I travel badly by most standards. I don’t cover much ground and I miss things I was supposed to see. What I do instead is follow the music and eat what’s in front of me, and those two turn out to be the fastest way into a place.

In October 2019 I went to Europe for the first time, alone, with a guitar’s worth of intent and no real plan — seven countries in three weeks, mostly by train, several of them for a single night. Everything below follows from that.

Netherlands

Amsterdam — 10–11 October 2019

I went for John Mayer at the Ziggo Dome. It was the first concert I had ever been to, and it was the reason the entire trip existed. Everything after it was accidental, which turned out to be the better half.

A narrow Amsterdam street of tall brick buildings on a grey day, neon signs for restaurants and cafés along the ground floor, people walking on wet brick paving.
Amsterdam, the morning after the concert.

I watched locals play chess on the street. I tried Dutch herring, which you eat standing up and regret nothing about. I stopped on a corner where someone was playing Vivaldi — Le Quattro Stagioni, on a street, for anyone — and stayed until they finished, then bought their CD.

Later, in the lobby of the hostel, I was picking out something I’d heard the night before on a battered house guitar when another traveller came over. He’d been at the same show.

That kept happening. Nobody tells you that carrying an instrument does the introductions for you.

Germany

Berlin and Potsdam — 11–13 October 2019

Two nights in a hostel off Mohrenstrasse, and the only city on the trip that made no attempt whatsoever to charm me. After Amsterdam’s canals and before Prague’s spires, Berlin was entirely uninterested in whether I liked it. I liked it enormously.

I spent a long stretch at the East Side Gallery — the surviving mile of the Wall, painted end to end. One panel is titled Curriculum Vitae: every year from 1961 to 1989 written out, a rose for each of the 136 people who died trying to cross, and two lines that have stayed with me since.

A painted section of the Berlin Wall titled Curriculum Vitae, listing the years 1961 to 1989 in large hand-painted numerals with small pink roses between them, and hand-lettered text about GDR refugees triggering both the building and the fall of the Wall.
East Side Gallery. “ESCAPE is a mighty method to destabilise dominion.” A wall that keeps its own CV.

Escape is a mighty method to destabilise dominion, on the side that went up. Gratitude to the killed and surviving refugees, on the side that came down. The same people caused both.

Out to Potsdam as well, which meant a train at an hour I’d rather not discuss.

The interior of a German ICE train early in the morning, rows of empty blue seats, luggage on the overhead racks, a single passenger visible further down the carriage.
5:06am, somewhere near Potsdam. The unglamorous half of a rail pass.

Most of that trip was like this — a Eurail pass, a lot of early starts, and several countries seen between trains.

Czechia

Prague — 14–16 October 2019

I travelled to Prague without a reservation, which I do not recommend and would do again. There is a story in my camera roll that is just me, finally, getting a seat.

Stone steps climbing toward Prague Castle in low golden evening light, a high brick wall on the right, an autumn tree overhanging, a lone figure walking up.
The climb up to the castle, late afternoon. Prague does this light for about twenty minutes a day.

Prague is where you work out how much Disney borrowed and never mentioned. It was also Pride weekend, so the old town was louder and better dressed than it had any right to be.

The music followed me around. A street performer playing Rondo alla Turca with an improvisation level I’d call professional. Louis Armstrong coming out of doorways — he is genuinely everywhere in that city — and a day that ended, as several did, with more jazz than I’d planned on.

Austria

Vienna — 17–19 October 2019

Vienna calls itself the city of music, which makes a concert less a plan than an obligation. Mozart and Johann Strauss the younger, then Don Giovanni — Là ci darem la mano in a room built precisely for that sound.

Vienna seen from above at night, rooftops and lit apartment facades in the foreground, the city spreading out to a horizon of orange lights with a cathedral spire lit in the distance.
Vienna after the concert. The spire in the distance is Stephansdom.

The next morning, the flea market at the Naschmarkt. Both of those are the city; you need the opera and the junk stalls or you have only seen half of it.

Somewhere in there I drank something local that tasted, I promise you, exactly like Coke.

Slovenia

Ljubljana — 19–20 October 2019

Another single night, and the strangest bed of the trip: Hostel Celica, in Ljubljana’s Metelkova quarter, which is a converted military prison. The rooms are the old cells, each one redesigned by a different artist, and you sleep behind the original bars.

