Belgrade: Bad Boy of the Balkans

I had a cold, my second on this trip, so I didn't go out on Friday night. Besides, I was at a crappy hostel that doesn't have a common room to hang out in which has the effect of scattering people and failing to create group outings to bars at night. It's a big failing of that place. So I just slept and in the morning I went out to explore the town a bit more.

Like I mentioned earlier, there's a film festival in town so I bought a ticket to see some random film from Turkey called Kosmos. I didn't really care for it but some of the other backpackers that I knew were going so it seemed like the thing to do. The rest of the day was spent pursuing Mexican food and coffee made with a filter. I failed on that last attempt.

The plan was to stay in that terrible hostel in Sarajevo for one night and then to take the train to Belgrade... well that didn't work out so smoothly because I foolishly trusted the train schedule in my Lonely Planet book instead of just asking a local when the train leaves. That just meant that it took me an extra day to get out of Sarajevo but that's not such a big deal I guess. I went to the train station and found out that there is no night train after all, so instead I bought a ticket for the morning, had a dinner of nothing but blueberries, and went out for live music and beers with a couple other backpackers.

In the morning I got out to the train station prepared for a terrible trip. The train left at 11:35 and was due to take 8 or 9 hours. It was a little confusing where to sit, but I asked a couple girls where on my ticket is specified the seat and they invited me just to sit with them. Their names are Femke and Suzane and they're grad students from Amsterdam. We talked about byzantine history, music, dutch culture, our respective trips, Los Angeles, and many other subjects. I played some songs, we all played Uno, and the time flew right by. Also, a nice Serbian guy joined us for the last hour and he had some things to tell us about his city. Finally we reached Belgrade quite late at night. We exchanged phone numbers and set off to our different hostels.

The hostel that I checked into, Manga Hostel, is a truly great one. It's super clean, has several different common rooms and a garden to relax in, and very comfy beds for $18 a night. I didn't get too much sleep on the train or the night before so I got some sleep and saved meeting people for the next day. In the morning I sent a text to to Femke and met them to tour the city for a day before they headed off to Budapest the next day. They're on a short trip.

First we wandered around the Kalemegdan Citadel, an old old fortress that was last updated by the Ottomans and now is mostly used as a tree filled park. There's a stone tower near there that was used as a torture chamber that's probably worth visiting but I'll have to visit it later. We walked through the busy streets downtown, I bought a pin with Milosovich's face on it, and we had lunch in a cute bohemian neighborhood.

We drank a lot of coffee, mostly good stuff surprisingly, and we also saw a government building that NATO hit with a missile in '99. I think that they're keeping it as a memorial to show the West's agression or some such business. Other than that, Belgrade is an exceptionally beautiful city. Definitely the second best of the trip after Istanbul. I'll cover it more in the next post.

The evening was pretty swell too. We supped at a tapas bar with a couple of guitarists doing Clapton and Dire Straights covers. Later on we went to a kareoke bar with a crew of people from my hostel. The music was mostly Serbian but some of the guys did some excellent performances of more mainstream music. The real problem with the place was its oppresive smoke, warmish beer, and countless underage Serbian girls. The Dutch girls went home to their hostel and I hit the hay. I had fun with them... good conversationalists. Maybe some day I can visit Amsterdam and get shown around by my new friends.

The next day was to be a slow one. I sat around uploading photos, eating pizza, writing this, and watching bad movies with other backpackers. I think that I'll hit some museums tomorrow.

Hot Days in Bosnia

It's been so hot for the last week that I haven't been able to get up the will to seat myself at a desk and type away on my hot little netbook and update this blog. Yea, I suck.... but I'm not getting paid for this so lay off! No worries.

Sarajevo was a hot and happening place. The hostel that Emily and I had checked into was a pretty busy one high up on a hill overlooking the city below. This meant that any trip into town would conclude with a grueling hike back home. This sort of thing is best tolerated at night since it was a bit humid and in the low 90s during the day. To that end, I tried to go out as little as possible during the day... just to get lunch at some vegan restaurants with Emily or to get a haircut. They did a great job on the hair considering I only had to pay $3.50.

