The Altstadt of Salzburg is pretty. It has horse-drawn carriages, and floral displays in central parks that befit European regency. A bridge with a thousand love locks crosses the river, and a large fountain sits in one of its squares. Mozart’s birthplace is an attractive yellow piece of traditional western architecture. It all tastes simultaneously…
Hotel painting
The painting Dogs Playing Poker, by Cassius Coolidge, is much derided and yet much loved. The surreal nature of whamming together two of man’s favourite things is joyous idiocy, heightened by its use of one of art’s most self-serious mediums. Only if the canines’ games were portrayed in ballet or opera could it be more…
Tiverton, Devon
In describing Tiverton, the Uncyclopedia website says with amusing cruelty: “There is nothing remotely interesting in this town, apart from the bread.” It is true that the town centre does possess an air that positively encourages drinking tins of lager whilst lying on a bench. The Tivoli cinema has a screening at six yet looks…
Shanghai and coronavirus: how China’s financial hub has managed to sidestep Covid-19
It requires four hours and the equivalent of £40 to travel first class along the 800km of railway between Wuhan and Shanghai. In geographical terms, for China, it is a short trip. Yet it is a journey that SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus behind the Covid-19 pandemic that was first found in Wuhan in late 2019, has…
GuoLiang, Henan Province
Henan, Day 3: TaiHangShan and GuoLiang Background:Prior to the 1970s, the village of Guoliang was isolated to an extreme degree. Atop a crest in the Taihangshan mountain range, it was connected to the world below only via a walking path which took hours to navigate. With the Cultural Revolution burning around the nation, the villagers…
Time zones
The eleven days it takes a container ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean includes visiting six time zones. Initially, this is a novelty, yet travelling east it is also a slow physical ordeal, a protracted water torture felt each morning at the breakfast table. This is because, in order to maintain working discipline, the daily…