Prague is a very pretty city.  It has beautiful architecture, interesting history, and good vibes.  I was excited to see Charles Bridge in person.  It seems to be the iconic photo of Prague that I see everywhere.  The bridge has been reconstructed, but it started in the 14th century!  I will never get over historical places in Europe.  It is exciting to think about the centuries of history happening in the same places where you're standing.
I tried Absinthe for the first time here, which came along with a history lesson.  I visited a beer spa.  It IS what it sounds like - soaking in a tub of warm, bubbly beer.  Supposedly it has a long history and it's good for your skin.  I went on a plague tour and I learned a bit about Jewish history here also.
Before WW2, I think they said there were over 100,000 Jewish people living in Prague, but today there are less than 10,000.  This continued what I was starting to see in Romania, where all of the cities I visited had a very small number of Jewish people living there today because of the Holocaust.  I learned about the Holocaust in school, and I've seen movies and read books over the years, but somehow it is different when you're visiting multiple cities, seeing it in person, and realizing so many people are missing today because of it.  

I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about Kiev because I honestly didn't spend a lot of time here.  Saint Sophia Cathedral was beautiful, traditional Russian architecture and a lovely bell tower.  Inside, it has the sarcophagus of Yaroslav the Wise.  It was a nice city with good food.  

The highlight of my time here was a day trip to Chernobyl.  It was a much bigger area than I realized.  I think it was 150 towns and villages that had to be evacuated.  On the tour, we were required to stay with the group since many areas were still radioactive.  It was very eery.  Businesses and homes were just abandoned.  There were still classrooms with desks and books, a day care with beds and toys, a grocery store with shopping carts and signs.  People had only a few hours to gather their belongings before they were taken away.  People did come back at different times to get things and loot the area, but otherwise it was pretty much left alone.  It was kind of like stepping back in time.  The tour guide had photos of some of the places as they looked before the accident, so it was interesting to compare them.

Odessa is a beautiful city on the coast!  It was a challenge to be back to a country using the Cyrillic alphabet.  It just makes getting around a bit more challenging, and I found that English was not as widely spoken in Ukraine as in other countries I've visited. It is very nice and hugely convenient when someone speaks English.  However, it is not a requirement.  I am a guest in their country, so I do not expect them to speak English.  Odessa is a large city, so I did find some people who spoke English.  Otherwise, I had to depend on Google Translate, pictures, gestures, pointing, and miming.  As in other countries, it is common for people to type the price on a calculator, or I can offer the calculator on my phone where they can type in the price for something.
The hostel owner here served in the Soviet army in the 1980s, so he had some interesting stories.  He made delicious Turkish coffee in the mornings.  There were several college students living at the hostel, as there was a university close by and this was cheaper than apartments in the neighborhood.  

Moldova is known for wine.  There are several famous wineries, and I chose to visit Cricova.  It has a huge underground city where there are hundreds or thousands of barrels for aging.  We rode in a golf cart through the underground tunnels.  They have wine vaults where people can store their wine - I saw John Kerry's personal collection.  A couple Nazis did store their wine collections there, and they are still there.  They also have antique wines on display close to 100 years old.  There are beautiful tasting rooms with different themes and a movie theater.  They served Prosecco during a short film on wine production in Moldova.  I also saw the Presidential room where Putin had his 50th birthday party.

Transnistria is a Russian-speaking separatist region in Moldova.  The hostel owner took a few of us on a tour, driving in his car.  This area is often described as "Russia 30 years ago".  They have their own currency, and they receive support from the Russian military.  When crossing the border, I received a 10-hour visa from the Russian army.  It did feel like it was stuck in time.  There were old cars, Lenin statues, and Soviet-looking monuments all over the place.  We had lunch in a canteen full of communist paraphernalia, decorated in a lot of red.  We had borscht and pork with potatoes.  The train station felt abandoned and looked like it hasn't changed in 20 years, but it is still used for just one train per day.  All over the place, there was a feeling abandoned places, but they were still used by a small amount of people.  On our way back, we stopped at a liquor store, where I got a bottle of walnut brandy, recommended by the tour guide, for less than $2 (USD).  

