Short true-to-life road stories: the missed ferry, the stranger with a key, the meal you still think about.
Short true-to-life road stories: the missed ferry, the stranger with a key, the meal you still think about.
Every country page collects its entries in one place, with a fact sheet and the guides for going there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We boarded the wrong regional train and only realised at the fourth stop. The valley it climbed into had a glacier at the end of it and a hut selling apricot dumplings. We told everyone afterwards that we had planned it.
My ticket was for the wrong day. The conductor examined it for a long moment, looked at the rain outside, punched it anyway, and moved on down the carriage without saying a word.
A car passed us so fast the mirrors shook. Our host later explained the unwritten rule: the left lane is not a place to live, it is a place to visit. We drove more politely for the rest of the trip.
The staircase in our rental was steeper than a ladder. The landlord explained that houses were taxed on width, so everything went up instead of out, and furniture still arrives through the windows on a hoist.
It rained for four days without pause. On the fifth we gave up on sightseeing, sat in a cafe for six hours with two waffles and a notebook, and had the best day of the trip.
At 00:58 the platform at Chatelet was full of people all pretending not to run. When the train came, a busker got on with an accordion and played the same song for four stops while nobody looked up and everybody listened.
We arrived at half past eleven and thought we had time. The stallholders were already packing. One olive seller pressed a bag into my hands, refused payment, and said the word for tomorrow twice, pointing at his watch.
The bus smelled of oranges because the man behind me had a crate of them. He offered one to every passenger who woke up. By dawn the whole bus smelled like a grove and nobody had slept.
Everyone says tram 28 is unbearable. At seven in the morning it is a commuter service full of people going to work, the windows are cold, and you can hear the wheels complain on every corner.
The waiter held the bottle above his head and the glass at his hip and poured without looking. He gave me the bottle to try. I hit my own shoe, and he refilled my glass without comment.
At noon in August the plaza emptied so completely that pigeons walked down the middle of the street. By eight in the evening the same square held four hundred people and a brass band.
A coffee at the bar cost one euro and took ninety seconds. Sitting at the table cost three times as much. The barman explained this as if it were a law of physics.
We followed a map for eleven minutes and arrived at a wall of canal with no bridge. A woman leaning out of a window above us laughed, pointed backwards, and held up four fingers. Four turns later we were at the restaurant.
It snowed in Rome for two hours one February morning. The Forum went white, every phone in the city came out at once, and by lunchtime it was gone as if the city had imagined it.
The gorge trail was closed and we sat at the gate feeling defeated. A shepherd walked past with eleven goats, looked at our boots, and gestured for us to follow. His shortcut took two hours and involved no path at all.
We slept on the deck under jackets because the cabins were sold out. At four in the morning the engines changed pitch and everyone woke to see an island appear out of the dark, one white line at a time.
The bus stopped at a checkpoint that did not appear on any map we had. It took two hours, three stamps and one shared cigarette between drivers before we crossed into a country whose name had changed twice in thirty years.
We asked for directions and were invited for coffee. Halfway through, someone mentioned our host had been mayor for eight years. He was more interested in explaining lake trout than politics.
A young man stood on the parapet for eleven minutes collecting coins before he jumped. Someone in the crowd explained that he would not go until the collection reached a certain amount, and that this had been the rule for centuries.
There are scars in the pavement where shells landed, filled with red resin. Nobody points them out. You simply notice one, then another, then you walk more slowly for the rest of the afternoon.
The road was blocked by a wedding procession. We waited, and then someone knocked on the car window with two glasses of plum brandy and would not take no. We arrived at our guesthouse three hours late and extremely happy.
The wine cellars had road names painted on the tunnel walls: Cabernet Street, Feteasca Avenue. Our guide drove an electric buggy and took corners like a taxi driver.
The compartment had four bunks and five people, and the fifth was fine with the floor. Tea arrived in glasses with metal holders at six in the morning whether you were awake or not.
At Christmas the old town smells of almonds and every second doorway leads to a cellar bar. We got lost twice inside two hundred metres because every street looks like the postcard.
I looked up at a stairwell ceiling in Riga and stayed looking for so long that a resident coming home stopped and looked up too, then said something in Latvian that clearly meant yes, it is good, isn't it.
Uzupis has a constitution on a wall in forty languages. One article says a dog has the right to be a dog. Another says everyone has the right to be unhappy. Both feel earned.
The sun did not set. At half past midnight there was a full football match on the astroturf and a queue for the pitch afterwards. Nobody looked tired.
Four nights of cloud, and on the fifth the sky opened for eleven minutes. Nobody in the cabin spoke. Afterwards a Danish couple opened a bottle of something and we drank it out of coffee cups.
