Round the Bloc

I have had a fairly long period in Romania since my last trip (without really working it out, I suspect the longest uninterrupted period in the country since I arrived), having not been anywhere since November. Not sure if this represents any major trend, but fortunately I have actually been working a fair amount during that time, but doing it online rather than in the flesh. I have to say though if one was to pick a time period in which to remain constantly in the Ciuc depression, the November-March slot would not necessarily be it. Especially not this ridiculously long, cold and snowy winter. Anyway, this period is about to come to an end next week when I depart these shores for the sub-tropical climes of ..., erm, ...Moscow.

As it happens the way things have worked out I now have a month of travel coming up, centred around a tour of post-communist Eastern Europe. Next Thursday I make the Bucharest-Warsaw-Moscow trip beloved of apparatchiks in the 1970s taking in all those amazing monuments to the beautiful architecture of the aesthetes of those times (they all look peculiarly and ironically Disney-esque to be honest, and show a great in-your-face penchant for architecturally flipping the bird at the very proletariat they were supposed to inspire)

From here...past here...
...to here
Back from Moscow at the weekend via a few days in Krakow, and then a couple of weeks later to that other city at the heart of it all, Berlin. This Bloc party is rather spoilt by the fact that in between the Russia/Poland trip and the Berlin trip, I will spend a week in Harrogate, a town which is about as far from the Communist heartland as it is possible to be. Twee-blue-rinsed-conservative-small-town-England. But still, who knows what hidden secrets Harrogate conceals beneath its genteel Victorian skirts. A gulag in which those not toeing the mustn't-grumble-except-about-immigrants party line are dunked in vats of strong tea? We'll see.