I ran across this book the other day on Amazon, and the idea - traveling on foot from Gdansk to Istanbul in the early 1990's, as Eastern Europe started life after Communism - sounded intriguing. Plus I knew Goodwin from his Lords of the Horizons book about the Ottoman Empire. I was shocked to learn that he is precisely my age, which meant that while I was enduring Practice Court at Baylor he was skylarking through Eastern Europe on foot. Weenie.
Seriously, the hardships of walking three thousand miles apparently didn't make much of an impression on him, as he was interested in what there was to see and experience on the way. Personally, I was highly uncomfortable with the whole concept of spending months on the road on foot, and you have to wonder about a couple that think not washing their hair for four months is a positive development. But the writing is good, although a bit opaque as he uses what I think is a little slang, and doesn't always explain who people are when they enter the story. But he is a master of the colorful vignette, and it was interesting seeing how his writing style started in this, his second book.