This particular route isn’t one I’ve seen a lot of others take. Most people inter-raill around Western Europe or island hop around Greece for their first long term Euro-trip. Instead, I travelled down, specifically Eastern Europe, travelling to over 20 different countries in only 3 months.

While we still got some of the perks of Euro-summer; the stunning architecture, historical landmarks and lots of Aperol spritz, we also had to deal with some freezing temperatures, miss out on on-season activities and sometimes go weeks without speaking to another person. Looking back, every second was worth it. I got to see things that not everyone else gets to see and everyday be awe-struck by the beauty you can discover going on the road less travelled.

We started in Helsinki, Finland which was… covered in dirty piles of snow?

The piles of scraped up dirty snow scattered around Helsinki centre

Despite that interesting aspect of the city, it definitely still had its charms. Even when you consider the time of year and how dark and grey the sky looked. it didn’t take away from how excited I was for the adventure ahead. If you’ve ever done something like this, then you’ll understand the feeling that you have when you land in your first place. Have you ever been playing the Sims and decided to move your Sim out of their house and into a completely different place? Well I think this is the closest to that feeling. At this point we didn’t know how long we’d be gone, what changes would happen and how we were going to react to being away from England for so long.

It’s excitement, nervousness, serenity and anxiety all rolled into one. What if it lasts forever? Or what if it only lasts 3 minutes?

Our accommodation in Helsinki was slightly out of the centre, which I’d argue was a good thing. We got to see the untouched, snow covered grasslands of Finland and go to a local supermarket and Gawk at the prices (£2 for a single Pepper!!!)

I went on to spend 3 days in Helsinki, knowing with dread and excitement that our next stop would require a nearly 12-hour coach journey overnight. As someone in the travel community, you’re most likely thinking ‘Elisha that’s not too bad I’ve actually spent 890 hours on a single piece of wood on wheels with no toilet’ and to that I very childishly stick my tongue out at you. Before this trip I was used to quick plane journeys with direct transfers that lasted no longer than 2 hours. Plus, I’m quite tall and often feel like I’m doing some sort of contortion performance on some of these buses. ‘And for my next trick I’ll show you me trying to get comfy on a bus’

After a long, uncomfortable but admittedly beautiful coach ride to Rovaniemi, I stepped off the bus and immediately grew icicles out of every crevice. When I tell you, I have never experienced such a sharp biting cold like this, stabbing the skin of my face. -27 degrees.

The plan in Rovaniemi was to SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. Spoiler alert: I didn’t see the northern lights. Closest I got was when I thought the sky looked slightly red and it turned out to be the glow of the neon sign from the local shopping centre.

I did have fun in Rovaniemi. I crossed the Arctic circle, fed reindeer and went to Santa’s village. Unfortunately, the 3 days we were there - going outside every 10 minutes to check the sky and constantly watching the aurora forecast on my phone - they never showed.

Santa’s village - next to the crossing of the arctic circle

The longest day yet was an 11 hour coach back to Helsinki, followed by a full day of waiting for our late at night Ferry into Tallinn with nowhere to rest, shower or change clothes. Little did I know that this was where it all really started.

Tallinn was one of my favourite places on the trip. Plus, I was in mainland Europe territory. Everywhere from here would be a bus, train, coach or car. Tallinn was miles different to Finland, a lot cheaper and, though still chilly, not quite as cold. The medieval town had so many fun things to do, architecture to admire and more.

I didn’t realise that all throughout Finland I had been, in some way, holding my breath. Worried that it would be all long coach journeys and piles of snow and disappointments. Don’t get me wrong, Finland is lovely but I can now look back in hindsight and say that it felt off. The very few times that I had been on city breaks before, I had felt this connection to myself that was unexplainable. An awe and gratitude for a place that I had never been and a life outside of my own. Tallinn was where I started to feel that. A childlike wonder of exploring somewhere that makes you buzz with excitement about what is around every corner.

Again, I don’t blame Finland. I think maybe I just needed to settle in and find my groove because, as the trip went on, I started to enjoy all the little things and embrace the essence of a place. By the end, I would have found something like a pile of dirt or a long journey where I got to see snowflakes swirl in the air like fairy dust, extremely exhilarating.

Walking around Tallinn was like a dream. Some say it’s over touristy with people dressing up in medieval clothing and such. Personally, I loved that. Like I was stepping into a scene from history. There were so many amazing buildings still intact to view, activities and history.

I’m actually a strange one when it comes to history. I love it and I think it’s so amazing and interesting… until it’s not. I’m riddled with ADHD so I get bored quickly and end up running through museums or zoning out (and wondering what’s for dinner) when someone starts talking about history. However, I also have a profound love for it. When I look at a building that’s thousands of years old, I picture in my head how there’s been thousands of people in that same spot, looking at that same building. People that had lives that were so different from mine. Even whoever was standing there yesterday.