The road was blocked by forty reindeer moving at their own pace. The driver turned off the engine, poured coffee from a thermos, and said this was quicker than trying to hurry them.
It rained horizontally. In the pub, a man told me there is no bad weather, only the wrong jacket, then bought me a pint because my jacket was clearly wrong.
Twelve passing places in three kilometres, and a sheep asleep in every one. The oncoming driver reversed a quarter of a mile with one hand on the wheel and did not stop talking on the phone.
The bothy had four walls, a fireplace, a visitors' book and no door key. Someone had left dry kindling and half a bag of coffee for whoever came next. We left tea and matches.
We came down off the ridge nineteen minutes late and the last bus was still there. The driver had seen two head torches on the mountain and decided he was not leaving until they came down.
Every museum was free and every cafe was full. We spent four hours in one room of the British Museum, ate a sandwich on the steps, and did not see the rest of the city at all.
The causeway appeared out of the sea over about twenty minutes as if someone were slowly drawing it. Everyone stood at the edge with their shoes in their hands waiting for permission from the water.
We drove through a tunnel and came out in a different weather system. The village on the other side had sun, sheep on the roofs, and a shop that sold both fishing tackle and cake.
The guide stopped, put a hand out flat, and we all stopped too. Two hundred metres up the slope a brown bear crossed without looking at us once. Nobody took a photograph until it was gone.
Our guide slid a bank card at a joint in the Inca wall and it would not enter. He did this for tourists twenty times a day, and it still made everyone go quiet.
At six in the morning the Jemaa el-Fnaa is empty except for cats and a man sweeping. By nine it is a market, by seven a food court, by eleven a drum circle. Same square, four cities.
Three glasses: the first bitter as life, the second strong as love, the third gentle as death. Our host poured from a great height each time and would not let us leave until all three were drunk.
Two months after we came home I found Saharan sand in the spine of a paperback. It had crossed a continent inside a book and I could not bring myself to shake it out.
There are at least nine blues in one alley and the paint is refreshed by hand each spring. A woman repainting her step let me help for two minutes and then politely took the brush back.
I accepted the second price and the seller looked genuinely disappointed. He explained that the negotiation was the point, poured tea, and gave me a better price than I would have got.
The wind died and our captain tied off the sail, lay down on the deck, and slept for forty minutes. We drifted backwards. When he woke, the wind came back within five minutes as though he had ordered it.
Twenty balloons went up at once over the Valley of the Kings. From the ground it looked like the sky had been decorated. From the basket it was completely silent except for the burner.
The bus left when it was full and not before. Full meant something different than we expected. We made friends with everyone in three rows and arrived eleven hours later knowing four words of Amharic.
The ceremony took an hour: green beans roasted in the room, ground by hand, brewed and poured three times. Refusing the third round, we were told, is a small insult. We stayed.
A priest unlocked a church cut down into the ground and held up a cross older than most European cathedrals. Then he sat back down on a plastic chair and continued reading his phone.
We were told to stay seven metres away. Nobody told the silverback, who walked within an arm's length of my knee without breaking step. The guide's only instruction was to look at the ground.
The sign said equator and a man demonstrated water draining in opposite directions three metres apart. The physics was nonsense and the performance was excellent, and we tipped him anyway.
We waited five hours at the river. Then, with no signal we could detect, four thousand wildebeest decided at once and the water turned brown. It lasted eleven minutes.
Our matatu had a sound system worth more than the vehicle and a hand-painted portrait of a footballer on the back. The conductor hung out of the door collecting fares in traffic and never miscounted once.
The guide said pole pole about four hundred times in five days. On summit night, walking at half the pace felt absurd until we passed the fast group sitting down in the dark.
The sea went out nearly a kilometre and the whole village walked out onto the flats with buckets. Children raced the incoming tide back to shore as if it were a game invented that morning.
He was making a boat with no plans, using a stick with notches as his only measuring tool. His father built the boat next to it. His son was sanding a rudder and complaining about it.
The collectors work waist-deep in water saltier than the sea, coated in shea butter to protect their skin. They fill a pirogue by hand and it takes most of a morning.
We asked about the history of the town and got a song instead of a date. It lasted nine minutes, named six generations, and was more accurate than the guidebook.
Once a year the whole town replasters the mosque. There are teams, there is a race, and there is a great deal of mud. Being clean that day marks you as a visitor.
Visibility dropped to about four metres. We took shelter in a shop selling only mattresses and phone credit, and the owner made tea for eleven people until it passed.
Nobody warns you that the Sahara gets cold. At three in the morning we wore every item of clothing we had brought and still slept badly, then watched a sunrise that made it fine.
We took the cable car up into total white. Visibility was eight metres. Then the cloth lifted for ninety seconds, the whole city appeared below, and it closed again like a curtain.
