Planned trip to the Adriatic and through the Balkans

Just watched an episode of Michael Palin’s New Europe, a journey to Eastern Europe into territory once forbidden – the new Europe previously shrouded behind the Iron Curtain.

It has enlightened me to the delights of what these countries have to offer and I am therefore planning a trip alone through Slovenia, Croatia (Zagreb), Bosnia (Sarujevo),  Serbia (Belgrade) , Albania (Tirane), Bulgaria (Sofia) and Turkey.  This should take me a good couple of weeks and will be a lot of travelling, but I’m looking forward to meeting people from this region and finding out how life is today in comparison to a little over 10 years ago when the Balkans area was subject to massive conflict following the break up of former Yugoslavia.

Map of my journey....

Looking forward to this trip!

In the meantime, good news on the business front:

1) Our UK Hosting Company Krystal is doing well and has sold two dedicated servers today.
2) My Film Forum is not doing so great – a massive drop in the Google rankings and a lot less traffic is the inevitable result of not giving it enough attention. I’ll rectify this shortly.
3) New web site up and comings shortly for IT training. Snipits.co.uk – keep a look out for it!

Until next time!
Paul

Hello from Dubai

Dubai, one of the 7 emirates that make up the UAE, and Dubai City, the main city within the emirate are unique experiences for me!  Having said that, elements of the city remind me of Vegas…I went to a hotel plaza complex next to the world’s only 7 star hotel last night (Burj al Arab) and it reminded me of the venetian without the canal running through the middle of it!  The people are very friendly; my initial concerns over the dress code and complying with local customs (ie, no alcohol, wearing of short t-shirts etc.!) have long vanished – many of the locals are used to Westerners and are very welcoming indeed!

The RIPE meeting itself is great; listening to the cutting edge experts in all fields surrounding the internet is a learning curve and a half…more importantly, though, the partying is great!

Off to ride camels, drive buggies and drink more alcohol again this evening…Met someone last night who goes to 30-40 of these events a year – great job!

Could do with more sleep though!

Currently in a routing workgroup so need to concentrate and stop writing!

Travelling blog

I have decided to start a travel blog to write about all the wonderful places I’ll go in my lifetime. I expect this will be horrendously boring, so I’ll try and liven it up with drunken nights out, weird and wonderful places, strange activities and other shananigans. Aim: Hit every country in the world. (Won’t happen, but the journey is more fun than the achievement!)

So expect ramblings from Dubai, next week, as I’m heading there for a RIPE meeting with my UK Hosting partners! Camel riding here we come!