We spent 3 days in Tallinn, 3 days in Riga, 2 days in Vilnius, 2 days in Warsaw and 3 days in Krakow. That's when I started to get it. We’re travelling now. This is kind of our life and I feel like I’ve done more things in these past few weeks than I had in the whole 21 and a half years I’d been alive. Another thing I noticed, which we absolutely hadn’t accounted for in the planning stages, was how tiring it would be. So many long coach rides doesn’t sound like anything when you’re sitting at your desk thinking about it but when you’re actually on it, your whole life is drained out of you. Plus, there’s the long wait times for accommodation and bus journeys and countless times nearly missing our bus while running with our backpacks.

One time, In Warsaw, our bolt driver took us the wrong way to the station so we didn’t get there until 3 minutes before our bus was due to set off. Then, whilst running up the stairs, somehow everything fell out of my backpack. My clothes, my underwear, my sanity. I had to scoop it all up in my hand and keep running for this bus, which I did eventually make… whilst holding all my underwear in my arms like a baby.

The reality is, travelling can be exhausting and long and lots of inconveniences and mistakes happen along the way but these core memories will live in my brain forever. The good and the bad. I realised, just as we got to Prague that I had a full life of these moments to make. My problem was never that I hadn’t seen the world, it was how I was seeing it. How lucky was it that we had caught our coach despite that circumstance. And how amazing is it that, even though I didn’t get to see the northern lights, I got to stand in fresh snow in the north of Finland and stare up at the crystal clear sky. And those long, uncomfortable coach journeys were always taking us to the most fantastic places with some beautiful views on the way.

Prague was where it started to feel normal. There was a sense of routine going on. We were used to checking into airbnb’s and doing our laundry. Every morning, we sat in this cozy little cafe and played a board game called ‘ticket to ride.’ Unfortunately, the instructions were in Czech so we didn’t quite understand the rules.

When people talk about their travels, they always talk about all the amazing friends they make along the way. Going on the road less travelled, at off peak season, not staying in hostels and being a couple meant that the case was slightly different for us. We’d had some really beautiful interactions with strangers but we mostly kept to ourselves and could sometimes go days without talking to anyone.

Some notable interactions we’d had so far were sharing toasted marshmallows with strangers around a fire in Rovaniemi, making friends in Vilnius with a group of locals who wanted to watch us play chess and meeting our single and only reoccurring character so far on a tour in Krakow.

We met our new friend on a bus. She was studying in Germany and travelling around local places in her reading week. It turns out that we’d both planned to be in Budapest on the same dates.

So during our time in Budapest, we met up with our friend again to have some drinks and do an escape room. Even though it’s such a simple thing that you can do anywhere, it was still a highlight of the trip. Being an extrovert, I was starting to miss people so it came at just the right time.

After 3 days in Budapest, we said goodbye to our old friend and got a coach down to Serbia. This is where we started what I call the “Yugoslavia” section, because throughout the entirety of March, we only went to a total of two places which weren’t part of the former Yugoslavian kingdom.

Starting in Belgrade on the first of March, our route would go on to be a lot less straightforward and linear. In hindsight, there’s a lot I would change about the route. Essentially our goal was to go to all the countries in the Balkans. Sounds easy? But do we go along the coastline? Go back on ourselves? Do a zigzag route?

In the end, the route we did had its flaws but all in all it made sense for the flow of our trip. I haven’t yet talked about accommodation. You see, most of the trip had been pre booked and mostly paid for with non-refundable booking. This means that the decisions that made sense when looking at a map of the world and photos on google had no flexibility to change or adapt to what was happening when we were actually there.

Another issue, I’ll come to this later, is that I was point blank refusing to stay in a hostel dorm room. Private rooms only. There were a few times this might’ve turned out cheaper but again it took away a lot from the experience. I don’t say this to in any way disregard the amazing time I had on this trip. Every place I went was amazing and shaped me to who I am now. I look back and I see what I’ve learned myself and sometimes I think it’s quite fun to compare the choices I made then to the ones I make now.

Back to the Balkans. Belgrade in Serbia had a very different vibe to what we’d seen so far. First, there was this sort of dark, moody atmosphere in the best way possible. It felt gothic and romantic with all the same quirks and vibrancy of most European cities. There were modern shops and trendy cafes juxtoposing against stark communist buildings and untouched landmarks which had been affected by the destruction of the war.

Throughout the Balkans, this shows up often. We would often see structures with bullet holes left in them, abandoned remnants of what was left over to preserve and remind people of the events of what happened. I had personally not heard anything about the war in class, nor the political ideologies of most countries we went to. It was interesting to see the contrast in different places political standings and how that affected simple things about it. I had, and still have, so much to learn and this is where I really started to open my eyes to that.

Croatia and Slovenia offered beautiful landscapes and walks, fun activities to do and captivating atmospheres. We also had a short lived trip to Italy, our only “Western Europe” country. Trieste is a port town close to the border of Slovenia and it was on our way anyway so of course we had to go. Trieste was such a refreshing, beautiful part of the trip and the food was to die for. That’s one thing I hadn’t been particularly fond of throughout the trip so far; the food.

