Slovakia - August 2014

Bratislava

The Guinness

With Bratislava being such a small capital city I was somewhat concerned I would find it difficult to find somewhere serving Guinness but I needn't have worried.  There, bang in the middle of the Old Town area was the Dubliner where the Guinness flowed smoothly.  I explained to Tamas the challenge I had set myself and he obliged by picking my next destination out of the hat - Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I should not have too much trouble finding a pub serving Guinness there!

Enjoying a Guinness served by Tamas in the Dubliner

 Getting there and around 
We were fortunate in that there's a Ryanair flight to Bratislava from our local airport Birmingham, not quite as cheap as chips since we were going in peak holiday season. At one point I thought things were going to get a bit lively as the gentleman in front swigged from his duty free bottle of spirits but luckily it had the effect of anesthetising him rather than making him any louder than he already was. 

As my wife had missed out on the trip to Budapest I'd made earlier in the year so I made up to her by taking her there this time.  It's only a couple of hours away and the train trip was good fun. 

Team Makeup

This was a trip away with my wife Margaret.  That's two this year.  It's becoming a bit of a habit.   

Accommodation

 We split the job of booking accommodation for the trip so needless to say my wife booked a four star hotel in Bratislava and I booked us into a youth hostel in Budapest.  Let's be fair though, I did manage to get us a private en suite room in the youth hostel.

Food

We consumed a surprising amount of local delicacies.  The hotel served a good slow cooked cheek of beef with dumplings.  You wouldn't want to go running after that.  One lunchtime we had potato gnocchi which was served in a cream sauce with bits of fried bacon.  Another tasty dish but slows you down a bit.  On our last day we ate at a Thai restaurant called the classy Green Buddha restaurant.  It was good food but the translation must have got somewhat mixed up as my dish was described as mild but blew my head off.  

In Budapest we partook of the local snack food i.e. langos, which is fried bread dough served with sour cream, garlic and cheese, served at a kiosk on Margaret Island.  To round off our rather eclectic mix of eateries on this holiday we ate in the Govinda vegetarian restaurant in Budapest.  Housed in a basement and serving an Indian buffet style food with rose water it certainly filled a gap with its huge helpings.

Sightseeing highlights

Bratislava isn't big.  The old town area has a relaxed atmosphere.  As it's a relatively new capital it gives the impression that foreign countries struggle to find premises to house their embassies.  As you walk around the streets looking at the embassies decked in their flags it's like entering a geography quiz.

The city also seems to have a good number of sculptures.  I particularly liked the one of Napoleon in the central square and the man peeping out of the manhole cover. 

Quirky moments

On the plane over I read about a new chain of shops recently opened called Bubblelogy, one of which was in Bratislava.  It's a type of Taiwanese tea.   Keen to experience this we found the outlet but it wasn't quite what I envisaged.  It had throngs of young people queuing to buy brightly coloured concoctions.  Margaret laughed that I may even consider joining the queue as I evidently looked so out of place.  I gave it a miss.  What is in those bubbles at the bottom of the beaker? 

A Skoda collection in the Trqansport museum.  Something to see on a rainy day!

Out of the City

The trip out of the city we made was to another, all together quite different capital city, Budapest.

On the Danube in Budapest

 Lasting Memories

 The small quaint old town and the massive nearby river Danube

Flags everywhere.  Name the embassies!

Belgium - July 2014

A low key Guinness drinking event this one as I took advantage of being in Brussels on a business trip. It's a regular haunt for me, as I've tended to travel to the Belgium capital two or three times a year for the past twenty five years. It seemed somewhat incongruous to visit the beer-capital of Europe and end up having a beer made in Ireland.  I once went on a tour of a Brussels brewery where the fermentation process relied on yeast particles blown in from the air to kick off the brewing process. This time there was only time for a quick stroll around the city centre before having a Guinness at O'Reillys bar opposite La Bourse, the former Stock Exchange building.

Enjoying the guinness with my collegaue Sami who kindly picked out my next destination - Bratislava.

