There’s something wonderful about travelling overland. Seeing how one country folds seamlessly, effortlessly into the next. We might imagine borders as a solid line but really, they’re anything but. Languages and culture do not respect borders. Nor do cuisines, landscapes or music.
I have just returned from a two-week overland trip around the European continent.
We* drove from London by tunnel to Calais, then to Brussels, then slept. We spent two nights in Berlin, then the same in Warsaw and Krakow. We crossed the Tatras south to Banská Bystrica, and the next day we travelled on to Bratislava where we met the mighty Danube** and stopped two nights. Budapest, after that, was the furthest we would reach. Two nights there and then we began the return journey: following the Danube home through Vienna and across the Bavarian plains to Munich. After a pitstop at the Hofbräuhaus we spent one evening in Strasbourg, and the next evening we had cocktails in Paris before returning to London the day after.
Hungary is very different to England. But it is not so different to its neighbouring Slovakia (parts of which were once incorporated within the Kingdom of Hungary); and nor are British landscapes all that very dissimilar to France. Along the road from the Netherlands through north Germany to Poland, meanwhile, the changes were subtle and incremental, and only cumulatively significant.
What an absolute joy it was to see Europe that way – not to drop straight into a strange and foreign place, but rather, to observe the slow blend of each place gradually becoming the next. From Normandy farmland to Slovak mountains. And to see the people change just as slowly.
I have always subscribed to the idea that borders are imaginary and that the greatest cure for ignorance and prejudice is just to get out there and experience more. The trips that have taught me the most were always the overland ones.
No place can feel altogether foreign once you have seen the steps, the formula, by which one extreme evolves into the other. Cultures, languages and ethnicities are not rigid and separate boxes, but rather a spectrum that blurs between one named point and the next. It’s all fluid and we’re all just basically the same animals.
All photos shot on an iPhone.
*I say “we," but in fact all credit goes to Evan Panagopoulos, who put in the gargantuan effort of driving all 3,400 miles / 5,400 km himself. For what it’s worth though I’m a great navigator and DJ.
**We later crossed the Danube in Germany, there called der Donau, after which point I realise I have now seen it in all 10 of the countries it crosses or borders.
Beautiful photos! Now I want to go to Slovakia and Hungary and Poland and...
When is your next tour? ;)