The hostel runs a tour of the city that covers a lot of the history of the recent war here between Serbia and Bosnia but I wasn't up early enough in the day to do the tour and then it wasn't offered again until after I had to leave to go to Mostar. Still, I did get a general feel for what happened. Basically, the city was besieged for several years by Serbia that indiscriminately shelled it from atop a mountain ridge and the city was pretty well terrorized by the snipers too. The Bosnians built a tunnel to bring in food and evacuate people and it worked reasonably well. Today the city is lively with many new buildings and just a few covered in bullet holes.

I got to do some clubbing on the first evening there. I took a Adderall that night since I had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before. Adderall is a very mild amphetamine that's given to people with ADD or some such thing and it really just keeps you awake and gives you the strength to drink beer in great quantity. Other than that you don't really feel it so much but I think that I need it to keep up with these Europeans. It's in their culture to go to bars and clubs at 1 and then dance till 4 or 5 am. I can do it sometimes but they're champions at it. My favorite bar that we went to had a live brass band and played some Bosnian songs that everyone else knew to sing along to.

After a couple days Emily and I left to go to Mostar, close to the Croatian border and theoretically to the sea. It's much lower elevation there and not so many trees grow on those hot and rocky hills. Actually, I found out that it's the hottest (temperature) city in Europe and it did not disappoint. It was at least 100 degrees every day and AC was very difficult to find. We got a hostel called Maida's and naturally that woman ran it. Her brother, Bata, runs a famous tour of the area and there's usually a 4 day waiting list to get onto it so we signed up right away.

They actually run two hostels in town... one of them is in an old apartment building and feels like a college dorm suite with a small common room an kitchen. It's always hot as hell in there and the walls are covered with drawings that backpackers made in praise of the place. After one night there we were moved to their other hostel that's much better. It's more of a house with several rooms and bathrooms connecting to a small open air garden with seating overlooking the river. One of the rooms even has an AC unit that doesn't need a remote to turn on so whenever Maida wasn't there we'd turn it on and relax for a while until that wretched woman would come back and shout at us again. While she wasn't there however I had a very pleasant time reading, watching movies, and practicing a new song for the uke.

There were many backpackers there and I made friends with a good lot of them. Some more memorable ones included Nick from Virginia who's recently retired from a 2 year stint with the Peace Corps in West Africa. I've heard a lot of different accounts of their mission, but he said that ultimately their purpose is to pay Americans to leave the country, to introduce our culture as an example to others, and to learn their lessons and take them home. The day to day activity seems to be volunteer work that some local person could be paid to do otherwise. I guess that it's important to spread our ideals because a lot of them are unique and worth sharing... like ethnic tolerance, women's rights, motivation to work, environmentalism, and population control. Other parts of the world have a lot to teach America on the subjects of respect for elders, generosity to travelers and hitchhikers, pedestrian commutes, cooking, the metric system, and hosteling. All worthy subjects that we suck at.

I also got to hear from a lot of backpackers coming from Croatia about the state of the trail. I was planning on heading that way to get to Hungary but the other travelers said that since it's high season, it's necessary to book everything a week in advance, its very expensive now, and things are generally too busy. It doesn't sound like a place to lay low for a while and the buses there are supposed to be very pricey so I've decided to turn inland and to go to Serbia and then north to Hungary. I'm gonna spend a while in Belgrade soon and I can't wait. Anyways, back to Mostar.

Mostar is famous for being hot, and it's also famous for it's very scenic old bridge in the middle of downtown. The bridge was built in the 15th century by the Turks when they conquered the area shortly after taking Istanbul from the Byzantines. Actually, the bridge was blown up by the Croatians in the 90s when they had a war with Bosnia but the locals have since rebuilt it in the classical style that they've always known. The war between Bosnia and Croatia was a really nasty one... they always are in the Balkans since every ethnicity is always bent on murdering all the others at the first chance. Sick people.