At the beginning, I found it so important to try the local dishes and ensure I researched it. However, by this point my mindset had changed to “how many more variations of meat and pastry can I try” so we often just ate at a chain restaurant or cooked in the hostel. I do wish I’d made some more effort to research specific dishes for each place and at least try one.

One thing to note is that a lot of the places still have strong influences of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish tea and coffee is served in the majority of places and lots of the dishes are from that time. However, don’t get me wrong some of it was great, it lacks a lot of flavour and spice that it would hold in Turkey. This is because Turkey is a major hub for exotic spices because of its position on the Silk Road. Whereas in the Balkans, food had to be made with local ingredients meaning it had a much simpler flavour profile.

Platter of local Bosnian dishes. It was very tasty.

We were making our way around the coast and so far we had been to Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Trieste, Pula, Zadar and Split. We spent Saint Patrick’s day in Split and made friends with some local Croatians who took us to this fantastic Balkan club playing amazing Balkan music. I had so much fun there. Balkan music uses a lot of accordions, clarinets etc in their modern pop music. It’s really refreshing to hear instruments like this being used in place of the electro-beats used in westernised music.

Mountain views on a boat trip in Croatia

Next, we move on to our first majority Muslim country; Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mostar is absolutely stunning and a place not a lot of people have heard of. The striking turquoise river running through the town looks so vibrant like it had a saturation filter turned on. Walking along the streets and, of course, the famous bridge, was so serene in a different way to how it was in the other countries. There were busy market stalls with people selling things I’d never even seen before, alongside the obvious tourist stuff.

We had a full apartment to ourselves with a TV that played Netflix and a balcony. It was a complete game changer of accommodation compared to everywhere else we had been. We were sat in this apartment when for the first time I hear the call to prayer. I had no clue what it was and I had never heard it before. For those that don’t know, it is an Islamic tradition that signals the time for Muslims to perform their daily prayers. Because it is a predominantly Muslim country, mosques are able to play it through speakers for the whole town.

Personally I found it really beautiful to hear and I loved getting to see an inside into a different culture. It’s very unifying and a community bond that I’d never seen before. I loved exploring and seeing mosque grounds and the togetherness of the locals. People will often stand outside talking to family and friends waiting to pray. People also don’t drink so there’s still so many places that people can go to hang out with their friends that aren't centred around drinking.

Moving on back to Croatia for a last stop in Dubrovnik - on the most harrowingly long coach I’d ever been on, with 6 different strict border crossing controls - we spent 3 nights there before moving to Montenegro. We explored Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia. All offered their own beauty and charm and individuality. However, we were quite excited to escape the Balkans.

Stunning spring walks in Ohrid, North Macedonia

Thessaloniki and Athens in Greece were absolute game changers. Mouthwatering food, nice hot weather, ancient historical landmarks and cozy nights spent singing and dancing to soft guitar melodies in local taverns. There wasn’t a moment throughout the whole trip that I wasn’t overcome with gratitude and joy just from being able to do it. In Greece, that feeling was extremely amplified.

From Greece, we explored Bulgaria and Romania which both felt different in their own ways. In Bulgaria, I found that Varna was a favourite and in Romania we got to tick off the bucket list Dracula's castle. Romania is also where we ended up having to stay in a hostel dorm for the first time due to a scamming encounter. I had never stayed in one before so I was nervous and unsure what to do but quickly found out that it was really fun, like a little sleepover. We also made some friends there and went for drinks which felt like the proper travelling experience.

After a long bus ride in the aftermath of food poisoning, I got to the final country; Turkey. My mum met me in a hotel in Istanbul but unfortunately I wasn’t of much help due to the exhaustion of the bus and food poisoning. It wasn’t until the last night she was there, that we really got to see it together and try the absolutely amazing food. Rich spices and succulent textures.

Being alone for a day, I decided to check into a hostel and gosh was glad I did. I ended up really getting along with the girls in my room and we all went shopping and got food together before going on the pub crawl that evening. Just my luck that by the end of the trip I’d realise this major thing that would really enhance the quality of the whole experience. This is why I always recommend that people try a hostel at least once because I know that it can really lead to the best moments and actually often feels safer than the dodgy Airbnb’s that we were staying in.

We went to Konya, Goreme, Antalya and eventually ended up staying in an all inclusive hotel at the end which sounds like a brag but it actually saved us quite a lot of money. Goreme was definitely hands down a bucket list location and I could talk about that for ages. I also had an eventful time in our all inclusive which I could talk about forever.

This trip really opened my eyes and taught me so much about myself and travelling than I ever could have imagined. Every moment was such a surreal dream because I never stopped being surprised at what was around the corner. I came home with a completely different lens on the world and cultures and people. I learnt so much about history and politics and even food, I did meet amazing people and have wonderful experiences. I hope it inspired you to travel a road less travelled and learn from my silly mistakes.

I have so many stories I could tell from every place but this post would be longer than all the twilight movies put together. Make sure you keep an eye on my blog and you may get to see some more detailed stories.

xoxo Elisha

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