African penguins crossed the boardwalk at their own pace and in their own order. A queue of humans waited politely, which felt like the correct arrangement.
There is one person at the fire and everyone else offers advice. Nobody touches the tongs. The meat is ready when the person at the fire says it is ready, and not before.
The ferry was scheduled for nine. It left at two. In between, someone produced a guitar and someone else produced grilled prawns, and by the time it arrived nobody wanted to board.
Our poler stood at the back and pushed us through reeds taller than the boat. He stopped once, silently, and pointed at an elephant twenty metres away that we would never have seen.
The Milky Way was bright enough to cast a shadow. Our guide named constellations we had never heard of, from a sky map that had nothing to do with Greek myths.
The gate opens at dawn and everyone drives too fast to Dune 45. We climbed the ridge in the dark, sat down at the top, and the desert turned from grey to orange in about four minutes.
We drove for two hours and turned the wheel twice. The gravel road went straight to the horizon and then continued. We passed one car and both of us waved.
The guide swims first to show it is safe, then holds your ankles while you look over the lip of Victoria Falls. It is entirely safe, allegedly, and my hands shook for ten minutes afterwards.
It did not rain, it emptied. Four hours of noise so loud that conversation stopped. Then it ended in about a minute and the forest started making an entirely different set of sounds.
We were told not to feed them. One sifaka disagreed with this policy, landed on my shoulder, checked all my pockets in about six seconds and left disappointed.
Everyone comes for the sunset photograph. Nobody mentions that afterwards, in the dark, ox carts keep coming down the same road for another hour, and that is the better picture.
The whole town smells of curing vanilla. A farmer showed us pods drying on racks and explained the two years between flower and export. Then he asked what we pay for one pod at home and laughed for a long time.
An old technique, mostly gone now, demonstrated for us by a man who clearly enjoyed the audience. He said his grandfather had six birds and knew all their names.
Salt lakes, date palms and a mud fortress melting slowly in the rain that comes once a decade. We swam in a spring at sunset with four boys who had cycled from the village to show off.
The rule we were given: if a street gets narrower, you are going the wrong way; if it widens, you are heading out. It worked eight times out of nine.
We knocked to ask for water and were served lunch. When we tried to pay, our host looked offended, then wrapped bread for us to take up the pass.
The shared taxi left when the fourth passenger arrived. By the end there were six of us, a crate of tomatoes and a goat, and the driver charged the same as if it had been four.
Music came out of every second doorway and none of it was the same song. A man selling fried plantain kept time with his tongs without appearing to notice.
In the workshop stood a coffin shaped like a fish, one like an aeroplane and one like a cocoa pod. Each was a life summarised in wood, and the carpenter explained every choice.
The metro stopped and the museums shut. We walked eleven kilometres, ate three lunches and found a rooftop where the Acropolis appeared between two air conditioning units.
Nets under the trees, sticks in every hand, and a family arguing pleasantly about branch technique. We picked for three hours and were paid in oil, which was a good deal.
The nearest streetlight was eleven kilometres away. We ate outside and by nine o'clock the sky had more stars than the guidebook had words.
We waited eighteen minutes. The driver walked back along the carriages explaining the situation to each one personally, and by the time we moved everybody knew everybody.
We arrived in a village for lunch and left at midnight. Nobody told us it was the patron saint's day, and nobody could believe we had turned up by accident.
The lighthouse is automatic now, but the cat still patrols as though it has responsibilities. The keeper's grandson runs a cafe next door and tells the story eleven times a day.
Six people in dressing gowns at eight in the morning in February. They swim for four minutes and drink tea for forty. We were invited on the first morning and did not miss a day.
The tram was nearly empty so the driver pointed things out as we passed, in three languages, without slowing down. At the terminus he apologised for talking too much.
We walked in fog for two days and saw the same twelve metres of path. Then it lifted on the last morning and Santiago's towers were exactly where they were meant to be.
The guesthouse key was iron and the size of a forearm. The owner said it had opened the same door since the eighteenth century and asked us not to lose it, understandably.
There is a correct order: sausage, then gingerbread, then gluhwein, then a second gluhwein. A local corrected our sequence firmly and then bought the second round.
He avoided the Grand Canal entirely and took us through back canals where the water was green and the walls were close enough to touch. He sang exactly nothing and it was better.
We ran the length of the platform and made it with four seconds to spare. A salaryman already inside held the door with his briefcase, then bowed slightly, and neither of us mentioned it for the next forty minutes.
Nothing matched that search on this page. Try a shorter word, or browse by destination.
The missed ferry. The stranger who handed over a key. The meal that ran until midnight. If something happened to you on the road and you still think about it, send it - a few sentences is plenty, and we do the tidying up.