A lot of the buildings in Mostar are still shelled out wrecks and the tallest building in the city is a vacant wreck called the Sniper's Nest. It's located right on the street that divided the Bosnian and Croatian forces and is now a place for backpackers to climb around on and for people to steal scrap metal from. The rest of the downtown area is pretty cute and all made of rough cut stone with slippery cobblestone roads. The stones are all several inches apart which makes them pretty awkward and painful to traverse on sandals but they're also supposed to prevent your feet from getting too hot. Ive never needed a foot rub more in my life than after a few days here.

I took the hostel's tour of the area with this crazy guy named Bata who lived in Sweden during the war as a refugee and speaks pretty good English. He's a lively guy and a very entertaining guide though a very dangerous driver. The first place we went was to was a burek store that makes them in the traditional way. Burek is basically a spanakopita (a Greek thing) or a pastry make of thin layers of dough, filled with meat or cheese, and then baked in a dutch oven. They're really damn good and about the cheapest food you can get since you can fill up on $1. We also got a good driving tour of town in Bata's pimped out van. Half the people sit on unsteady Ikea stools and he disabled the AC to make the trip more 'extreme'. He also has a disco ball, colored lights, and a huge stereo to abuse us with.

The next stop was some waterfalls for a little swimming, which is a great idea when you're dying of heat exhaustion. The waterfalls were huge and covered a wide area like Niagara though more manageable. He led us through various caves under them, made us swim under the falling water, and jump from various high places. It was quite extreme and a little dangerous, honestly. There were also rope swings and finally a 8 meter jump into the river off a cliff. I did it, but only a couple others in our group of 14 had it in them. Oh well.

After this we visited an old Turkish fort overlooking another river and guarding an important trade route. The fort was super pretty and we stopped in at the home of an old lady who gave us various strange homemade refreshments (elderflower, mintflower, and pomegranate extract sodas) and Bosnian coffee which is just like every other awful coffee in this part of the world but you're supposed to slurp it to be polite. The rest of the tour wasn't so interesting but we got back at midnight and were each handed a 2 liter bottle of cold beer. I was too tired to drink it so I just went to bed... wimpy.

The next day it was time to go. I'd been hanging out at the hostel for 4 days... swimming in the cold river and the heating up in the baking sun, but I wanted to escape the hear by going to the mountains in Northern Bosnia. This was my way of heading East towards Serbia since I wasn't going to Croatia anymore. I got a very delayed bus up there and checked into a small hotel since the tiny town has no hostels.

The town is called Jajce (pronounced ee-ah-say sort of) and it was once a very important castle town that the Bosnian kings would go to get crowned at. Today it's a town of 30k, though more likely 15k since the entire population evacuated during the war and most never returned. I spent the night and the next morning set about exploring the castle. It's pretty small and not so noteworthy. The town also has some old crypts, a renovated classic house, and a small roman shrine to visit but you have to find the person with the keys to each one of them. That part took some time, but cooling off in the crypts from the warm day was a welcome treat.

Nothing really happened in town that night since it's clearly designed to be a local tourist attraction with no tourists in sight, save me. Also things were quite because the day before a local woman died the night of her wedding and the town was in mourning. So sad.

I also went to the town of Travnik the next day. It's supposed to have a spooky castle but I found it to be really small, not so spooky, though fun to climb around. I also explored the city streets at night when the sun wasn't bothering me any longer. This was all getting very dull so I was determined to get back to Sarajevo so that I could get on with the trip out to Belgrade asap which is about 10 hours away by bus. Sounds like a blast.

So, today I made it back to Sarajevo though I didn't get a good hostel since there's a film festival in town and lots of people are staying for the end when Morgan Freeman is going to talk about his movie, Invictus. It is a Friday night though so maybe I'll go out and then hit the road the next day... or the day after. I'm not so good at getting things done as you can tell by the diminishing frequency of my blog posts.

