I saw a competition for travel writing openers recently and I shook my head. I wish I could wave a wand and remove Opening Sentence Stress from budding travelogue writers. You see, I don’t think the opening sentence important. The opening paragraph is. Let me emphasise that this doesn’t apply to articles or short stories. […]
Wi-fi in Germany: no laughing matter
I’m writing this at home after a long, three-week trip to Germany. Hardly blogged from there as I usually do. The reason? German hotel wi-fi or W-LAN as it is called there. Germans have a very ambivalent attitude to wi-fi, like they do to credit cards. I still remember the shock when only ten years […]
Stained Glass Windows: Medieval Cartoon Books
I am a sucker for stained glass; I consider them comic books from another era. They taught stories about religion to those who couldn’t read and as such I find them fascinating. Occasionally they resemble medieval cartoons. Now Freiburg Cathedral has one of the best stained glass window collections in Europe. The bishop of the […]