My Travel Adventures

My train left Málaga as scheduled at 7:30 in the morning, calling at Antequera and Córdoba before reaching Madrid at half past ten. I had an hour to kill until my friend Victoria arrived from Barcelona, so I took a short walk from the train station, passing by the Lope de Vega House Museum on the way to the Metr ópolis Building. From the eastern end of the Gran Vía, I looped back along the Cibeles Fountain, and we met at a brunch restaurant close to the train station. A long queue, I noticed, was snaking its way along the Museo del Prado, so we decided to visit it first thing in the morning the next day rather than in the afternoon.

The last few weeks were a whirlwind in all the wrong ways. After coming back from Vietnam, I immediately started my new job, which I was to do remotely until receiving my visa in May. I quickly found out, however, that I did not like the position at all, and decided to quit only three weeks in. Since then, I have been looking for other opportunities in a state of anxiety and benefitting from only occasional bursts of enthusiasm. Amidst this hassle, it did not feel very responsible to go on any trips, seeing as I spend a lot of time afterwards writing about my experiences and sorting through my pictures. One of my sisters did, however, manage to persuade me to visit the Botanical Garden in Prague one weekend, and to drive to Nymburk the next. I decided to view these trips as favours to her.

The weather remained unwelcoming during the second day of Li’s visit, though the remaining snow brightened the otherwise dreary city. This was my first time showing someone around Geneva, and I felt relieved that I did not have to come up with a very long itinerary thanks to our late breakfast. We started in the centre, walking north along the lake and past the Brunswick Monument to Parc Mon Repos, which I only recently discovered has a small grove of beautiful redwood trees. I started feeling a little cold, but awaiting us were the greenhouses of the nearby botanical garden. The papayas and habaneros were completely ignorant of the snow outside, happily growing out their fruits by the bushel.

I woke up on the last day of this intense trip feeling quite sluggish, but the weather was too nice to slack off. I packed up my bag one last time and went out, basically repeating yesterday’s circuit around central Copenhagen. This time, I spent longer checking out the spiralling roof of the Stock Exchange building: upon closer inspection, it is made of the intertwining tails of several dragons. I also briefly stopped by the Botanic Gardens, which were free to enter but were undergoing major reconstruction. The entire northeastern side was closed off to visitors, and what remained was a short loop between the Palm House and the lake.

We started our day by buying breakfast and dinner at a supermarket in Banja Luka. Lacking in invention, we bought what we have been consuming for the vast majority of our breakfast meals on our trip: bread, cheese, a milk-based drink, and fruit. The purchase brought our supply of Bosnian Marks low but not to zero. Thus, we decided to get some gas before crossing the border to the EU. We were pleasantly surprised when, upon arriving at the gas station, we were helped with our purchase by an employee who simply typed in the desired amount and refilled our tank for 30 BM worth of gas.