I’m Nora. I write about the small places at the edge of the map — towns that take a slow train and a bus to reach, market mornings, routes that are worth an extra hour and routes that are not.
How this started
For six years I edited other people’s travel writing. Most of it was the same article with a different town swapped in: the top ten, the viewpoint, the sunset photo, the same four adjectives. I stopped believing it around the third year and kept editing it for three more.
Then I started taking the slow train instead. A place you reach in four hours on two connections is a different place from one you fly into. You arrive with the day already half spent, and that changes what you notice.
What I write
One place, judged properly: whether it is worth the detour, how many days it deserves, which season is honest about it, and what a day there actually costs. A market that opens at six and closes at noon is more useful to you than a list of five restaurants.
I also write about the things that go wrong, because those are the parts that cost you a day: the bus that does not run on Sundays, the room that is above a bar, the “short walk” that is 40 minutes uphill.
What I don’t write
Top-ten lists. Hotel price comparisons. Anything a hotel paid for. If a place is not worth the trip, I will say so in the first paragraph, not in the last.
Where I am
Ghent, Belgium, in a flat with too many paper maps. I travel with my partner, who refuses itineraries, and we usually take the slow train because it is cheaper and because you see the country in between.
If a fare, a timetable or an opening hour has changed since I wrote something, tell me — I would rather fix it than leave it wrong.