Coventry, Colchester:

Rubbish places. Thank God for education; without that distraction, I’d have fried myself long ago.

Tehran:

Tehran, 40 degrees Celsius, but the low humidity made for a pleasant stay. The one hotel still standing in Tehran was the former Hilton hotel. Persian women are so beautiful. Persian men treat their women very badly. Cuisine: kebab, repeat ad infinitum. Things have changed now, of course. The women are so beautiful and politics remains a lifetime away in a space that is detached from and is inconsequential to daily living.

Laussane:

Atop the hill over-looking the lake, as the sunset cast a calming orange on the water’s surface, one could almost re-live the feeling of the early Reformers. The Swiss are a peculiar lot. I have no idea why, but the kantons survive. It is here, in Lausanne, that Amnesty International has its European headquarters. It is also here in Lausanne that you find Halloween celebrated. Among these valleys are workshops – fabriques, ateliers – manned by studious men who deal in the mechanics and minutiae of time.

Tashkent:

One of the loveliest places this side of the Silk Road, Tashkent is a marvel; a jewel of Uzbekistan.

(ex-)Yugoslavia – Macedonia:

Back when the blue helmeted UN folks were buzzing round Skopje (circa. 1998). A little like the rest of Soviet Russia (see Uzbekistan): the vodka, the extortionate prices, the extorting mafioso. Interesting fact: the national carrier was privatised and acquired by the owner of Skopje’s largest restaurant chain.