Travel stories, quotes and fun facts

Iceland has no mosquitoes

Iceland is one of the only inhabited places on Earth with no native mosquito population. The island's freeze-thaw cycles interrupt the insect's life cycle before it can complete.

The barman who kept the light on

Our flight was cancelled and every hotel in Reykjavik was full. A barman closing up at two in the morning heard us arguing with an app, shrugged, and let us sleep in the back room on beer crates. He refused money and asked only that we leave the key under the mat.

The world is a book

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.

Reykjavik runs on hot rocks

Nearly every home in Reykjavik is heated by geothermal water pumped from volcanic bedrock, which is why the tap water smells faintly of sulphur but the air stays remarkably clean.

Norway invented the cheese slicer

The cheese slicer was patented in 1925 by Thor Bjorklund, a furniture maker from Lillehammer who adapted a carpenter's plane to slice brown cheese thinly.

A ferry that would not wait

We missed the last ferry by ninety seconds and watched it pull away in flat grey light. Then a fisherman untied his boat, said one word we did not understand, and pointed at the bow. He dropped us on the island an hour later and vanished before we could thank him.

The world's longest road tunnel

The Laerdal Tunnel runs 24.5 kilometres under Norwegian mountains and is lit with blue and yellow caverns every six kilometres to keep drivers alert.

Travel is fatal to prejudice

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Sauna diplomacy

Nobody in the lakeside sauna spoke English and we spoke no Finnish. For forty minutes we sat in silence, then somebody handed round a bucket of ice and everyone laughed at the same time. It turned out we had been arguing about football using only eyebrows.

Sweden recycles almost everything

Sweden recycles or recovers energy from the vast majority of its household waste, and for years it imported rubbish from neighbouring countries to keep its plants running.

Finland has more saunas than cars

With roughly three million saunas for 5.5 million people, Finland has more steam rooms than automobiles, including one inside the parliament building.

The cyclist's rule

I stopped in the wrong lane and a woman in a suit rang her bell without slowing. Then she circled back, explained the hand signals, and rode beside me for six blocks until I got it right. She was late for something and never mentioned it.

Twenty years from now

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

Denmark's flag is the oldest

The Dannebrog has been in continuous use since the 14th century, making it the oldest national flag still flown by an independent state.

Copenhagen counts bikes, not cars

More bicycles than cars cross central Copenhagen every day, and the city installed traffic lights timed to a cyclist's pace of about 20 km/h.

Bread at midnight

A bakery window in Kazimierz opened at midnight and sold the first loaves straight from the oven. There was no sign and no menu, just a queue of taxi drivers and one traveller who had followed the smell for four streets.

Estonia declared internet a right

Estonia treats internet access as a social right, runs almost all public services online, and lets citizens vote in national elections from a laptop.

I travel for travel's sake

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Latvia's forests keep growing

More than half of Latvia is covered in forest, and the total forested area has been expanding for decades as farmland returns to woodland.

The clock that stopped for us

We arrived at the astronomical clock two minutes before the hour and found the square full. A boy on his father's shoulders counted down out loud in Czech, and a hundred strangers joined in without agreeing to.

Lithuania has a hill of crosses

The Hill of Crosses near Siauliai holds well over 100,000 crosses left by pilgrims. Soviet authorities bulldozed it repeatedly; locals rebuilt it every time.

Chess in the steam

Two men played chess in the hot pool at Szechenyi as if the water were an office. When I sat down to watch, one of them turned the board a quarter turn and pointed at a piece. I lost in eleven moves and stayed for three more games.

Poland's forest of bent pines

In the Crooked Forest near Gryfino, some 400 pine trees all bend sharply north at the base. Nobody has ever proved why.

New eyes

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.