I walked from the palace all the way down Bulevardul Unirii, which was another of Ceauşescu’s grand projects and is a few metres longer than the Champs-Élysées. Apparently some historic parts of the city were bulldozed to make way for this, but despite this I quite liked it, probably because I was again reminded of [...]

I only spent one night in Bucharest. I spent the final morning of my trip walking from my hostel to the Palace of the Parliament, which is claimed to be the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. I could well believe it – after a hot walk in blazing sun to Bulevardul [...]

It was hot and humid in Bucharest, and I stayed in a hostel above a really sleazy nightclub. I went for a late night walk around the city when I arrived. I’d read about Bucharest’s amazing stray dog problem before I came, and when I’d arrived on the night train from Chişinău I’d seen a [...]

Braşov had an addictively laid-back vibe, and I spent another couple of days there doing nothing much at all but enjoying the fresh mountain air and sunshine. Eventually it was time to move on – I wanted to see a bit of Bucharest before flying back home – so I got a train to Sinaia, [...]

I wanted to cycle to Bran while I was in Braşov. It’s about 20km away and is the site of castle, claimed on scant but tourist-attracting grounds to be Dracula’s castle. But it was the weekend, and all the bike shops in Braşov were closed, so I reluctantly headed out to the autogara and got [...]

At Bucureşti Nord station I said goodbye to Cristi, bought a strong coffee for breakfast, and then got on the first train to Braşov. The train was far nicer than the average British medium-distance train. I found a window seat on the top deck and sat back to enjoy the ride. A lot of the [...]

After a couple of days I’d pretty much covered Chişinău, and so I walked down to Chişinău’s grand main station and bought a ticket for the night train to Bucharest. The train was quiet and I thought I might get a compartment to myself, but a few minutes before the train left someone joined me. [...]

A slight problem in Moldova was that none of the cash machines seemed to accept foreign cards. Luckily I’d taken some cash with me, and I had enough to cover a few days in Moldova. When I tried to change my notes at a bureau de change near where I was staying, I ran into [...]

At the town of Bendery, just before the border with Moldova, two young Pridnestrovians had got on the bus and sat next to me and Carlos. We spoke to them in a strange mixture of English and French, not finding much common language in either but still having a friendly conversation. When we got into [...]

So with our time extremely limited, we hurried off down Lenin Street into town. We passed Kirov Park, and soon reached Ulitsa 25 Oktober, the main street. Tiraspol is no beauty, that’s for sure, but it had quite a likeable atmosphere, and no-one seemed too bothered by the sight of two obvious tourists taking photos [...]

One of my main aims on this trip was to visit the breakaway Republic of Pridnestrovie. I can’t even remember how I first heard of this place but I think I chanced across it on the web pages of Tan Wee Cheng. It’s a place which I think most Europeans would be surprised to realised [...]

The next day there was a colossal cruise ship docked at the ferry port, and the city was suddenly full of elderly tourists puffing up the steps, and Filipino-looking crew members enjoying a few hours off their ship. I decided to go to the beach for the day. I headed out to Lanzheron Beach, which [...]

I felt like I was missing a lot of Ukraine by getting night trains, but then if Ukraine is known for anything it’s for being flat. I woke up to find the sky blue and the Sun blazing over green plains. Soon the suburbs of Odesa were appearing, and we arrived on time at 8.48am. [...]

On my final day in Kiev the temperature had dropped more than 20°C. It was cool and a persistent rain was falling. I walked down to Kreshchatyk again, which was pedestrianised because it was the weekend. I don’t know if it was a special event or if it happens every weekend, but the whole street [...]

The next day I visited this part of the city again, but the sunshine had gone and the city was swathed in mist. I got the metro to Arsenalna and walked through the park to Rodina Mat. It was a Saturday, and there were large numbers of newlywed couples near all the statues and war [...]

The next day was hot again. My first target was to buy a train ticket to Odesa, a task made much easier through being accompanied by April, a traveller from Australia who I’d met in the hostel. At the train ticket office, we wrote out our ticket requirements in Cyrillic and joined a queue. As [...]

It was hot and sunny when we rolled into Kiev the next morning. As soon as I walked out of the station I liked the city. It was instantly reminiscent of Moscow but at the same time obviously less huge and intimidating. I walked out of the station on Komintern Street, found a hostel and [...]

The next day it was raining heavily. Only a couple of weeks earlier, Ukraine had been in the grip of a fearsome heatwave with temperatures well over 40°C, but it had clearly broken now. Lviv in the rain was not quite as enchanting as Lviv in the sunshine, and I decided to book a train [...]

We arrived in Lviv in pitch darkness at 4.45am. I hardly remember arriving as I was tired beyond belief, but I know I found my way to a warm waiting room with my two travelling companions, Johan from Sweden and Brianna from the US. We slept in the waiting room for a couple of hours, [...]

On my way back from China in 2002 I’d stopped for a couple of days in Warsaw. This time, I started here because flights were much cheaper than flights to Kiev, and I thought it would be nice to start somewhere familiar. After a brutally early start to my day at Heathrow, I arrived at [...]