In 2004, I visited all 25 countries in Eastern Europe. You'll find the blog entries from that trip here. In 2008-2011, I returned to see what had changed since that time. With these two visits, five years apart, I accumulated enough material for my 750-page book, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.
This blog now has many excerpts from The Hidden Europe. But who the hell reads anymore? Just look at the best photos from Eastern Europe!
This map reflects how I define Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans love to deny that they're in Eastern Europe. I tackle how and why I define Eastern Europe the way I do in the Introduction of The Hidden Europe.
Places I saw and recommend in eastern Germany: Berlin and Dresden.
After our conversation, I thanked Veit [a stern/formal East German] and stepped away to pack my things. However, before I could leave the McDonald’s, he approached me and said, “Bad veather today. I show you around. I have car. Come.”
What a transformation! He had started so cold and unfriendly, now he’s offering to take me on a tour of the town! When we got into his car, I noticed it was an Opel. That’s a General Motors brand. “You’re German and you’re driving an American car?” I blurted out before being able to censor my thoughts.
“Ja, but zis is a joint venture between GM and Germany,” he said, as if that excused him of his transgression.
Places I saw and recommend in Poland: Kraków (including side trips to Oświęcim-Auschwitz and the Wieliczka Salt Mine), Gdańsk, Poznań, Wrocław, and the High Tatras Mountain Range.
It was February 19, 2009 and I was freezing my ass off. It was 10 p.m. in the Gdańsk train station and I was scanning all the bundled people trying to recognize my 24-year-old couchsurfing host, Emilia Łoś. I had seen her smiling photo on her couchsurfing profile, but people don't always look like their photos, especially when they're wearing 17 layers.
Suddenly, Emilia appeared with a big, warm smile and she gave me a hug. I'm not sure if she hugged me because she felt comfortable with me or because she was also freezing. Despite all her clothes, it was obvious that she was skinny, so it's probably because she was cold. Emilia exuded simplicity: her clothes were plain, her soft brown eyes had no makeup, and her straight brown hair was short enough to be manageable, yet feminine. She had a gray birthmark on her right cheek that was easy to get accustomed to. Her most obvious feature, however, was her positive spirit. She giggled and bounced around in a pleasant and endearing way. By the time we arrived to her apartment, I had already concluded, "It's impossible not to love Emilia."
Places I saw and recommend in Belarus: Minsk, Brest, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
My Belarusian friends knew that I wanted to inhale radioactive air. Therefore, the next day Mikhail, Dimitri’s father, offered to drive Irina and me into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Although the Chernobyl reactor was in Ukraine, it was just 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the Belarus border. Since most of the radioactive plume blew onto Belarus, most of the contaminated Zone is in Belarus. The military was guarding all the entrances. Nobody could enter unless you had family ties in the zone. In 2004, it was illegal for any foreigner to enter the zone (Ukraine opened their side of the zone to tourists in 2011). Therefore, Mikhail was taking a big risk in trying to sneak me in.
As we approached the checkpoint, Mikhail told me not to open my mouth. He will tell the guard that we’re visiting relatives. Since he lives just 40 kilometers from the zone, it’s a believable story. The guard examined Mikhail’s documents. Then he looked at me. I stopped breathing.
The guard barked out a question in Russian. I had no clue what he was asking. My lips began to part, as I thought about something to say in Russian.
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