Tue 11/08/09 15:04
This has been one of those days that I haven’t been very productive. I’m not really sure why, maybe because it rained most of the day, or maybe because I feel like I’ve seen most of the tourist areas and to see any of the other sights I’d have to take a tour, which I wasn’t in the mood for. I did spend a few hours walking around and preparing for the train ride to Budapest tomorrow so it’s not like I didn’t do anything, just not as much as I think I should have.
My next destination is Sarajevo, Bosnia and I had to take about four busses to get there, that’s what I was told, in fact it only took three, the first was a two hour trip that started in Tirana. Like I said for me this place was just great, I packed my bags to the bus stop, a little further from where the first bus dropped me off from, and sat down. Over comes three guys that are packing around the area and they are heading the same direction, at least for the next three buses. They were from Germany, and very friendly too, I ended up talking the whole trip with them about traveling, Albania, and life. When we got to the next stop, because it was Sunday there weren’t any buses heading to Ulcinj, Montenegro but we could take a taxi for about 25 euros, lucky again, I got to share the ride with the guys from Germany. From there they dropped me off and I thought I had to go to Podgorica to get a bus to Sarajevo, but they had a bus that went right there that left in a couple of hours. When the bus showed it turned out that I was the only passenger. :)
I’m in Sarajevo now and like it seems with all my bus trips this one ended in just the same way. I arrived in Sarajevo at 4 in the morning to a closed and deserted bus station. The directions to the hostel said that you could see two blue skyscrapers in the distance, and that it was close to them. The problem was, was it had just rained and it was cold enough that I could see my breath and that it was so foggy that I couldn’t see any buildings in the distance,. So the first thing that I did was to put on long pants and the next thing was to try to find a place out of the way until I could see where to go. At six they opened the station and at least I had a place out of the cold. I slept there until about 8 and then started asking people for directions. It turns out that the bus dropped me at a bus station that was about 20 km away from the main station, but nobody could tell me how to get there, one lady did tell me the direction though (and tried to give me money for the bus) and that was all I needed to head out. I walked for about 20 minutes just following the road and ran up on the airport and since I didn’t have any Marks (the Bosnian money) I wanted to find an exchange so at least if I did get lost I could pay for a taxi. It’s a small airport and except for some workers it was empty, there were two USAF people walking around so I went up to talk to them. I don’t know why, but when I see Americans I just like to say hello, I like to say hello to others, but Americans are special. I talked to them a little bit and found out they were actually working with NATO.
Now with money and the weather getting a little nicer I headed out again after about another 20 minutes I got to the tram line and grabbed one headed into town. One lady that spoke English told me that I needed to stay on until almost the end of the line so that’s what I did. Unfortunately, I should have asked her where the central bus station was because when I did get downtown I didn’t have a clue where to go. It’s about 10am now and I’ve had my packs on for about 2 hours, some people gave me good directions, although vague to the bus station and I did find it about thirty minutes later. Unfortunately again, the directions to the hostel that were on the web site did more to confuse me than anything else, I ended up walking around for another hour until I did finally find it, only to be told that they didn’t have any beds. See, I made the reservation thinking that with four bus trips that I wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow, so my reservation wasn’t valid yet. So the hostel manager tells me to find the Europa Hotel and right next to it is an information center and they can help me get a room. This lady needs to learn how to do directions, because she tells me that it about a ten minute walk right on the same street of the hostel. Sounds easy huh? Well about thirty minutes later I finally give up and get a bag of potato chips and a water and eat them against the side of the store. I must of looked pretty pathetic too, because as two packers were walking by, I said, “Excuse me.” They ignored me, I said it again, and one of them looks at me and shakes his head no. I’m thinking that was rude, so I said, “Do you speak English?” One of them turns around and in an American accent says, and I still can’t believe it, “I’m sorry sir, we’re not interested.” I actually was so stunned/angry I thought about going after them and confronting them. I wasn’t a beggar… but I guess I know how it feels to be one after the lady at the bus station tried to give me bus fare and then those two asshats. About 300 meters up the road I saw a hostel and found a room. In the end I walked around the city with my packs for roughly six hours. Never did find the Hotel Europa, but no worries I comfy now.
