Anthea Pitt got the ball rolling with stories from Edinburgh during her time there writing for The Scotsman. When she moved to Oslo she took on the confronting task of defining an entire culture in a few paragraphs. Utepils, other drinking customs, flying cats and many other peculiarities are examined.

Graham Reilly lived in Saigon for a couple of years. While there he wrote one novel, began another and still had time to write this for us.

James Scanlon recounts the surrealistic nature of life as a foreigner (or perhaps it was life as James Scanlon) in Prague, from being eaten by a dog to toilet grandmas and all points in between, and there are quite a few.

John McKeown was writing for the Irish Examiner, at least until the third of these stories. All will become clear.