Eastern Europe Trip Report
 

A few days ago my partner Don and I returned from a two week trip to Belarus and Ukraine. During the trip we wrote about our trip at the following web site:

http://donnhoward.blogspot.com/

Feel free to read about it there. I have included a shorter summary below.

The main purpose was to visit the four small towns that my grandparents came from. However, the majority of our time was be in larger cities.

Here was our itinerary.

Fly into Minsk, the capital of Belarus (from Wash. DC) - 3 days in Minsk

Bus (5 hours) to the small Belarus town of Turov, Belarussia (home of grandparent #1) - stay for a day

Hire car/driver for next day to visit David Gorodok (home of grandparent #2)

Overnight train to Lviv, Ukraine, stay in Lviv for 4 days. One of the days hired car/driver to visit hometowns of grandparent #3 in Cherniv and grandparent #4 in Zolochiv.

Overnight train to Kiev, stay in Kiev for 5 full days, with one day trip to Uman, about three hours by bus from Kiev.

Next day, flew back to DC.

In the small towns, we didn't really have specific places to visit, but will get a feel for the towns. In Liviv, we visted the archives to see if we could find any information on family history. Turns out we found a couple of hints that will need further investigation.

Belarus had very very few tourists as it is still a closed society. Ukraine is more open and more westernized.

Howard

Hello Howie234 :)

My maternal grandparents came from Belarussia (my grandfather in 1915 and my grandmother in 1917).

Perhaps you're my long-lost brother??

Now I'll go and read your blog. Thanks for posting!

Happy travels!

Welcome home!

I am going to read your blog, but noticed that you used a Flip. I am considering getting one...any thoughts on it?

I'm enjoying your trip report. It's great to read about some place a little off the beaten path.

That is so terribly interesting and well done. My husband and I want to do Belarus and Ukraine soon so this is very handy for planning purposes.

Thanks lots!

Thanks for your responses.

Swisshiker - The years you mention are close to when my grandparents emigrated from Belarussia. We probably are at least cousins!

We bought the Flip video camera jsut before the trip. We only took a bunch of short videos. I think the quality of the videos look pretty good. The camera was not expensive ($99), it is very easy to operate, and it is very small. There are only three controls: 1) camera on/off switch
2) video picture on/off switch 3) zoom. The downside is that the zoom is only 2X the non-zoom. The downside is that it does nothing fancy but I think it is a good value.

We have added a few pictures and a short video to the blog.