Post #17 - Albania & Greece

                                               Original Olympic stadium in Athens


For those of you keeping track, it's been an inexcusably long time since my last post because my laptop got stolen in Athens. I won't get into the details because it makes me angry, and I'm doing my best to get past it and not let it ruin the rest of my trip.

I had almost finished a very detailed post about the week I spent in Albania, but I'm writing most of this post from an ipod touch (which isn't very much fun) so I'll do my best to summarize the highlights. Also I'm aware that the font colour & size are variable in this post, apologies for the discontinuity but I can't figure out how to fix it. 

For starters, a LOT of people had warned me not to go to Albania, saying it was underdeveloped and unsafe, especially for solo female travelers. But then I met a few people who had actually been there, and they said that they really loved it, I had (probably) nothing to worry about, and the only drawback was the crappy, bombed out gravel roads that give even the toughest of travelers motion sickness. 

Well, what I heard was pretty much spot-on: it WAS stunning there, I had (mostly) no problems, and the roads really did suck. I say mostly no problems because there was one really scary thing that happened to me the night I arrived (although it made a pretty thrilling story in my original post). Essentially,  after taking five separate buses from Montenegro, I made it to a town called Berat just as it was getting dark and starting to rain... And then the hostel I'd booked turned out to be a deserted building at the outskirts of town with the glass front doors kicked in and big holes in the rusty chain-link fence that surrounded the place. Fun, right?

After that though, the rest of my time there was literally a walk in the park (park meaning roman ruins heritage site, ancient castle, sandy beach, or natural spring in the middle of the woods). 

                                                  Blue Eye natural spring


The old castle complex atop a hill in Berat offered some gorgeous views of the town & surrounding areas. The hike up to the castle also made for a great workout, which I (stupidly?) did at 1 in the afternoon one day.

I spent 4 days in another town called Saranda. Highlights from this place included the Blue Eye, a freezing cold natural spring that you can swim in (although only for maybe 30 seconds at a time because it's 10 degrees); Butrint, a national park and world heritage site that is covered in roman and Byzantine ruins that you can actually walk around in and not just look at from behind a rope fence; and cows randomly roaming the streets.

                                                            Butrint


The ferry to Greece from Albania was quick and easy. My first stop was an island called Corfu, where I spent 5 nights. I was especially excited for this because only about a week before, Maggie booked some flights to Corfu from Rome to come visit for a few days. She was originally supposed to meet me in Turkey, but her plans changed and luckily this worked out instead. We were full of good intentions to do some hiking around the island and enjoy the landscapes, maybe visit a few other villages on the island... but the hostel we stayed at wasn't really a hostel. It was more of a massive budget hotel aimed at young people with endless organized activities, like beer pong and flip cup tournaments, toga parties, greek dancing demonstrations, and afternoon boatrides around the island ("booze cruises"). After participating in some of these, all we really wanted to do during the day was lie on the beach and go swimming. In any case, we had an unbelievably fun time together and met some great people. 

                                                  On a boat 

                                                     Maggie and I, pre-toga party 

After Maggie and I parted ways, I took a ferry & then bus to Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. Luckily for me, I have some extended family living there (only by marriage, sadly I'm not part greek) who were kind enough to host me. My uncle George (and when I say uncle I mean my second cousin's wife's brother, but who's keeping track) suggested I go to Athens for a few days to visit some of the most famous architecture/archeological sites in Greece. I'm really glad I did (despite the part where my computer was stolen), there are some really spectactular places to see, most notably the Acropolis, which is the site of the Parthenon.

                                             Acropolis

                                              Parthenon

George also introduced me to some more cousins who were a little closer to my age, Fotis and Thanos. Fotis took me on a few tours of the city and introduced me to some of Greece's finest foods, souvlaki & gyros. SO DELICIOUS. They even invited me to spend a weekend at their beach house in a town called Chalkidiki (try saying that 5 times fast!) which was so gorgeous and has some of the nicest beaches I've ever seen. Definitely a highlight of my whole trip. Sidenote to my Kingston & Ottawa friends- the boys took me to a few nightclubs, but it works a little different in Greece. You know how we head to the bars at 11:30 or 12 then leave when they close at 2:30 or 3? Well we LEFT for the bars at around 2:30 or 3, then got back home at about 7. As in, the time we wake up for class, and the sun has been up for at least an hour. I was practically nocturnal after that weekend. 

                                           2nd from left: Thanos      1st from right: Fotis 

And now I'm in Turkey! I got to Istanbul yesterday. It's one of the most impressive cities I've ever seen, and I get the impression that I haven't even scratched the surface. Since blogging has become a lot more difficult in light of recent events, my next and final post probably won't be till I get home, but it will have cool pictures of the Blue Mosque, the body of water that separates the Europe and Asia sides of Istanbul, and way too many pictures of stray cats that I probably should not be touching.

