The Existential Railway Station Book was never really an alternative title, but it could have been. The story begins with a fever in Berlin.

The sort that makes hotel ceilings pulse gently and convinces you that destiny has a sense of humour - particularly when you're in town to see Bruce Springsteen, who once wrote and recorded a song called The Fever.

In Quicker Than Walking I travel the way I suspect many people do - curious, occasionally baffled, and always watching. From airports and train stations to back streets and unexpected encounters, I collect the small details that make travel memorable: odd customs, fragments of history, chance conversations, and the quiet absurdities that seem to occur the moment you leave home.

Written with a dry sense of humour and an eye for the telling detail, these stories wander through different countries without ever taking themselves too seriously. I'm less interested in ticking destinations off a list than in the experience of getting there - noticing the things guidebooks miss and discovering, time and again, that the journey itself is usually the best part.