In 1970 to visit the USSR you had to book everything in advance and collect a bunch of coupons from the travel agent in London. These coupons were used instead of money. So we turned up in our Ford Cortina at Vyborg on schedule on 4 September. There was a short stretch of road through the woods between the actual border and the border post and in ( Read more... )

We had a deadline to get to Russia and we had no idea how long it would take, so we basically raced across from Oostende to Denmark. What I remember of Belgium, the Netherlands and north Germany is virtually nothing, apart from some canals and overpasses. We were camping in our green tent by now, saving on B&Bs, but I have no idea where we stayed ( Read more... )

I should've mentioned wrt Ireland that although Ulster was then the poorest part of Great Britain, it had a greater air of prosperity back then than the Republic. One began to understand why the Orange crowd wanted so desperately to cling to the UK, even if the industrial basis of that relative prosperity was already waning. An economic determinist ( Read more... )

I have a lot of Irish ancestors. Unfortunately, they're from the wrong side, by which I mean they were from the ruling class. I do not intend to imply that they were all adherents of the Protestant Ascendancy, although quite a few of them were. The distinguishing feature of my ancestors is that they belonged to the aristocracy. They fought in many ( Read more... )

Once we were assured that the Cortina wasn't a dud and my 6 week contract was finished, we set out westwards. I don't remember which route we took, but pretty soon we arrived in Wales. I have a feeling we skipped some major tourist destinations on the way, Tintern Abbey for example, and we skirted around Cardiff. The first place I can recall was ( Read more... )

To test drive the Cortina, and as sort of farewell gesture, we first took a weekend excursion to the west with John and Alicia. The first 'historic site' we visited was Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire. It was by no means as grand as Stonehenge (which we ignored), but it was certainly mysterious and foreign. The thing about really ancient things ( Read more... )

Our friends, John and Alicia, lived in a block of flats in North Islington. Just down the road from Highbury (the home of Arsenal FC - not that I went there, but I've been loyal ever since!). Since John, like Chris, was an aspiring Labor politician, he was proud of the fact that Barbara Castle lived somewhere in the same complex. She was a minister ( Read more... )

10 Mai. We headed in a southerly direction from our hotel on foot. I remember purchasing a map: Paris unique sens. I had studied French for 5 years in school, but my school French was useless. I didn't know, for example, what 'unique sens' meant (I do now, it means 'one way'). The map showed the one way streets, which we didn't need because we were ( Read more... )

Salzburg is very close to the German border, but the public transport was not good. So we took a local bus to a big road junction outside of town and put out our thumbs. After about an hour somebody picked us up. He drove us to Munich on the autobahn. The distance was 160 km and we covered it in 1 hour. I was terrified and we were by no means the ( Read more... )

We had to wait rather a long time at Niš for the through train. I don't remember a lot about it, other than that the station seemed more like a village one than a city one. I have a mental image of an uncovered platform, whitewashed buildiings with red tile roofs, nothing else ( Read more... )