9 days till home :) (and 9 days till a manicure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 

Post #16 - Montenegro

Montenegro was everything I loved about Croatia minus the hordes of tourists. The first town I visited, called Tivat, was a small port town that took about 15 min to walk around. There wasn't a lot to see or do, but I spent almost 4 full days there and wasn't bored for a second.

I've stayed at some pretty incredible hostels in the last few weeks, but Hostel Anton probably tops them all. The staff is SO nice and it has such a relaxed atmosphere.
There's this gazebo:

 And this outdoor kitchen area: 

And this rooftop:

And this view from my dorm's balcony: 

And this dog:

And the cutest baby that I NEVER heard cry:

I took an overnight bus from Belgrade to Tivat, which went by surprisingly fast, probably thanks to the several episodes of Suits and Cougartown that eventually lulled me to sleep. I arrived at the hostel at around 9:30 am, several hours before check-in, but they immediately let me come in and drop off my bag in the dorm, then offered me some breakfast. Alex, one of the staff, showed me around and asked if I had any questions. I wanted to know how to get to the beach and he told me his shift was over in an hour and invited me to join him and his friends there. Since I've mostly been spending time with other travellers, it was really fun to hang out with some locals for a change.

                                             My tan helps me blend in with the Montenegrans.

One evening at the hostel there was a local band that played a bunch of 70s rock covers. It was a ton of fun and they were really good!

I finally had to invest in some mosquito repellant though, because with the windows open at night, my arms and legs were getting eaten alive. Speaking of eating, I didn’t try anything specifically Montenegran (except for the beer, called Nikšićko) but I did eat a freshly picked fig, which I’ve never tried before. It has a strange texture and is very sweet, but they’re super tasty.

I wanted to check out another town in Montenegro before moving on to Albania, so after spending 3 nights in Tivat, I took a half hour bus ride to Kotor, another coastal town. I think I made a good choice because it was stunning. The old town is surrounded by a big wall and is right next to a steep mountain with (what else) a fortress on top. On the other side of the walled-in town is a port with some of the fanciest yachts I've ever seen:

I had only planned on spending one night there before starting my super complicated journey to Albania that started with the first of 5 buses leaving Kotor at 7:38 am, but when I woke up that morning, before leaving I had planned on double checking some bus timetables and writing down the address and directions to my hostel in Berat. I soon discovered that the reception area/common room was locked until 9 am, and that was the only place I could get wifi. I felt way too unprepared to venture into unknown territories without enough info, so I decided to stay in Kotor one more day and try again the next morning. More about my eventful entrance into Albania next post :) 

Post #15 - Serbia

Even though Sarajevo, Bosnia and Belgrade, Serbia are only 193 km apart, it took about 9 hours by train to get there. I had met Rhys from England a few days earlier and he had been planning on taking the same train, so it was nice to have some company for such a long journey, especially since we may have both been a teensy bit hungover. Not long after we got on the train, we met Magnus from Norway, who came to join us in our compartment when he heard us speaking English.

Incidentally, that day was July 1st, Canada Day! (This will give you an idea of how behind I am in my blog posts, today is July 11th...) It may not have been the most traditional way to celebrate, but it's definitely one to remember- waking up in Bosnia, falling asleep in Serbia, and celebrating with a Welsh, a Norwegian, and later joined by a Croat. Diverse!

After 9 agonizing (okay, it wasn't THAT bad) on a slow, old train with no AC and windows that didn't stay open, we finally made it to Belgrade and eventually to the hostel. Here we met the owner, Dusko, who joined us when we went out later on.

Belgrade is a FANTASTIC city. It's really different than Sarajevo, and a LOT bigger. It kind of has a Montreal vibe, having tons of cool pubs, bars, and shopping areas, plenty of interesting old architecture, lots of cool museums and cultural sights, and some beautiful parks.

I spent a lot of time exploring the city on my own (the boys were too lazy to join me) and my favourite part was the big fortress, called Kalemegdan. I've probably posted pictures of every fortress/castle I've visited and I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but this one was different. It's more of a giant, walled-in park on a big hill that overlooks the confluence of 2 rivers, the Danube and the Sava. It took me ages to walk around the whole thing, but there are plenty of shady trees that made it bearable in the scorching heat.

Although Belgrade too has been beautifully restored since being bombed by NATO during the Kosovo War in 1999, they've left a massive reminder of it right in the middle of town in the form of this bombed out building:

Standing in front of it and seeing shards of glass still attached to some of the window frames is an effective memento of the devastation that Belgrade suffered.

