A Balkan Adventure

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As I begin to write this, I really have no idea as to how to summarize my second half of my Spring Break travels that took me to seven countries and involved crossing Europe from South to North and then East to West. However, I will try to hit the high points, but I could never put into writing everything that I learned and experienced.

I’ll start this blog on Thursday April 16. The rest of the people that I did the Camino de Santiago took the 13 hour bus ride back to Alicante at 4pm, but my friend Johan and I were taking the overnight train to Madrid, so we had some time to waste in Santiago de Compostela. We spent this time walking around the city, using the internet for the first time in a week, finding bakeries and super-markets to buy supper before chilling in the train station. Although we didn’t get a sleeper cabin, the ride went well with me sleeping the whole time. We arrived in Madrid at 8 in the morning and just relaxed in the station for an hour and a half because then Johan had to use the Metro to go to the airport to catch his flight to Greece. I then used the Metro to go to the city center to spend the day reading in the park. However, the day was kinda cold and damp, so I ran across this Dunken en Coffee that had a nice seating area where I read for about two hours before walking to meet Rachel, a friend from Marquette that is studying abroad in Madrid for lunch. I always enjoy meeting up with people that I know from home because although I’ve made some good friends this semester, nothing can replace the friends that I have at home. I then took the Metro to that airport to catch my 4pm flight to London.

I arrived at the Gatwick airport at 7pm London time and had no trouble finding the bus company that I had bought a ticket thru to take me downtown. When I tried to get on the bus, I thought that the door was closed, but really it was just on the other side. This was just the first of numerous occasion of being confused because of them driving on the other side of the road. I always thought that people made a bigger deal out of this fact than was necessary, but it really is so different than what I was used to. On the bus, I also realized that I was back in an English country because I understood the radio and the conversations around me. I spent the 45 min ride talking to this Danish woman who had travel to many of the same places in the US that I had while we enjoyed the English countryside. When I got off the bus at the Liverpool Station, I had my first “I’m not in Kansas” moment. Here I was, standing on the side of this street (with the cars going the opposite direction); there are people everywhere and large building surrounding me. It took about 5 minutes for this to pass and I then got my wits about me and pulled out my maps, figured out the Tube and got to my hostel about an hour later. I basically dropped my bags off and headed out to explore the city because by this point it was 10pm. Smartly, I had booked a hostel that was close to the main sights, so it only took me about 5 minutes to make it to the River Thames and see the Parliament Building, Big Ben, the London Eye and Westminster Abbey. The city was dead at this time of night with literally nothing open which is the opposite of Spain when most restaurants being packed at 10, but luckily I had some food with me that I ate as I walked to Buckingham Palace. I then made it back to my hostel around midnight for about 7 hours of sleep. After breakfast, I used the tube to get back to Liverpool Station and took a bus back to the airport for my 2pm flight to Ljubljana, Slovenia. I enjoyed London, but my view of it was very brief which will require another visit in the future before I can make a good judgment of the city. However, I can say that seeing London while listening to the Beatles gave me a much deeper understanding of their music.

After a two hour flight, I arrived in Ljubljana. I had to take a 30 minute bus ride into the capital city, but greatly enjoyed looking out the windows at the small towns surrounded by fields at the base of the Alps. Once in the city, I walked to this old Mansion at the edge of the old town that was my hostel, where I met up with my friend Chris. For the rest of my travels, Chris was my travel partner who was perfect because we worked perfect together and have similar taste in terms of how we travel. The city of Ljubljana is extremely beautiful and was my favorite one that I visited because it was a large city, but the castle separated the old part of town with the newer half, which made it seem much smaller. Also, the downtown was packed with restaurants, had a river flowing thru it with outdoor cafés and bars along it and life music. You just had to be there to experience this city. The next day, we explored the city a little more, climbed the castle where we watched a 20 minute 3-D video of the city, bought bureks and apples at the Saturday outdoor market and then took the train to Zagreb, Croatia. A burek is hard to explain, but it is a heavy pastry that has meat and cheese in it that comes from Turkey. I highly recommend this city to anyone because it is beautiful, the people are nice and all speak English as a second language and everything is cheap, even though they use the Euro. Also, there were basically no tourists in this city, which is quite surprising seeing how beautiful it was. I would love to return to Ljubljana, but would also like to bike around the area and go up to Bled, a city in the Alps that looked breathtaking.

