The clouds were heavy and low, a looming threat as I climbed off at the Zagreb bus station. The loitering crowds paid no attention to any new arrivals, faces disappearing into the taxis or threading out on the sidewalks. Bag over shoulder, I opted to chance the coming rain and walk the half hour to… Read More Reconstruction Site
Tito stood derelict, the statue at an angle and nestled into a corner by the stairwell. The courtyard looked like a neglected backyard, patches of grass between bare dirt and tools left to rust. In spite of the surroundings, Tito’s eyes remained fixed firmly on a future that never was. The interior of the History… Read More Looking for Vučko
“Crazy driver” she said, her cab deftly swinging out to the right lane and surging ahead. My cabbie, a middle-aged bottle-blonde with lip fillers, had no need for a turn signal. She repeated this a dozen or so times on the way from the airport to my apartment in Bascarsija while we crossed the length… Read More Sarajevo My Love
Wallonia is essentially the French-speaking bottom half of Belgium, contrasted with Flanders, the Dutch-speaking north. In contrast to the Flemish, Walloons earn less on average and it shows in the towns that our Skoda wound through in the shallow valleys between rolling hills and forests. We were headed for Dinant, a small town nestled in… Read More At the Next Roundabout, Take the Second Exit
We spent the better part of a day carving a long arc over northern France, retracing our steps to Le Havre before turning east to Reims. The day’s drive ended in this mid-sized city of the Grand-Est region, which was chosen mostly for being in the right general location for our onward travels. I didn’t know what, if anything, to expect of Reims, but the first impressions were positive. … Read More Incertita Hora
Bayeux was a welcome refuge. Building a trip around visiting World War II sites, while worthwhile, also means somber moments. It was important to leaven out this sort of emotionally heavy experience with other activities. Normandy, and the small town of Bayeux where we based ourselves, offers exactly this. Though Bayeux is small, its history… Read More Some Fresh Air
Our first and only stop before crossing into France was near the Flemish town of Ypres, where we pulled into a small private museum known alternately as Sanctuary Wood or Hill 62. For Canadians, this is the area immortalized by the poem “In Flanders Field”, which combined with poppies worn on Remembrance Day form the… Read More Overlord
Ian and I met at Heathrow, the same airport we began way back in 2002 on what was my first trip outside of North America. Fresh high school graduates, we were part of a group of five backpackers spending a month in Europe. Ian and I enjoyed it enough to make another two-man trip across… Read More Reunion Tour
I’m a restless traveler. I don’t like sleeping in and the idea of a full beach day makes me deeply fidgety. Given the choice, I’d rather be out in a city, town, forest, mountain – somewhere – moving my feet. This used to manifest as constantly going from one place to the next, wanting to… Read More Leaning In
Like Rome, I had been to Berlin, our last stop, nearly two decades ago. Sandwiched between my self-important and overwrought teenage musings, my old journal notes that Berlin felt like the first dynamic place, a city not preserved but alive and changing, one that subverted my sheltered expectations of Europe. It has that same feeling… Read More Standing by the Wall
Zak Abroad 