Eastern Europe and the Balkans: 14 Countries in 5 Weeks, From Chernobyl to Sarajevo
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At the end of 2019, I spent about 5 weeks crossing Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from Belarus in the north down to Albania and back up to Slovakia. That came to 14 countries, if you count Transnistria, which most of the world does not.
I went to learn about communism, and about what is left of it 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down. What I found was a long list of strange places: abandoned towns still marked by radiation, a nuclear missile bunker, buildings still scarred by war, museums full of weapons, fairy-tale castles, and a hundred small Soviet quirks that nobody has bothered to remove.
A note from today: this trip was in late 2019, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Several of these places are now off-limits or changed. Check your government’s travel advice before planning any of these stops.
What stood out?
The gap. Within a single day’s drive, the standard of living could change completely, and the countries inside the European Union looked far better off than the ones outside it.
The route ran roughly like this: Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovakia. I did it on a group tour, which, for places like Transnistria and the Chernobyl zone, is close to the only sensible way in.
Belarus
Minsk
Minsk is a city that was almost erased and then rebuilt to one man’s taste. During the Second World War, its population fell from about 300,000 to 50,000, and about 80% of the city was destroyed. It was rebuilt in the 1950s the way Stalin liked it, with wide avenues and huge, heavy buildings, and its centre still looks the way he wanted it.
A practical note: English is rarely spoken, and everyone speaks Russian. A few key Russian phrases go a long way.
The Stalin Line and Khatyn
Outside Minsk is a stretch of the Stalin Line, the chain of concrete bunkers and gun positions the Soviet Union built along its western border from the 1920s. Today it is an open-air museum, full of old tanks, artillery and aircraft, and visitors can climb into most of them.
I also stopped at the Khatyn memorial, for a Belarusian village whose people were killed by German forces in 1943.
Nesvizh and Mir
Belarus also has 2 castles on the UNESCO list, about 29 km apart. Mir Castle is the fairy-tale one, red brick with towers. Nesvizh Castle was the home of the Radziwill family, one of the great noble families of the old Polish-Lithuanian state. Between 1921 and 1939, both sat inside Poland.
I wrote up all 3 days in Belarus, from the castles of Mir and Nesvizh to the bunkers of the Stalin Line and the memorial at Khatyn, in Belarus: Minsk, the Stalin Line, Khatyn and the Castles of Mir and Nesvizh.
Ukraine
Chernobyl
On 26 April 1986, reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded. It is still the worst nuclear disaster in history, and one of only 2 rated 7, the maximum, on the international scale. The other is Fukushima in 2011.
Today, with a guide, you can walk through the exclusion zone and the abandoned city of Pripyat, where about 50,000 people left in a hurry and never came back.
The nuclear missile base
Somewhere in the countryside between Kyiv and Odessa, near the small town of Pervomaisk, is a former Soviet missile base. It held intercontinental ballistic missiles, the kind built to cross continents, and its underground launch control centre is still there.
The highlight of a visit is going down into that launch control centre, where visitors can sit at the console for a simulated launch.
I wrote up both days, with the dosimeter readings and the launch room, in Chernobyl and a Nuclear Missile Base: Two Days in Cold War Ukraine.
Kyiv and Odessa
Kyiv, the capital, sits on the Dnieper River and was home to almost 3 million people in 2015. Odessa, on the Black Sea, is the port city of the south, known for its 19th-century buildings, its opera house, and the Potemkin Stairs, made famous by the 1925 film Battleship Potemkin.
Transnistria: the country that does not exist
Transnistria is a thin strip of land on the east bank of the Dniester River. On paper, it is part of Moldova. In practice, it has run itself since a short war in 1992, with its own government, army, currency and border posts, and almost no other country recognises it.
Tiraspol
Tiraspol is its capital. It was founded in 1792 by the Russian general Alexander Suvorov, whose statue still stands there, and the hammer and sickle still appear on the state symbols.
Chitcani and Bender
Chitcani is one of the oldest villages recorded in Moldova, dating back to 1367, and the home of the Noul Neamt Monastery. Under Soviet rule the monastery was closed and used as a hospital, a storehouse and then a museum.
Bender sits on the other bank of the river, inside the buffer zone set up at the end of the 1992 war. Its fortress, Tighina, was one of the important strongholds of the old Principality of Moldova.
I wrote up all 3 days, with the exchange board, the quarry tunnels and the old fairground, in Transnistria: 3 Days in the Country That Does Not Exist.
Moldova
Chisinau and the Cricova cellars
Chisinau, the capital, is the most prosperous part of Moldova, which tells you how big that gap I mentioned can be. About 15 km north of it, under the town of Cricova, are some of the largest wine cellars in the world: about 120 km of underground roads, cut from old limestone tunnels and turned into a wine store in the 1950s.
The legend is that the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went in on a visit in 1966 and came out, with some help, 2 days later.
Romania
Bucharest
Bucharest’s landmark is the Palace of the Parliament, a communist-era government building with about 1,100 rooms, one of the heaviest buildings in the world. Nearby, the old Lipscani quarter has the nightlife, and the ruins of the Old Princely Court, where Vlad III, “the Impaler”, once ruled.