After a three hour train ride along a river that went thru the mountains, we arrived in the Zagreb. We did what we ended up doing in all of the cities we visited which was walk from the train station to our hostel, drop our bags off and then just wander around the city. When I say wander, I mean it. We would just spend a few hours just walking around because it would let us get a good feel of the city without being told by a guide book or a map what we should see. After this, we had supper at a nice Italian place that was right in front of the city’s Cathedral. The next day was kind of rainy, so we borrowed an umbrella and made our way to this cemetery that the guide book said was interesting and then to the Cathedral. I know that it is a little weird to go to a cemetery, but it really was relaxing because it was so tranquil just walking around as crazy as it sounds. We spent the afternoon just chilling in the hostel with some amazing people from all over the world just reading, swapping stories and having a great time. We headed to the train station at 11pm for our overnight train to Belgrade, Serbia. I enjoyed Zagreb, but when I return to Croatia I think that I will spend my time along the Dalmatian Coast or in Split because that area seemed much more interesting based on what others told me about it.

After six hours in the train, we arrived in Belgrade at 6am. One thing that you need to understand about overnight trains is although I can sleep pretty well in the sleeper cabins, we always get woken up when we cross the border. So, in this case, the Croatian border guards woke us up at 3:30 am to stamp out passports, then 10 mins later the Serbian guards to this and then a little while after that the train staff has switched at the border, so the Serbian staff has to check our train tickets again. Although it is a little nerve racking to be woken up by border guards that are demanding your passport in a foreign language, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. We got off the train at 6am, but were able to buy our next train ticket for the following night and then ran across this bakery where we each got two doughnuts, a yogurt and a juice for about 2 US Dollars that we enjoyed in a park as we watched the city come alive. As we walked the last few blocks to our hostel, we noticed these huge office buildings that looked bombed out. We didn’t know what to really think about them, but later in the day I asked the people at the hostel and she said those building were the military headquarters and were bombed out by NATO and the US in 1999. I was able to have a good talk with one of the staff about the events of 1999 and her feeling towards Americans. I really had no idea of any of this recent history, but it was surreal to be in a country that the US had bombed so recently. I know that Serbia sounds a little scary, which was added too when the Hostel gave us these papers proving that we had been registered with the police because it a law that all foreigners are registered within 24 hours. However, we had no problems at all and everyone was extremely nice. I have numerous stories of people going out of their way to help us that would never have happened in Spain or the US. Some of the sites that we saw in this city were a huge Eastern Orthodox Church, a castle, some beautiful federal buildings, an outdoor military museum and an indoor military museum. It was this indoor museum that affected me the most. Most of the museum was of different military gear going back 3,000 years, which was very interesting, but I couldn’t read many of the descriptions. However, they had one exhibit that affected me in a way that I can’t really explain. It was this room that had pieces of an American F-16 jet and the pilot’s gear that the Serbian had shot down in May of 1999, the movie “Behind Enemy Lines” is based off of this event. After walking past buildings that the US had destroyed and then seeing an American soldier’s uniform on display, it was just very moving. I mean, almost 10 years to the date, my country was at war with Serbia and now here I was enjoying this city. It was just an indescribable experience. One interesting fact about the area was that although we were there on Monday April 20, they had just had Easter the day before because Easter is a week later in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I want to return to Serbia at some point because there is so much history, everybody was so nice and it was extremely cheap. We pulled out 12,000 of their currency which was about $100. We would get gelato and it would only be about $1.50 for three scoops and a waffle cone, we got this twice a day, you just can’t help it when it is this cheap. We got to know the amazing staff of the hostel well that were about our age and had open the hostel just a year ago as well as this kid from France. This one girl from Germany that had been staying there for 3 weeks as she did an internship said that she had met only one other American in that time and as you can imagine, there isn’t many hostels in Serbia. This was kind of interesting because we basically were ambassadors to this country. We then took the 10pm overnight train to Sofia, Bulgaria with being woken up again at the border.

In Sofia, we bought our tickets and then almost went to the hospital because Chris needed antibiotics for his sinus. This had happen to him twice in Spain, but he needed a prescription for the antibiotics, however, in my guide book it said to avoid Bulgarian healthcare at all cost. So, luckily there was a pharmacy in the train station, but the lady didn’t speak any English and to make it worse, Chris is allergic to some antibiotics. Luckily though, the international train ticket lady was willing to help translate when we asked her, even though her English was that good and we were able to get the antibiotics and some other pills that help a lot. We then bought umbrellas because it was raining and headed off to see that city. We decided to go to this archeological museum and then an art gallery because of the rain and we had to carry our bags all day because we were going to be in Sofia for about 10 hour before catching the next train. Both of these were interesting with the museum having artifacts from 3000BC. Sofia has the most religious buildings of any city I have ever seen with tons of churches and mosque, but after a while, they get old. So, seeing that it was rainy and Chris felt like crap, we spent about 2 hours in an Irish pub and then about 2 hours in McDonald’s playing cards and reading. Here again everything was so cheap, for example at the pub, I got a meal that in Milwaukee had cost me about $25, but here it only cost me about $6. Although Chris and I enjoyed our time given the circumstances, I wouldn’t recommend going to Sofia because the traffic was crazy and other than all the churches, there are better places in the Balkans that are so much more interesting. We left the city at 7pm to take the 14 hour overnight train to Istanbul, Turkey that had a 2 hour stop at the border for us to get our Turkish visas.

