Head to Romania to track real-life bloodsucker more terrible than the fictional one

When you go to Tirana, you do not seek stunning architecture or rich history. You go for the curiosity factor. Albania and its capital are shrouded in the atmosphere of a little-known, little-visited, isolated and poor country haunted by the…

Fortifications are not something out of the ordinary in Transylvania. They define the Transylvanian landscape as much as the thick forests of the Carpathians, and are so ubiquitous that one stops paying particular attention to them after visiting the most…

Communism in Cuba dies with a whimper, not with a bang

The best of Balkan madness, with all its unapologetic joie de vivre, can be experienced at a certain location at a certain time: the Guča Trumpet Festival in August, and this is not just because of the official ritual of…

Athens is a place that simultaneously feels very old and very new. It is a place of ancient monuments and of drab, unremarkable post-1940s streets with white houses and greying apartment buildings, with bustling street traffic and elderly people slowly…

The lady at the ticket booth of the Iaşi Philharmonic Orchestra is surprised. She is not used to seeing tourists entering the building and asking for tickets for a classical concert. We, too, are surprised. We are not used to…

The men's voices appeared suddenly from the darkness that had fallen over Mestia, the most accessible town of the Upper Svaneti region, in northwestern Georgia (the country, not the US state). Their song was strange, three different voices weaved into…

For the Bulgarians, going on a summer holiday in Greece has for long stopped being exotic. Everyone does it: the lovers of luxurious experiences, the adventure enthusiasts, the families preferring a quiet vacation, the camping aficionados, the water sports fans.…

"I cannot understand how these people continue with their lives surrounded by all these memories," says a British lady we meet at the Markale central market in Sarajevo.