http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/spipes/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from spipes en-us Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:38:31 +0000 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:38:31 +0000 Today we left our olive farm in Proastio a small village near Kardamili which is a town in Mani the southern part of the Peloponnese that big island on the SW of Greece. It's been a beautiful past 2 weeks. We lived in the bottom part of a house surrounded by old yellow stone houses and olive tree terraces until the Ionian on one side and the Taygetos mtns on the other. As you approach Kardami http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Pelopennese/Kalamata/blog-351475.html We are in an Albanian internet cafe right now hoping to catch a bus or furgon minibus that follows a mysterious route around the country and leaves when full back to Gjirokastra to our Peace Corps host. Peace Corps does all the couchsurfing in Albania We've been lucky to enter their network there is at least one in every city and if they like you they will send you to their friend in the next http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Albania/East/blog-345374.html After much encouragement from readers I'm so flattered people are checking for updates and the discovery of a cheap internet place in Sarajevo I'm going to try to write a longer entry. Bosnia is fantastic and the people here are incredibly nice. Every day we experience extreme highs and lows staying in a Soviet apartment block surrounded by bulletriddled buildings then stumbling across imp http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Bosnia-and-Herzegovina/East/Sarajevo/blog-340331.html Sorry not to have written in forever. The internet is extremely expensive around here. We are staying in the motorhome of a German traveler on the outskirts of Dubrovnik a beatiful city. We have many many stories to tell and have met some great people.Thanks for your interest and if we get to a place with cheaper internet we will update more. Tonight we go to Montenegro and then soon after we fi http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Croatia/Dalmatia/Dubrovnik/blog-337624.html We spent a few days in Pecs and on a farm outside of Pecs in a town of 280 called Kiskassa. Pecs was far more relaxed than Budapest and when we first got there we sat on some benches outside a church near some fountains and snacked on salami and bread checking out the scene. It is like a very touristy version of Cambridge to Budapest's Boston. In Budapest we went to the baths to relax an amazing http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Southern-Transdanubia/Pecs/blog-331546.html We are now in Zagreb Croatia so I am a country and a half behind in this blog. I'll try to give some highlights...We had a wonderful time exploring Budapest which is a striking and intense city and full of surprises. The first was the price of Coke. We saw a sign for coke taped on the window of a window in a wall on the sidewalk which served as a store front. It was 50 forints 160 fts to the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Central-Hungary/Budapest/blog-331525.html We woke up at 445 am for coffee and proper goodbye then caught a bus at 620 to Frankfurt Hahn Airport Ryanair is very sneaky and uses this airport which is one and a half hours from Frankfurt. Then when we got there Jan had to pay 20 euros to check his bag. We were relieved to get through with no further trouble. We had a huge cheesepretzel about 1 foot wide and a halffoot tall for b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Central-Hungary/Budapest/Pest/blog-329419.html We took the Sbahn back to Offenbach and sat across from a kid wearing a Utah tshirt listing the places to go hiking. We spoke to him and his father for a little while and they made sure we got off at the right stop. People here are really friendly from our experience though maybe it helps that we look so clueless. We went to Stephen and Oliver's apartment on the penthouse of Offenbach's sky http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Hessen/Frankfurt/blog-329415.html We only left the apartment around 4 yesterday after catching up on the computer. We hopped on the Sbahn after buying our day pass Markus had already left for WallE and Nurlan had work. Jan wasn't sure that we were waiting on the right side of the station so I said I was sure but that it didn't matter if we went the wrong way This reminded us that we're free to explore whereever we want so w http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Hessen/Frankfurt/blog-328236.html We landed yesterday in Frankfurt at 545 earlier than it was supposed to come a good omen. We made our way to the central train station with very little trouble and found an internet cafe open in the station a very good omen we found an email from our couchsurfing host telling us how to get to his place. As we left the station though we realized that Jan had forgotten the nice new black http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Hessen/Frankfurt/blog-327833.html