We arrived in Istanbul at 8am and did our normal thing of dropping our bags of and then exploring the city. We wandered by the Blue Mosque, Aye Sofia and the Grand Bazaar. The Blue Mosque is the largest mosque in the world and is just stunning and is so different than the churches that I have visited because it is used five times a day and has different customs like requiring us to take our shoes off before entering. We only walked in front of the Aye Sofia on Thursday, but I Friday we went in to it. It was built in 537 as a huge cathedral and in the 15th century when the Ottoman Empire conquered the city, it was turned into a mosque followed by being turned into a secular museum in 1945. It is such an interesting building because there are Christian and Muslim elements in the same building. The Grand Bazaar is the largest covered market in Europe and was just crazy and all the bargaining that you have to do to buy anything. On Thursday, the city was packed with 30,000 New Zealanders and Australians who were there to celebrate Anzac Day. It is the largest holiday in their countries and it commemorates a 9 month battle that occurred near Istanbul during WWI between them and the Turkish forces. I got educated on this battle numerous times by enthusiastic Australians who were shocked that I had never heard of this day or battle before. Both nights that we were there, we went to the Pudding Shop for pudding and amazing Turkish tea. This shop was thy place in the 70’s and was recommended by a guy we met in Croatia and was featured in a movie. On Friday, after the Aye Sofia, we toured this underground cistern and then took the tram to the north part of Istanbul to get away from the tourist and try some restaurants the hostel staff had told us about. It is hard to explain without a map, but Istanbul is a city of 18 million people, but is separated into 3 parts. First you have the European side which is split into two parts (North and South) by a large river and then you have to cross the straight of Istanbul to get to the part of the city that is on the Asian continent. We got the North part and were walking by the water when we came across ferries to the Asian part and on a whim decided to go to Asia for lunch. So, after figuring out the ferries which was all in Turkish, we made our way over to Asia for some bureks. This part of the city was very interesting because there was no tourist and everybody was so caring. Also, it had such a different vibe then other cities that I had visited. We then returned to the South part of the Europe side and visited the Spice Bazaar, which is very similar to the Grand Bazaar, but is more for the locals and has many spice and tea vendors. For supper, we had Kebabs because you really can’t get much more Turkish than that.

On Saturday April 25, we took a shuttle to the airport and then a four hour flight back to London, followed by a two hour flight to
Alicante. This 10 day tour of the Balkans was a great experience that I could talk about forever, but I hope you enjoy these highlights, even though they got a little long.

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Photos

London
The River Thames, Big Ben and the Parliament building

London
These signs on the sidewalks literally saved my life numerous times.

London
Westmister Abbey

London
Buckingham Palace

London
The first of many pictures of the beautiful flowers I took. Notice the London Eye in the Background.

London
The cool taxis in London.

Ljubljana, Slovenia
An example of the towntown buildings

Ljubljana, Slovenia
The casltle that was still used and added to in 1982 by the Communist.

Ljubljana, Slovenia
The city from the Castle.

Ljubljana, Slovenia
Chris and I with the city behind us and the Alps in the distance

Ljubljana, Slovenia
One of the vendors at the outdoor market. Those are tubs of sauerkraut.

Ljubljana, Slovenia
Myself looking like an idot with our apples and apple cider that we bought.

Ljubljana, Slovenia
The downtown at night. A picture could never capture the feel of the city at night.

Zagreb, Croatia
Chris with the umbrella that we borrowed

Zagreb, Croatia
Some more flowers

Zagreb, Croatia
The resturant we ate at both nights. It had a great location and cheap food.

Zagreb, Croatia
The outside of the cemetary that we visited

Zagreb, Croatia
The front door of the Cathedral

Zagreb, Croatia
Stanley and I in front of the National Theater

Zagreb, Croatia
Some friends we made at the hostel.

Belgrade, Serbia
The Congress building of Serbai.

Comments

[Lisa]

Beatles...
I am so happy when talking about London you mentioned the Beatles... anytime you want to further learn to appreciate the greatest band in history you know where to find me! Also I laughed really heard about the tower where you mentioned the soldiers being short .... short soldiers or you're just too dang tall!!! Miss you!