This description is that of the Hard Cover (Pictorial).ISBN 978-0297-84449-5 This book, like the other books that Michael Palin wrote following each of his seven trips for the BBC, consists both of his text and of many photographs to illustrate the trip.

All of the pictures in this book were taken by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was part of the team who did the trip.

The book contains 21 chapters: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad/Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Germany.

Recurring themes in the book include the question of how the citizens of these countries compare the current situation with the Communist years and the expectations these people have of the future and the enlarged European Union.

Most strikingly, he refers to the Estonian language as being made up of thousands of "characters", when it is in fact written in the Latin script.