Brussels - The EU's administrative capital.

Le Grand Place in the centre of Brussels - never looses it's attaction

The town hall - there the front doors are an archtectal anomoly in that they are off centre.

Manakin Pis - Its smaller than you think its going to be!

Ah - TinTin

Hungary - May 2014

My Guinness in Budapest was had at Jack Doyle's bar only a few hours after arriving this impressive city. Bratislava is only three hours up the road so I thought if that had got picked out as my next destination I needed to leave sufficient time to make a mad dash up the Danube. I was a bit spoilt for choice for places to drink Guinness in Budapest as a quick trawl around the internet revealed a fair number of outlets.

Owner Charles from Tipperary picks out Brussels

Wandering past Jack Doyle's on a Friday evening however it seemed to fit all my criteria. It had atmosphere, live music and food as well as Guinness. I ordered a Guinness and asked a friendly photographer working there if he could take a photo using my camera. He duly obliged and after explaining what I was up to he suggested that Charles the owner would be the best to ask for picking out my next destination. Charles, a friendly chap from Tipperary, agreed and picked out Brussels as my next stop. That shouldn't be too difficult given the amount of time I spend there with work.

The music was good as was the guest poet, Neil McCarthy who recited some of his work. It wasn't till I got home did I realise that he wasn't just an ex-pat living in Budapest but a real poet. That would explain why he was so good! Worth looking him up if you get a chance. So what of the rest of my time in Budapest?



Neil McCarthy - a fine poet

I stayed in Wombats hostel which is very central and well run. My £10 three-day travel pass not only got me into the city from the airport but enabled me to hop on and off the buses, trams and metro as well as use the boats on the Danube.

The commercial part of the city is Pest, on the east bank of the Danube where as Buda is the hillier, and historic area on the west bank. On day one I wandered up Gellért Hill, exploring the monuments and geology. The second day was more spent in the historic town area, old fort and cathedral quarter. Finally on the last day I strolled around Margaret Island, an oasis of calm on the Danube.

This is the first time on a Guinness trip where I have used my hobby of geocaching as the principal means of taking me to the historic and interesting parts of the city. I found over 50 caches in total over the weekend and walked a fair number of miles!

London - April 2014

A fun day was spent in London with family and friends that culminated with a Guinness or three in Ye Olde Bank of England in Fleet Street.  Earlier we had been up in the London Eye and seen the city's landmarks from above, before walking along the Thames to the Tate Modern and then over to St Paul's Cathedral.

The bar staff appeared rather busy and pre-occupied so I asked Margaret's cousin, Oliver, to pick out my next destination which turned out to be Budapest, Hungary.

Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Holland, Slovenia, Sweden, Macedonia, Bosnia, Vatican City

Baku, Azerbaijan - September 2011

A full collection of photos from this trip can be found in my Baku Flickr album

The Guinness

Cheers!  Enjoying a Guinness in Baku

There was a good Irish bar in Baku called Finnegan's Bar, so goo actually I went there a few times during my stay.

Chinarra in Finnegan’s Bar kindly poured me a Guinness

The changing skyline of Baku

You'll never be stuck finding a carpet in Azerbaijan

Quirky Moments

Before I left UK I had a phone call from producers at Radio Wales asking if I could do a live telephone interview with Roy Noble when I was having a Guinness in Baku.  I gave them a day and a time to coincide with when I thought I would be drinking a Guinness in Finnegans Bar.  The bar was pretty noisy at the allotted time so I was standing outside, ready to take the call, and feeling all full of myself for being a guest on Radio Wales.  Needless to say the call never came.  Apparently Roy was off ill that day.  To make me feel even more small, as I was waiting, three cyclists turned up with full panniers.  They were speaking English and one was sporting a shirt with a Union Jack.  I asked them how far they had ridden.  They'd come all the way from London!  

Hats off to these guys who arrived at the end of their journey in Baku having ridden all the way from London.

