Forgotten Part of Europe

In January of 2018, after I come back to school from winter break, I looked back at my previous thoughts on the Baltic trip. The idea hit me so hard that I had to look into it seriously this time, and some vague ideas regarding a less popular route appeared. The eastern part of the continent attracted me, and I decided to step into it alone. I planned out the entire trip across February and March; I marked all POIs and routes on customed Google map, with accurate arrival/departure time for every single stop. On March 26, after staying four days at alma mater Rice, I went on that magical journey towards Eastern Europe.

The trip can be divided into three parts. While the entire trip is about history (Middle-Age, prewar, modern), it has a few layers of old towns, modern wartime, and post-war (or Cold War) aspects. The first part in Baltic countries and Warsaw are mainly about sites and architecture in old town squares. Oswiecim-Birkenau is the darkest page in modern history. Prague and Budapest is some sort of mixture of contemporary and ancient times, while the Balkan countries led an adventure into post-war ideologies, and natural scenes. Following the steps of previous explorers, I captured some of the most astonishing symbolic sculptures in Serbia and Bulgaria, the representative being Buzludzha, the “communism UFO”. Those became precious sources for the project I later started working on.

It is hard to fully capture the thoughts and reflections on this amazing trip. I am going to lead you into the gallery, where pictures are the best narrators of my mind.

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