15

pff. There are tonnes of itineraries on the Western European branch that include Prague, and Warsaw, Krakow and Budapest also how up frequently. Bratislava gets lots of mentions in threads related to Vienna.

And there are tonnes of people who combine Greece and Turkey.
There will always be travel across 'branch borders' no matter what you say.

My proposal is simple: don't add a branch, but change the branch name back to the original one: Central and Eastern Europe.
yes, that doesn't mention he Caucasus but few people would put the Caucasus in the Middle East or Central Asia. It leaves Turkey unmentioned, but that is no change from where we are now. And leave Greece were it is, which, frankly, is ridiculous as geographically, culturally, historically and culinary, it has everything in common with the Balkans and Turkey and very little with France and Spain. But that's a compromise I am willing to make.

Exactly. Isn't travel supposed to be about broadening the mind rather than reinforcing old stereotypes?

I will put the proposal on the main board.

16

CEA should read CEE (Central & Eastern Europe). Sorry, typo on my side.
Russia and stans as a separate branch. Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and Caucasian republics to CEE branch.
Turkey IS part of the Middle East. Who and why did fight to leave it? (I know some Turks want so much to be Europe, but they're not).

17

Not sure who fought for this but you might try searching for the discussion. There was lots of "research" regarding where people going to Turkey were traveling from/to and basically in was almost always either the Caucasus or the Balkans.

Most of the people who were regulars on this branch did not want Turkey added and they argued against it stating that it would "crowd" an already large branch.

Ruth

18

Fieldgate, in terms of splitting up the branch- i think i'm just being realistic thinking thsi won;t happen. I agree that Russia is a large place and canada has its own branch too but it's not that simple.

If you look at the number of posts, the whole current EE&C branch has about the same posts as the Thailand (one country!) branch, and about 30% fewer than the WE branch.

Sure, there are countries with and even lower post count but for some of these, they are distinct destinations that are not often combined (Caribbean for example).

Given that it will be hard to agree on a subdivision (Where does Turkey go? Georgia? IS Slovenia Central Europe or Balkans) I don;t think it's achievable to make that change.

19

MTL,
Rusia could be combined with Central Asia, where there are all the "stans", and all, except Afganistan, are former USSR, ie. Russian speaking. That's what I already proposed.
Georgia and Slovenia are both Europe, they'd go into C&EE, along with Balkans.
Turkey, as said before, to Middle East, where it belongs by definition.

Basically, such a change would be about renaming EE branch to C&EE, and moving Russia and Turkey to other, already existing branches. That would be more logical and correct in geographical sense.

20

MTL,
Is your thread(poll) removed?
I'm feeling embarassed. Mattoni and Pizwat, what did you think?
Let's take maths for geography. 2+2 =4 and 2+2 = 5 is okay too?

21

Fieldgate, I would leave everything as it is for very simple reasons. The purpose of TT is to give and receive travel advice. As long as there is no massive misleading of users, any division is good. I can't think of many cases where users have been misled by the current name of the branch. So why change it when it serves its purpose?

I still myself divide Europe into Western and Eastern Europe and many people do so as well without any further implications. People tend to use easy divisions and the current one is easy.

22

As I recall one of the reasons for removing Central from the title was confusion because of an expectation that Central Europe included Germany and Austria which are not on this branch. If you add back Central to the title, I would anticipate seeing more posts about Germany and Austria that would need to be moved.

Ruth

23

The current division may be political, but it is convenient if you want to split europe into two branches.

I agree that a branch which has central europe in its title should include germany and austria. A separate branch could have advantages though as a lot of people do the Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest thing.

24

Hi Fieldgate - As other have pointed out, any division has some practical problems. Last week I probably would have voted to add "Central." Reading this thread, however, made me see value in keeping "Eastern Europe" as an irritant which keeps discussion alive, even if it's infrequent.