Great Indoors of Kosovo

I haven't really been going out so much since I got to Ohrid. There's just one hostel in town and the weather has been bad so people just spend most of the day laying about on the balcony, TV room, and in the back yard. There are actually a lot of churches, old historical sites, beaches to see, and free bicycles to ride around on but we spent most all our time playing cards and chatting.

One of the days I went to the beach with my friend Emily that I met at the hostel. It was kinda cold and the 'beach' was made of pretty rough rocks but it felt good to lay out in the sun for a good long time. Emily has been backpacking around the Balkans for a long time now and seems to love the area. She's currently traveling with a young girl, Saranda, who is an American Albanian visiting her family in Albania and touring around the region. She's a nice girl but a little inexperienced so it's good that she found Emily to be her travel partner for a while. Saranda is fluent in Albanian and proves a useful if somewhat reluctant translator.

Every night we'd go out to tour the many bars and midnight eateries. One of the nights a group of 6 of us were seated for a lakeside table at 1:45 am, by far the latest that I've ever seen a tourist restaurant operating. One of the others in the group that I hadn't mentioned is a cool Irish guy named Ian. He's been traveling for more than a year and a half so far and did a little work in some places to kill the time. Recently he visited India and he's carrying several cases of silver and turquoise rings that he bought there. He gave one of them to Emily as a present; how nice of him!

The restaurants in Ohrid all serve traditional Macedonian food of course. I probably already talked about this in the last post, but I ate so many bacon wrapped chicken kebabs that I actually managed to get sick of them in 3 days. I thought it would be impossible. Most of the salads that came with the food seemed pretty Russian in style, though there is some good German potato salad available. I was with a couple vegetarians and they were having some huge difficulty finding anything more than cheese and tomatoes to eat, but hey, too bad for them. Most veggies that I've met put that side of them on vacation until they get home.

So anyways, I was having a perfectly lovely time at the hostel but then after a long long night of drinking I was convinced by Emily and her friend Saranda that we ought to travel to Pristina Kosovo together to see Snoop Dogg perform the next night. Also, they knew some local people that we could stay with and would show us around the city. Emily is supernaturally outgoing and tends to know a lot of locals everywhere. It's her dream to start a hostel in Pristina next year. Early the next morning, after 3 hours of sleep, we got on our way and didn't get to Pristina until 8 pm after a series of minor mishaps.

We got picked up by Emily's friend Noli and his gf Lydra. They're in their early 30s and have some sort of career assisting international peacekeepers in and around Kosovo. I hear that they got their start as translators for the international monitors that came into Kosovo before the west started bombing the shit out of Serbia in the late 90s. These so called 'monitors' were really special opps agents of various countries that gave assistance to the Albanian guerrillas and marked targets for the future. Here's the short version of what happened.

From after WWII to the early 90s, there was a country called Yugoslavia and covered most all of the western Balkans: Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Macedonia. The Serbians were the ones with the most power and guns in Yugoslavia so when Western style ethnic nationalism became powerful enough that the union started to fall apart, Serbia attacked pretty much everyone. They really blew the hell out of Kosovo because despite being part of Yugoslavia, it's mostly Albanian people living there and the communist country of Albania had recently collapsed into anarchy. Hundreds of thousands of people died fighting and there were many massacres of various groups before Bill Clinton decided to stop waiting on the European community and to bomb the shit out of Serbia with 75 days of air raids. Serbia surrendered but still claims Kosovo as part of it's territory though most of the world recognizes it as a separate country. This history made Clinton (and America) the heroes of the Albanian people and there are many many things named after him here. I think that he did the right thing, but I haven't heard much of the Serbian argument. From what I hear, the country is in denial over it's horrific war crimes, and actively lionizes the wort kind of people, like this unbelievable a-hole.

