Summer 2008 Trip: The Plan

Like many Peace Corps volunteers, I decorate a sizable chunk of my wall space with maps. Mostly because they’re free, but also because they can be used for other purposes. I have a map of Ukraine that I update shortly after returning from any trip with in the country. I often use my map of Kyiv to study routes to new addresses I need to visit before departing to catch my train for the capital.

I also have a regional map of Europe. It spans from the Iberian Peninsula to the Urals, Lapland to the tip of North Africa. I’ve studied this map intently, repeatedly, during the last year in preparation for the inevitable summer 2008 trip.

My confines: ~25 days of earned travel, the allotted money in my bank account, and a personal vow to travel by boat across the Black Sea to Istanbul.I went through dozens of potential routes before deciding to set out on a western Black Sea loop: from Ukraine to Turkey by sea, then back up through Bulgaria and Romania by land.