EuroCheapo's Eastern Europe Articles

Jul 15 A few months back, we gave Belarus a mention here on EuroCheapo. No surprises of course that our posting opened up a mini-debate on the ethics of travel to a country that wins no awards for liberal enlightenment. Yet, it is precisely because of its unusual politics that Belarus is a top destination for European » Read more

Mar 19 Last week Berlin hosted the ITB 2009. The ITB is a travel extravaganza, a huge trade fair devoted to extolling the merits of countries from Sarawak to Sardinia. Europe made a good showing of course, with almost every country of the continent there to present its case for a share of the tourist dollar. Almost every. » Read more

Jun 02 Photo by Gumerov Ildar If you’re old enough to remember flower power and Woodstock, then you’ll probably recall the Keflavík stopover. Budget-conscious air travelers in the sixties used Loftleiðir (now part of Icelandair) to hop between the USA and Europe. Loftleiðir undercut the high fares of IATA airlines and pulled a young crowd of first » Read more

Dec 28 Brits are of course now labouring under a diet of cold turkey. Christmas generates its own extraordinary traditions across Europe, which differ greatly from country to country. There is no such thing as a standard-issue European Christmas. The English certainly like their turkey on the Christmas table, but elsewhere across the continent firm Christmas favourites » Read more

Mar 19 Italian semi-low-cost carrier AlpiEagles now offers flights to a wide range of destinations across Eastern Europe. Forget the now standard destinations in Poland, the Baltics, Slovakia, and Croatia—AlpiEagles flies to even less well-served markets across Eastern Europe. Among its destinations are Bucharest, Club-Napoca, and Timisoara in Romania, Chisinau (Moldova), Kiev (Ukraine), and Moscow. When push » Read more

Mar 14 Despite the fact that a final political status for Kosovo is not yet in sight, travel to the territory appears to be picking up. One low-cost carrier and several other standard airlines now fly to Prishtina, Kosovo‘s capital. We checked with four competitors to see how much it would cost to fly to Prishtina from » Read more

Mar 07 While researching new listings for the upcoming EuropeanHostels.com relaunch, we found our jaws dropping at the concentration of cheap hotels in several cities in Eastern Europe. Here, a brief digest of three cities particularly well suited to cheap sleepers. Exhibit A: Budapest, which is just about neck and neck with Amsterdam in terms of cheap » Read more

Mar 01 A quick round-up of things we’re digging this Thursday morn. 1. Azerbaijan. After collecting a ton of Azerbaijan brochures at last week’s New York Times Travel Expo, we’re more excited than ever about the ex-Soviet republic. Now if we could just find it in the budget to make it to the 6th Azerbaijan International Travel » Read more

Feb 13 The Balkans stretch from Croatia‘s Adriatic coast to Bulgaria‘s booming Black Sea resorts, and include cities from hip and brooding Belgrade to creative, chic Thessaloniki. The tourist infrastructure in the region is famously uneven, with Greece and Croatia among the easiest to navigate, and Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia among the most difficult. For a number » Read more