It had only been a short walk from the clinic to the station and the yellow post bus left right on time. Of course it did…..this, after all was Switzerland ! I had been on emergency duty for the last 24 hours and had a day rest before starting another 24 hour shift. Thankfully …
Author Archives: The Blue Vet
Hotel Moskva
It was the piano music that I noticed first, while strolling down Terazije, one of the central boulevards in Belgrade, in October. Finding myself somewhat drained from another vet congress, where I had updated myself on how to remove gall bladders in dogs, how to endoscopically neuter chickens and how to dampen the blow …
Lunch with Goethe in Frauenfeld
Another day, another place and once again the realisation, that there is so much more to life than veterinary medicine….. It had been a busy morning at the small veterinary clinic in Frauenfeld, not far from the German border in the North of Switzerland, where I had been working in the beginning of October. …
4 hours to the Matterhorn
A cold front has moved in from the Atlantic and the mountains of the Northern Alps are covered in thick clouds with non-stop rain forecasted… I am in the middle of a two week locum at a veterinary clinic on the Toggenburger plateau, not far from Lake Constance. Not the best of prospects …
Bacalhau – Not just dried cod….
It had been of no avail……I was grounded on a small airstrip, hundreds of kilometres North of the Polar Circle….. Yes, it was true, that on the previous day, the wing of my plane to Oslo had clipped a building while taxiing at Gatwick airport, so that an alternative machine had to be found. …
For a Bica with Fernando Pessoa at A Brasileira do Chiado
After a busy day at the faculty, I could have chosen a worse places to wind down, than the historic setting of A Brasileira do Chiado, one of Lisbon’s oldest coffee houses. Adraino Telles do Valle, a Portuguese merchant, who had married into a Brazilian coffee planter dynasty at the end of the 19th …
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Life below the bridge
It had been a short night. Despite my late arrival the previous day, I was awake well before sun rise the next morning, due to the constant noise of 7000 cars passing every hour 50 meters above the window of my room. In addition to this, there was a regular interlude caused by one of …
The Oracle
The door to the small balcony was left open and the light of the full moon came flooding into the room. A few fair weather clouds featured on the otherwise blue sky, the shadows of the bannister and the chair produced pitch-black lines on the floor, so that the whole scenery would have given a …
Kraken
Returning from the truly remarkable setting of the small church of Agios Ioannis, which is precariously placed on top of a large rock at the weatherbeaten Northern shore of the Sporadic Island of Skopelos, I was sitting over a beautiful traditional Greek dish of octopus with herbs in olive oil and vinegar, when my …
Spying felines, an encounter with the Mahatma and a race against the sun in Athens
Track shoes ready for another early morning run… And this time for a change one that will include a case of potential espionage and a visit of the American Embassy…. I am in Athens, in the middle of September. It’s by far not the first time I am here and I just love this city: …
The Blue Vet Diary 