We did make it to the Snoop Dogg concert that night just in time to hear him take the stage but we could not get in. There were no more tickets for sale and Emily's friend in the police arrived too late to escort us inside himself. Oh well, we caught some of it on the news a day later. The next day and the day after were pretty much on the same schedule. We'd wake up at noon, get something to eat at 3, and then drink and chat until 4 am in that cramped little apartment. Not too inspiring but fun. I don't really have too much to say about this period of time other than that I felt a little sick all the time and I'm glad that I'm carrying a deck of Uno cards.

Finally, it was time to go from this very non-beautiful city. Saranda needed to part ways to go off and do things with her family. Emily wanted to go to Mostar in Bosnia to see this gem of a city. I didn't really have any plans in particular but I opted to head on towards Mostar with Emily. It would be skipping some of the sited in Albania and Serbia but who cares? I can't see everything and it would put me in a good place to part ways and explore Croatia on my own afterwards. Unfortunately the only way to get to Mostar was to visit Sarajevo Bosnia first and there were issues crossing the Serbian border so we had to travel through the night for 20 hours. It kinda sucked actually. We checked into a big and busy hostel here in Sarajevo and we'll get to making new friends immediately. She's probably going to want to move on sooner than me so I think we'll part here.

Winging it in Macedonia

That play that I went to in Delphi was a bust. I can't figure out what it was called even though I still have the flier, and it was all in Greek so I couldn't understand at all what was going on. The show got a lot of laughs, seemed to be acted well, and had good costumes but otherwise it was totally inaccessible to me. I didn't even get to sit near anyone who spoke English and could explain it to me. The next morning, while looking for the bus, I actually ran into the Actor that invited to the play and I didn't have anything but praise for him at the time but I probably should have asked him what the heck the name of the show was. I was in a hurry I guess.

Anyways, I was happy to get out of the town. I'd taken almost all my meals at this tiny gyro shop that all the locals ate at, and spent a lot of time talking with one of the cooks there who is an Albanian immigrant. He was a friendly guy, but since I came so often he started giving me free Ouzo with my meals, but he's pour them larger and larger. I just can't turn down a free drink. At my last meal, he poured five fingers of the stuff, warm, and then put a couple ice cubes in it. I choked it down and never came back, but he was a nice guy. Wish I remembered his name.

It was a pretty miserable series of bus rides that got me out of Delphi and on to Thessaloníki. At one of the places where I had to change buses, I bought the ticket and then saw it pull away as I was paying for lunch. It was another 3 hours until the next bus departed. I got there very late at night, got the cheapest hotel I could, and the next day I got a train ticket to take me to Macedonia that night. Not a very eventful day, but I had some good company on the train.

I met a Macedonian guy named Alexander (Alexander the Great was from Macedonia) and he told me all about his homeland. The ancient Macedonians were ethnically Greek, though the classical Greeks thought that they were barbarians because they didn't live in great cities. Later on the area was important to the Romans because the Via Egnita road, which connected Rome with Byzantium, ran through Macedonia and Thessaloníki. The 7th century saw a wave of Slavic peoples move down from the North and settle in the area. This started 14 centuries of hostilities with Greece that still simmer today. After Roman occupation Macedonia had a brief independent time and was later conquered by the Byzantines and then the Ottomans. In more recent times, the history gets more complicated as the many ethnic groups here fought for control, but basically there have been many shifting national boundaries here for the last hundred years until most of the Balkans became part of communist Yugoslavia after WWII. In 1992 Macedonia declared full independence as Yugoslavia fell apart and various ethnic wars were waged, though not much fighting went on here. The country has seen a lot of political struggle, poverty, and ethnic rivalry since then, but it's been mostly good times.

Alexander also talked about the great wine here (I've read that it's some of the best in the world), and about the struggles with Greece. Besides the age old ethnic rivalry with Greece, the Greeks dislike the use of the name Macedonia. The country of Macedonia comprises a very small portion of classical Macedonia and is ethnically Slavic so there's really nothing in common with Alexander the Great's Macedonia. Making things worse, the country of Macedonia used Alexander's royal crest as their first flag which really pissed off Greece.

