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.
In 2004 and 2008-2011, I traveled throughout Eastern Europe to write my 2nd book, The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. The book includes 60 photos. This page lets you download those 60 photos as well as see several more photos that don't appear in the book.
To see the 60 photos that are in the book, download one of these three formats and then see them in your favorite ebook reader:
Read this if you have a Kindle: When you buy the Kindle version of The Hidden Europe through Amazon's website, photos are not included because Amazon charges publishers by the megabyte whenever they deliver a Kindle book (other ebook stores don't do this). Had I put 60 photos into the Amazon book, I'd make pennies on each book. To get around that problem while still letting you see the photos that appear in the hardcover version, we're making the photos freely available here. All you have to do is download the .mobi photo file and then import it into your Kindle (follow the USB instructions to do it for free).
The 60 photos that appear in the book aren't my best photos from Eastern Europe. Why not? Because I preferred putting photos of some of the people that I met or other photos that readers of the book would appreciate.
But what if you just want to see pretty photos from Eastern Europe? Below are my 50 favorite ones. Only a few of them made it into the book.
Step into Dubrovnik and the rest of Eastern Europe....
In the southwest corner of Finland is one of Europe's oddest places: the Ahvenanmaa archipelago (Åland in Swedish). It has about 6,500 islands (about 80 are inhabited). Ahvenanmaa is roughly between the Swedish mainland and the Finnish mainland, but it officially belongs to Finland. But you wouldn't know it when you visit.
That's because if you want to speak Finnish on this Finnish island, then you should take a boat back to the Finnish mainland. We only speak Swedish in this part of Finland.
How did this turn out? In 1921, the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN) said that these islands belong to Finland. However, the island’s inhabitants lobbied the Finnish Parliament to pass the Autonomy Act in 1951 (and amended it in 1993), which granted this archipelago unusual independence:
The 7-minute video below is a combination of photos and video of the statue, plus some music and my occasional narration. Although it won't win an Oscar, it's cheaper than a movie ticket.
Estonia's Bronze Soldier: The Most Controversial Statue in Eastern Europe from Francis Tapon on Vimeo.
After World War II, the USSR placed a bronze statue of a common soldier in the center of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a small country next to Russia. For Russians, the Bronze Soldier represented the triumph over the Nazis. Russians wanted to remind the Estonians that the Soviets had liberated the Estonians from the Nazis.
On the other hand, Estonians felt the Bronze Soldier symbolized the Russian domination and occupation. Every Victory Day (the anniversary of WWII), Russians would wave the Russian (or Soviet) flag around the Bronze Soldier.
By 2006, patriotic Estonians had enough. They wanted the Bronze Soldier removed. Ethnic Russians who live in Estonia disagreed.
In April 2007, protests reached a crescendo when two days of riots erupted in the streets of Tallinn. When the dust settled, one had died, millions of dollars of property damaged had been caused, and the statue was moved to the Military Cemetery in the outskirts of Tallinn.
Officials from the Russian government demanded that the Estonian government resign. Fear of war mounted. Ultimately, it didn't happen. At least, not yet.
I made this 8-minute video at the end of 2008
Tour of Tallinn's Old Town in Estonia during the snowy winter from Francis Tapon on Vimeo.
In 2009, I went to a costume party for New Year's Eve in Parnu, Estonia. Everyone was supposed to be either a movie star or an animated character. I dressed up as a thru-hiker, using my sexy Jacks 'R Better convertible sleeping bag and its stylish green hood. The sleeping bag does double duty as a serape, but what its designers don't know is that it has a third use: a make-shift costume for a party. When asked what I was, I replied, "A green M&M."
Read up about Estonia in Wikipedia and the CIA Factbook.
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