Eastern Europe

Western Europeans have a habit of talking about Eastern Europe as though it is still 1989. The wall came down, the Soviet bloc collapsed, and somewhere in the Western imagination the region froze. The reality, thirty-five years on, is considerably more complicated.

Warsaw is a modern European capital with a restaurant scene and cultural life that would surprise most visitors who arrive expecting bleakness. Tallinn and Ljubljana are small, confident cities that wear their history lightly. Even Bucharest, long the punchline of European city-break conversations, has quietly become one of the continent's more interesting places to spend a few days.

The history is real, and in places still raw. The 20th century treated this part of Europe with particular brutality - occupation, partition, ethnic cleansing, decades of authoritarian rule. You cannot travel through Poland, the Balkans, or the Baltic states without it. Nor should you try.

But history is not the whole story. These are countries in motion, working out who they are after decades of having that question answered for them. That process is visible, sometimes uncomfortable, always interesting.

Eastern Europe does not need your rediscovery. It needs your attention.