In May, 2014, we took a Danube River cruise from Budapest (a gem of a city) to Bucharest. This was by no means a typical European river cruise. There are few towns along this part of the river, and those few are not the picturesque villages one associates with the Rhine and Danube in Germany and Austria. With the exception of sailing through the "Iron Gate" the scenery is also not spectacular, although beautiful in a quiet, unspoiled way.

So what made this particular cruise memorable? The itinerary took us through five countries commonly known as part of the Eastern Block. In other words, they were, in varying degrees, under the control of the Soviet Union from 1945 until 1989. Until this trip, we had only a vague notion of what this implied for each country: decades of living in a police state, the attempted destruction of a rich and diverse cultural heritage, a destroyed economy, and now the efforts to recover and rejoin Western Europe.

This is not the place for a history lecture, nor am I knowledgeable enough to give one. I would just like to say that these countries (Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania) are fascinating and certainly worth more attention than they receive from the typical tourist. Read more