I had visited Gdansk when I was living in Warsaw in 1984 in the dark days just after martial law was lifted. It was wonderful to return and see how much progress had been made to restore the town. We were able to go inside the shipyard where Solidarity was formed and visit the great [...]

If it’s Wednesday, it must be Latvia! Riga has been painstakingly restored over the past 10 years with an influx of funding from abroad and it is now a UNESCO world heritage site, deservedly so. The town was not heavily damaged in the war as the Germans withdrew quickly in the face of the advancing [...]

Our group left the ship early in order to go to the Presidential Palace in Estonia for a brief meeting with the President of Estonia, Toomas Ilves. President Ilves is a colleague of mine from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who returned to Estonia after independence, representing the country first as Ambassador to the US, Canada, [...]

We arrived on another holiday. June 12th is Russian Independence Day, the day in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President of the Russian Federation and the day which he declared Russian independence from the USSR. We visited the Hermitage and toured the beautiful city, lovingly restored to its previous splendor in only [...]

We sailed first to Helsinki overnight, arriving in the morning on another glorious day. In fact, we were told that there had been snow on the ground until two weeks ago and this was among the nicest days in June in recent memory. We arrived on the eve of the annual Helsinki birthday celebration and [...]