So, I’ve been back home for a few days, and after a lot of running around, I’ve finally gotten settled, enough so that I can sit down and think about the journey that I’ve just been on. I’ve been taking trips like this for a little while. What’s changed, what hasn’t, and what have I learned for the future?

Timing: This was probably the tightest trip in terms of timing since I was in Norway five years ago. With ten countries fitted into just over three weeks, some cities got no more than a single night at the expense of places like Berlin that got three. It wasn’t perfectly organised, and a fumble in miscounting the days meant that I ended up missing out Sofia altogether. Still, I quite liked the rhythm of having two days in a place: one to see the city itself, and one for a day trip to somewhere nearby. In some places where I stayed longer, time dragged a little more. That might be something to remember for the future. (Bear in mind, that I’ve developed a dislike of sitting still in recent years. My pace of solo travel might not suit everyone else.)

Rail is the Way: I still love rail travel, and for this trip it took me all around Europe, with only two deviations – the boat trip down the Danube from Vienna to Bratislava and the bus trip from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo. The most expensive tickets were those in Poland and Germany, which I booked in advance, whereas the trips I took as I went further south and east were cheaper and usually booked at the station. There usually weren’t any problems finding space on overnight trains, and you get to meet all sorts of interesting people when you’re sharing a compartment. Though travellers at the peak of the high season would probably find things a little trickier than I did.

Luggage: I think I shaved things close to as minimal as I could on this trip, toting a medium-sized backpack instead of a full-sized rucksack. As it was, I needed to add a shoulder bag that allowed me to keep some daily essentials with me when I left the main bag behind for a few hours. Over the course of the whole trip, I only needed a single laundry day to keep me in clean clothes, so things went well on that front. The lack of luggage space did mean that I was restricted in bringing things back, but my usual collection of fridge magnets fitted nicely.

Accommodation: As in my last trip to Greece, I mixed B&Bs, hotels and hostels, booking them a day or two in advance on my phone. Again, it all worked out well, and the variety was one of the high points of the trip. Hostels are great for meeting people and having a space to chill out, whereas B&Bs and hotels can be cosier and offer some respite for your humble introvert and a decent shower. The last place I stayed in, the Hotel Cosmos in Chisinau, Moldova, was a former Soviet tower that had only patchily been updated to modern standards – just enough to be comfortable while keeping that weirdly appealing ’80s vibe of the original building.

Technology:  Once again, I relied on my iPhone alone. This worked as well as it did in Greece, if not better. Wifi has become completely ubiquitous – even in Moldova I never had any problem finding a place with a signal. This has both good and bad sides: booking accommodation remained easy, and TripAdvisor kept me informed about things worth seeing locally, but there’s no longer a lack of internet to provide a crutch to enable disconnection, if that’s what you’re looking for. You’ll have to rely on willpower alone, or escape to the sticks. Battery life can be an issue, albeit one that can be alleviated with planning. My external battery pack worked nicely, though I couldn’t charge it and the phone at the same time – a dual-port USB adapter might complete the travel kit.

Footwear: I might just have got the balance on this one right this time. I’ve always preferred a sturdy pair of shoes that you can wear both in the city and on the trail over a pair of boots that are only suited to the wilderness. Previously, I’d brought some flip-flops for sunnier weather but found them neither comfortable nor very useful. So this time I picked up a pair of sturdy sandals, which proved a fine backup for the shoes. And no, I didn’t wear them with socks (though if it was cold enough, I probably would).

History: I love digging into the history of places, which usually means museums, but most cities also express their history through their culture and architecture. Bucharest in Romania, with its wealth of gorgeous architecture, is completely different from Chisinau, capital of the neighbouring Moldova, which is Soviet almost everywhere you look. Yet both nations share a culture, and their histories and future are tied as tightly together as those of Ireland and Britain. To travel through so many different nations is to get a real feel of how the changing fortunes of history have affected them all in different ways. Common elements abound, like World War II and the Holocaust, but Serbia has its own experience of history both recent and distant, completely different from those of a nation like Poland. One frustration for me was the language support in museums – it got tougher to find English-language offerings the further south and east I went.

Travel Guides: Phone apps versus traditional books is the choice here. I managed to get an Eastern Europe Lonely Planet book that covered all my stops except Berlin and Vienna, but it had the twin problems of being bulky and a couple of years old. In the other corner, TripAdvisor allowed me to download city guides for major cities, but these had fairly basic navigation functions and didn’t cover minor destinations, such as Chisinau and Veliko Tarnovo. So neither option is perfect yet, though paper’s bulk and the fact that apps are updated suggests that a little more work on finding the best option on the latter front could be well worth it.

Exploration vs Checklist: The one big issue with this trip was that in fitting so many different destinations into only three weeks, there was a danger of turning it into a process of ticking boxes. Most of the cities I went to were capitals, and in many cases I didn’t have time to explore beyond the city limits. Still, there are always going to be limits to any holiday – you can never get to truly experience a place without living there. As long as I’m okay with missing out on some things, there’s nothing wrong with this way of travelling. And, as mentioned above, the two-day rhythm of city and day trip turned out to be a pretty good one.

Future Trips: My next holiday might not be in Europe, but I’ll be doing this again at some stage. Three holidays in particular suggest themselves – a European Fringe Tour from Finland south through the Baltic states and Belarus to Ukraine, a Balkans Tour starting in Venice and ending in Albania, and a Statelets Tour covering as many of the minor states and principalities as I can hit. If I can do all three of those, the only European nation I won’t have been to is Cyprus. And a weekend away in the sun should cover that. Checklisting, maybe, but as an excuse to dust off my travel shoes, it’s proved a pretty handy one to date.