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Danube Travel – BP Portrait Awards

Thursday, 5 July 2018

The National Portrait Gallery in London (half way between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, right behind the National Gallery) is one of my favourite London museums or galleries and each year the BP Portrait Award – ‘the most prestigious portrait painting competition in the world’ – is one of my favourite events there. It’s on right now until 23 September 2018.

Short listed painters who don’t take out one of the big prizes are also eligible to apply for the Travel Awards, which funds them to go travelling and bring back portraits from their travels to be shown at the following year’s exhibit. This year I was one of the judges for the Travel Awards and we decided the winning painter was Robert Seidel, who is German from Leipzig.

◄ This is David, his entry in the BP Portrait Award from a visit to San Francisco. Robert is going to travel down the Danube River using a variety of forms of transport including bicycle and paint portraits of the people he encounters.

 

 

The Danube flows through four European capitals and coincidentally I’ve visited all of them in the past few years. In March this year I was in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

▲ Looking down on New Bridge or Nový most and other Danube River bridges from Bratislava Castle. Officially it’s SNP (‘Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising’) but it’s often referred to as Most Slovenského národného povstania or the UFO Bridge because of what looks like a flying saucer landing on top of it.

▲ Our MGBs board a Danube River ferry as we cross from Bulgaria into Romania.

Last year my Silk Road trip – driving from Bangkok to London in an old MGB sports car – took me through Budapest in Hungary and Vienna in Austria on the last week of our long drive. I had visited both cities on earlier occasions. Two years earlier in late-2015 I visited Belgrade in Serbia, hometown of Nikola Tesla. The international airport is named after him and he also has a fine museum in the city.

Danube Travel – BP Portrait Awards

5 July 2018 | Culture

The National Portrait Gallery in London (half way between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square, right behind the National Gallery) is one of my favourite London museums or galleries and each year the BP Portrait Award – ‘the most prestigious portrait painting competi...

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Bologna & Rimini

5 July 2018 | Places

Emilia-Romagna – turn east from Rome and head north – tops Lonely Planet’s Best in Europe category for 2018. It’s got a lot going for it: Bologna (the main city), Ravenna (Italy’s best mosaics), Modena (fabulous food), Parma (the ham), Ferrara (a Renaissance gem), Rim...

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Flag Carriers – Losing Money or Flying Nowhere

20 June 2018 | Transport

A flag carrier is a national airline, an airline that ‘flies the flag’ internationally. Once upon a time you could add ‘at great expense’ because most flag carriers seemed to be bottomless pits for government money. Some of them still are and in Europe that descriptio...

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MH17 – why didn’t the Russians check before they fired their Buk missile?

27 May 2018 | Transport

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014 – almost four years ago – while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The Netherlands authorities have announced who did it – the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Briga...

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25 Hour Hotel Bikini Berlin & its Mini

14 May 2018 | Living

▲ When I was in Berlin last month I didn’t stay at the 25 Hours Hotel Bikini Berlin, because I was joining Maureen, she was on an opera tour and she was already installed at the Regent Hotel near the Staatsoper. I did go to have a look at the hotel because of this anc...

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Airlines – good & bad

13 May 2018 | Transport

Flying between London and Melbourne in March-April I used seven different airlines for 11 flights, two of which (Adria and Emirates) had annoying delays. And one which I didn’t even fly on, but left me very impressed – Regent Airways of Bangladesh – we’ll get back to ...

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Bangladesh Transport & Human Chains

29 April 2018 | Transport

There’s plenty of transport around Bangladesh, but it’s often lethally unsafe. The Bangladesh accident rate is not appalling against the population numbers, but presumably a large proportion of Bangladeshis never see a road. Against the number of vehicles (1000+ death...

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Cox’s Bazar & Chittagong

27 April 2018 | Places

My recent Bangladesh trip was primarily to visit the Rohingya refugee camps south of Cox’s Bazar, where the Myanmar army has shoved half a million of their Muslim citizens out of the country and in to refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh. It’s been described ...

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Shipbreaking in Bangladesh

18 April 2018 | Places

Visiting the refugee camps in and around Kutupalong, south of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, was the principal reason for my recent visit to the country. Planet Wheeler, my foundation, works with COTE (Children on the Edge) to provide education to some of the children amo...

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No, that’s not Donald Trump

15 April 2018 | Culture

Exploring the German History Museum – Deutsche Historische Museum – on Unter den Linden in Berlin, just before my recent trip to Bangladesh, I came upon this interesting portrait with its even more interesting description: ◄  Kaiser Wilhelm II In an attempt ...

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