In 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, I was 13. I had just begun to become familiar with names other than America, England, France, Australia and the likes. Now there were 16 new countries to become familiar with. Our weekly geography quiz predictably asked us to list down all the new countries. I don’t recall anyone could. But 34 years since, I can claim to know all their names.

A year earlier, Yugoslavia had split into 6 countries. Countries were emerging from behind the iron curtain. Countries about which I knew nothing. I had never met anyone who had traveled to these countries, not eaten or seen anything from these countries, not heard of any famous personalities. This was the beginning of my interest in the unknown.

To be honest, I did know a few things. Thanks to cultural exchanges between India and the Soviet Union, books translated from Russian language were available for cheap at book fairs in Delhi. These books taught us about the 1917 revolution and how a just society was being built. For me, revolution and freedom struggle were synonymous, and since there wasn’t any colonial power occupying Russia, I couldn’t really understand at that time what the Russians were revolting against.

Years went by and I got more and more inquisitive about these countries. I started seeing their athletes in the Olympic Games. They all looked very lean and disciplined. They won a lot of medals. They spoke very little. None of them spoke English. When they did speak in their own language, I could not understand a word, unlike, say in French or Italian, were you could catch something familiar. They were serious and mysterious. I had an urge to travel to these countries.

My first encounter with one of these ex-Communist bloc countries was in 2015 when I traveled to the (now very non-communist) Czech Republic. Despite having made very capitalist strides, the country was visibly different from Germany and Austria, the two other countries I visited during the same trip. People were indeed more serious looking and communist era buildings still existed in large numbers. I earmarked more such countries for future travels. In 2016 I visited Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. In 2025 I visited Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I will try to write about my experiences in another post.