Travel Guides for Eastern and
Central Europe:
Travel
to Europe - Discover Eastern Europe by Dani Alonso
Everything arranged. So, you
are going to Europe this next vacations, and you have already asked for permission
at work, your family agrees that this is a nice place where you can spend
your holidays, and you are already looking forward for the time to pack
your bags.
Good
beginning. In any case, up to which point you understand Europe as a whole
entity? Many times I have heard people only telling me that they want to
visit Europe, and the question I ask them is: "What are you looking
for?" The cultural variety of the countries that share this old
small continent is exceptional in all over the world. In this article I
am going to focus in one of this sectors of Europe, the recently
discovered Eastern Europe.
It is
not anything new, it's not a last trend I'm uncovering for you. Eastern
Europe, far still from being a touristic hot spot as other countries in
Europe, is on its maximum growing potential. If one thing identifies
those countries is an economic situation that almost certainly is not as
good as we can expect in the rest of Europe. Nothing to do with their
habitants, of course, but times have come in which their political
alliances didn't work as good as expected and right now they are on the
way of development.
What
you can expect in Eastern Europe, is first of all unspoiled destinations.
You will have the opportunity to avoid the mass tourism now that it is
still possible and visit many cities with a large possibility of
sightseeing opportunities, in some cases as much as in any other
touristic destination. The word to describe very generally Eastern Europe
is "contrast".
Contrast
means basically that you will find there cities that try to be but still
aren't. You will find commercial centers and high skyscrapers in the city
center, surrounded at just some 100 meters by buildings that are on the
way to fall down, sometimes even placed wall to wall. The highly
demanding society that belonging to Europe means to be, compared with the
actual resources that this countries have, puts them in a bit of trouble
when it comes to select the adequate investments for the growing cities.
Some
of those countries suffered a lot during the recent world war, specially
all the ones that used to belong to the old Russia.
All this countries where placed in the middle of the way, and German
troops and allied countries created an absolute chaos on the territory. Tallin, for example, had more than a 60%
of its residential areas destroyed by bombings.
If you
travel a bit closer to central Europe, you will find countries such as Poland, the Czech
Republic or Slovakia. They are
possibly the ones that are more close to the good quality of living in
Europe and the way they are integrating is now very fast. Instead, going
south, more war problems left countries like Bosnia
and Serbia with destruction everywhere. Let's give them a breath and they
will soon become great nations as their habitants are.
Even
if many has been destroyed in some conflicts, many of the Eastern
European countries, and this including the city of Moscow, have incredible buildings
standing there. Cathedrals, churches and palaces that have a special
style, sometimes with some more Asian influence than the most occidental
part of the continent.
When
it comes to people, it is important to understand that war and problems
have been faced by many of the habitants in some of those countries,
specially going east and south. Even if the city center is full of joy
and movement, the feeling still roams a bit in the air, and sometimes you
will need to work a bit harder to gain confidence from somebody. At same
time, as it is always true in relations, as soon as you manage to make
somebody open to you, it will be easy to make ever-lasting friends there.
Finishing
with all this, a trip to Eastern Europe in one side will be exactly the
same as any other part, provided that the cultural variety and
architectural proficiency are enough as to keep any tourist occupied for
a long time. It will be good to get insight in what has happened in every
region in the early past events to understand the contrasts you will find
there. Keep an eye on security, as poverty is more extended than in other
European Regions, but following your common sense, I wouldn't consider it
a dangerous region.
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About
the Author: To find guidance in planning a trip to Europe: Travel
to Europe the-dream.ws
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