Six Degrees of Separation ~ From Brussels to Afghanistan

 

#6Degrees of Separation:
from Brussels to Afghanistan

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

This month we are supposed to use a travel guide as our starting book (e.g. a Lonely Planet or an Eyewitness Travel title). My favourite place to visit is Brussels, and my favourite travel guides are the Eyewitness Guides by Dorling Kindersley, so I just had to select this title:

Dorling Kindersley "Brussels. Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp" - 2000

And since we are on a trip already, I have decided to carry on like that this month and take you on a tour through two continents but lots of different countries.

Bryson, Bill "The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island" - 2015
The first place I would go to from Brussels is the British Isles. And who better to tell us about them than Bill Bryson. He has travelled Great Britain on foot when he first arrived and wrote a book about it in 1995 but then did almost the same tour again twenty years later. If you decide to go the Britain, Bill Bryson is a great author to read beforehand. And after.

McCarthy, Pete "McCarthy's Bar" - 2000
Next we'll hop to the next island in the British Isles, another one of my favourite, Ireland. Thelate Pete McCarthy has searched the whole island for pubs with his name. He found quite a few and also detected a lot of places in Ireland that are worth visiting.

Booth, Cathleen "Mercy & Grace on the Camino de Santiago" - 2020
Now we cross the Atlantic and enter a country in the South.
Did you ever fancy walking the Camino de Santiago? Many people dream about it, a lot of the members of my church have done it. One of them is the author, who went with other members of your congregation and wrote a book about it. She is a wonderful author and even if you don't want to do that tour, she tells us a lot about that part of Spain.

Orth, Stephan "Couchsurfing in Russia: Friendships and Misadventures Behind Putin’s Curtain" (GE: Couchsurfing in Russland. Wie ich fast zum Putin-Versteher wurde) - 2017

For the next country, we are going East, so we probably want to take a plane. Or we might not want to go at all given the present political situation.
But Stephan Orth was there before the war started. And, as in his other books where he couchsurfed in the most unlikely countries, he tells us a lot about the people, those that we normally don't meet. A beautiful tale of an excursion to a country we might never be able to visit that way.

Fatland, Erika "The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and the Northeast Passage" (NO: Grensen: En reise rundt Russland gjennom Nord-Korea, Kina, Mongolia, Kasakhstan, Aserbajdsjan, Georgia, Ukraina, Hviterussland, Litauen, Polen, Latvia, Estland, Finland og Norge samt Nordøstpassasjen) - 2017
From Russia we can visit many different countries and that is just what Norwegian journalist Erika Fatland did, she travelled around this huge country and went to all the countries that surround Russia. From Norway to North Korea (there is only one country in between them, Russia), from China to Estonia, through most of the Stans, what a trip.

Elliot, Jason "An Unexpected Light. Travels in Afghanistan" - 1999
And since we're in the area, a country I think I might never travel to, either. They have been at war for as long as most of us can remember and we just have to feel sorry for the poor people having to go through the occupation and then their own compatriotes who started to bring back the Middle Ages. But Jason Elliot visited the country and met the "real" Afghans. And he has a great way of telling us all about it.

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So, it's easy to see the connection betwen the first and the last book this month, they both take you to another country, one a little more adventurous than the other.