At the end of the Train ride I parted ways with Alexander and made my way to my hostel in the heart of Skopja, the capital of Macedonia. The hostel was great... with a big kitchen, living room, seating areas in the garden, and a host of young people to meet. I didn't see anything like this in Greece and apparently chill hostels like this are common in Eastern Europe. I met a couple Hungarian guys and agreed to tour the city with them the next day.

Their names are Peter and Ben. They're university students who live around/in Budapest, have the summer off, and share some interests with me. They're both into games (mostly DotA), and Peter's a programmer. I had a lot to talk with them about. They're also into awful apocalyptic settings for movies and enjoy a good beer. The first day with them we walked all over town though most things were closed on account of it being a Monday. Most museums are closed on Mondays here. I found a mall that sold me a copy of Lonely Planet's Eastern Balkans book. Also, I got to see some magic when Peter lost $20 to a game of Three Card Monty. It sure looked like he picked the right one, but no.

We also visited a very mediocre castle, the lackluster town square, and wandered streets lined with huge cement apartment buildings. Our best find was in the field of lunch. They have a lot of restaurants selling traditional Macedonian food, and it's all really cheap. The large good quality beers here run for $1.50 at a restaurant and a third of that at a shop. Most of the food seems to revolve around pickled veggies, fried potatoes, pork breakfast sausage, melted cheese, and wrapping things in bacon. I had a pork roll, filled with cheese, and wrapped in bacon. They got ground pork steaks, filled with cheese, and topped with more cheese. Between the grease and the beer, I left feeling satisfied... but too much so. A hallmark of a great lunch.

Later in the evening we went out to a bar for some live music and got to hear a pretty good cover band doing mostly american rock, like Kings of Leon, Nirvana, and Arctic Monkeys (yea, not American). They were great. Drank too much and went to bed.

The next day we went to the national art museum, a pretty small affair set inside an old mosque. The walls were freshly painted and they kept the cool brick ceilings with holes for sunlight to stream in. All the art was made my Macedonians and a lot of it was quite good I think.

After many discussions, I bought a concert ticket for next month in Budapest. Ben will be going and I'm going to tag along. The day after that Peter is arriving in town and the three of us will hang out and do who knows what. Oh, at the concert I'm gonna see Danko Jones, Billy Talent, Kasabien, and Muse. Awesome, I'm really excited to see Muse but I listen to the others quite a bit too. Peter and Ben had to leave late in the day to catch a train back home and then they're going to do some hiking in Romania next week.

I spent the rest of the evening talking with other travelers to get an idea of what they did and where they are going. Many of them are going to visit Pristina in Kosovo for a day or two before returning to Skopja. After that many are going to Serbia, some to Albania, and some to Greece. I think what I'd best do is head to Serbia and then see how I can best use my time until I need to meet the guys in Hungary in 5 weeks. I think in that time I can probably do Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, and maybe even Croatia. It's a small place, the Balkans. Anyways, before I can leave Macedonia I have to visit Lake Ohrid, the cultural heart of Macedonia.

So, the next day I caught a bus to Ohrid. It's a 4 hour ride through the mountains and forest. The land looks a lot like Virginia. Very green with thick forest and hilly. The hostel that I reached seems to be a good one, and the only in town. From what I hear, the locals are upset about the hostel because up till now backpackers used to rent rooms in homes from people that would pitch them from the bus station. You can still do that, it's half th price of the already cheap hostel, but the social life is not as good.

Last night at the hostel I went out with a group of travelers from Holland, Ireland, America, and Macedonia to do a little bar hopping. The first one had a great violin/flute/cello band covering Prodigy, James Bond, and Cold Play. After a few bars I got tired and went home at 3 am. Now today the weather is not so good and I'm mostly staying in. I could tour the town to see its many churches, castles, monasteries, and markets but I'm content relaxing and chatting the day away since it's kinda too cold for swimming. Last week I'd think that impossible. I'll tell you all about this positively beautiful town next time.