[Rick Lee]

I'm in Germany at the moment and the only other place I've been on your list is Prague and that was two wks. ago. I'd definitely save Scotland for last, since you don't want to be lugging all that Scotch around the whole trip and would likely have duty to to pay in Russia or any other non-EU country you're bringing more than 1 litre per person into.

I would not do Eurorail passes. You have plenty of water to cross on this trip and St. Petersburg is probably two days on a train from Germany. I don't know how much time you have, but flying and driving are the way to go here unless you have time to burn and don't mind living on a train and hauling everything around with you. I always get a rental car because I can leave all my stuff in it and only take the clothes I need into the hotel or wherever I'm staying. My wife did some shopping, is a pack rat prima donna and it was nice to not have to haul all that sheet into a hotel each night.

I haven't been on a train in the former USSR in 20 yrs., but back then it was a looooong ordeal. Those countries use a different track gauge than the rest of Europe, which means they have to change all the wheels on all the train cars at the border. While riding from Krakow to Kiev in 1992, that ordeal took 3-4 hrs. and then my friend and I were the only people on the train who needed a visa. So the guys with dogs and rifles took us off the train, made us leave our luggage there and escorted us to what looked like an interrogation room. Anyway, that stuff is fun after it's happened, not while it's happening. If you need to keep any kind of schedule, you need to fly and drive.