I am very picky about where I choose to stay and especially where I choose to stay and recommend to my readers. A sweet spot for me is a hotel that is environmentally friendly or a hotel that just has a cool and hip atmosphere. It is very rare that you find a hotel that […]
Category Archives: Central & Eastern Europe
Ukraine, Inspiration, Soviet History & Architecture
Slavutych, Ukraine: The Soviet City Built for Chernobyl Refugees
I have witnessed the Chernobyl disaster go from being a globally-recognized mass tragedy to a clichéd source of trite tourism where travelers go in with their cameras hugging their hips, all ready to shoot the perfect photo (which has inevitably been taken 3,790 times already that same month) for bragging rights about how they visited such a creepy […]
Ukraine, Soviet History & Architecture, Things to Do
Duga: The Russian Woodpecker inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Soviets never did anything in an unostentatious manner. Not even radars that were supposed to be kept a secret from the rest of the world. Such is the case with “Duga” (meaning “arc” in English), commonly known as the Russian Woodpecker. I have long had a desire to travel to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. […]
I remember the moment that I booked that train to Kharkiv from Kyiv’s central station. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I knew I had wanted to head east and Kharkiv just seemed like the obvious option. I booked my ticket a few weeks in advance on the ‘fast train’, but I never […]
Ukraine, Soviet History & Architecture, Things to Do
Thoughts and Photos from My Time in Chernobyl and Pripyat
My first trip to Ukraine was all the way back in 2011. I say ‘all the way’ back because, unless you have been ignoring all major world news in recent years, you surely have heard about the revolution that took place in Ukraine and is still unraveling today. Ukraine in 2011 is a very […]
Estonia, Finland, Planning tips
Tallinn to Helsinki Ferry: Cruising Across the Baltic Sea with Tallink Megastar
It took me eight years of living in Europe to take a Baltic ferry. I have visited the Baltics and Nordics so many times (I mean, I lived in Norway for four years!), but I never seemed to hop aboard a ship and sail to my next destination; it was all about the plane journey. […]