Also, here is my travelogue and travel desire, from a trip in 2003 and an upcoming trip:
I really want to visit and spend time in Romania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia. Also Poland, which I visited in 2003 with my mother; to give you an idea of how offbeat we are in our preferences, we were in Dresden visiting a friend, and we had two options: Gdansk or Venice. We were travelling by Eurail, but from Berlin, both were about equidistant mainly due at the time to slow speeds on the Warsaw-Berlin railway and the lack of a direct train via Pomerania; both involved one train change; Venice would have taken us to Munich on the ICE, where we would catch a EuroCity for Venice, which is or was a lovely train; the Italian passenger coaches first class coaches used on Eurocity services were beautifully furnished with blue and green upholstery. and featured a spectacularly detailed map of the entire Italian railway network (back then, all run by the state owned FS), and the bistro car despite not being a full restaurant car had amazing Lasagna; we had two years earlier taken this train from Munich to Innsbruck.
However, we wound up going for Gdansk, and it was so beautiful on the Baltic, especially the Polish-built Gydnia, which had more interesting architecture and was less crowded than the former German port of Danzig. The latter city was still amazing; while we were there, we had our favorite cuisine (Russian) at an outdoor cafe in Gdansk proper, toured a few historic houses, visited the cathedral with its beautiful carillon, which entertained us with lovely classical music every hour no matter where we were in the city, and toured the ships of the Maritime Museum, including a beautiful Polish Navy exploration and oceanographic research vessel dating from the Soviet era. The trains were also awesome; Berlin to Warsaw was a special EC train, jointly owned by PKP and DB, and identical to the German IC trains except with a blue stripe rather than a red stripe. IC and EC trains with their six seater compartments, which, if empty, and they usually were, let you stretch out and lie down two ways, across the seats, or by merging two seats together with full recline (especially nice on the few unrefurbished "Silberligne" trains used on local routes in Germany, as the compartments were slightly smaller, making the two chairs fit together perfectly as a bed). The only exception was CD, the Czech Rail, which in their infinite wisdom fixed the armrests and reduced the recline angle in Eurocity cars, and the nasty German InterRegio trains, which had been refurbished with hard plastic seats, and were retired in 2002 except for their nasty BordBistro, which replaced the BordRestaurant on all IC trains, but not EC trains like the Berlin-Warsaw Express. The Polish IC train was even better, with a fabulous bar car where you could order delicious chicken dinners from the kitchen for just $2 American. I felt guilty doing it, but I was 16 and hungry, so I bought a second dinner affer I finished rhe first. Today I would struggle to eat just one.
So by mutual consent we had settled on Gdansk, and absolutely loved it to pieces. The very highlight was the walk along the beach from the adjacent resort town of Sopor to Gydnia, where there were swans swimmimg in the Baltic by a little outdoor snack bar, where we split bottles of fanta and I think, icecream, just to watch them. We then went to a beutiful little hotel with gorgeous 1920s Polish Arts and Crafts style architecture, on a wooded hill af the end of the beach, to call a taxi to take us back fo our bland hotel by the railway station. Sitting in the lobby, we resolved to go there "next time" pray that my mother regains her health so we can make the trip
I wish we had been able to do Venice also, as I hear since 2003 in the summer it is even more overrun with tourists, giant cruise ships sail down the Grand Canal precipitously close to St. Mark's and other cultural treasures, and the Venetians are getting priced out of their own apartments due to the demand for more hotels, and a mayor had the literally bright and metaphorically dim idea of ordering the gonfolas in passenger service to have reflective stripes. The Venetians have become, understandably, grouchy, and I dont want to add to their misery with my presence. The Poles were and I expect still are warm and friendly, as Gdansk remains slightly offbeat. We took a delightful sleeper from Gdansk back to Berlin, which was perfect except for polish customs and the German Gendarmee waking us up at 5 AM to check that we were the persons on our passports (which were held for us by the attendant). I then had a bizarre dream in which my mother asked the German guards for Vodka and I sarcastically said "Hiel Hitler" when they were finished, and then we arrived. Good thing we did not say that to them while they were actually there, eh. i expect this was a dream, as Germans have no sense of humor regarding the Nazi period, understandably perhaps, but disagreeably continue to ban Mel Brooks delightful, very anti-Nazi romp The Producers.
I want to go to Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia largely because the railways in these countries, and in Slovakia, which I would also like to see (Ive only been to Prague and Budapest in the brutally occupied western end of the Iron Block), still have the beautiful IC and EC trains, in fact, largely formed from former German, Swiss and Swedish rolling stock. (The extra-wide Swedish cars, which I travelled on to see my Godfather Eugene's adopted daughter and her Swedish husband and their children, my only living relatives in Europe, in 2000, continue to run in Bosnia).
Also, I want to meet the people and see the Orthodox churches and monasteries. Especially the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Sofia, and the monasteries in Serbia, Kosovo and Romania, and perhaps visit Albania to see the miraculous Orthodox Christian community, which survived Enver Hoxha underground and against all odds, and the monasteries of the Bektasi Sufis. In Herzegovina, I would like to go to Mostar to try and meet the Diocesan Bishop, if he speaks English, and I think he does, as I regard him as a hero and functionally Orthodox for standing up and fighting against the falsehood of Medjugorje. Also, as mentioned above, I would like to spend some time in an Orthodox city where it is possible to attend the Divine Liturgy or other services at different churches daily; do Belgrade, Sofia or Bucharest fit that bill?
As mentioned elsewhere, my Uncle Wendell loved Portugal, and they still have some beautiful trains and trams, as does Spain (not quite as good in terms of trams and funiculars, but in the Basque country there is a large and very busy narrow gauge railway, the most modern in Europe, run by Euskotren). I desire to see Barcelona, especially the Art Nouveau architecture of Gaudi and his nearly complete Cathedral, and wave a flag in support of letting the Catalonians have a vote on independence, Madrid, where I wish to see the beautiful architecture, sample tje famous cuisine, including a type of flan called "Heavenly Bacon", and the gorgeous former chamber of the Spanish senate, Lisbon, Porto, San Dominica de Compostela, with its Cathedral of St. James the Great and the world's largest thurible, the Basque country, and conclude in Andora, as I have visited Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg, and my goal is to see and learn about all the small countries of Europe, and that would leave just San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican, among universally recognized Sovereign states.
I would also like to see Transnistria, which is not internationally recognized, and the autonomous Finnish territory of Aland, and its Danish mid-Atlantic counterpart, the beautiful Shetlands.
*Eurail for those over 26 is only sold in First Class, but back in 2000-2003 it was cheaper than flying, before the rise of Ryanair and easyJet, i would still prefer it, however; for me Europe doesnt feel right unless at least part of my trip involves watching the exquisitely beautiful countryside unfold from the window of a train. So much in Europe, like the beautiful castles, churches and small villages of the valleys in the Austrian Tyrol, and the beauty of the Swedish Baltic coast and the Norwegian forests, I would have missed if I had travelled by air.