Metelkova itself is an occupied former barracks turned autonomous arts complex — every surface covered in murals, sculpture welded out of scrap. It is the least Habsburg thing imaginable to find two hours from Vienna, which is exactly why it works.

Hungary

Budapest — 20 October 2019

The best meal I ate in Budapest was Lebanese, which felt less like a detour than the point.

The Danube at blue hour, still water reflecting a line of warm street lamps along the far bank, dark treeline and a church spire on the horizon.
The Danube going dark. Twenty minutes later it was just lights on water.

And the countryside turned out to have more going on than the capital — a village street strung with mismatched lampshades, the sort of thing nobody puts in a guidebook.

A cobbled street at night strung with rows of mismatched, brightly coloured lampshades glowing above empty café tables.
Somewhere outside the city, after dark.

Croatia

Split, Hvar and Dubrovnik — 22–28 October 2019

Croatia is where the trip stopped being a holiday.

Looking down at bare feet standing in shallow, perfectly clear turquoise sea over pale round pebbles, white trousers rolled up.
The Adriatic in late October. Colder than it looks, clearer than anywhere I have swum since.

In Split I ended up in a bar where a woman was singing Back to Black — Amy Winehouse, sung properly, to about thirty people. Later that night the band let me get up with them. I sang Imagine, fumbled the lyrics, and had nobody to record it because I was travelling alone. First unofficial performance in Europe. I have never minded that there’s no evidence.

A narrow stone alley in Split's old town, washed in warm light, an elderly woman walking away from the camera between shuttered buildings.
Split old town — the kind of street you end up in rather than plan for.

Split also had the best ice cream I have ever eaten, and I have thought about it more often than is reasonable.

Hvar was sunshine, sea coast and lavender, and asked nothing of me at all.

A plate of spaghetti with fish in tomato sauce and a glass of red wine on a terrace table, with stone walls, palm trees and bright sky beyond.
Lunch on the coast. Most of what I remember about a place arrives at a table like this one.

In Dubrovnik I walked the old town on a Game of Thrones tour, and went diving for the first time. The shop were extremely patient with someone who had clearly never done this before.

A diver in a black wetsuit suspended mid-water in clear blue sea, arms outstretched, bubbles rising toward the surface above.
Dubrovnik. The quietest I have ever been.

And on one night in an Irish pub there, playing with Croatian musicians who then played me their own regional music back, I chipped a fingernail clean off from playing too hard. Best musical night of the trip. Worth the nail.

United Arab Emirates

Dubai — May 2025

I went for GISEC Global, the Middle East’s largest cybersecurity event, at the Dubai World Trade Centre from the 6th to the 8th of May. That is squarely the day job — three days of conversations about exactly the problems I spend my working life on, conducted in a hall the size of a small town.

A man standing in front of the Dubai World Trade Centre exhibition gate beneath a huge digital banner reading GISEC GLOBAL 2025, Middle East and Africa's largest cybersecurity event, with rows of fountains along the plaza.
GISEC Global 2025, Dubai World Trade Centre. The reason I was there.

But a conference is a poor reason to see nothing of a city, and Dubai splits cleanly in two.

There is the Downtown version everybody arrives for — the world’s tallest building, which you do once, mostly so you can stop being asked whether you did.

And then there is the other side of the creek, Bur Dubai and Deira, which is older, denser and considerably more interesting. Meena Bazaar after dark is textile shops and gold souks and a minaret lit green against the sky, and it feels far more like a working city than a rendering of one.

A slender minaret lit green against a dark blue night sky, a crescent moon directly above it, older low buildings on either side.
Meena Bazaar, on the old side of the creek. The half of Dubai that predates the skyline.

That side is also where the food is, and Dubai’s food is really other people’s food — a city composed almost entirely of somewhere else. The best thing I ate was Bosnian: ćevapi arriving under a lid of somun bread with kajmak and ajvar, which is not a thing I expected to find in the Gulf.

A metal platter holding grilled ćevapi sausages tucked under a folded flatbread, with chopped raw onion, red ajvar, mustard and white kajmak alongside, in a warmly lit restaurant.
Bosnian House. Dubai is full of other people’s home cooking, which is the most interesting thing about it.

