About Paul Bradbury. Please contact me if you would like help with your website content. I also write for Google News via Digital Journal - see my range of articles here. Ongoing writing projects:. Around the World in 80 Disasters. Total Hvar in the Media:. Special Feature in Globus Magazine May Featured on Croatian TV show, More - watch the report here. I am available for writing services. Please contact me on [email protected].
Other websites:. Total Hvar - www. Total Split - www. Total Inland Dalamtia - www. The Swiss Tourist Board is missing a trick. Having been to Albania recently and hearing the country described as the 'Switzerland of the Balkans', I reflected on the reasons the Swiss don't return the favour and market themselves as the 'Albania of the Alps'.
My mind went back to a different time to another Alpine paradise in exile, in the Ural Mountains, and the nondescript town of Krasnoufimsk, which I was assured was in the heart of 'Switzerland of the Urals'.
Perhaps the mind is playing tricks over the 18 years since I visited, as I don't recall pristine lakes and snow-capped mountains in idyllic mountains inhabited by cows with bells and shepherds called Heidi. The only thing that sticks in my mind is the best example I can across of the efficiency of the Soviet distribution system - no bright lights of Geneva and Zurich in my memory, just the nagging question of how a fully-functioning brewery on the edge of town could fail to supply a single drop.
An investigation of the brewery itself led to some more baffling questions. This is not a drinking blog post, although writing about life in rural Russia without reference to a drop of the good stuff is beyond my powers, but drinking was a part of the story. It was my first official trip and I was determined to make a good impression. A week earlier I had met a girl from Birmingham in an Irish pub in Moscow who was looking for Russian-speaking foreigners to work as aid workers in more remote areas of the country.
