'I remember entering Krakow for the first time, in 1995. I'd arrived at the train station via Paris, Berlin, Prague and Budapest — cities where I'd stayed for various periods, looking for a place to live and write. Back then, you couldn't drop into a destination from space via Google Earth, swivelling a camera to explore streets. There was no Tripadvisor or Airbnb. All I had were a kw descriptive paragraphs in a battered edition of Lonely Planet's Eastern Europe on a Shoestring, printed in black and white on Bible-thin paper. ' (Introduction)