When I am not walking up and down the hills of central Slovakia, I spend the better part of my day surrounded by groups of Elenka’s – see ending regarding name change – relatives. They must think I'm peculiar as I sit for three, sometimes four hours smiling with them and listening to them. They know that I speak no Slovak. What they don’t know is that it's because I’m on an entirely different plane, not really listeni...

We've just arrived in Vienna from Riga and have taken a cab to the train station. There's a glow on Ellen's face. We're on our way to Brusno.

.Flying from Tallinn to Vienna was a bit of a screw up. The airline attendant at Tallinn airport told us that we'd have no problem making our connecting flight in Riga, but that even if we did, the plane would wait for us because we were four people and that's the way they do things. The attendant was friendly and reassuring. That probably should have been our Murphy's Law tip off. Our flight to Riga left 45 minutes late. When we touched down, Ellen s...

  Nature is wonderful. Trees, birds, animals, lakes, streams. No one to harass you. No one wanting to sell you something you don't need. Every time I find myself in a forest, stumbling over jagged rocks and stepping in animal excrement, I tell myself these things. But it never works and I don't know why I keep trying. The fact is, for me there's nothing more wonderful, more magical, than a city. I'd almost always take even an ugly city over a bea...

 Helsinki isn't pretty and she never really smiles. She's nice enough though, and so are her people. She's also efficient, and clean; the kind of city that you could wrap your arms around and hold tight. But not for long. Soon, you'd find yourself wanting to leave her. I'm not sure that a real urban boy could ever truly love Helsinki. I can't explain her much better, other than to say that if you actually did fall in love with Helsinki yo...