Inspiring Travel Writing from Simon Busch
Simon Busch was born in New York, grew up in Sydney and Perth (Western Australia), began his writing career in Melbourne and, for six years, has been based in London. He writes a regular column, on gardens and other outside spaces, for the Financial Times and contributes travel and other features to the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Times, the Observer, the Independent, the Australian and such magazines as the New Statesman, Dazed and Confused and the Idler; he is also a radio broadcaster. He specialises in culinary and cultural travel but will go almost anywhere that provides food for thoughtful writing.
Articles by Simon Busch
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Italy: Well-Oiled in Puglia
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Simon Busch
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Italy
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Puglia
The region supplies almost half of Italy's prodigious demand but, until recently, its product was used only for blending. The spur and heel of Italy's boot, it was for a long time worn down by poverty. Yet, its agricultural riches have fed a slow...
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European Fleamarkets
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Simon Busch
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France
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Pas-De-Calais Region
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Lille
LA BRADERIE, Lille When: the first weekend of September; some stalls stay open through the night. Supposedly the biggest fleamarket in Europe, and the second biggest event on the continent after Oktoberfest, La Braderie sees 2 million bargain-...
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Dumfries and Galloway
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Simon Busch
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United Kingdom
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Southern Scotland
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Dumfriesshire
Ross Island must be the perfect place to be a recluse. Its sole inhabitant left a career as a laboratory technician in Edinburgh a few decades ago to set up camp on this hillock poking up above the waters of the river Dee. Gary McKie, a guide who...
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Northern India
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Simon Busch
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India
Was I marriage material, I wondered as I dipped into the thousands of matrimonial ads in the complimentary Times of India provided on my red-eye flight into Delhi. The parents of one sterling-sounding chap extolled his virtues thus in the "wanted...
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Lisbon Past and Present
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Simon Busch
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Portugal
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Lisbon Region
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Lisbon
The first time I was in Lisbon I stumbled upon a shooting. I was wandering through the narrow streets of the Alfama quarter when I was stopped short by a series of wooden barricades blocking an intersection. On the other side of the barrier stood a...
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Marseille: The French Connection
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Simon Busch
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France
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Provence
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Marseille
Marseille has a seedy reputation enhanced by its depiction in film, most famously the 1970s Gene Hackman flicks The French Connection parts I and II, and in writing, as in the melancholic detective novels by the native Marseillais Jean-Claude Izzo....
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The Northen Circuit
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Simon Busch
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Morocco
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Northern Morocco
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Asilah
She appeared out of the mist like a slatternly vision. The smudge of lipstick she wore was stark against her etiolated skin and her wild, peroxided hair. She pushed a pram inexpertly, as if it were a new toy. A vendor approached her, proffering...
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The Rhone Valley
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Simon Busch
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France
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Rhone Valley
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Ardeche
The Rhône Valley? That’s just heavy industry and nuclear power stations, isn’t it? Not really. I only once or twice caught a glimpse through the roadside trees of those looming concrete funnels on a recent tour of the region. Still, the reactors...
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Sinai
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Simon Busch
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Egypt
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Sinai
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South Sinai
“Sometimes people put whisky here, and hash here, and go to heaven!” Amir had said, gesturing in turn at the body and bowl of a shisha pipe and then up at the sky. I only had apple-flavoured tobacco in mine - my choice among an orchard of other...
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Trieste with James Joyce
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Simon Busch
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Italy
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Friuli-Venezia Giulia
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Trieste
They arrived at crowded Stazione Centrale in a cloud of steam but it might as well have been a cloud of scandal. He was only 22 and she 20; they were penniless and he did not even have a job to go. Worst of all, though, they did not have a ring. And...