I really liked Moldova.  The Moldovan people were nice.  I stayed in the capital, Chisinau.  The hostel was a new experience.  The owner was very nice and organized really great tours.  However, I think I would describe the hostel atmosphere as ... "different"?  Moldova is definitely not on the typical tourist trail, so the other people staying in the hostel were pretty experienced travelers, and some of them seemed almost competitive.  Yes, some people view travel as a competitive sport.  Sitting around the kitchen table, drinking the local boxed wine, and people talking about the obscure places they've been...  I got mansplained on American politics by a talkative French woman, met an Australian guy who retired in his early 30s from a career in programming and was now traveling the world, met another Australian who views America as a developing country because we don't have trains or universal healthcare, and shared a toast with some flirty drunk Russian diplomats at a local restaurant.  A guy from Catalonia was biking and needed to find a cardboard box to ship his bicycle home.  A woman from Catalonia was denied a visa to enter the US because she had been to both Israel and Iran, so there was a waiting period to enter the US.  A guy from Italy was riding his Vespa around eastern Europe.  it was an eclectic group of people, and definitely different vibes than other hostels I've been to.

Overrated.  Bram Stoker never visited - his novel Dracula was inspired by listening to other peoples' tales.  The legend is that Vlad the Impaler did stay here for a short time, but it's not certain.  I tried to go to Peles Castle, as I heard that was more exciting, but it was closed on the day I tried to go, and I was anxious to move on to Moldova, so I skipped it.  I'll save it for next time.
I did meet some great people on this tour though!  Two software developers living and working in the Netherlands, so I made some connections and we talked about differences and similarities between American and European work culture.  And we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Brasov and drinking wine :-)

From the farm, I spent one night in Sibiu (beautiful town), and then went on to Cluj, where I stayed for a week.  This town isn't quite as picturesque as some of the other areas I've seen in Romania, but it is has a wonderful central square with vibrant cafes, and I got to meet up with a couple of the women from the retreat!  The highlight was the salt mine.  Deep below the ground, in a former salt mine, there is a ferris wheel, boats, ping pong, and it's beautiful because the walls have wave patterns, and they've decorated it to look like an instagram dream.
Several coffee shops here had cold brew and tonic, sometimes with something additional such as rose oil - this was an unexpectedly delightful combination I hope to repeat again.  There was also an interesting museum of Jewish history in Cluj.  In the US, when it comes to Jewish history in Europe, we pretty much focus on the Holocaust.  This museum covered Jewish tradition in Romania, and specifically Cluj, for hundreds of years.  From Cluj, 16,000 Jewish people were sent to Aushwitz.  Of those, 2,000 survived.  Communism started soon after that, and most of the remaining Jewish people left for Israel or the United States, and today there are less than 300 Jewish people left in Cluj.

After my Transfagarasan expedition, I spent a few days on a farm outside of Sibiu.  I found this place by accident while searching for hostels in Sibiu - and I'm so glad I found it!  It was a unique experience to see Romanian farm life, and they served delicious and fresh food and homemade wine from their neighbors.  The landscape was beautiful, and I took some time to hike to the next village and talk with a couple locals who spoke some English.  I also met another woman living on the farm more permanently from Germany, she was volunteering on the farm in exchange for free room and board, and she gave me tips on Romania.

Leaving Bucharest, I rented a car and drove the Transfagarasan Highway.  I think it's only about 60 miles, but you must drive slow with the elevation change and the hairpin turns, and I stopped for pictures several times along the way.  I saw five bears. (I have been to the Smoky Mountains many times - no bears.  I spent last summer hiking and camping in Washington - no bears.  Then I saw FIVE in Romania!!!). The landscape is beautiful, and I saw herds of sheep with their shepherds, and I saw people using horse carts for actual transportation - not just for a fun hayride.  There are many road side stands selling things such as pastries, cheese, and homemade wine.  At the end of the road, I stayed at a guesthouse in a small village, where I really did see the cows come home at the end of the day.  Like the saying - around 8 pm, there was a parade of cows on the main street as they left the pasture to go home to the barns.