When I got off the bus in Tel Aviv, I was greeted by my long-time travel buddy Micha (who I met in 2003 in Thailand) and his lovely fiancé Simone. They took me for a quick Israeli breakfast before meeting some of the rest of the Toronto crew. Micha is an orthopedic surgeon, and his friends are also underachievers. The wedding crew consisted of a brain surgeon, an urologist, a few docs in internal med, some medical students… the list goes on. The “Sharman, so what do you do question,” was a little easier since Micha had prepped them all that I was a professional traveler. Micha had organized a two day beach stay at place in a little cove north of Tel Aviv. Our rooms were right on the beach, and Micha’s sister and brother-in-law ... read more

So after a quick rip through Hamburg, I was back on the road to Berlin to meet up with my little buddy Eng – who managed to get a few days off to continue our European adventure. Reunion time with my little buddy Eng When we met at the metro station I was so excited. Eng not so much – she had an early flight from London and had been battling some serious insomnia since she left me in Turkey. (I think her body was in shock at our separation). We couldn’t check in to our hostel that early, so we went off in search of a second hand shop to find something exciting to wear to the Kit Kat Club that night. The club is where they filmed Cabaret with Liza Minnelli back in the ... read more

When I arrived at my hostel in Krakow, the lovely Anna working reception checked me in. Without even asking, she busted out a map showing me where the major museums and sights were, and set about telling me where I could get some good local food. She looks at me and says “have you hear about perogies?” My response… “Have you heard about celiac disease?” She looked at me with sympathy, but then figured out some other things I could eat. It hurt, but what was worse was going with three guys from the hostel to a 24 hour perogy house, finding out they were out of cabbage rolls (the only gluten free thing on the menu), and having to watch them down what looked like some good baba-made perogies. The boys walked to another place ... read more

So….. we sort of got stuck in Olympus. After getting over the first night in the bird explosion dorm at grungy Kadirs, we knew we were happy at Bayrams Tree houses thanks to a wonderful gay bartender from California named Tyler, a chef who made sure I had lots of gluten free food, amazing Turkish staff, and for $17 a night a clean and warm dorm, breakfast and dinner. We had planned to stay 3 nights there, but then we had a couple days of crap weather and felt we had to give it a few more days when the sun came out. Every day we kept meeting new cool people, and suddenly 3 days had turned into 7… and it was Saturday night again. We had met some cool London girls and a couple from ... read more

From Albania – we headed east towards another Balkan country … Macedonia! Our journey from Albania was a three-hour bus journey to Elbasan, where we had to walk from the bus station (400 meters down the road, turn left, 150 meters to the post office) which involved two girls with enormous backpacks asking for confirmation by saying ‘Posta?” in our best Albanian accent. There we put our bags in a large van ‘furgon’ – the faster and slightly more expensive way to travel in Albania. Highlights of the trip include me realizing I left my jacket in the toilet near the furgon station – jumping out of the van to go get it, running back to where the van was and having a mild panic attack for a few minutes before some random whistled at me ... read more