Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

This morning, I crawled through muddy, dark Roman-era tunnels below Lisbon.  The tunnels were carved during the reign of Emperor Augustus, and for centuries, they directed underground rainwater while empires above rose and fell. Eventually, they were sealed off and forgotten - to be rediscovered completely by chance during the rebuilding after the 1755 earthquake, which turned most of Lisbon into rubble. Today, the crypts are normally completely filled with groundwater, but they are pumped dry on just a couple of days each year, where only a few visitors are allowed access.   Today, I was among the lucky few.  The only entry to the below is through a narrow temporary shaft in the middle of the busy Rua da Conceição, right between the rails of the 28 tram line. The stairs leading down felt steep and risky, and when I finally reached the galleries, a few lights illuminated the void that had stood in total darkness for more than a Millenium. Some passages were s...

Yesterday we walked along Lisbon's shores. We started the day at the crumbling warehouses of Cais do Ginjal, and by evening we were eating golden sardines and moist monkfish. Cais do Ginjal is the waterfront just across the river. It used to be filled with life and workers, but now it stands totally empty. We wandered past locked warehouses with peeling paint and cracked glass. Wildflowers sprouted straight out of the bricks, and most of the walls were covered in graffiti. In one warehouse, a whole wall had collapsed right down, showing all the rusty pipes inside. The jagged hole looked like a gap-toothed grin, as if the building was chuckling at how broken it was. We went inside through a side door hanging loose off the hinges. Broken glass crunched under our shoes as we walked around the dark interior. It was now a place for pigeons, and their cooing echoed around. The sun streamed through broken window panes to light up the dust. Rust bloomed on the old machinery like ora...

We started our travels in 2024 at our house in the Ardeche mountains of Southern France. And - we had four absolutely miserable weeks!!! While Northern Europe experienced a lovely spring, we stayed mostly indoors, covered in duvets, while persistent rain and even sludge beat against our windows. Well - this is now rainwater under the bridge. And plenty of it! We survived - and, eventually, we escaped - and yesterday we arrived in a sunny, warm Berlin, where our new neighbors were hangi ng out in some of Kreuzberg's many outdoor cafes. ----------------- o ----------------- Today we used a lovely Ascension day to make our own ascent onto what is probably one of the weirdest places you can visit in all of Berlin - the top of the Teufelberg mountain far out in the Grunewald forest. This rubble mountain turned Cold War listening post turned graffiti wonderland is a strange mix of the last 80 years of German turmoil and rebirth. The approach to Teufelberg is unassuming - a nondescr...

Ever since our very first visit to Paris, we have made it a tradition to light a candle at the Church of St. Pierre de Montmartre on our final day in the city - hoping to be allowed to come back. This is of course superstition, and we're not superstitious, but luckily it seems to work, even if you don't believe in it! For the last 40 years, we have  lit perhaps thirty candles - and we have been coming back to Paris every single time without exceptions :-  ) This afternoon a new candle has been lit. À bientôt Paris!

My main focus - just now - is to keep my lips sealed, while I lie, floating on my back, in the middle of the Canal St Martin in Paris. The place I just duck into is absolutely no azure swimming pool, but rather an industrial canal cut through the city center, where swimming for the last hundred years has been strictly forbidden And for good reasons! The river flowing through Paris has been severely polluted, making it possible to contract skin infections, or develop gastroenteritis if you ingest the water. Not speaking of leptospirosis, or rat disease, which is transmitted via rat corpses or urine!   In lieu of all this - why am I this Sunday splashing around in the canal with a happy group of Parisians? One thing is the heat, but the main reason is: Because we actually can! For the last hundred years wild swimming in Paris waters has been strictly forbidden under pain of a fine (or pain of sickness!), but this Sunday and in this small part of the Canal St Martin, it is allowed for...

Yesterday, we were going to the Fondation Le Corbusier. On our way to this museum, which lies in the posh Paris neighborhood of Auteuil, we passed row upon row of centuries-old homes with bisque stone facades and quiet courtyards - until we stumbled upon a small street, which stopped us in our tracks. A short, private cul-de-sac with five giant cubist townhouses - the Rue Mallet-Stevens. We gazed up at whitewashed facades, sinuous curves, and floor-to-ceiling windows, and we felt like we had stepped into a living architectural exhibit from the interwar period, where - even by today's standards - each house seems as modern as the next. When we googled the street, it turned out that it is named after a now almost forgotten architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens, who back in the 1920s designed all five houses for a group of wealthy bohemians, who embraced the clean lines and geometric forms of the newly developed Art Deco architecture. Robert Mallet-Ste...

The stench is the first thing that I notice as I enter the dark underworld of the Petite Ceinture, the long-abandoned more than 150-year-old railway line which traces the 32-kilometer perimeter of Paris. Some parts of the Petite Ceinture are now open to the public, but the kilometer-long tunnels are barred and you have to be sneaky if you want to explore them. I found a way in (see below), where the dank air smelled of urine, rot, and abandonment. It was the smell of a place forgotten. Moving further on, the beam of the torch on my mobile creates a bubble of light in the almost impenetrable darkness. It flashes at the stone walls on either side, and the circle of light picks out tags, scribblings, and crude drawings, as this abandoned place has probably for almost a century been witness to furtive meetings, drug use, rough sleeping, and teenage gatherings. I walk slowly, wary of deep holes in the floor and obstructions on the tracks. Everything...