BlackSeaRoamer

Journeying to Sukhum, one could almost feel like being in a normal country. Soon after leaving Gali, the road becomes much better. In fact, ...

Walking across the Inguri bridge into Abkhazia, there is something of a Cold War feel, crossing on foot the line in a frozen conflict. I tra...

I took a ferry from Ilichevsk, just along the coast from Odessa, to Batumi, in Georgia. It was an experience, on more than one level. First ...

Along the coast from Sevastopol, Yalta is also marked by history. What student of modern history would not be stirred by a visit to the near...

Few places are as brim-full with military history as Sevastopol. Built as a naval base when Russia first took over Crimea in the late 18th C...

To a modern world steeped in the political culture of the nation state, schooled to believe in the unique value of the nations to which we b...

There are few places in the world where the migrations of peoples, the ebb and flow of empires, have left so many and such diverse traces in...

I had long been attracted by an idea of Odessa. I imagined a romantic city, a city of writers (Isaac Babel, Pushkin, Gogol were all there), ...

Kiev is a city of hills. One of those, along the bank of the Dnieper, has for centuries been a favoured site for some of the city’s most imp...

Walking along Rruga Ismail Qemali in the Blok district in central Tirana, with its cafes and restaurants, its relaxed couples out for a stro...