The last time I recall sending postcards was in April and May 2006, to my mum. My mother had been hit by a car and was in hospital in a coma in Perth, Australia. My husband and I were in Thessaloniki and about to collect a hire car to travel around Greece researching a chapter … Read more about Postcards: to my mum
During our travels in Europe, my mother and I seemed to spend more time addressing the postcards than writing them, the world around us proving more distracting than we anticipated. And we’d laugh each time it was time to move on to another country, because we still had a stack of unwritten cards with stamps … Read more about Postcards: does anyone read them?
As we drive around Cyprus I notice stands of postcards outside souvenir shops everywhere. The spinning racks are stacked full of kitsch cards, of archaeological sites, old men playing backgammon at cafes, and old ladies dressed in black riding donkeys, in the Greek-speaking south, and in the Turkish-speaking north, of archaeological sites, whirling dervishes, and … Read more about Postcards: does anyone still send them?
Brown cafes are ubiquitous in European cities like Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. These traditional bar-cum-eatery-cum-coffee shops, with their big picture windows, rickety wooden furniture and cigarette smoke-stained walls, have an atmosphere and warmth that no modern cafe can match. Slide into a tattered old leather banquette, order a local beer, and simply sit back … Read more about Cyprus: the search for traditional charm
So what is it that leads us to look for atmospheric antique cafes, charming old pubs, traditional tavernas and the like when we travel? Is it nostalgia? A longing for the past? But what if we’re too young for that past to have ever been our own? Is it that we long to relive the … Read more about Travel and nostalgia