Short but sweet is how I would describe my second visit to Belgrade. I basically ate my favourite dish found in Serbia to date - Karadordeva snicla, went on a pubcrawl and left. I was put up by a friend of a friend that I had met the year before and was again blown away by Serbian hospitality and friendliness. I would have loved to have stayed longer in Belgrade, but time was pressing and I was en route to Novi Sad where I was to meet a friend made in Montenegro.... read more

Considering that I was travelling through Eastern-Europe in the middle of winter, I should really be quite grateful that it wasn't until I arrived in Sarajevo that I actually had to deal with snow. Luckily the snow on the main streets of Sarajevo wasn't that high and my lack of preparation for winter conditions in the middle of winter, wasn't to catch me out too badly... The two main things that I remember from my trip to Sarajevo are the magical old town and walking accross the bridge where WW1 is said to have been triggered after, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie the Duchess of Hohenberg were assassinated on it. Another city with a few series of books worth of history to read up on - the evidence of its recent bloody ... read more

. Kosovo - Pristina It took longer than anticipated to get to Pristina, so by the time I got there it was well after nightfall. Back on my own again and completely without my bearings, I opted to take a taxi to get to the hostel/hotel I had found on the internet. I checked in to the hotel, where I talked to the owner for a bit about Kosovo and its politics. He was Albanian/muslim and it was interesting to hear his perspective as I had previously only talked to Serbians about what went on there. Needless to say his perspective was different to the Serbian perspectives I had heard which all differed from one another in themselves and all of the perspectives put together varied from the perspectives that I had been exposed to via ... read more

Tirana Albania's capital, we arrived at Tirana at 3am as this was the only time we could arrive, with the only bus scheduled from Skopje to Tirana being scheduled with an arrival time of 3am - while I couldn't figure out the logic of it at the time, I imagine it has something to do with the border crossing. Once there, we set off to find our next hostel, but as it was 3am, we didn't have much luck, with the first hostel we had jotted down shut for the night and the second one unfindable. With a lot of what seemed like shady characters cruising around in very expensive cars, stray dogs menacing the streets and rough looking people about, our nerve held out until the point where a car pulled up next to us ... read more

Skopje I arrived in Skopje at around 11pm. I had written down where I was supposed to go, but had managed to loose the piece of paper. This turned out to be a big problem as the bus station didn't have any internet cafes. Eventually I managed to find a tourist agency with internet and managed to convince the reluctant and wary worker to let me use her internet, after our attempt at oral communication had failed. So I scribbled down the address again and then after failing in my attempt to find the hostel on foot, I hailed down a taxi driver who accepted the one or two remaining euros I had, even though it is not the currency in Macedonia. This only got me a skip, hop and a jump from the hostel however ... read more

Thessaloniki Originally I had planned to spend some time in Thessaloniki . As it happened, on one hour's sleep, I found myself in a mad scramble to get to there from Athens in order to try to get the last train to Skopje, my new year's destination and where I was to meet my friend Andrew who had made his way there from Sophia, Bulgaria. I was completely hung over and I really don't know how I did it, but I managed to get to -Thessaloniki somehow. Despite the fact all the trains were booked for the day and hence untakeable with security monitoring possible overloading overloaders, and inspite of the fact that it took me an hour and a half to find the magical bus stop in the middle of loonyland that was to be ... read more

... Temple of Poseidon The temple for the god of the sea and everything in it is situated in a pretty idylic spot. I spent two days trying to get to Poseidon. The first time with an American girl, failed, we ended up spending half the day on local buses going around in circles. As fate would have it, there was a second time a few days later when I was supposed to go there with a crew of 4-5 people I had met. Unfortunately the ordeal of changing my travellers cheque in Athens lasted approximately 3 and a half hours. The last time I will use a travellers cheque while travelling, I hope. So I missed being at the departure point at the time we had organised. I decided to go anyway and finally I ... read more