Neal, Greg and I spent the day exploring the Buda side of Budapest, which is on the western bank of the Danube. Atop Castle Hill, an imposing citadel covering a decent sized hill, we explored the old Royal Palace, walked past many government buildings along the cobbled streets, saw a few impressive churches and, Read More
After a long night farewelling my friends in Baden I caught a 6:30am train to Munich. I decided to add on the side trip (originally I planned to go direct from Zurich to Budapest) to take up an offer from a Brazilian mate Marcelo to join him and a bunch of his friends from, Read More
It’s been great fun being back in Switzerland for the past week… Last weekend I joined some of my rugby mates at one of our traditional summer tournaments – the St. Gallen "Bishop’s Cup" 10’s tournament in eastern Switzerland. Sure enough I couldn’t avoid pulling on the boots again and I played a handful, Read More
The Grand Tour began at 4:30am on 6 June at the corner of Greenwich and Grant St in San Francisco. My taxi didn’t show and I was therefore rushed to make my flight on time. It all worked out OK and I had an uneventful flight and seamless transfer in Toronto. It was a, Read More
Now that I’ve wrapped up the MBA at Berkeley, what comes next? Well, I’ve accepted an offer from Bain & Company (a management consultancy) here in their San Francisco office that I’m really fired up for. BUT before you all think that I’ve finally grown up at the ripe old age of thirty, there’s, Read More
The final stop on our South American vacation was Ecuador. We flew into Quito – the 2nd highest capital city in the world! – and while it’s at 3000m we didn’t have any problems acclimatizing to the altitude as we’d just come from Bogota which is also pretty high. Fascinating Quito! We, Read More
Now I have to admit that my desire to backpack through Colombia was for a few different reasons: I felt like traveling somewhere considered “unsafe” (I had my reasons but you’re not allowed ask me why) I wanted to see what Colombia was all about ,and whether it deserved the bad wrap it usually, Read More
Andy Passmore and I flew down to South America for our Christmas vacation. We didn’t have a firm plan as such: we just bought a Lonely Planet guidebook and looked for a cheap fare to South America. And that’s how we ended up in Caracas. We arrived in Caracas at night without a hotel, Read More
Well, my time has come – for now at least – to leave this land of good chocolate, cuckoo clocks, smelly cheeses, incredible mountains, filthy cigarettes, Nazi gold, ridiculous small dogs, offensive prices, and many somewhat humourless law-abiding people! Hey, but it’s not all bad!!! I couldn’t have asked for more out of the, Read More
(Yet another trip well before the era of digital cameras! I’ll have to scan in some photos sometime…) While I was interning at ABB Power Generation in Switzerland in 1998-1999, I was able to negotiate six weeks off to backpack around Europe over the summer. Here’s a summary of the trip, with extracts from, Read More