The End of Another Adventure

I'm back home in England now, which means it's finally over. I made it from Scandinavia to Asia by land and sea, visiting 24 countries and nearly 60 cities, spending an unhealthy amount of time on trains and buses and sleeping in all kinds of different hostels, hotels, apartments and friends' places.

I am certainly looking forward to relaxing at home, sleeping in my own bed, not getting up at 6am every day to catch lengthy train journeys and being able to take a shower whenever I want! But first, however, I want to take a look back at my trip:

My route map (click to enlarge)

Some of my favourite moments:

• After climbing down a mountain for two hours, and still mid-way up, sitting in a cottage with friends and eating sauerkraut whilst gazing over the Austrian Alps.
• Holding hands and singing patriotic songs, whilst joining in the graduation party of some Estonian students.
• Visiting an abandoned Soviet missile base in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around except the couple of people I was with.
• Staying in a hostel covered in bullet holes in Bosnia and having one of the best times I've ever had.
• Visiting a Serbian monastery nestled in hills of Kosovo, one of the most serene places I have ever been.
• Celebrating Midsummer by the sea in Lithuania, complete with bonfire and music.

Relaxing in Istanbul on the final day of my trip

And some of the most memorable moments:

• Being on a bus full of smugglers from Ukraine and getting caught up in the ensuing madness at the border.
• Hurtling along dusty, bumpy tracks at over 100mph, crammed into a car with five Albanians as we headed across the border to Shkodra.
• Firing an AK-47 in a Soviet bunker, with no tuition and a Russian man shouting at me (in Russian) to hurry up and get on with it.
• Unexpectedly bumping into a friend on a bus in Lithuania I had previously met in a remote forest in Finland a year before.
• Visting a non-existant state (Kosovo), where everything is run by the UN and peacekeepers are needed to keep things stable.
• Witnessing the continued ethnic strife in a village in Bosnia, where the two opposing peoples live on opposite sides of the river.
  
  

Thank you Europe!

Above all this, I met so many wonderful people on the way who I will never forget - Europe is such a fantastically diverse and interesting place, and if anything Eastern Europe is even more so. I'd like to say thank you to all the people who made my trip so memorable and, despite travelling on my own, never left me feeling lonely.

Now to start planning my next trip...

Thanks for reading!

David Allan,
August 2007