From the Baltic to the Balkans in 30 Days

October 15 to November 14, 2001

After a month of travelling through China, Mongolia, and Siberia, on the Trans-Siberian Train, we spent the next month driving a rented car through Eastern Europe. A month of living out of the trunk of our car; a month of entering a new country, using a different currency, reading signs in a different language, evenings spent watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" on TV (with a different local host in each country!) –-- a month of sitting next to each other in a compact car, navigating and driving in stressful conditions! Well, we made it. Only one film of 24 exposures to show for it, but here are our pictures of our month in Eastern Europe.

After our Trans-Siberian tour concluded on October 10 in St Petersburg, we said our good-byes and took a Lufthansa flight to Berlin. Despite our best efforts, the embassy in St Petersburg could not arrange visas to Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia for us. However, we DID manage to get a visa for Poland, and we already had a Czech visa (which we got from the Czech embassy in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia).

This is a map of the route we took. Our car rental began in Berlin. From there we headed into Poland. We meandered south, through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, back north through Slovenia, Austria, into the Czech Republic, and finally back into Germany, to Frankfurt. There we dropped our car at the airport and flew south to South Africa.