May 6 - June 13, 2010
The Grand Plan
Why would anyone want to visit almost every country in eastern Europe, or the world for that matter?
Probably for the similar, but different, reasons that others strive to attend every home game of their favorite sports team, or play bridge every week, or volunteer to build houses for strangers, or walk the 1,260 miles comprising the 2,612 streets of San Francisco, or drive a small cart 2-3 miles repeatedly, weekend after weekend, stopping from time to time to try to hit small white balls into holes in the grass, or make long trips to remote places to sit for hours counting birds with binoculars, or go to China to teach English for a year ... and on and on!
People are passionate about many wonderfully diverse things. There is even a reality television game show focused on travel ... The Amazing Race. Thank goodness we do not all think alike!
We enjoy traveling. We had never been to eastern Europe before. We were not getting any younger! We decided to do it!
The many steps involved in preparing for a major trip each present their own challenges and satisfactions ... Putting together a grand design, fleshing out the itinerary, researching the places we plan to visit, hunting up tickets and reservations, thinking through a packing list, and backup plans, all mean the experience begins many months before we leave home.
Once on the road, there is much to see, just as we had dreamed and planned, but there are also the many, fascinating people, and experiences one could never have expected ... being caught up in a funeral ceremony in a village, unexpectedly coming across the site of the Warsaw ghetto where so many Jews died during World War II, learning how flat tires can be fixed in remote villages, or having to improvise on the spot when an opportunity arises or plans go awry.
Then, upon returning home, we need to digest everything we have experienced, put our photos in albums, and flesh out the daily journal notes made along the line.
Finally, after all is done, we can savor the experience and the broader horizons we have built in our minds, and the new friends we have made, by having visited places we never could appreciate from a distance until we had experienced them first hand, even if only for a short time.
Trip Details
On this trip, we visited over 30 sovereign countries, most of which we had not visited before, but we also visited numerous smaller political entities ... states within key countries, enclaves, autonomous provinces, etc. ... bringing to total number of "places" visited to between 50 to 60, depending on how one wants to slice and dice various political and geographic boundaries.
With so many places to visit in a relatively short time, we needed to plan carefully. The basic strategy was to travel from one country capitol to the next, taking about half the day to travel, seeing the countryside, farms and small towns as we went along, and the other half of the day to see as many of the "Top 10" sights as we see could in the capitol city. Since the distances between countries in eastern Europe are not terribly great, we were able to do this without getting totally worn out. In addition, our schedule included seven extra nights along the way where we spent two nights in the same hotel, resting, washing clothes, etc.
The main part of our trip, in eastern Europe, was by public transportation. We had a rental car only for our final week, in Italy and Switzerland. Until then, we made use of a bewildering array of different modes of transportation. As best we can determine from our notes, the trip included 1 rental car, 2 private cars, 2 trolley cars, 3 funiculars, 6 ferry boats, 6 hired cars/overland taxis, 7 shuttle vans, 8 airplanes, 10 inter-city buses, 12 local buses, 12 inter-city trains, 15 subways/commuter trains, and 15 local taxis.
Our accommodations were similarly varied. We were underway for 39 days and 38 nights. We spent 31 nights in 24 different hotels, 3 nights in 2 different hostels, 3 nights on trains, and one night in the air.
We kept our baggage to a minimum. We had already done quite a bit of backpacking with only about 25 pounds of clothing on our bodies and gear on our backs, including tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses, cooking gear and fuel, food, and water. We realized that if we stayed in hotels, we could leave all of our backpacking "camping" gear at home, throw in some extra clothing, an iPad, a hair dryer and curling iron, downsize to smaller packs, and be reasonably comfortable with only about 10 pounds of gear on our backs and less than 10 pounds of clothing on our bodies. And if we needed anything, well, we would be in cities, rather than deep in some forest!
So, at the end of the day, off we went, wearing and carrying a total of 37 pounds, with just two small day packs and a purse ... no checked baggage to contend with in airports, or as we spent time sight-seeing along the way!
Our Trip Report
It is hard to reduce 39 days and 11,000 photos to something you can go through in a few minutes, but, continuing to believe that a picture is worth 1,000 words, we hope the photos and brief notes on the following pages will give you a small taste of our trip.