Funfare for the Common Man

 And no, it’s not what you think! [Editor’s note: this is yet another interlude between my summer 2011 travel instalments. For those waiting for part IV - the Balkans - patience please! It’s coming…one of these days.] In late July 2010, I was at a cross-roads. Just two months earlier, I had completed my teaching certification in high school history and social studies and the plan had been to teach in an international school. Growing up, my ‘plan’ had more or less been to teach history. I was the geeky little student who loved history, geography and civics in school and thought it would be an absolute blast to teach it. So yeah, that was the plan. Readers of the Layman’s Guide will be familiar with my tales from Keene State College in New Hampshire, where I toiled from September – December 2009, and then my torrid time at Manchester Memorial High School between January – May 2010. There are a plethora of posts, some funny, some sad from that time (interspersed with a few flas...

 courtesy Arab News   Editor’s note: this is a short interlude before part IV of my summer 2011 travels Readers who don’t like football, bear with me: this is meant to be a short, poignant piece, where I attempt to put a few things ‘in perspective’. First, a disclaimer: though I’ve hinted in the past that I’ve been building up a reservoir of pet hates that I eventually want to post (the list is well over 100), I think I’ve long lost the impetus to whittle it down and share it. I think it would bore more people than my blabbering about the 2010 World Cup on the Layman’s Guide (mercifully, I’m not going to provide a link to any of that drivel). But one of my top 10 pet hates is the clichéd expression ‘it really puts things in perspective’. Anytime I hear that, I want to groan and stab the person in the throat with a fork. Just to hurt them, mind, not to kill. This phrase, more than any other perhaps, really seemed to come into being post 9/11. And yes, I understand and ...

Talk about a rough start, and a rude welcome to eastern Hungary. I was almost ready to throw in the towel within hours of my arrival. I try to plan as little as possible when I’m on the road, though in the height of summer with limited accommodation on offer that can be a perilous endeavour. So from time to time I swallow my principles and book rooms in advance. Unfortunately, I was unable to for Eger, my next stop, and it was perhaps an ominous sign that I couldn’t get through by phone or email. I was particularly concerned because it seemed like a place with limited accommodation, and I was proved right. I could really draw the story of my arrival out. It was one of those evenings that I have tried to purge from my memory, but then the negative experiences are also part and parcel of travel, right? “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” (Clinton Fadiman) Long story short: ...