Posts by Jack Noah Rees

Bern Baby Bern

At the commencement of our jaunt around Central Europe, if you had asked us which country, we were most looking forward to exploring it would have comfortably been Switzerland. With such lofty expectations, we made a swift beeline from our previous nation of Luxembourg, through a great swathe of Western France and the cities of Metz, Nancy, and Mulhouse to arrive at the gateway to the Alps in the city of Basel.

Luxembourger King

You rejoin us after an almighty night of birthday boozing in the Luxembourger capital: Luxembourg City. Although, not even the sorest of heads could fail to appreciate the spectacular city scenery that greeted us from our lofty Airbnb balcony the following morning.

Delectable Deluxembourg

While bouncing from Belgian bar to Belgian brewery slurping on craft beer was immensely pleasurable, nothing quite hits like visiting a new micronation. Discovering how they’ve managed to maintain their independence throughout the centuries is always a fascinating lesson in the trading of land as well as savvy leadership and Luxembourg is no different.

Flexing our Brussels

We arose on the outskirts of the Belgian capital in fine spirits given the remarkably clear blue sky that greeted us, a novelty for the trip thus far, and in great anticipation for a city neither of us had set foot in before.

In Bruges

Following our introduction to Belgium in Baarle-Hertog, the town known for its notoriously complex hotchpotch of borders with The Netherlands, we skipped across Northern Belgium past the port behemoth that is Antwerp and arrived in the more picturesque Bruges.

Dutch Courage

After a week spent acclimatising and familiarising ourselves with the Dutch way of life, which involved a lot of vertical smock windmills and vegan soused herring, we decided to dive into the beating heart and capital of the country: Amsterdam. I say dive, we parked about as far away from the centre as was still practically commutable in order to avoid unwittingly navigating into a canal or getting stranded in the Red-Light District with no method of extraction, for that would be a disaster.

Going Dutch

September 16th, 2023. So commenced our third Autumnal European escapade in as many years as we began our next adventure sipping thimbles of Tesco value Sauvignon Blanc on the speedy LeShuttle deep underneath the English Channel, as has become a tradition.

Criss-Crossing Kosovo

The final chapter of our tour of the Western Balkans started in one of the ten Serbian enclaves of Kosovo, never thought I’d be writing that. As touched upon in my previous post, Kosovo and neighbouring Serbia have a complex and fraught relationship that only becomes more complex and fraught inside a majority Serb area, such as where I was stood in Gračanica.

In Pristina Condition

Undoubtedly Europe’s most controversial nation, not through any fault of her own, Kosovo has long polarised opinion with absolutely no sign of any contention slowing down. A slim majority of countries around the world (52.3% to be exact) recognize her sovereignty including the UK, USA, and most of the EU although notable exceptions include Spain (concerned it would bolster separatist movements in the Basque and Catalonia regions) and, most vociferously, big brother Serbia.

Skop Right Now, Thank Ye Very Much

From the shores of North Macedonia’s largest lake, we made the bumpy three-hour drive northeast to its largest city, and capital, Skopje. Pronounced Skop-yay, this city of half a million may not appear to be the most geographically significant municipality when looking at its landlocked location on a map however, you’d be partially wrong.

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