Speaking on Saturday, June 8, 2024 (on the 2nd Saturday) we have :
1st: Joe Sheffer – The Road to Oxiana.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021 Joe Sheffer had been covering Afghanistan for nearly a decade as a cameraman and journalist. He decided to start taking tours to the country and his company – Safarāt – became the first foreign travel company offering tours in the new Afghanistan.
Three years later, Afghanistan is experiencing a tourism renaissance unseen since the time of the hippy trail – spurred on by youtubers, vlogger and travellers looking for adventure. But is travelling in Afghanistan ethical at the moment, or does it prop up an repugnant regime and should you think hard about visiting? Is the country’s sudden glut of tourists a disaster waiting to happen, or simply an important source of income for Afghans hungry to work and keen to show off their country to foreign guests?
Joe will have just returned from Nuristan – a place made famous by the writings of Eric Newby, Wilfred Thesinger and will be presenting on his latest work in the province.
2nd: Mary Fogarty – Northern Greece and Macedonia: in search of family roots
Last September Mary went with Australian Macedonian Victor to find his family roots in northern Greece. They arrived in Thessaloniki, where Victor was very taken with Alexander the Great (consider by Macedonians to be theirs, and by Greeks to be theirs!). From here it was a bus journey up to Florina, near to the border with Macedonia, where they hired a car and took off into the mountains to visit the many villages where his parents, grandparents, ancestors were all born. Here, despite the fact that they were clearly in Greece, it was interesting to discover that everyone was still speaking Victor’s parents’ old dialect of Macedonian …
Driving over the border to Northern Macedonia (ignoring bear warnings and the car hire’s disapproval), they visited Bitola and Lake Ohrid, a blissfully beautiful place where Mary longed to stay but no, after a few idyllic days it was back to the old village for a Greek wedding, which went on all day, finishing up in a ginormous, Las Vegas-style ‘wedding reception hall’: here, 850 guests watched displays of fireworks and endless Greek/Macedonian dancing and horn playing; Mary took to drinking copious amounts of retsina and Coke, which was the ‘go to’ drink of the evening.
On the final leg of the journey, they took a six-hour bus journey down the backbone of Greece to Athens, where Victor was overwhelmed by the ancient Greek architecture and Mary by meeting a famous film director. Their last staging post was the heavenly island of Hydra, where mules have replaced cars, and the sea was the deepest blue … here Mary went swimming and Victor developed a chill, which was the beginning of another big drama …
Date & Time: Saturday 8th June 2024
Doors open at 14:15 in London and on Zoom with the talks starting around 14:45 (London see Event Time Announcer for local times), please arrive early so we can deal with any issues with joining.
We would ask that anyone with respiratory symptoms participate via Zoom.
Admission costs:
- £7 for members. (Members can access a ticket code below or from the members area.)
- £10 for non-members. (save £3 if you join at this meeting)
- a recording to watch later will be available to members and non-member ticket holders.
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