Nicosia, Cyprus - November 2011

For a full collection of photos from this trip visit my Flikr Cyprus Album

Finbarr's in Nicosia

I enjoyed a Guinness in Finbarr's where my next destination was picked out of the hat by Maria.

Certainly not my usual type of accommodation - Palm Beach Hotel in Larnaca

Amsterdam, Holland - April, 2012

The Guinness

Mulligans Bar, Amsterdam, with its unusual decor - advertisements in Dutch encouraging people to visit Ireland. 

So what is the capital of Holland?  Most would say Amsterdam but some would argue The Haag.  Just to make sure I've completed this challenge to everyone's satisfaction we took a train to The Haag and sampled a Guinness in the Poteen Still.

Poteen Still, Den Haag

The Sights

In all honesty we didn't do too well at sightseeing in Amsterdam.  We tried to visit the Van Googh museum but after joining a lengthy queue that moved at a reasonable pace initially and then slowed to a snail's pace when those on coaches with pre-booked tickets arrived we knew it was time to give up. We did however enjoy our time wandering around the canals and parks of the city.  

Clogs anyone?

Out of town

One day we took a train out of Amsterdam and visited four other destinations:  Haarlem, Leiden, The Haag and Delft.  

The 1000-pipe organ in St Bavo's Church, reputedly to have been played by both Handle and Mozart. 

The attractive town of Leiden, home of the Pilgrim Father's before they set of for America.

Getting there and around

We flew from Birmingham to Schiphol airport from where its a short train ride into Amsterdam.  Train was a popular form of transport this time as we also used it for our day out to four other cities.  The Amsterdam metro and bus system also served us well.  We never did however sample the barges nor bikes.

Accommodation

My wife and I split the tasks for preparing this trip.  I booked the reasonable flights from Birmingham with BMIbaby and Margaret purchased, sorry, booked, the hotel.

Our base, Mercure hotel at Noorderstraat 46, Amsterdam.

Team makeup

Just me and Margaret on this trip.  We left the dog at home.

Food and Drink

There was plenty to choose from both in Amsterdam and the other towns we visited.  In Amsterdam itself we particularly liked sampling Indonesian food at Sampurna.  In the Haag we visited the recommended Bij HeM

Dinner at Bij HeM in the Haag

And there's more

A full collection of photos from our trip to Amsterdam can be found here here

Ljubljana, Slovenia - July 2012

For a full collection of photos see my Slovenia Album in Flickr

The Guinness

Enjoying a Guinness in Patrick's Irish Pub, Ljubljana

Stockholm, Sweden - September 2012

For a full collection of photos from this trip visit my:  Stockholm Flickr album

The Guinness

There ere a fair number of places to choose from in Stockholm to sample a Guinness ranging from the quiet to the noisy.  In the end I chose to have my tipple in Wirströms Pub which claims to be the only Irish owned faux Irish pub in town.  

Enjoying a complimentary Guinness at Wirströms.  Many thanks.

Alisia kindly pouring me a Guinness

Skopjia, Macedonia - March 2013

That was close.  I almost failed in my attempt to have a Guinness in Macedonia.  I had done my homework before going and discovered there were plenty of bars selling Guinness.  I had even contacted one before going.  When I got to Skopjia however everywhere had run out and were expecting a delivery 'tomorrow'.  Inevitably, that never happened.  I think there was some fsort of dispute going on with the supply chain.

In the end and to much relief I found some Guinness on sale in the only supermarket in town.  I took it back to the hostel and had a nice evening with the other guests having a Guinness or two.  Phew!

A full collection of pictures from my trip to Macedonia

Sarajevo, Bosnia - October 2013

A full collection of photos from this trip can be found in my Sarajevo Flickr album

The Guinness

I wasn't convinced there would be Guinness available in Sarajevo after the problems I'd experienced in Macedonia.  When I first arrived I had a quick look around and found the Guinness Pub.  That looks promising I thought but no, once again I was told they had run out but would be getting some in 'tomorrow'.  In the end I discover that the Central Bar, although having run out of draught Guinness does have some bottled Guinness.  Phew!

