up? What were such tensions? – but wondered in all good faith, if it hit too close to home, when such seemingly innocent questions might have, for them, meant a matter of death of life.

We stopped for a “photo-break” in Pocitelj (Poh-gee-tel), a town to the south of Mostar, devoid of anyone until we came along it seemed.

The last toilet-break was once more in Neum. To my horror, the bus parked beside many other large tour buses where all perspiring tourists queued for gelato, and crammed into the supermarket seeking cold drinks.That particular scene served as a (timely?) reminder of the bane of a package tour, even if it was only for a day.

The bus journey to Korcula runs daily at 3pm from the bus terminal and seeing that the check-out time at Pension Stankovich is at 10am, the morning was spent wandering about in the sweltering heat and finally into the Taj Mahal, a small konoba off the Stradun that serves strangely, Bosnian rather than Indian food. Bosnian sweets and strong coffee at 11am in the morning couldn’t possibly go wrong. Thus came the tufahijia, a dessert dish made from baked apples, chocolate and walnuts, then topped with a layer of cream.

It was then back to the Pension begging for much needed relief found in a glass of cold water, Mac’s company and a suspicious Stankovich cat staring at me in the kitchen area while Zoran’s brother hung laundry outside to dry. For some reason he seems obsessed with Indonesia (and with the pirates along the Straits of Malacca), as he had, according to Zoran, spent some years ago in the Navy in Southeast Asia.

I found out just how much Croatia is about money and more money as the agencies squeeze the mickey out of the average visitor (and also out of the locals) – when I was informed to my incredulous amazement and stunned disbelief by the bus driver to Korcula that storing my bag in the luggage hold cost 10 kuna, in addition to the bus ticket fare, as well as the extra cost of reserving a seat number.

The coast-hugging ride to Korcula was a 3.5 hr one (and obviously scenic) that included a 15-minute ferry ride across from Orebic. Finding the cheerful-looking Depolo Villa was rather easy as it was located along a lane that leads out of the Old Town into the residential area of Sveti Nikole. Rezi Depolo, its chatty owner, regaled me with a few of her travel stories, the stray cats she feeds, her sunday plans, and her dismal internet wireless, just as I requested for my laundry to get done.

“You must try Maslina,” Rezi said, and launched into a rather complicated set of instructions on the Korculan restaurant’s location en route to Lumbarda. “There is another one in Old Town, but just 5 days ago, a French couple told me that they changed ownership and it’s not very nice, and not very friendly. Go to the one outside. It’s a nice walk. And there is a church on top of a hill, surrounded by cypress trees. You can have a nice view of the town. Before I could process all of it, I was then sent off to the small Old Town on her orders as the last rays of light faded. My full day in Korcula fell on a sunday, which meant most of the town closes to celebrate inactivity and rest.

The sights that Rezi mentioned were a bit of a walk out of town and came at the cost of full-blown hives. Red, angry patches that started out as some pinkness on the arms appeared in full force and looked to spread quickly after I spent an extended length of time walking in the sun. Such irony on a sun-drenched island when tanning is the order of the day! Foolishly, I thought the sunlight would have a *drying* effect, when it did just the opposite.

What did I do after rubbing a lot of hydrocortisone that seemed to have absolutely no effect? I knocked on Rezi’s door apologetically to disturb her once again, and begged for some alternative Croatian “herbal” remedy. Rezi took one look at the increasingly leprous-lookalike arms, and gave me a glass of rubbing alcohol which helped calm the itch a bit but made the skin sore to the touch.

My alcohol-induced commandment of the day: Lead me not into temptation to scratch.

When someone has food and drink, sit closer. When they are working, move away. It is best not to disturb them. – One of the 10 commandments printed on a postcard of Montenegro

It is rather mind-blowing to enter a country that is a mere 3 years old but has a history that stretches over millenia. Montenegro – bordered by the Adriatic sea in the southwest and Croatia in the west – severed its ties with Serbia in June 2006 and declared its independence. It is an enticing region of monuments (and their ruins), beaches and great weather, situated in the allure of sparkling sea that continues as far as the eye can see.

The group I chose to do the tour with had thankfully, a small bus with a group of 14 persons, which meant nipping around more quickly. I was impressed by everyone’s punctuality and amused by the degree to which sunblock was revered by most of them; in fact, people were even early for the scheduled meeting times despite turning red in the face and hurrying around in the heat. I braved the sun, thinking that my skin must somehow be used to it, and managed to get an uneven browning instead. A crazy woman in the group kept asking for the beach, and wore clothes that were aimed solely for removal at first sight of water and shingle/sand.

We drove through 2 checkpoints, and soon reached Herceg Novi, a town whose industrial Soviet-era architecture sharply contrasts its picturesque setting – the La Dolce Vita standard that Dubrovnik has striven so hard to attain with its villas and available luxury – is still the missing factor in Montenegro’s package.

The bay of Kotor lies further southwards, and winds inland so much that it is an area touted as Europe’s southernmost fjord, inhabited by the Illyrians in Classical Antiquity, overrun by the Romans, changed hands again and for a short time, belonged to Napoleon and the Austro-Hungarians. A city-guide met us in Kotor’s incredibly crowded old town, pointing out the number of aristocratic houses and churches crammed into a rather small square, rattling off way too many dates that flew just over my head. The guided tour meant however, that there wasn’t any time left to climb the 4km surrounding ramparts that provide a dramatic look down onto the city.

The number of stray cats abound. It was after a time, difficult to get around the curious stares of shopkeepers and the slow-trudging of the tourists who arrive by the busload fanning themselves.

A step out of the old town brings the local life into greater focus, and the daily market that lines up outside the town’s walls is probably the daily marketing congregational point of the Montenegrin natives.

Montenegrin beach tourism comes into full swing along the Budva Rivijera (Riviera), which supposedly rivals the south of France’s Riviera with kilometres worth of beach madness to explore. The Budva town itself is over 2 millenia years old and appeals to many because of pulsing nightlife and its beach bum status. Money rules the place: A staggering number of millionaires made their fortunes selling off lands to Russian development companies poured their new found wealth back into real estate in the surrounding towns of Podgorica and Herceg Novi.

The Dubrovnik Gastro festival in the Stradun was gearing up for full swing at 7pm when I returned, going for an unbelievable 10 Kuna per ticket that I snapped up after some hesitation. The shoving that resulted once the gates opened was inevitable and annoying, and by the time I actually got to the food or what was left of it, all that was left really some black seafood risotto and a bit of dessert for dinner, a pity considering that Croatian specialities were up for grabs.