A 30-Day, 30-Country European Trip Drawing to a Close...
All good things have to come to an end, and as I spend my final night here on the Continent awaiting my morning flight to London from Berlin, I still somehow lament the unlikely finale of a trip that was at the same time too long but also in a way a bit too short. Yes, I am ready to go back home, settle down, and get some studying done again, but the accumulation of the many experiences and stories of the road must still be regurgitated, digested, continually reflected, and if anything, requires further reinforcements to prove them to be generally valid rather than simple one-time exceptions.
But before I go on, here is the final authoritative list of countries touched and visited on this trip out of London and terminating here in Berlin: (1) France, (2) Belgium, (3) the Netherlands, (4) Germany, (5) Denmark, (6) Norway, (7) Sweden, (8) Finland, (9) Estonia, (10) Latvia, (11) Lithuania, (12) Poland, (13) Ukraine, (14) Moldova, (15) Romania, (16) Bulgaria, (17)Turkey, (18) Greece, (19) Albania, (20) Macedonia, (21) Kosovo, (22) Montenegro, (23) Croatia, (24) Bosnia, (25) Serbia, (26) Hungary, (27) Slovenia, (28) Austria, (29) Slovakia, (30) Czech Republic.
Unbelievably, in the one month-long trip, I actually managed to average one country per day, and given the fact that I visisted more than one city in some counties (e.g. Warsaw and Krakow in Poland, Lviv and Kiev in Ukraine, Dubrovnik and Zagreb in Croatia, Hamburg and Berlin in Germany, etc), I actually managed average more than one city a day despite the fact that all journey up until this very last flight back to the UK are done with sometimes extremely slow and clunky trains and buses.
If the sheer speed of progress was one defining characteristic of the trip, the sheer differences of conditions and cultures encountered during the whirlwind tour of the Continent was definitely the other. The differences are especially sharp in mentality. On one hand, some countries are leading the world in modernity through the acts of recognizing and actively preserving their traditions. They are moving toward worldly humanist principles that move beyond narrow nationalist concerns. These countries deserve our respect and our emulation.
But on the other hand, for every admirable quality some on the Continent offered, there were always other, equally noticeable elements of malign. A traveler had to keep his vigilance at the highest level in some parts of Europe, mostly dealing with random incidents of locals sacrificing their countries' reputation for personal benefits of ill-devised financial scams, or more benignly but just as annoyingly, a prevalent outward expression of racism. A clearly misplaced and irrational sense of local pride alarms anyone with an internationalist mindset.
To make all the observations and their meticulous recording happen, I must thank the "friends" who accompanied my journey faithfully to the end. My informative travel guide book, who saved me repeatedly when I was completely lost in completely unknown lands, situations that would lead anyone to be discouraged and question the very purpose and motivation of the trip being undertaken. And of course, there is this laptop that recorded every touristy and strange picture I bothered to take on the road, and allowed me to jot down every thought in my mind as I continued my journey.
In fact, amazingly, this trip was the first one in which my laptop actually accompanied from the beginning to the end. While previous trip also found me recording my thoughts in Internet cafes every other night, the freedom to write anywhere anytime gave me the flexibility and ability to capture those fleeting thoughts at an almost real-time basis. The result was a much fuller and extensive, albeit a bit delayed and outdated stream of reactions as I traveled across unknown lands and get myself into feisty situations.
All in all, though, to sum up such wealth of experiences in a few words is unfair and impossible. But looking back at the very purposes of the trip detailed before its beginning, I feel that at least one of them is achieved. That is, I have witnessed and confirmed firsthand the true diversity of European peoples and nations, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. And the differences are worthy of continued observations, if the second European tour gets underway later this year...
But before I go on, here is the final authoritative list of countries touched and visited on this trip out of London and terminating here in Berlin: (1) France, (2) Belgium, (3) the Netherlands, (4) Germany, (5) Denmark, (6) Norway, (7) Sweden, (8) Finland, (9) Estonia, (10) Latvia, (11) Lithuania, (12) Poland, (13) Ukraine, (14) Moldova, (15) Romania, (16) Bulgaria, (17)Turkey, (18) Greece, (19) Albania, (20) Macedonia, (21) Kosovo, (22) Montenegro, (23) Croatia, (24) Bosnia, (25) Serbia, (26) Hungary, (27) Slovenia, (28) Austria, (29) Slovakia, (30) Czech Republic.
Unbelievably, in the one month-long trip, I actually managed to average one country per day, and given the fact that I visisted more than one city in some counties (e.g. Warsaw and Krakow in Poland, Lviv and Kiev in Ukraine, Dubrovnik and Zagreb in Croatia, Hamburg and Berlin in Germany, etc), I actually managed average more than one city a day despite the fact that all journey up until this very last flight back to the UK are done with sometimes extremely slow and clunky trains and buses.
If the sheer speed of progress was one defining characteristic of the trip, the sheer differences of conditions and cultures encountered during the whirlwind tour of the Continent was definitely the other. The differences are especially sharp in mentality. On one hand, some countries are leading the world in modernity through the acts of recognizing and actively preserving their traditions. They are moving toward worldly humanist principles that move beyond narrow nationalist concerns. These countries deserve our respect and our emulation.
But on the other hand, for every admirable quality some on the Continent offered, there were always other, equally noticeable elements of malign. A traveler had to keep his vigilance at the highest level in some parts of Europe, mostly dealing with random incidents of locals sacrificing their countries' reputation for personal benefits of ill-devised financial scams, or more benignly but just as annoyingly, a prevalent outward expression of racism. A clearly misplaced and irrational sense of local pride alarms anyone with an internationalist mindset.
To make all the observations and their meticulous recording happen, I must thank the "friends" who accompanied my journey faithfully to the end. My informative travel guide book, who saved me repeatedly when I was completely lost in completely unknown lands, situations that would lead anyone to be discouraged and question the very purpose and motivation of the trip being undertaken. And of course, there is this laptop that recorded every touristy and strange picture I bothered to take on the road, and allowed me to jot down every thought in my mind as I continued my journey.
In fact, amazingly, this trip was the first one in which my laptop actually accompanied from the beginning to the end. While previous trip also found me recording my thoughts in Internet cafes every other night, the freedom to write anywhere anytime gave me the flexibility and ability to capture those fleeting thoughts at an almost real-time basis. The result was a much fuller and extensive, albeit a bit delayed and outdated stream of reactions as I traveled across unknown lands and get myself into feisty situations.
All in all, though, to sum up such wealth of experiences in a few words is unfair and impossible. But looking back at the very purposes of the trip detailed before its beginning, I feel that at least one of them is achieved. That is, I have witnessed and confirmed firsthand the true diversity of European peoples and nations, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. And the differences are worthy of continued observations, if the second European tour gets underway later this year...
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