Travelling Across Europe

This weekend was the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ which came live from Oslo. As always, there was the mix of the diverse (Butterfly Costumes from Belarus), the out of tune (the UK), the moving (Ukraine) and the purely charming (the boy from Belgium). It showed the diversity and richness of this continent that I live on.

In previous years I have watched this friend with the ubiquitous drinking game: obvious key changes, costume change, bad taste generally etc would ensure a slug of the alcoholic poison of preference. During the voting, the new game was to reward obvious points exchanges (Germany/Turkey, Greece/Cyprus) with a drink. Now one of the variations we came up with the voting (as there just didn’t seem to be enough opportunities to drink by this stage!) was the first to call out the name of the capital of the next voting country did not have to take a drink. Now I was surprisingly good at this, not only able to identify the obvious options of Germany, Norway and France but also the less well know capitals of Georgia, Belarus and Albania (Tbilisi, Minsk and Tirana, as you were asking).

Now before this comes across as a list of the occasions I have become drunk or adhering to any other British student stereotype, let’s see if I can make this a little more worthy (and relevant to my research). Now a (sober variation of) the capital guessing game it made me think of the countries of Europe I have visited (or not). I’ve visited 14 (and 12 of their capitals) but when you list the full EU membership (27), the countries applying (9), EFTA (7 including microstates) and various neighbouring countries (10), there are quite a few left to visit. Now, I am meant to be interested in Europe in my research and, yet, I have only seen various sections of Europe. Now, having lived in France, been behind the former Iron Curtain (Czech Republic), visited a Baltic State (Estonia) and worked in Scandinavia (Sweden), I think my experience is broader than many people’s but wouldn’t it be interesting to see a few more?

So capitalising on my restlessness and desire to travel at the moment, coupled with a generous leave allowance, perhaps it is time to use Ryanair and see this continent: Ljubljana or Skopje anyone?