Guinness European Capital City Challenge

To have a pint of Guinness in every European Capital City - before its owner!If you can’t manage that, please take him for a pint of the black stuff wherever. Why not take a picture and add it to the bug web page. If you can’t manage that then this travel bug is like me – it just likes travelling and gets restless if left in the same place too long! Cheers!

See my blog at  :http://guinnesseurope.blogspot.com/   

There I was sitting in a pub drinking my Guinness contemplating what to do next. I was nearing the end of my 3,500 mile walk around the coast of England and Wales that had occupied me for the past 20 years. Finishing the walk would be satisfying but with no new goals I was afraid I’d be destined to a life of DIY and crosswords – there must be something else to do. What had I enjoyed most I asked myself? The exercise, always going somewhere different, meeting people from different walks of life, the beer and not doing the DIY were the top five. By the end of the second Guinness two ideas had emerged – the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ challenge. Having kept to the coast for 20 years the ‘home’ challenge would be climbing the Nutalls – the peaks in England and Wales over 2000 feet – about 400 of them. The ‘foreign’ challenge would be to drink a pint of Guinness in every European capital city. Isn’t it funny how an idea you have in the pub never looks quite the same when you get home and start doing your homework. What counts as a European country? Can you buy Guinness in every one? After a lot of deliberation I came up with a list of 52 countries. To add to the fun I have decided to start and finish in the Guinness brewery in Dublin. The next destination would then be chosen at random – hopefully by some willing individual in each capital city. There would be no time limit on the challenge but three or four capitals a year sounds reasonable to me. The challenge therefore started in August 2004 in Dublin where I visited the Guinness brewery and got this paperweight. The first city chosen out of the hat was Sofia, Bulgaria. I visited there in September 2004. I tried to set a virtual Cache there but it was unfortunately turned down on the grounds that one should not set caches whilst on vacation. The next capital city chosen out of the hat was Torshavn, Faroe Islands which I went to in July 2005 - what a great place! In August 2005, Superted and family visited Vilnius, Lithuania! I have since been to Tirana in Albania, Moscow and Vaduz in Liechtenstein. Next stop Belgrade - Serbia with maybe a trip down to Montinegrero too now that it is independent. The objective of this travel bug is therefore to beat me around Europe and have a pint of Guinness in every capital before I do!