Smiling like a Cheshire cat having found a Guinness in City Bar, Sarajevo.

Of all the places you would have thought would have Guinness ...... but no!

Getting there and around

At the time there weren't any budget airlines flying to Sarajevo from UK s instead I took a Birmingham to Dubrovnik flight with Monarch.  I spent a couple of days exploring Dubrovnik before taking a coach up to Sarajevo.  On my return I stopped off for a couple of nights in Mostar.  Sarajevo is a small city so there was no need to use any other form of transport whilst there apart from a bus to and from the coach/train station.

Vatican City - February 2014

After doing a bit of research in the Vatican cafe I quickly established that there was no Guinness on sale in the Vatican City.  All was not lost however.  An Irish bar in Rome, Trinity College bar, kindly supplied some Guinness and even a barman to pour it for me.  Alfonso and his friend were great company and he kindly picked out my next destination: London.




Here's a story from the website of La Repubblica, an Italian newpaper, about my recent visit to the Vatican City:  http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/02/25/news/birra_e_europa_il_viaggio_di_ted-79585676/

Or a rough translation from Google Translate gives:
CITY ' OF THE VATICAN - Some people in St. Peter goes to see the Pope , the colonnade or dome . A tourist Welsh , however, went there just to drink a pint of beer. The number thirty-four sipped in the center of a European capital .

That Ted Richards is a journey that started 10 years ago, when he decided that he visited 52 cities of the old continent to drink a Guinness in all of them . Oslo , Berlin, Madrid , but also the capital of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been stages of this tour guided by fate. "Every time - tells Ted - I ask the person I need to draw the Guinness from a box that I carry with me the name of the next destination. Sometimes people do not understand or take me for a madman , but I find it a fun way to travel " . A single destination has not been and will not be drawn at random to Dublin. The starting point and the closing of this trip.

In normal life, Ted worked as a chemist in a large company of Coventry in England, but in his spare time loves to invent personal challenges. And that Guinness is not the first in his curriculum . "The idea I had while I was sitting in a pub. Was about to complete my previous adventure - walk over 3500 miles of coastline between Wales and England - and I was happy but also a bit ' frustrated by not have another company to accomplish. So looking at my pint I decided : I would have a drink in every European capital . "

The choice of beer could fall on one of the many excellent Irish , but it is based on two good reasons . "The main reason is that Guinness is my favorite and then I thought that is widespread but not everywhere , which would give me the opportunity to have to work a little ' to find it. A small challenge in the challenge , in short ."

In Vatican City, for example, there are no pubs , and Ted turned to a restaurant in the center of Rome, which has taken steps to help him. To him and his wife Margaret was served a cold Guinness yet . And out of the box with the names of the capitals were drawn the next city , in which there will surely supply problems : London

Germany - April 2011

Bicycling around Berlin

The Guinness

I’d done my usual research on Guinness in Berlin before coming out and discovered there were quite a lot of Irish bars catering for the tourists and ex-pat community. Some were way out in the suburbs whilst others were the more brash type and no doubt large and noisy. I chose the Lir Bar, named after a sea god in Irish mythology. 

The Lir Bar was indeed a cosy place with just a few ex-pats in passing the afternoon and watching the football. Graham from Dublin was there to serve us the Guinness.  At the start of the second Guinness I explained to Graham what I was up to and got him to pick the straw out of the box. Inside the straw was Baku, Azerbaijan. For the third pint, Graham wrote Baku into the head of the Guinness! 

Getting there and around

Something I’d wanted to do for a long time was to travel to one of these destinations by train and Berlin seemed to present itself as the ideal opportunity. I’d done a bit of train travel as part of this challenge before but never done the complete journey by rail. I ended up booking on the German train DBhan website from London to Berlin return with changes at Brussels and Cologne. On the way out I’d have a night on the train from Cologne to Berlin in a couchette. The return trip I would do in the daytime. All this for a very reasonable €170. This just left me to book the train from Coventry to London and back. Anyone who knows about buying tickets on British railways will know that costs can vary from reasonable to outrageously expensive if you buy on the day.

