A Memo from Mitteleuropa
Barry and Margaret Williamson
Summer 2025
Summer 2025
Introduction
The Memo from Mitteleuropa below (also available as a pdf document), covers some of the ground of our present but soon-to-be-ended European journey. Here is an introduction and background to this journey which is the culmination of 38 years travelling together on almost every kind of wheel – plus some flying!
The Memo has words, pictures, videos and music!!
It was in the days when much of it lay behind the Iron Curtain that we first travelled in what a German-speaker would call ‘Mitteleuropa’. The occupation by the Soviet Union lasted from 1945 to 1990, in a standoff held and maintained by the armed forces of the USA. Our two forays by bicycle in the late 1980’s each began with a ferry to Hamburg, the first cycling on through West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria, then a flight back to the UK from Vienna. The second was cycling to Istanbul, riding through Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and so into Turkey. Cycling in East Germany was not permitted to any foreigner at that time.
Within six weeks of the December 1989 revolution in Romania (when the Ceaușescu couple were shot on Xmas day) we took the first of three loads of relief supplies to Orphanages in that destitute country. This included a 7.5 ton truck loaded to 9 tons driven over the Carpathian Mountains into the remote corners of Moldavia.
Since then we have criss-crossed Mitteleuropa on motorhome and cycling journeys over many years, observing the impressive rate of development, particularly in the 10 countries which joined the EU in May 2004. Starting from barely nothing, a concentration on housing, industry, transport and infrastructure has placed them ahead of a static UK in many ways. Mitteleuropa is a land of republics with valid and working social democracies; the UK is frozen in time. So much so that Henry VIII would find the monarchy, the aristocracy, the class structure, the palaces and mansions, the established church, the parliamentary and legal system, the House of Lords, the private schools, elite universities, nepotism, leasehold, landlords and tenants, etc, all still in place and indeed flourishing.
The Memo from Mitteleuropa below (also available as a pdf document), covers some of the ground of our present but soon-to-be-ended European journey. Here is an introduction and background to this journey which is the culmination of 38 years travelling together on almost every kind of wheel – plus some flying!
The Memo has words, pictures, videos and music!!
It was in the days when much of it lay behind the Iron Curtain that we first travelled in what a German-speaker would call ‘Mitteleuropa’. The occupation by the Soviet Union lasted from 1945 to 1990, in a standoff held and maintained by the armed forces of the USA. Our two forays by bicycle in the late 1980’s each began with a ferry to Hamburg, the first cycling on through West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria, then a flight back to the UK from Vienna. The second was cycling to Istanbul, riding through Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and so into Turkey. Cycling in East Germany was not permitted to any foreigner at that time.
Within six weeks of the December 1989 revolution in Romania (when the Ceaușescu couple were shot on Xmas day) we took the first of three loads of relief supplies to Orphanages in that destitute country. This included a 7.5 ton truck loaded to 9 tons driven over the Carpathian Mountains into the remote corners of Moldavia.
Since then we have criss-crossed Mitteleuropa on motorhome and cycling journeys over many years, observing the impressive rate of development, particularly in the 10 countries which joined the EU in May 2004. Starting from barely nothing, a concentration on housing, industry, transport and infrastructure has placed them ahead of a static UK in many ways. Mitteleuropa is a land of republics with valid and working social democracies; the UK is frozen in time. So much so that Henry VIII would find the monarchy, the aristocracy, the class structure, the palaces and mansions, the established church, the parliamentary and legal system, the House of Lords, the private schools, elite universities, nepotism, leasehold, landlords and tenants, etc, all still in place and indeed flourishing.
Europe divided into its Historic Parts
The Memo from Mitteleuropa
Nearing the end of yet another post-Brexit, Schengen-enforced, 90-day permit to be on the mainland of Europe, we find ourselves on a solar-heated hillside at the southern end of the tiny enclave that, post-Austro-Hungarian Empire, became the anachronism called ‘Liechtenstein’. As Swiss as the inhabitants of adjacent Switzerland across the infant Rhine, sharing their language and currency, it is not in the European Union, yet being in Schengen it still enjoys all the benefits of membership. Like freedom of movement, free trade, enormous wealth and a voice where decisions are made. If it really had to leave the EU, why at the very least could not the UK have done the same as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway?
As Bob Dylan once sang: ‘Who could explain it? Who could tell you why? Who can give reasons? Wise men never try!’ He also gives some good advice on another more personal matter.
This current tranche of travel is a circuit of what the Germans call ‘Mitteleuropa’. Our previous travels, both full-time in the period 1995 to 2020 and in episodes following both the pandemic and Brexit, have been largely to Nordeuropa (but including the Baltic Republics) in the summer, with Süd- and Südosteuropa reserved for the winter. Osteuropa remains a closed book, unlikely to be reopened in our lifetimes. Now for half the year we, like all of us in the UK, are restricted (constrained, imprisoned) in the offshore islands of Westeuropa: stuck out in the Atlantic - insular, isolated, insulated.
So far this year our motorhome’s 2,584 miles (4135 km) have taken us, via the P&O Hull to Rotterdam ferry, through the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic, before that part of Czechoslovakia and before that part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Poland (close to the Ukraine border), Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Liechtenstein. About 600 miles remain through Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and back into France for the ferry from Dunkirk to Dover. Dunkirk! Nostalgia promotes images of the British army retreating from the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg at the end of May 1940. Our lads waded out to flotillas of small boats waiting to take them back to the sanctuary of the British Isles. These scenes are now repeated on the same Dunkirk beaches daily but with completely different and opposed sets of players, circumstances and motivations!
