Along the Amber Route

Light, portable and high in value, amber is an ideal commodity for long-distance trade. An Amber Route, comparable to the Silk Road, ran from the Baltic to the Mediterranean for thousands of years. In Along the Amber Route, C.J. Schler follows this route by bus, train and boat for 2,500 kilometres along river valleys, forest paths and Roman roads. His journey traces both the greatest fault lines of European geopolitics and his own familys history. As he explores lands contested by Romans and Vandals, Teutons and Slavs, lost empires and the former Iron Curtain, Schler must also confront his own family history, Nazism and the Holocaust.