What few people know about is the special cheap tickets you can get that link up with an already purchased Eurostar ticket. When I say few, I mean few. Not even the people at Coventry railway station admitted to knowing about it until I explained it to them and they looked it up. You need to ask for a ticket to London International. The advantage of this is that not only are they cheap but they are also covered by the European train agreement which means that if you miss a connection e.g. the Eurostar is late on your return route, you do not have to purchase a new ticket. After two trips to Coventry station and a bit of persuading I therefore had my £7.50 each way tickets to London instead of the normal £130 ticket.

For the final leg of the outbound trip I catch is the sleeper train to Berlin, or to put it more accurately the sleeper from Amsterdam to Prague, with some sections of the train going to Moscow and also Belarus. There’s a couple of things to make sure here. Firstly get on the right carriage because every so often they stop in a siding and have a play around with the train set and you may find yourself on the wrong train all together. The other is to make sure you wake up in time – 4am in my case. I really should have done my homework better because now I know that going via Paris rather than Brussels would have got me into Berlin at a much more sensible time rather than the middle of the night.

My sleeping compartment is empty so at least I’m not waking up an irate Dutchman. I’m soon joined by a young German girl going on a business trip to Dresden. We discuss the finer points of the works of Ibsen, Chaucer and Brecht. OK, I lie. We just go straight to sleep actually after a brief conversation about the war – she started it, I wasn’t going to mention it.

The alarm on my phone did its job and woke me at 4am. I’d propped it up in the corner and was surprised to see it still upright having been jolted around all night. I find that was explained by the fact I’d rested it on a bit of discarded chewing gum. Getting down off the top bunk of three, with all your belongings, without disturbing the other occupant was not easy. I don’t think I woke her, at least not till I stood on her head.

In preparation for the trip I'd covered a paperback in brown paper.  Not one of the usual tasks I do before setting off for one of these trips but needs must. The book club I’m a member of was reading Fatherland by Robert Harris, a thriller set in post war Berlin but using the premise that Germany had won the war and that Hitler now ruled. I planned to take the book with me as holiday reading material but had the dilemma that the edition I’d purchased on eBay had a swastika on the cover. I planned to be doing quite a bit of train travel and fearful of upsetting my German travelling companions and being accused of being some sort of war tourist or Nazi sympathiser I thought covering the book was the best option. Now however it risked onlookers thinking I was deliberately trying to cover up something far worse – maybe a Jeffery Archer novel.

Team Makeup

One brave sole signed up to accompany me on this trip – my old school friend Richard Bartlett. We go all the way back to Marlborough Road Infants School in Cardiff and I suppose could be described as a product of Friends Reunited, having been put back in touch with each other and the rest of our small group of friends after 20 years. Richard chose to go the easier route by flying to Berlin and joining me for the weekend.

Accommodation

Our hotel, Hotel Agon, was a fairly non-descript eleven story building on the intersection of two major roads, amongst lots of other buildings of similar appearance.  It was in the old East Berlin, not too far from Alexanderplatz.  My room was enormous but somewhat austere – very soviet in style but clean and functional at the same time, it just looked like ten other people could fit in too.

Food

One of the stalls on the nearby market sold traditional food though from which region of Germany I’m not quite sure. For €6 I had a platter of pork with vegetables, mushrooms, and fried potatoes all cooked in wok style pans, adding up to an unhealthy dose of cholesterol no doubt. To wash it down and celebrate a successful day acclimatising to Berlin I had a large glass of local beer.