Nearing the end of yet another post-Brexit, Schengen-enforced, 90-day permit to be on the mainland of Europe, we find ourselves on a solar-heated hillside at the southern end of the tiny enclave that, post-Austro-Hungarian Empire, became the anachronism called ‘Liechtenstein’. As Swiss as the inhabitants of adjacent Switzerland across the infant Rhine, sharing their language and currency, it is not in the European Union, yet being in Schengen it still enjoys all the benefits of membership. Like freedom of movement, free trade, enormous wealth and a voice where decisions are made. If it really had to leave the EU, why at the very least could not the UK have done the same as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway?
As Bob Dylan once sang: ‘Who could explain it? Who could tell you why? Who can give reasons? Wise men never try!’ He also gives some good advice on another more personal matter.
This current tranche of travel is a circuit of what the Germans call ‘Mitteleuropa’. Our previous travels, both full-time in the period 1995 to 2020 and in episodes following both the pandemic and Brexit, have been largely to Nordeuropa (but including the Baltic Republics) in the summer, with Süd- and Südosteuropa reserved for the winter. Osteuropa remains a closed book, unlikely to be reopened in our lifetimes. Now for half the year we, like all of us in the UK, are restricted (constrained, imprisoned) in the offshore islands of Westeuropa: stuck out in the Atlantic - insular, isolated, insulated.
So far this year our motorhome’s 2,584 miles (4135 km) have taken us, via the P&O Hull to Rotterdam ferry, through the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic, before that part of Czechoslovakia and before that part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Poland (close to the Ukraine border), Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Liechtenstein. About 600 miles remain through Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and back into France for the ferry from Dunkirk to Dover. Dunkirk! Nostalgia promotes images of the British army retreating from the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg at the end of May 1940. Our lads waded out to flotillas of small boats waiting to take them back to the sanctuary of the British Isles. These scenes are now repeated on the same Dunkirk beaches daily but with completely different and opposed sets of players, circumstances and motivations!
Margaret heading East on the Donau Radweg in Austria
Since setting out in early April we have stayed in 39 different places, with perhaps 10 more before we regain our own hearth. Leaving off the hi-viz jackets, lights and helmet camera (essential equipment for the risk of cycling on the UK’s roads), we have made 40 great day-rides on largely purpose-built and signposted cycle paths (Radwegs in Germany and Austria, Fietspads in the Netherlands and Willkommen everywhere). We have felt and been totally safe and indeed respected on these rides, compared with the repeated flouting of Highway Code rules on British roads, with at least two life-threatening incidents for every ride in our native land. Some English police forces have a portal for videos of extreme motoring offences but in our experience they are very reluctant to take any action.
A Wave from our Personal Bicycle Ferry in the Netherlands
The Danube is 2857 km (1,785 miles) long, the Rhine 1230 km (768 miles), and like all the major rivers of mainland Europe they are followed by bike paths, sometimes on both banks. Where high cliffs or any other obstacle make a path impossible, a small ferry plies up and down and across the river enabling cyclists to continue the journey. In the Netherlands a river bridge under repair forced traffic to divert, but a small boat waited to carry ourselves and our bikes across free of charge. Social Democracy at work.
This short video gives a taste of the range and variety of the fietspads throughout the Netherlands, with JS Bach providing the accompanying music.
See also Our Images of a Journey through Central Europe 2025
Many years ago, a Scottish friend, Ian Inglis, wrote to us describing his Highland Glen, Balquhidder (where Rob Roy McGregor is buried), as his Thin Place - the place between heaven and earth, the closest you get to a spiritual home, where the distance between life as we know it and our spiritual abode is tissue thin. The idea is developed in a song by Dougie MacLean about his home, the Isle of Lewis:
“The old man looks out to the island. He says this place is endless thin.
There's no real distance here to mention. We might all fall in, all fall in.
No distance to the spirits of the living. No distance to the spirits of the dead.
And as he turned his eyes were shining and he proudly said:
This short video gives a taste of the range and variety of the fietspads throughout the Netherlands, with JS Bach providing the accompanying music.
See also Our Images of a Journey through Central Europe 2025
Many years ago, a Scottish friend, Ian Inglis, wrote to us describing his Highland Glen, Balquhidder (where Rob Roy McGregor is buried), as his Thin Place - the place between heaven and earth, the closest you get to a spiritual home, where the distance between life as we know it and our spiritual abode is tissue thin. The idea is developed in a song by Dougie MacLean about his home, the Isle of Lewis:
“The old man looks out to the island. He says this place is endless thin.
There's no real distance here to mention. We might all fall in, all fall in.
No distance to the spirits of the living. No distance to the spirits of the dead.
And as he turned his eyes were shining and he proudly said:
A Quiet Corner for Lunch in an East German Village
Feel so near to the howling of the wind.
Feel so near to the crashing of the waves.
Feel so near to the flowers in the field.
Feel so near.”
We hope that you have found or will find your ‘thin place’. Ours is out here on the road, just round the next corner.
With our Best Wishes
Barry and Margaret
PS Quiz: How many of the countries mentioned in this story were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until it was dismantled by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles? Starting with Liechtenstein, which turned away from Austria and towards Switzerland before a second World War ensued. A cunning plan!
Feel so near to the howling of the wind.
Feel so near to the crashing of the waves.
Feel so near to the flowers in the field.
Feel so near.”
We hope that you have found or will find your ‘thin place’. Ours is out here on the road, just round the next corner.
With our Best Wishes
Barry and Margaret
PS Quiz: How many of the countries mentioned in this story were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until it was dismantled by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles? Starting with Liechtenstein, which turned away from Austria and towards Switzerland before a second World War ensued. A cunning plan!