David Whitley's Blog

Posted by David Whitley

Capital City of Slovenia

Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia, is a simply gorgeous town. The bar terraces by the river are a great place to hang out, whilst those visitors that take on the walk up the steep hill to the castle are rewarded handsomely by the views.

Tivoli Park – near major museums

However, one of the more underrated elements of this highly attractive city is the Tivoli Park, to the west of the river and just past the area housing most of the city’s major museums. Ljubljana’s Tivoli Park is an oasis of greenery, but it is one that is put to use.

Chess centre… radio studio… tennis courts

Amongst all the couple performing first class public displays of affection (for some reason, there seems to be a lot of this going on Ljubljana) there are all manner of facilities. There’s a chess centre, a radio studio and some clay tennis courts for starters. It all makes for a nice blend between activity and tranquillity.

Photographic Exhibition

Best of all, however – at least when I was in town in January – was the photographic exhibition in the middle of the park. After strolling up and down past the mounted photographs, I couldn’t help feeling that other cities could do with making use of public space in such a way.

Posted by David Whitley

Stock phrases and keywords in foreign languages

If travelling to a country where the locals speak a language other than English, I always try and learn a few stock phrases and keywords (such as ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘do you speak English?’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’). I also find the phrase ‘I am looking for’ (‘je cherche’ in French for example) very useful – it doubles for ‘I would like’, ‘where is?’, ‘can I have?’ etc.

Where is the toilet in French, Italian, Spanish and more

However, when you really need to go, there is one other phrases that becomes absolutely vital: “Where is the toilet?” Here are a few translations in major languages… Where a non-Latin script is used, I’ve given the rough pronunciation.

French: Où sont les toilettes?

Italian: Dov'è il bagno?

Spanish: Dónde están los aseos?

German: Wo ist die Toilette?

Russian: Gde tualet

Portuguese: Onde são as casas de banho?

Arabic: Ain al-?ammaam?

Japanese: Toire wa doko desu ka

Mandarin Chinese: Cèsuo zài nali?

Dutch: Waar is het toilet?

Posted by David Whitley

Emu in Sydney, horse in Ljubljana…

With apologies to all the vegetarians and animal-lovers out there, I have to confess that I am a fully-fledged carnivore. And I take great delight in trying out new meat. Thus I have eaten kangaroo, crocodile and emu in Sydney, Australia, goat and pigeon in the Caribbean, reindeer in Helsinki, Finland and horse in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I regard this as immersing myself in another culture, even though I’m probably just lying to myself on that score.

Olde Hansa Restaurant in Tallinn, Estonia

Therefore, imagine my delight when I saw the menu at the Olde Hansa restaurant in Tallinn, Estonia. This is one of those consummately touristy restaurants that has waiters in novelty costume, is in a renovated medieval building and has absolutely no locals dining there. Usually this is a warning sign for bad food, but this is not the case – it was the best meal I had in my eight days in Finland and Estonia.

Estonian brown bear sausages

The best thing, though was what was on the menu. Wild boar was instantly tempting, but then I saw the goldmine – bear. Now that is an animal I’d never even contemplated eating before, and there was a big roast bear on offer. Eventually I went for the wild boar, elk and Estonian brown bear sausages. After all, that’s three new ones to tick off the list, but bear is easily the most impressive.

Posted by David Whitley

I like travelling by train on the whole, even though I’ve spent most of my life in Australia – where nobody does use the train – and the United Kingdom – where even those who would like to use the appalling train network struggle to afford to. There’s just something nice and relaxing about the whole thing.

Train from Tampere to Helsinki in Finland

Getting the train from Tampere to Helsinki in Finland was a real eye-opener though. It is, approximately, a two hour journey between the two cities and I was astonished when the train pulled up. After all, where was the graffiti? Where were the grimy, dust-covered seats that clearly hadn’t had a lick of paint since the 1940s? Where was the utterly miserable ticket collector?

Comfortable seating

It was, quite frankly, the nicest train I’ve ever seen – even better than the Eurostar from London to Paris or the TGVs in France. It was spotlessly clean, split over two levels of pleasant, comfortable seating and moved so quickly and quietly that it felt a little like a cocoon. If only all countries could have such an excellent rail service.

Posted by David Whitley

Tourist information office

While I was in Luxembourg a few months ago, I had an interesting chat with a man who works in the tourist information office. I’d asked whether there are any budget airlines that fly into the country, and he explained why there are none.

Business city: banking and European politics

Luxembourg is very much a business city, whether that business is banking or European politics. It also attracts a more upmarket brand of tourist than many European cities. This means that people going there are willing to pay for it (or, rather, get their company to pay for it).

Budget airlines and cheap flights

Whilst some cities have benefited enormously from budget airlines operating cheap flights to them, others have seen a downside to it. The likes of Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia, for example, have seen a huge surge of tourists heading over there largely to get drunk on cheap beer. Luxembourg, it seems, doesn’t want that.

National carrier Luxair

There is also the matter of protecting the national carrier, Luxair. Many of Europe’s flag-carrying airlines have struggled as the skies have been opened up to competition and some – such as Sabena in Belgium – have gone out of business altogether. Luxembourg figures that the benefits of preserving the national airline far outweigh the benefits of getting more flights and more tourists into the country.