One night we ate at the Berliner Republik which seemed to have an irreverent take on German life with cartoons of national leaders adorning the walls. The beer prices were displayed on a screen and changed in price supposedly depending on demand like the prices of shares in a stock exchange. The Berlin soup to start with followed by the monstrous broiled knuckle of pork was authentically German and rather heavy! They describe their menu as hearty – as in bad for the heart I guess. We washed it down with a bottle of Rioja. The urinals were worth a visit. The walls were painted with a comic scene from the old Berlin Wall.

Sightseeing highlights

I arrived in Berlin at 4.35 and a small group of us half-awake tourists fall onto the platform.  I got some cash from an ATM and saw something else I‘d read about, the 100 bus.  It’s a normal Berlin bus but goes west to east through the city past the Tiergarten, taking in many of the main sights.  Doing this at 7am was like having my own personal tour bus. The morning sun glistened off the newly gilded statue of Victoria (Roman Goddess of victory not the English queen apparently) on top of the giant Victory column. The Nazis relocated the column to its present site inanticipation of victory. I caught glimpses of the Reichstag with its Norman Foster-designed glass dome and Brandenburg Gate and the other famous sights but this was just a taster of the days to come. The streets were nicely quiet.

Richard had been very organised and pre-booked us on a bike tour of the city on Saturday. At the allotted time we and about a hundred others congregated at the bike company’s offices at the foot of the TV tower and awaited instructions. We are subdivided into six groups each with their own guide. We chose Lauren, a young American who had graduated in history from a Berlin university and decided to stay in the city. The process of choosing our bikes, having a practice ride around the area and adjusting whatever necessary took a little time but after that we were on our way. Our group of fifteen multi-national tourists headed off, weaving our way in and out of all the other tourists. The bikes all had names to make them easier to retrieve after one of our allotted stops. My bike seemed somewhat heavier than the rest – that’s probably because it was called Black Sabbath ....made of heavy metal.

We also took in Checkpoint Charlie, the only legal crossing point for members of the allied forces, where Lauren gave us a potted history of the post war period aided by a chalk drawing on the pavement. During a visit to a surviving section of the wall we were told how it was topped off with sections of sewage pipe, ordered from West Germany. Now that’s something Churchill, with his love of wall building using red bricks, would certainly not have approved.

The most moving part of the tour was undoubtedly the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It’s made up of over 2000 grey concrete slabs of subtly differing sizes and laid in an area where the floor also slopes. There’s a lot of modern history to ponder in modern Berlin, a lot of it unpleasant but architect Peter Eisenma has been clever in designing something so very different to other memorials that it encourages visitors to remember its purpose. The crowd pad around solemnly, dwarfed by the blocks.

Quirky moments

A visit to the Kennedy cut out saying the words Ich bin ein Berliner.  Kennedy visited Berlin in June 1963 to make a speech that demonstrated US support for West Germany a few months after the Berlin wall had been constructed. The speech is regarded as being a success but also famed for the Ich bin ein Berliner phrase that could be taken to mean I am a Berliner, a jam doughnut.

Out of the City

Before my travelling companion Richard arrived in Berlin I decided to have a day out to the spa resort of Bad Saarow and Frankfurt am Oder.  I change trains at Fürstenwalde onto a private ODEG train, single carriage modern machine safe in the knowledge that with my day ticket I can travel when and where I please. We arrive at the town of Bad Saarow dead on time. It’s a place that has a strange history, the place where the old East German and Russian military leaders had their holiday homes and where the East German athletes doping programme was masterminded.

After coffee and chocolate mousse cake at the Park Cafe in Bad Saarow  on the side of the lake I wander down to the quayside and as luck would have it have just enough time to buy a ticket and hop on board the boat for a one hour trip to Wendisch-Rietz on the other side of the Scharmützelsee.  I join the majority of the boats occupants on the open air upper deck where we are bathed in sunshine whilst admiring the sumptuous lakeside houses.

Lasting Memories

The sheer number of things to do and see in the city of Berlin.

Meeting up with the editors of 'hidden europe', a top class magazine that I have been subscribing to for many years now.  It explores cultures and communities across the continent and delivers it in articles where you just wallow in the quality of the writing.