SUNDAY 16 AUGUST 2009 *PRISHTINA Up pretty early so nothing new there. The plan today was to basically wander around Prishtina and see what the city had to offer. Turns out on a Sunday - not much as all of the shops were closed. After orientating myself in town and working out some landmarks to work out how I could get back to the guest house later on; I wandered on past a few mosques (all of which were boarded up) before heading towards tourist information - which I am not sure actually ever existed; and if it does - certainly [View Full Entry]

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8 AUGUST 2009, SATURDAY Up bright and early again as my 24 hours in the car park was going to be up just after 9:30am so I had to get the car. I had decided to head west across in the direction of Liverpool so that is exactly what I did. I made a few stops along the way in the Peak District National Park as it was a lovely area. There were lots of little country ‘villages’ and winding roads. The scenery was definitely very green and helped by the fact that the sun was making an effort and that [View Full Entry]

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FRIDAY 31 JULY 2009 Slept through the flight back from Budapest - which arrived into Luton which I had obviously stuffed up on as I had organised to pick up the hire car from Gatwick. So I got the train all the way down from Luton to Gatwick - was peak hour so it was pretty packed - always interesting when you have a large backpack! Got to Gatwick at about 9am and by the time I got the car etc it was about 10am when I hit the road. Was a bit odd being back in a car again - [View Full Entry]

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THURSDAY 30 JULY Got up and made my way to the Zagreb train station for my 10am train. It was late and didn’t get there until closer to 11am. Boarded and sat in the wrong carriage and got told off by the ticket conductor - which was just as well as the back half of the train wasn’t going to Budapest. Ended up sharing a compartment with two Americans (from Georgia) who were interrailing through where you would expect - their next stop was Budapest before heading onto Vienna and eventually through to Paris and London. Seemed nice enough although young [View Full Entry]

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26 JULY 2009, SUNDAY Got up really early as there seems to be a shortage of shower and toilet facilities in this hostel (appears to be one shower between 12-18 people). I knew I had to check out at 10am so I basically headed straight to the ‘beach’ for an early swim before heading back to the hostel and packing my bags and checking out. When I say “beach” I mean rocks. I did some early morning sun bathing and ended up with indents all over my stomach - was kind of amusing!! Attempted on several occasions to go into the [View Full Entry]

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23 JULY 2009, THURSDAY Woke up incredibly early, well before my 7:30am alarm so had a shower and got some uni stuff in before people started waking up at around 9am. People slowly had showers and ate breakfast (the hostel people didn’t seem to understand that I didn’t want a cup of tea or coffee though!) I had agreed to do the ‘excursion’ which I was told the day before there were four other people doing it. Fair enough. Then the six Irish guys said they were going to do it and so I thought it would be a good sized [View Full Entry]

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21 JULY 2009, TUESDAY The rest of my room mates woke me up at 5am and 6am this morning thanks to what was obviously an early bus/ train. Made that much noise what with coming and going through the door constantly that I was about to scream!! By the time it got to 8am, I was up and showered. Left at around 8:45am and first stop was the office to pay for two nights accommodation. From there it was a bit of a walk to the west to visit a few museums. The first ‘sight’ outside of the Turkish old town [View Full Entry]

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19 JULY SUNDAY One thing I forgot to mention. Last night when we were wandering around trying to find the area of Skadarska (ie/ the bohemian quarter of Belgrade) and on one of our many returns to Republic Square to re-orientate ourselves, we stumbled across four ‘naked’ English ‘performers.’ Two couples. Essentially they had on naked suits - complete with genitals and everything. They were speaking in quite loud, very English accents are were clearly doing some sort of performance for something - although I am not really sure what. After just a few minutes they had [View Full Entry]

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17 July 2009, Friday Woke up very early this morning and showered and did some uni work. Packed my bag and hung around until 9am but when the hostel guy didn't show up I just left him a note to say I still had the key and my bags were there even though I had 'officially' checked out. As I hadn't had a whole lot of a chance yesterday to look around beyond the pedestrianised area downtown, my first stop was supposed to be Petrovaradin Citadel. As per the instructions in the guide book, I got the number three bus but [View Full Entry]

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15 JULY 2009 - WEDNESDAY Well, it’s the first day of my ‘big trip’ and already it is proving quite eventful. After spending a few days saying some ‘final’ farewells and packing and shipping my things back to Australia, it finally came time to leave my house in Tooting. Since my flight was at 16:45, I thought I would allow myself plenty of time and so left at 12:30. The first leg of my journey was the number 77 bus to Clapham Junction. I had gotten no more than about five stops before we could see just a short way ahead [View Full Entry]

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