Bulgaria with Noodles

A blogger with his in-laws. It was my hero, Michael Palin, who said in Around the World in Eighty Days that air travel is a great way to see airports. Real travel is something you read about while you are sitting in seat 33D. Well, yes, I would more or less agree with a lot of that. Airports are pretty dull places, about as sexy as Brexit. I do, however, want to write a few lines about one particular airport that I found quite interesting. There, I have said it. An interesting airport. Is that an oxymoron?   Very surprising and beautiful - and it's an airport. Simferopol airport has only recently opened and, considered as a piece of architecture, it really is interesting. The shape of the building is supposed to resemble a wave and the effect really is quite startling. There is also a huge wall along one side of the departures area, with thousands of plants growing on it. This green wall acts as a sort of lung, freshening the air and introducing a touch of Nature in ...

In his wonderful BBC travel series, Around the World in Eighty Days , Michael Palin says that his round-the-world trip could only be interest of interest to other circumnavigators and therefore most ordinary people would find it boring. I have to disagree with Mr Palin, as I must have watched Around the World at least fourteen times.  What has that got to do with blogging? As I have mentioned in a previous post, I used to bore to death all of my poor wife and my colleagues at Green Oasis School by talking endlessly about Bulgaria. (In fact at one point, I had the idea of marketing Bulgarian real estate here in China, but that particular attack of insanity did not last long.) Now I bore everyone to death with the latest news about my blog. “Yesterday I had nearly 200 hits!” and “Expatfocus have done the piece I sent to them and they also mentioned my blog!”  Et cetera, ad infinitum.   It is freezing in our apartment. Yes, southern China is supposed to be ...