My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

11 Comments so far ↓

• Albert Beale // Jun 22, 2009 at 11:11 pm

  Aha — so you _are_ cross­ing from Italy to Greece by boat, and not brav­ing the still-rather-rup­tured, I think, routes through former Yugoslavia on the way out.
  Sounds like a nice 24-hour cruise! My equi­val­ent boat trip — dec­ades ago — was from Brindisi, not Ancona, and I don’t remem­ber it as being that much fun…

• chris // Jun 23, 2009 at 9:57 am

  That was­n’t the trip where the boat from Athens was bombed by the Israeli secret ser­vice was it? (Or have I com­pletely made that up?)

• Albert Beale // Jun 23, 2009 at 7:22 pm

  No — my Patras-Brindisi jour­ney was much earli­er, in my stu­dent bum­ming-around-Europe-for-the-sum­mer era.
  The Israelis blow­ing up the “Ship of Return” (though I guess that’s about 20 years back now!) was luck­ily just before all the Palestinians and the journ­al­ists and the inter­na­tion­al solid­ar­ity act­iv­ists got on board!
  Still, I ended up spend­ing 10 days in and around Athens cour­tesy of Middle Eastern oil rev­en­ues, with some quite inter­est­ing people…

• Albert Beale // Jun 23, 2009 at 7:27 pm

  Actually, the idea of your (not, as it hap­pens) going through former Yugoslavia on the way reminds me that for the first time in very many years I had a genu­inely appro­pri­ate opp0rtunity just the oth­er day — in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion at a book launch in Housmans — to do my party piece about the sub-dia­lect­ic­al vari­ations of Serbo-Croat. A party piece which I fear you, Chris, must have had inflic­ted on you at some stage over the years I’ve known you…

• Alastair Cameron // Jul 1, 2009 at 9:37 pm

  “Much still up in the air,” you say — what about all those nitrous oxides??! Get your decisions made straight away, for the sake of the environment…

• chris // Jul 2, 2009 at 5:22 am

  Hah! You’re right enough. Must mind my meta­phors (good Greek word!). How about “Many points are still to be set, but we hope to stay on track and avoid going off the rails”?

• Travel update // Jul 12, 2009 at 3:25 pm

  […] Journey Plan […]

• beth // Jul 24, 2009 at 2:10 am

  Hey! my house­mate Emily is in Budapest right now, she says she’s found some lovely thermal baths owned by the city. It would be so amaz­ing if you could meet up, but she’s leav­ing for Belgrade and Sarajevo soon. She stayed in this hotel — Hotel Ibis, Raday Utca 6, Pest. I don’t know if she liked it, but if you need one there one is.

• jane // Jul 24, 2009 at 2:09 pm

  Hi Beth — do you have a mobile for her? Mine is +447519582130 xx

• Astrid Hess // Jul 27, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  oh, I just saw your jour­ney plan — you are going back via Austria, Munic, Paris, London. So obvi­ously no chance to meet.
  If you are in Bucharest you must see Ceausescu’s palace — then you will under­stand the term gigan­to­mania. In Rumania pock­et-pick­ing is epi­dem­ic, btw. People are so poor, some­times it is heart­break­ing, esp. when you see the children.

• chris // Aug 1, 2009 at 7:52 am

  Thanks for the warn­ing, Astrid. We already had purses stolen on the Athen metro, so we are being hyper-vigil­ant 🙂 Sorry we will not be stop­ping in Germany on this trip — we will see you anoth­er time I hope!