Hi Everybody! Croatia is a beautiful country that sits on the side of a mountain by the blue waters of the Adriatic Sea. The coast is rocky with an occasional narrow beach. Most of the beach is covered with small rocks. The scenery is spectacular and reminded me of Italy. As a little background, I would like to remind you that Croatia was attacked early in the morning in October 1991 by the Yugoslav Army- mostly Serbs. Croatia had declared its independence from Yugolavia a few months before this happened. The citizens took shelter in the city's ancient walled fort and [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! We drove over a twisting, mountain road to get to Bosnia Herzegovina. Not long after we crossed the border, we started seeing bombed out houses. We rode by the Neretva River passing many fields of grapes. Our destination was Mostar, a city situated at the base of a mountain range. This city has a thriving Muslim community and a large Catholic community. Over half of the buildings had bullet and shrapnel holes. Some buildings were just a shell, others had collapsed roofs, and others had the doors and windows shot out. A large Catholic church downtown had hundreds of [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! We took our first plane flight from Belgrade to Tivar, Montenegro. Three times, we were at our gate ready to leave when the police came in and cleared the waiting room. We never understood what the problem was. Montenegro's scenery was different from any that we have previously seen in this part of the country. It has majestic mountains that come straight down to the Adriatic Sea. Judging from the nice yatchs, it must be a favorite haunt for the weathly. We drove to Budva, a seaside town for lunch and found it very crowded. The food had a [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! Walt and I have just returned to Belgrade from Romania. We had a fascinating adventure! Just getting there was very difficult! We took a bus from Belgrade to the bus station near the border. At that point, we had to get a taxi and were able to do that by Walt speaking German to the bus driver. He understood enough to tell the taxi driver where to take us. The bus and the taxi were not allowed into Romania. The driver took us as far as to the Serbian checkpoint. We walked from there to the Romanian border - [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! Yesterday, we took a train ride from Sofia, Bulgaria to Belgrade, Serbia. We covered 200 miles in 11 hours on a train that had no air-conditioning. We bought the best available first class tickets which meant that we had white satin covers on our headrests. We did have assigned seats but no one seemed to pay attention to that. The train ride was long and hot! The good part was that we made a couple of excellent friends. One was a University student returning home to Belgrade from a 45 day trip to the Middle East. His name was [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! I am having to play catch up with the blog, because we have not had internet access for several days. I know the travelblog alerts are probably irritating to some of you. Just delete the reminders or hit unsubscribe if it fills up your mailbox. To get to Sofia, we had to ride the bus back to Skopje, Macedonia. We caught another bus there for Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. The road to Sofia was extremely bumpy. All of our muscles ached by the time we arrived. Most of the population in Sofia is made up of Orthodox members. [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! When you are in this part of the world, you have to do what the natives do. We have lots of places that we want to visit. The problem is that it is difficult to travel between them. We have been to many travel agencies trying to get airline tickets. They either tell us that they are not available, they don't book plane tickets, or some other reason. The rental car is out for various reasons. That leaves the unairconditioned train which is often very slow or the sometimes crowded bus. The bus has to stop at the border [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! I am using a strange keyboard that has y and z switched. Try to overlook that if I have spelling errors with those letters. I also cant use an apostrophe or quotation marks. Walt and I walked over the Old Stone Bridge and explored the Ottoman section of Skopje. A young couple was exiting the Orthodox Church after getting married. Two musicians serenaded them as they left the church. The Kale Fortress overlooks this section of town. Only3 of its original 70 towers remain. This city is 2000 years old and has suffered many floods and earthquakes. When buildings [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! We spent Saturday afternooon exploring Thessaloniki. We went to the Roman Forum, Paradisos Bath ruins, the Arch of Galerius, the White Tower, several Orthodox churches. We went through a park and I saw a woman jumping rope, my favorite exercise. I tried to communicate with her and found out that she was from Afghanistan. Today has been great! We caught an early train from Thessaloniki to the capital of Macedonia, Skopje. We had a cabin with 6 seats that we shared with a super, nice guy - Chad. He is working for a contractor in Kosovo. Our trip flew [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everybody! We boarded our bus to Thessaloniki Friday morning at 5:30 A.M. It took us eleven long hours to reach our destination from Tirana, Albania. The bus was a modern tour bus. All the other passengers were natives of the two countries. We were able to talk at length with a young man who had recently graduated from the University in Albania. Other natives who could not speak English, still tried to help us by showing us what to do at the border with passports, luggage checks, etc. We drove through a beautiful, green valley with lots of orchards (apple, [View Full Entry]

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