Vietnam

Hanoi, Hà Nam, Huế, Hoi An, Da Nang — May–June 2026

We went top to bottom, north to centre, mostly overland. Vietnam is long and thin and rewards doing it that way — the food changes every few hundred kilometres and tells you where you are more reliably than the signs do.

Hanoi

Three days, most of which happened by accident. We fell into a random street food joint one evening and it turned into something else entirely by the end of it, which is the correct outcome for a street food joint. There was a mandatory pilgrimage to a music store. And one night we sat and watched the whole of Radiohead’s In Rainbows — From the Basement, the 2008 live session, start to finish, in a country neither of us lived in.

Hà Nam

South of Hanoi, and mostly a stop rather than a destination — but the convenience stores alone justify it. Vietnam sells vacuum-packed marinated chicken feet as a casual snack, hanging on a rack next to the crisps, forty grams for sixteen thousand đồng.

Brightly coloured vacuum-sealed snack packets hanging on a shop rack, each containing a single marinated chicken foot, labelled Chân Gà, with a price tag reading 16,000 VND.
Hà Nam. Chicken feet, forty grams, sixteen thousand đồng, sold like a packet of crisps.

I find this genuinely admirable. A whole category of snack we’ve decided is unthinkable, sitting there completely unbothered.

Huế

The old imperial capital, and the one stop I planned around a recommendation — Anthony Bourdain’s.

A weathered laminated menu board for a Vietnamese street stall reading BÚN BÒ HUẾ, with the name Kim Châu and the line Anthony Bourdain's Hue Lady circled in white, above a list of Huế dishes.
Kim Châu — the bún bò Huế stall Bourdain sent half the world to. Worth the detour.

He’d found a woman in Huế selling bún bò Huế — the local beef noodle soup, sharper and more lemongrass-heavy than phở — and told everyone about it. So I went and found the same stall. It’s the sort of recommendation that could easily have curdled into a tourist trap in the years since, and somehow hasn’t.

Huế mornings are their own argument for getting up early.

Hoi An

Yellow walls, blue shutters, lanterns, and a tailoring industry that will make you a suit before dinner. It is as photogenic as everyone says and slightly self-aware about it, which I didn’t mind.

A café front in Hoi An with an ochre-yellow wall and bright blue folding doors, a neon sign reading IVY coffee-tea, a yellow silk lantern above, and red plastic chairs around small tables on the pavement.
Hoi An. The plastic chairs are the giveaway that a place is still for locals.

The red plastic chair is the reliable indicator across all of Vietnam: wherever they’re out on the pavement, the food is worth stopping for.

Da Nang

The coast, and the end of the line — where the rain finally caught up with us.

The best meals of that trip did not come with white tablecloths, which is true almost everywhere and undeniable in Vietnam.

India

The monsoon road trip, July 2022. A long drive down through Karnataka, across Kerala and out into Tamil Nadu, in the middle of the rains. It started in coffee country — Chikmagalur, then Coorg, where I sat on a plantation in the rain playing Ode to Joy badly. The trek out to Thadiyandamol and Chelavara Falls was the wettest walking I have done.

A man in a bright yellow rain poncho sitting on a rock in the middle of a fast-flowing forest stream, drinking from a bottle, dense wet green forest all around.
Chelavara, mid-trek. The Shiraz was load-bearing.

Then down into Kerala — Wayanad in continuous rain, a houseboat on the backwaters, and Varkala, where the cliff meets the sea. Then Tamil Nadu, which after two weeks of green and grey arrived in colour.

A man in a denim shirt and sunglasses leaning against a rough stone wall above a rough green sea, rain falling.
The Kerala coast, mid-monsoon.

Meghalaya, May 2024. On a bike, through Shillong and the canyons — one of the wettest places on earth, visited in the rain, which was entirely predictable.

Brahmatal, into 2025. A winter trek in the Uttarakhand Himalaya, walked across the new year — snow line, frozen lake, and a summit reached at sunrise. Cold nights, warm company. A completely different proposition from everything above, and the one I think about most.

Hyderabad, where I live: the old city, which you should never skip, and a long-running project of working through the city’s cafés — including a coffee platter with a praline I had genuinely mixed feelings about, which is still more interesting than something merely fine.