Category: Global Gossip
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Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France
The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove. But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative…
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What are we stumbling into? Messages of hope and fear from Amsterdam
How can we be so careless? We cannot afford to forget lessons of another time when populist opportunists arose from recession to destroy human decency.
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Irish passport to peace?
Please pardon any wobbly bits in the piece that follows. This was a two-fingered exercise on my iPad, written and posted by hand for Sceptical Scot from Seat 53 on the train from Edinburgh to Kings Cross. A journey long enough to explore two passports and changing identities. Travelling light, I’m sitting on the train…
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Hunger for hope: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen
The food is waiting for us. Colours and aromas of Syrian feasts in dishes of creamy humous, smokey aubergine, spicey beetroot, roasted carrot dips, all laid out in pretty bowls on a crowded table. Imad, our smiling host, invites us to sit.
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In a state of ambiguity
Neither one thing nor another. Travelling through Europe for the first on my new Irish passport, I fear the callous carelessness of hard Brexiteers and their crude threat to an essential state of ambiguity: ‘neither simply Irish nor simply British’
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Our excellent DIY Orient Express adventure
Why did we do it? There are quicker and easier ways to get from Edinburgh to Istanbul. You can fly direct from Edinburgh to Istanbul’s Ataturk airport in just about four and a half hours. But where’s the romance and adventure in that?
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Nothing up my sleeve
At San Francisco airport we are offered a choice. We can go through the bodyscanner or opt for a ‘thorough pat-down’. Without giving it much thought we follow everyone else through the microwave. My man’s scan triggers an alarm which means waiting for a male security officer and a ‘pat-down in the soft parts’.
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Found in India
“Daily life is soundtracked by a cacophony of car horns. After a few minutes in a taxi, you see why”, Tommy Perman’s guest blog describes what Found discovered on a whirlwind tour of India.
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Beware the Tigers of Florence
Florence: Friday 3.00pm (ish). Beneath the pomegranate tree, a pleasant softening of focus after lunch of melon, bought in the market at the far end of our street, prosciuto from the scary supermercato way over the railway bridge, and a glass of red wine.
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Wanted: a covered market for Edinburgh
Imagine this. A warm October evening in the covered market: on the ground floor stalls packed with gleaming fruit and veg, upstairs friends gather to chat, drink and eat. We wander round, selecting small dishes to taste, secure our stools by the bar and dream about what might have been in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.
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Times and tides of a small island
Government cuts won’t hurt Canna museum or library but real life makes itself felt in other ways. Island life is not for softies. We got back to Edinburgh in the early hours this morning, now it’s evening before the day has properly begun. I always have difficulty adjusting to the clocks going forward but today…
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Welcome back to Edinburgh: you’ll have had your tram?
Berlin town planning with a purpose Some homecoming. For a week we explored the most exciting city in Europe. We rode trains, trams and buses to the centre and one sunny day we took the train in the other direction to discover the public housing estate that was inspired by Britain’s first garden cities. We…