Transylvania
Transylvania is the region everyone knows from Dracula, thanks to Bram Stoker’s novel and every film since. Bran Castle, the Gothic fortress tied to the legend, and Peles Castle, a 19th-century royal palace in the mountains, were both on my route, along with Brasov, a medieval Saxon town with its walls, its big square and its Black Church.
Bulgaria
Sofia
Sofia sits at the foot of Vitosha mountain, in the middle of the Balkans, and its landmarks cover over 2,000 years: Greek, Roman, Ottoman and Soviet. It is sometimes called a “triangle of religious tolerance”, because a church, a mosque and a synagogue stand within a few minutes’ walk of each other in the centre.
North Macedonia
Skopje and Matka Canyon
Skopje was hit by a huge earthquake in 1963 and rebuilt.
A short drive west is Matka Canyon, about 5,000 hectares of cliffs with medieval monasteries, 10 caves and the oldest artificial lake in the country.
Kosovo
Pristina, Brod and Mitrovica
Pristina, the capital, is a young city in a young country. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia only in 2008, and many countries still do not recognise it.
Brod, in the far south, is a mountain village of about 900 houses in the Gora region, home to the Gorani people, who are known for their sweets and confectioners.
Mitrovica is a divided city. It is split by the Ibar River, with Albanians on one side and Serbs on the other, and the bridge between them was guarded for years after the 1999 war. In March 2004, riots there left at least 8 people dead and about 300 injured, the worst unrest in Kosovo since the war ended.
Albania
Tirana
Tirana only became Albania’s capital in 1920. It is one of the sunniest cities in Europe, with about 2,500 hours of sun a year, and since the end of communism, many of its grey blocks have been painted in bright colours, which makes the city look nothing like its past.
Montenegro
Budva, Tivat, Kotor and Sveti Stefan
Montenegro is a small country on the Adriatic coast that only became independent in 2006, when a referendum ended its union with Serbia. My route took in Budva, Tivat, Kotor, with its walled old town at the head of a long bay, and Sveti Stefan, a tiny island village joined to the shore by a strip of sand.
Serbia
Belgrade
Belgrade may be the most fought-over city in Europe: by one count, it has been fought over in 115 wars and razed 44 times. It was the capital of Yugoslavia from 1918 until the country finally broke apart.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sarajevo
Sarajevo is the city where the 20th century turned twice. In 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on one of its streets set off the First World War. Seventy years later, it hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, a high point for the city. Then from April 1992 to February 1996, it lived through the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare: 1,425 days.
It is also called the “Jerusalem of Europe”, because a mosque, a Catholic church, an Orthodox church and a synagogue stand in the same neighbourhood.
The tunnel and the Olympic bobsleigh track
During the siege, the city was cut off on all sides except one, under the airport. In 1993, the Bosnian army dug a tunnel about 800 metres long under the runway to the free territory beyond it. Food, aid and weapons came in through it, and people got out. Part of it is now a museum, the Tunnel of Hope.
Up on Mount Trebevic is the bobsleigh and luge track from the 1984 Olympics. During the siege it was used as an artillery position, and today it is a long, empty concrete snake covered in graffiti.
I wrote up both days in Sarajevo, the tunnel, the track and the Sarajevo roses, in Sarajevo: The Siege Tunnel, the Olympic Bobsleigh Track and the Spite House.
Croatia and Slovakia
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, on the Sava river, with a good quality of life and plenty of museums. (I had been to Croatia before, in 2010, and went back again in 2025 for a very different trip.)
Bratislava, Devin Castle and the TV tower
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is small for a capital, with about 430,000 people, on the Danube right at the borders of Austria and Hungary. From 1536 to 1783 it was where the kings of Hungary were crowned.
Just outside it, Devin Castle stands on a rock above the point where the Morava meets the Danube, with its tiny Maiden Tower balanced on a separate rock. And on Kamzik hill is the TV tower, about 196 metres tall, built in 1975, with a deck from which you can see Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic on a clear day.
From Bratislava, I flew home through Dubai.
How did the trading fit in?
One of the biggest advantages of swing trading is that it does not ask you to watch the market all day. A few minutes on my phone each day was enough to manage my positions, and I spent the rest of the day in bunkers and castles.
The clock was easy too. Most of this route sits 1 to 2 hours ahead of London, which put the US market open at about 4.30 or 5.30 in the afternoon, local time, right around the time each day’s touring ended.
I wrote up how that routine works on the road, the watchlist, the alerts and the time zones, in how I trade while travelling.
Could you do this trip today?
Only part of it. The missile base and Chernobyl sit in a country at war, and Belarus is a very different place to visit than it was in 2019.
In 2022, I did the Central Asia half of the old Soviet Union too, in 5 weeks across the Stans.
Have you been to any of these countries? Which one would you pick first: Transnistria, Chernobyl or Sarajevo? Let me know in the comments.
All my other trips are on the travel log, country by country, and more photos are on Instagram, @iamrecneps.
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