In May 2014 Katherine and I flew to Frankfurt and began a five-week trek across central and eastern Europe. We packed light, got about mostly by train, and were regularly impressed with the region’s efficient transportation systems. In cities we took buses and subways—never a taxi—and rarely had to trundle our little suitcases more than 150 metres. The internet helped, of course, with these arrangements. Above: downtown Bamberg.

   

   

To get started, we visited two Bavarian towns celebrated for their historic architecture: Bamberg and Regensburg. Both are World Heritage Sites, the former for its 17th and 18th-century merchants’ homes (above, upper left) and the latter for a well-preserved medieval centre (upper right), supposedly the finest in Germany. This route brought us to the Danube, which we followed into Austria to Melk, a small village with a huge Benedictine monastery (lower left) towering over it. I’d read about Melk abbey and its over-the-top baroque interiors in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wonderful travel book, A Time of Gifts—an entertaining guide to the region, incidentally. In Melk we found a comfy room above a restaurant, and later caught a boat downstream through the Wachau, as this picturesque stretch is known, to Krems.

   

After a few obligatory days sampling imperial Vienna’s architecture and art (adored the Albertina, with its prints and drawings), we took a short train ride to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia (above). After Vienna, this was like slipping into the third world: crowded, dirty, unfriendly. The old town is attractive, but small. The saving grace, for us, was the castle on a hill overlooking the city. A huge food fair was in progress on the grounds, in a series of tents. K had a “Peruvian” dinner: chicken kebabs, potatoes, quinoa salad. I went Hungarian, with venison goulash. Chocolate for dessert. We ate under some trees, as dinner was interrupted by a 15-minute downpour.

Budapest at last. We stayed a week here, renting an old, high-ceilinged apartment. The view above is from the Royal Palace, on the Buda side of the Danube, with the pleasant island park of Margit-sziget in the background.

  

  

Budapest is a lovely, sophisticated city, enlivened by legions of young people and travellers. We stayed right downtown on St Stephen’s Square (above, upper right) and went to an organ concert in St Stephen’s Basilica. Our apartment was on the fifth floor of the building to the right, but faced the inner courtyard, not the square. Parliament (upper left) is one of Budapest’s iconic sights. Beneath it, the neo-Gothic Matthias Church, where Emperor Franz Joseph was crowned in 1867. Lower right: the enormous Central Market.

   

   

We took several day (and night) trips on the Danube—one to see the lights, above, another upriver to Szentendre, a pretty little town with old squares and cobbled streets, upper right. (Total tourist trap and knick-knack centre, though.) Budapest is a city of hot springs, and a fun thing to do is to go to the thermal baths, several of which—like Szechenyi, lower left—are quite fancy. In the lower-right image, Katherine (who took most of these photos, incidentally) hangs out on Buda hill with Zoltán Kodály, Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist.

   

   

From Budapest we travelled northwest, by train, to the gracious Czech city of Brno for two nights, then east, on a long, slow journey to southern Poland. Rail service is not so good in Poland, and we almost missed the train from Katowice to Krakow, thinking that our carriage (above, upper left) was a museum. We loved Krakow. Our apartment—quiet, modern, central—was perfect. Old Town blew us away with its medieval architecture and delicate beauty. Market Square and the Cloth Hall were a delight. We spent four busy days here, visiting the former Jewish quarter of Kazimierz; Schindler’s Factory, a museum devoted to the fate of Krakow’s Jews; and the Royal Wieliczka salt mines, an underground complex and World Heritage Site. All were excellent. Photos: Dominican convent of Our Lady of the Snows (upper right), Market Square (lower left), Wawel Castle (lower right).

   

We took a day to visit Auschwitz, 70 km from Krakow. You cannot travel through the region without acknowledging this gut-wrenching place and paying your respects. We were required to join a tour with an excellent English-speaking guide, who delivered a flat, uninflected monologue—just the horrific facts, no emotion, no blame. Birkenau, a bus-ride away, was included in the tour. Well over a million people were murdered here. I found that the Holocaust still casts a heavy shadow over central Europe, more so than Communism, which seems to have been shaken off like an annoying, ludicrous harness. But the Holocaust—and all that it reveals about human potential—is harder to forget.

  

Wroclaw (pronounced “vrotslav”) is another city in southern Poland with an attractive Old Town. The wonderful central square has more of a local feeling than the one in Krakow, though that may have been because we were there on a busy Saturday night, with another food fair underway. Wroclaw has plenty of intriguing sights and good walking: well worth a couple of days.

  

   

Back on the train to eastern Germany. Dresden (top photos above), obliterated in WWII,  is undergoing a major restoration of its baroque 18th-century city centre. A quick side trip to the medieval town of Meissen (bottom pix), famous for porcelain, where we wandered a maze of restored lanes, squares and steps to a hilltop cathedral with exquisite views of the surrounding countryside.

   

A couple of days in Leipzig, soaking up musical history (Schumann, Mendelssohn, Bach), then to Berlin, our final stop, where we rented a cute little apartment for a week (above) and spent much-appreciated time with my cousin and his family, who have lived in Berlin for six years and who showed us a side of the city we wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. So we saw tourist Berlin—the Wall, the grand boulevards and plazas, memorials and museums—but also the everyday Berlin of local people: innovative mixed-use developments in Mitte and other old East Berlin neighborhoods, flea markets, the fabulous transit system, the green spaces of Tiergarten and Grunewalde.

  

Berliners are not covering up the horrors of Nazi rule (as some say). Plaques set into paving stones outside city apartments (above) commemorate former residents killed by the regime. We saw similar ones all over the city. The Topography of Terror museum (above right), a meticulous “documentation centre” in English and German on the site of the former Nazi HQ, deals comprehensively with the party and its leaders. (Imagine Vancouver devoting a full city block to a detailed institutional examination—with names named—of the shameful near-genocide perpetrated on BC’s native people.) Then there’s the Holocaust Memorial, the Bebelplatz book-burning memorial, the Gleist 17 railway platform from which people were deported to the camps, the Stasi Museum, the Jewish Museum and much more.

   

Berlin struck a deep chord with us. With its youthful, cosmopolitan population and modern outlook, the city is the true beating heart of 21st-century continental Europe. In the wider region, for me, only London compares. Photos: the Wall (above left); Hackescher Markt, our favourite S-bahn stop (above right).