I've been trying to avoid spending all my time in just one city in each country (so far the only exceptions have been Budapest in Hungary and Bratislava in Slovakia) so I took an afternoon trip to another town in Serbia called Novi Sad. I had heard it was a really pretty city and worth checking out, and I'm glad I went, but I get the feeling they don't get too many tourists because I had the hardest time finding someone to give me directions. When I arrived, I got off the bus and went to the info desk at the bus station to ask for a map or at least to be pointed in the general direction of the old town/ downtown area, but the clerk didn't speak any english. Same thing happened at the railway station, which was next door. Finally, just before opting to wander the city aimlessly until I found the old town, I found an outdoor newspaper kiosk that happened to have a map of Novi Sad. Although I grumbled a bit to myself about having to buy one, since I probably could have gotten one for free somewhere else like every other place I've been, it really saved me because without it, I doubt I would have made it back to the bus station in time to catch the 8 pm bus back to Belgrade.

I almost forgot to mention- the Serbian language, though it can be written in Latin letters, is actually meant to be written in Cyrillic script (the same alphabet used in Russian and Ukranian, to name a few) though it originated in Bulgaria. So, some of the street signs look like this:

But most of them actually look like this:

Not so easy when all of the tourist maps have the street names written in latin letters, but fun to try to decipher. I've actually gotten pretty good at 'transcribing' the cyrillics into latin letters. Once you figure out the main differences, it's not too difficult: P = R,  H = N,  backwards N = I,  C = S,  and A, E, J, K, M, O, & T are the same, etc. So for example, if you see the word PECTOPAH, you can translate it into RESTORAN, which, if you're clever enough, reads ‘restaurant’. But if you're looking for a late night snack, you might instead come across something like this:

                                    And I thought Pizza Pizza was an Ontario thing! 

Post #14 - Bosnia

So far I've been relying pretty heavily on google maps to find my way from bus & train stations to hostels. Recently I realized that I should probably find a backup method, because in some parts of the world, google maps are next to useless, Bosnia being a prime example. I realized this the morning I left Dubrovnik for Sarajevo, and spent entirely too much time trying to find a basic route, but kept ending up with this:

Eventually I just shrugged, got on my bus, and hoped for the best. After all, there are sometimes tourism info centres near transportation hubs that provide free city maps, or at least basic directions. Luckily on the bus I met a super friendly Bosnian/Australian girl who knew the city very well and gave me some simple but effective directions once we arrived, and also some local food suggestions, at my request of course. One of them is called ćevapčići, which is very popular in all of the balkan countries I've visited so far. It's basically a bunch of sausage-like meatballs served inside of a soft grilled flatbread with raw onions and a type of cream cheese called kajmak. I had to actively stop myself from eating this for every single meal, it's unbelievably delicious. 

Despite my maplessness, the place was easy to find and in an excellent location on a lively pedestrian street in the centre of town. On top of that, this was one of the best hostel experiences I've ever had, mostly because of the people. The owner Sejo (sp?) distills his own Rakija, a traditional Balkan spirit made from fermented fruit, plums in this case, with which he was extremely generous. The rest of the staff were 3 lovely girls who were always happy to chat and offer suggestions of places to see and things to do. One of them, Hannah, even gave me a tour of the city (which is GORGEOUS) and included a break at the Sarajevsko brewery. 

I didn't know much about Bosnia & Herzegovina before I got there, only that they suffered a bloody war from 1992-1995 following their separation from Yugoslavia. Although the city has been excellently rebuilt into a exciting & modern cultural hub and some of the old historical buildings well restored, there are still plenty of reminders of the war throughout the city, which is fairly small and easily explored by foot (mostly).

A small river called the Miljacka runs through Sarajevo and there are several bridges that go across it. One is called the Latin Bridge, and right next to it is the site where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated, which marked the start of the first World War, when Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia.

On my second night, I met a few really friendly guys from the US, Mike, and Edin, who is originally from Bosnia and has family in the area. They invited me to join them the next day, so we met and drove up a big hill that has some spectacular views of the whole city. My camera doesn't do a great job of capturing the jaw-dropping allure, but it looked  a little something like this:

Then we went to see a traditional Turkish/Bosnian house from the 1800s (I think) that has been preserved into a museum,

and finally stopped for some traditional food, but I have no idea what it's called.

One day I took a day trip to a town called Mostar, which is in the Herzegovina region of the country. Apparently it was the city that was the most hard-hit from the war. Its most famous landmark is a bridge that connects the two sides of the town.

 Sejo was driving that way so I got a lift from him there, and took a train back that evening. The region is very mountainous and I tried to get a few photos of the scenery on the way back through the window, which didn't work too well but looked a little something like this:

There are tons of hostels in the old town so it was really easy to meet people and socialize. I haven't been rating any of the places I've seen so far, but if I had, Sarajevo would get an A+.