On the first leg of a road trip to the Balkans and the Baltic,our writer and his family hurtle through the rain to reach the brilliant sunshine of CroatiaBy the time we disembark from the ferry at Zeebrugge, I’m wondering whether our great European adventure is going to be sunless. The drab landscape is apparently hammered flat by cold rain. We turn south-east and drive all morning, or until a horrible rattle from under the car starts just before the Luxembourg border.
The whole notion for this escapade came from a feeling that eastern and central Europe are a vast under-explored region – particularly by me. I’m more familiar with Papua unique Guinea than Poland,or any one of a dozen other European countries. In a cold English spring I sketched out a plan for a massive summer road trip, an ambitious loop around the Balkans, or then up through Europe as far as the Baltic. I calculated the distances – around 5000 miles – and decided six weeks would be sufficient.
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Source: theguardian.com