Walking your way around the world: more historic tourist trails

THE Iron Curtain, which divided the Communist bloc from the capitalist West for half a century and instilled fear into a generation of Europeans, is to be turned into a tourist trail.

Under a scheme suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet President, and being funded by the European Union, the Iron Curtain will become a 4,250-mile tourist trail for walkers and cyclists.

The EU hopes that the Iron Curtain Trail, likely to be the longest heritage trail in the world, will preserve the memory of Europe’s past and celebrate the Continent’s reunification with the enlargement of the Union last year.

Michael Cramer, a German MEP who is the driving force behind the proposal, said: “Only those who know the past will master the future, and for decades this continent was divided.

“Now we can have a ride in the history, culture and politics of Europe and we’ll master the future.”

The path will stretch from the coast of the Arctic Ocean, where Norway touches Russia, and slip down through the Arctic tundra of the Russian border with Finland. It will then skip through the former tsarist capital of St Petersburg and skirt around the Baltic coast of the former Soviet republics — now EU members — of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

The Baltic coastline was part of the front line of the Soviet empire, closed off to the public and controlled by watchtowers to stop people leaving or arriving by boat. The trail will then follow the Polish coast, plunge down the old border between eastern and western Germany, then circle around the Austrian border with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, all EU members.

It will then follow the border between the former Yugoslavia and Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, along the banks of the Danube for a while.

Although Yugoslavia and Albania were Communist countries, they were not part of the Soviet bloc and fought against Stalin, so they are on the Western side of the Iron Curtain. Finally, the Iron Curtain Trail will follow the border between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey before ending at the Black Sea.

Winston Churchill said half a century ago that an iron curtain had descended across Europe, as the Cold War froze relations between the former communist and capitalist allies after the defeat of Hitler in the Second World War.

Mr Gorbachev, whose reforms led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, suggested in the early 1990s that the Iron Curtain be preserved as a path and has more recently given presentations on it.

The Berlin Wall, which divided the German capital, has already been turned into the hundred-mile Berlin Wall Trail, and Herr Cramer, who is an MEP from Berlin, took up the challenge to extend this to European dimensions.

Much of the work is being done in patchwork fashion by EU member states, and many parks are being built along the route. Germany is turning the stretch of the Iron Curtain cutting through the country into an eco-trail. The Czech Republic is setting up trails along its border with Austria and Germany, and in Finland nongovernmental organisations are setting up the trail along the border with Russia. Throughout its course, the route tends to go through relatively empty countryside, much of it wooded, making it pleasant for walkers.

The EU aims to link the trail from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and to mark it out with signposts.

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