10 years later, it won’t be exciting at all to brag about the hours you spent at the office! But it would absolutely be thrilling to talk about the sharks you saw while sailing through the oceans and the heights you first got scared off while you glanced the world from those sky-scraping mountains!

The world is soaring high with magnificent hues for you to get tinted in and unmask the magic of breathtaking rivers, cliffs, valleys, and forests. So give it a break, calm yourself down and sneak out from your bustling life making it standstill for a few days! Let me tell you about some spell-binding destinations that’d be perfect for you this year to set off to! Pick your favorites from the ones jotted below, find peace and reboot!

Istanbul, Turkey

This beautiful mélange of the East and the West will take you past some stupefying mosques, minarets, and palaces along with ferry rides over the Sea of Marmara.

Prague, Czech Republic

One of the most popular destinations it is with a bunch of old towns and castles taking you to the era of kingdoms and thrones!

San Francisco, California

Head towards this fog loaded city to witness the great Golden Gate Bridge, ride in the cable cars and take over some wine tours and tastings.

St. Lucia

This island country lets you relax on the warm sand along the beaches, glare into the clear skies beside waterfalls and dive into the depths of the oceans.

Costa Rica

Take a walk in the forests, see the smoke emitting volcanic mountains and get crazy selfies with the wildlife creatures in the finest parks here.

Santorini, Greece

It’s a stunning blend of the whites and the blues. You’ll be enthralled to wander in the streets amid the spectacularly built houses here.

Rome, Italy

The capital city of Italy has some fascinating masterpieces of architecture, art, and culture together with some captivating ancients and ruins.

Bilbao, Spain

The food lovers should definitely hit it as this city has some of the best restaurants in the entire world besides a rich culture and architecture.

Phuket, Thailand

It has all at one place! Oceans, mountains, rainforests and an amazing culture of Asia will unwind you for sure!

Lisbon, Portugal

Climb up this hilly city to visit its historical museums and pastel color coverings on the houses and buildings.

Budapest, Hungary

Get relaxed at this city of spas and baths and look on how the splendid Buda and Pest meets through the chain bridge here.

Vienna, Austria

Vacay on this largest city of Austria and see the astonishing work done by great artists on historic buildings here.

Chicago, Illinois

Ape up on the monstrous buildings and skyscrapers in Chicago and get to know how it all looks from above.

Bratislava, Slovakia

You get here some real peaceful moments around the old hamlets and fine vineyards with no crowds hovering over.

Petra, Jordan

Petra will make you take a ride on camels, show you forts and the mesmerizing stones of the Middle East.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Visit this bewitching city made of huge stone walls and limestone paved streets to hush your inner chaos. Top Vouchers Code, an online discount provider, has a massive collection of travel portals to feed your needs for an exotic holiday booking.

Valletta, Malta

This sunniest city will make your heart sing along the restored churches, enticing palazzos, and ancient constructions.

Cuba

At this lively spot, you’ll be all yourself while stepping forward in streets surrounded by beautifully painted walls and vintage cars.

Meh. I read this book because it is primarily set in Slovakia, and it was a drag. Its title character is a Romani singer, turned into a poet by Communist authorities after WWII, and based on a real-life poet named Papusza. (Zoli is about 20 years younger though, conveniently allowing her to be a sexy lover for the Englishman who narrates one of the middle sections of the book.) The book follows Zoli’s life in a disjointed and meandering way – switching points-of-view between sections and switching between first and third person – and has no particular plot. Two-thirds of the way through, a major chapter in Zoli’s life closes, and I wasn’t sure why the book wasn’t just finished rather than needing to drag on for another 100+ pages.

Of course, a character’s life can be a plot, but it helps if you care about the character, and I didn’t give a whit for anyone in this book. The characters have no personality, just life circumstances; they seemed more like ideas of people than actual humans. Even when we’re in their heads, they take seemingly arbitrary actions that feel disconnected from any thoughts or feelings that they have. McCann’s writing being rather stylized, those thoughts and feelings are often expressed in the form of long flights of figurative language that do more to draw attention to the writer than humanize the characters. Meanwhile he describes in great detail the characters’ mundane actions, which drag down the pace without revealing insights into the characters. Even by the end, Zoli was still a cipher to me; I was never clear on what she wanted out of life, what was behind her often strange or inconsistent decisions, or why I should care what happened to her. “Has suffered tragedy” does not substitute for a personality and an inner life.

Speaking of tragedy, this is not exactly a fun book to read; the setting for the majority of the novel is drab and gray and hopeless, punctuated by occasional brutality. Later on it becomes less dark, but more tedious, as its opaque protagonist wanders about with no discernible objective. You’ll learn a bit about the persecution of the Romani/Gypsies, but you can get that more directly from other books. I’m glad to have this one behind me and would not recommend it.

AT the end of January I won another giveaway on Goodreads: 'A Country Lost, Then Found' by Rick Zedník. It's a book somewhere between autobiography, biography and non-fiction on a chapter of recent Central European history. Being Austrian I was quite familiar with the outlines of this history. However, the writer tells his own story exploring his family's history in Slovakia from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the present, getting to know his Slovak family after the Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce, and learning the country's language while living Slovakia's transition from one federal half of Communist Czechoslovakia to a western-style independant state that was to become a member of the European Union.

The novel is a very personal account of Rick Zedník's visit to Slovakia's capital Bratislava that soon captivated him and made him spend several years there. He stayed with his grand-parents who had remained in the country all their lives while their two children emigrated to the USA at different times. His grand-father having fallen ill with a brain cancer, he helped his grand-mother to take care of him until the end. With expatriate friends he co-founded the Slovak Spectator, an English-language newspaper, in Bratislava. And he met his future wife. They were adventurous years for Rick Zedník as well as Slovakia!

The book is widely written in journalistic style with several references to websites to further information. At the end of the book many photos from the author's private album are to be found along with a family tree going back to the late 1800s.

All in all, I enjoyed the read and learnt some interesting new details about the history of Slovakia, a neighbouring country of Austria, that I didn't know or that I didn't pay much attention to when I was coming of age.