Berlin has played an important part in my life: it was the first place I visited on my trip to Tibet and I spent a month there in 1986, before the wall came down, and I was lucky enough to get a good look at a city that had been carved up by the great powers. (more…)
When I was a kid we lived in a white house by the Firth of Forth, an estuary just north of Edinburgh. The house was so close to the sea that waves would splash into the garden when it was rough. Inside one of the garden sheds was an old kayak made of thin fibre glass but I never knew who it belonged to, how it had got there and as far as I remember I was the only one who ever went kayaking. (more…)
I’m staying in an old military base on one of the thirty thousand islands that lie outside Stockholm. From where I am sitting I can see massive cruise ships pass by, en route to the capital city, making their way through the forested islands.
“A submarine was spotted over there recently” says my host, a retired policeman who now runs a kayaking centre on the island, “it was spotted by a retired naval officer. The submarine surfaced for a bit and then went down below.” (more…)
For many years I thought I knew the answer to the problems faced by the Romani Gypsies: education. If we could just make school more appealing to this population their situation of marginalisation would gradually end, and they would learn the skills needed to challenge the discrimination they are faced with all over Europe.
A new book I am reading has made me realise that I was totally wrong about this – there is no simple answer to their poverty – and that I know a lot less than I assumed about the Romani Gypsy population. And our patronising, know-it-all attitudes doesn’t help. (more…)
My first thought about camping is that I don’t want to do it: it’s cold and wet outside and even thinking about what I would need to pack sends a shiver down my spine. So much easier to sit in my warm room, go to work and meet a friend for a pizza this evening. (more…)