Video Highlights – Germany – Austria – CzechRepublic – Poland – Slovakia – Hungary- Romania and on to Montenegro.

Nightfall in Krakow Poland.

The Route Travelled by Train.

Red For Train. Pink For Plane. Blue For Road. Green For Boat.

This evening TotalAdventure departs Miami, flying to Munich via London. From Bavaria we go by train through Austria,Czech Republic,Poland,Slovakia, the Carpathian Mountains in Romania , the Balkans in Bulgaria, Bosnia,Serbia,Croatia and Montenegro, arriving in Turkey by ship.

Tonight’s Route.

Late on a Sunday night, I boarded at train from Krakow that would arrive in Kosice, Czechoslovakia ( now Slovakia ) the next morning. This Soviet train going from Paris to Moscow, passed by but did not pick up passengers.  I shared a compartment with construction workers – we spoke in broken German while swilling vodka the whole night. Once a bottle was opened, the cap was tossed away.

Kosice was peaceful in the early morning, though there was no place to eat or even have a coffee.

Art Deco Proletarianism.

” Truth ” for the Working Masses.

Punk Concerts – Catching up with the times.

Open discourse. This picture was actually taken in Prague.

Fresh picked harvest.

Late in the morning I boarded another train for Debrecen,Hungary. Finally,I could sit down for an excellent kitchen cooked meal.

On the vast plains near Fuzysabony, Hungary. The flat lands stretch thousands of kilometers eastward to the Urals.

In October of 1990, just after official German Reunification, I traveled from Berlin, in the former East Germany, to Czechoslovakia ( now two nations) ,Poland,Hungary and Romania. While today the Eastern countries are much a part of the modern world, the East 20 years ago was a group of lands newly awakened from a long and stifling slumber.

In the next few days, ArcticTropic will feature a photo series  – Eastern Europe at the Fall Of Communism – to be interspersed with our regular adventure news and updates. Eastern European travel at the time was an adventurous undertaking, given the lack of infrastructure, the lack of any understanding of tourism and the unfamiliarity of many people with the outside world.