City Tours Tim Robson City Tours Tim Robson

The Cities I Forgot

The Urban Noir Blanks

I’m catching up on some cities from my recent tours in the last few years that haven’t yet been blogged about. Click on the city of your choice for a brief solo travel overview:

  • Aachen

  • Bad Zwischenahn

  • Luxembourg City

  • Amsterdam

  • Utrecht

  • Dordrecht

  • The Hague

  • Gent / Ghent

Why Unwritten?

It’s like a lost regimental flag in some musty provincial town museum listing ancient battle honours: Delft, Antwerp, Bruges, Krakow, Breda, Monschau, Mons, Paris, Honfleur, Chicago, Prague. These are the cities I’ve blogged about on this site. Places where I’ve recently matched my wordsmithery and world-weary eye against the elements, fighting wonky barstools, cobblestones and largely indifferent ladies and subsequently exposed each adventure to the public on this website (Urban Noir Tales).

But are these the complete story of my recent travels, I hear all ten of you ask? Are the cities I’ve reviewed every destination I’ve been to in the last three or four years? No, it is not Mr Xi from China (who mysteriously checks this blog everyday). 

So what have I missed out from this scabrous tour of Europe? Which towns didn’t make the callback to join the ensemble cast of the city tours already published? Were their stories less remarkable? The people I met less interesting? The follies de toutes less observable? My failures unfunny? 

The Runts of the Litter? No!

Perhaps but no, I usually manage to make a compelling story from the most mundane materials. Clearly there’s no hidden embarrassments too shameful to reveal. I’m always pretty truthful; all events I describe on this blog actually happened and my own pratfalls and missed connections are real. True, like any writer, I’m guilty of crashing events together, editing furiously and leaving out the parts not additive to the main narrative of whatever city I’m writing about.

‘Literary impressionism’ I once called it. Yes, a somewhat pretentious term but that description is an apt one. I aim to entertain and inform. And be pretentious.

They Came Too Soon

The main reason these cities were left out, I guess, is that they came at the wrong time. Maybe I hadn’t yet toned the writing muscle I rediscovered in those rainy afternoons in Delft and Antwerp late spring 2025. Simply, they came slightly too soon for the ‘Urban Noir’ series.

All have stories unwritten in each. Perhaps, given time, given newer, shinier cities, they just got forgotten. What is unwritten is unremembered. There’s nothing so unfamiliar as the recent past. But let’s check out that theory. The stories - and cities - may have short entries but I’ll add the highlights, as I remember them from some distance. 

So where to start? Let’s go to Aachen and an uncomfortable massage from Omar.

Quotidian Notes

  • “Are you scraping so far below the barrel Tim that you’re actually mining? Or has your egotism finally fully taken over in your solipsistic world that you now give us the scraps from your notebooks?” Fair point. Thank you but fuck off. No, some of these untold stories are better than those already published. I have high standards around here.

  • For example. There’s many a scabrous story in the Dam!  If lying on a bed in nightclub being forced to suck on a pipe strapped around a naked guy’s groin is your thing, you might like these new recollections. A lost gem I feel.

  • The main point is to give travellers (particularly solo travellers) some idea of what a place is like before they get there. An impression. A feeling of what the city is actually like. Maybe some bar reviews. Some practical tips. Muesems. But mainly the bars and the interactions I get into. Or fail to get into.

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