Behind Anywhere East

Anywhere East was a short travel log series we created at the beginning of 2019. It was our first attempt at assuming a serious tone for the purpose of recording the sights and sounds of a place unfamiliar to us. Retrospectively, it may have served us better to adopt a tone more natural to us; one less concerned with painting a certain maturity.

We had an absolutely amazing time traveling without family for the first time, discovering the many wonders and oddities of Eastern Europe. We met in Budapest, an incredible city esteemed for its gorgeous 19th century architecture. It struck as a place of contrast, as beyond the central ring of beauty revealed a starkly bleaker environment, especially in the dead of winter. From there we traveled by train south to Serbia, where we got lost and ended up in a tiny border town called Demitrovgrad. This place completely un-visited by tourists offered a true sense of the country and we ended up creating some of the most memorable moments of the trip.

Subsequently we crossed the border to Bulgaria, where we traveled by train through the foothills of the Balkan Mountains to the capital of Sofia. This was a temporary stop off before we ventured out of the city for the slopes of Bansko in the Pirin Mountains. We enjoyed shredding the mountain before we dipped for Turkey. An overnight sleeper train took us from Sofia’s soviet style train station to the wonders of Istanbul. We all agreed this was our favorite place so far, and revelled in the surprising feeling of familiarity we felt in this seaside city. From there we flew to Georgia in the oft-forgotten Caucasus. We enjoyed the East meets West atmosphere in the capital of Tblisi. From Tiblisi we again ventured into the mountains, where we climbed the passes of the Caucasus mountains to the Russian playground of Guadari. After some icy days on the slopes we headed to Prague where we met a friend and rode out the remainder of our trip in a more relaxed manner.