Coffee Helps

My overwhelming impression of Auschwitz? It is huge. I’ve read a lot on the subject of the Holocaust, a sort of horrified fascination that has been with me since I first read Anne Frank’s Diary when I was a child. My most recent reading was a book called The Last Seven Months Of Anne Frank, [...]

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Imagine there’s a knock at the door one day and you and your family are suddenly escorted out of your own home. All around, you see friends and neighbours being herded up like cattle and forced to march along the streets where you’ve lived all your life. Imagine you’re separated from your loved ones and [...]

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It’s been a very long 24 hours. Well, it’s been a very long week, come to that. I’m now in Krakow. The 9 hour bus journey overnight from Vilnius to Warsaw was a killer, particularly as there was another middle of the night cheeseburger incident. This time, I actually saw the food stand, and went [...]

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OK, boys and girls, I have wallowed in Vilnius for long enough, and this city, however pretty, will now forever be Miseryville and Heartbreak Hostel to me. I think it’s best that I keep moving. I still don’t have anything amounting to a sensible plan. However, in looking for countries nearby where it’s really cheap [...]

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D@ve recently issued a poetry challenge. Being thoroughly miserable and full of self pity, I figured that it was a good time to be writing poetry – and a friend pointed out to me the other day that “this pain is good for you in that it gets you further towards the top of the [...]

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I always loved the Mr. Men. Mr. Tickle was probably my favourite, because he had those really long, bendy arms that could reach across roads and into rooms to tickle people, which I always thought would be a really amusing thing to be able to do. I also loved Mr. Muddle, and Mr. Bump, probably [...]

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I couldn’t stand the grotty hostel any longer. Nor could I face the thought of getting on another overnight bus. So I found another hostel. It is like a little piece of heaven in the middle of my hell. There were no beds free (not many newly-dumped girls need to also battle with the fact [...]

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I don’t exactly know how I ended up in Lithuania. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing most people do accidentally of a Wednesday afternoon. Still, here I am, and it is a decidedly strange place. As I left the station in search of a hostel, having not slept for so long that my [...]

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I remember reading this post of Annie’s last year and feeling her pain. I do that. I feel other people’s pain, even when they’re complete strangers. It is a gift, or a curse, or a slight mental defect, or something. Now I just feel my own pain. And there’s nothing like sitting outside a bus [...]

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I cannot sleep on public transport. Exhausted, shaky, nervous and very fragile, I clamber on to the overnight bus at Tallinna Auotobussijaam and curl up in my seat. I cover myself with jackets, and for the first time in my travelling history clutch Eeyore tightly to me rather than keeping him carefully hidden in a [...]

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