LeahEric

We hop on our train to Urumqi, China, and are pleasantly surprised to find there is no one else in our cabin. We spread out our stuff, plug in the computer and spend the next 30 hours watching movies, sleeping, eating junk food and watching the desert out the window. On arriving in Urumqi we quickly realize we are now in China. Until now we haven’t really experienced any major culture shocks. Each country has seemed to have flowed quite nicely onto the next, but here everyone stares at you, anything you can imagine is being sold on the sidewalks and the streets are exceptionally crowded. We find the one hostel in the city. It´s nice enough but smells a lot like stale piss and nearly everyone happily spits on the floor, which I hear we ... read more

We have a nice and easy going flight from Tbilisi to Almaty. During our time on board we can see the Caspian Sea, the long never ending Kysylkum Desert and the remains of the Aral Lake. The distance is around 3000km and the flight only takes three and a half hours. Looking at the map it´s amusing to realize that we have just spent the last five months covering the same distance overland. Before arriving in Almaty we had found a Couch surfing host Veronica, a friendly Kazakh girl who actually grew up in Mexico, lived the last 10 years in Dubai and has come back to live where she originally comes from. She is living in a very impressive penthouse apartment with a lovely view of the lake, the mountains that surround Almaty and the ... read more

We thought the drama on the bus from Thesseloniki to Istanbul would be hard to top but we were unfortunately wrong. The bus drive from Istanbul to Tbilisi is very chaotic. We have no idea what the drama is about but there are a lot of people screaming at each other, a few tears and an intimidated attendee trying to keep the peace. We try to sleep but the man near us starts thrashing around violently. We jump up to help him, thinking he is having a heart attack but he eventually comes around and explains that he suffers from bad night terrors. He falls asleep again and during another episode his neighbour accidently gets a good punch in the face. The bus ride is supposed to take twenty five hours but ends up taking thirty ... read more

After many sad goodbyes we head off to find the bus that will be taking us from Thessaloniki to Istanbul, a 10 hour bus ride. We leave at 9pm expecting we will be able to sleep and wake up happily in what the Greeks still call Constantinople. Everyone seems to be full of energy on the bus, we hope they will settle down so we can get some sleep but when we arrive at the boarder at 2am everyone is still as energetic as ever. They all get off hurriedly and rush off to do some duty free shopping, getting back on with a lot of alcohol and cigarettes which they all trade to make sure they are not taking more then legally allowed. We give up on resting and arrive very sleepy in Istanbul at ... read more

We already had a woofing place organized for Greece starting on the 9th of may and seeing as it was only mid April we thought it would be good to find a place to go for a week in either Bulgaria or Serbia. We were conflicted between two places, a hippy hostel in Bulgaria or a family in Serbia. At the last minute the Bulgarian place cancelled so Serbia it would be! We asked about the easiest way to get to Belgrade from Timisoara and it seemed the only option would be a train that strangely went all the way back to Budapest before heading to Serbia. It seemed the only way would be to hitchhike. We had no trouble flagging down a car as there was a Ramstein gig that night in Belgrade and we ... read more