After getting cleaned up, I headed out to see the old town. It’s a little bit touristy, but it still has a lot of charm. There’s lots of old building, and there are a lot of new ones too. From what I’ve heard they are just like Beirut in that they are rebuilding the city after the war, which is evident nearly everywhere. I don’t think a person could miss seeing the buildings not only with bullet holes, but you see the gunpowder marks as well. Some of the buildings even look like they were attacked recently.
From Macedonia I headed for Albania. You know, it seems strange to me to be writing that I have spent time in Albania. Not for any reason dealing with the country, but more for the reason that I don’t think I ever thought that I would be there, for that matter Macedonia and Montenegro seem the same. Having said that though, I’m glad that I did make my way to visit these countries. My time was great in Albania, if it lacked a lot of things to see it made up for in the culture, the people, and for that matter the other tourists, some of which were more friendly than any other place so far. Just like most of my trips lately the bus to Tirana, Albania was at night and the same thing happened when I arrived. What made this trip more fun is that there were some students that I was sitting next to that were really friendly. They were on a weekend journey and all were part of a…a…I’m not really sure what it was, but it was an international school-sponsored internship or something where they went to Macedonia for seven weeks to work and had weekends to travel around, that’s what they were doing when I met them. Like I said they were friendly and I ended up talking to them for a fair amount of the trip. When we arrived in Tirana I had been asleep for about four hours and was awoken by the bus driver telling me that this was where I needed to get off. The group that I mentioned stayed on the bus, so I was a little confused, but even more groggy from having a matter of seconds to grab my stuff and get off the bus. It was about five in the morning when the bus drove away, and except for a few taxi drivers and a couple of left over people that were on the bus, the town was deserted. There was no bus station, I didn’t have a reservation at a hostel, and all the shops were closed, about the only thing I saw was just a round-a-bout. So I started walking. You ever need something to go your way, you know, you just feel like you need some luck? That’s kind of how I felt walking that morning, the good thing is it seemed like every was going my way, not fifteen minutes later I came up to what was obviously the city center. The large round-a-bout with a huge statue in the middle was the giveaway, and to make matters better, there was an open coffee shop. It could have been so easy for me to take a different street when I started walking and ended up miles from where I needed to be so I really do feel fortunate. I went and had a cappuccino to figure out my next plan, that’s when the students that were in the bus came up. They saw the coffee shop and I guess was thinking the same thing. It turns out that the bus took them to the bus station. After my cappuccino I headed out to find a hostel that I hoped would have room for me. It was a ways away but I found it in about twenty minutes. It wasn’t open so I waited for about an hour before someone came outside to go to a grocery store, they told me that no one was there that worked there so I kept waiting. I waited until about nine in the morning, two and a half hours until the owner showed, and what’s better is that they did have room for me. I dropped off my bags and headed out to do some sightseeing. Like I usually do, I just walk around and take some pics, and I’ll post them soon. The city was very nice, not a lot to see or to take pictures of, but it was a city with some style, for example, the mayor wanted to make the soviet style apartment buildings less dreary so he got people to paint the outside of the building with very colorful patterns. It’s amazing some of the patterns that the people came up with. Another thing about Albania was that they like America. It seems that I saw at least fifty US flags hanging in cars, on flag poles, and just about everywhere else. It’s something that I really like to see, mainly because since Bush America and Americans aren’t really regarded too highly.
What made the day special is that the people in the hostel were really great, the best that I’ve been around in a long time. In fact it had been so long that I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me that I wasn’t meeting those type of people while traveling. After walking around I hung out with the people at the hostel, later that evening we all went out for dinner and drinks. Everyone in the group were great, and even the ones that didn’t go to dinner, and if I wasn’t falling behind on my schedule to reach Kiev I would’ve like to stay longer.
Mon 10/08/09 11:38
Hmmm, Macedonia… or rather Skopje, Macedonia, the capital city because that’s where I’ve spent the day. First of all the people have been much more friendlier than the people in Sofia, and in some ways the two places are almost identical. I arrived this morning at four, yeah, four in the morning and promptly headed for an empty bench in the bus station to finish getting some sleep. The station was pretty much full when I got there with sleeping backpackers, so the guards didn’t look twice at me stretching out on the bench, that was until the station started filling up with travelers about 630 or 7. I woke up on my own, but there were a few that the guard had to wake up, and even after that some of them wouldn’t get up.:) As soon as the ticket booths opened I bought a ticket to Tirana, Albania that left Skopje tonight at 7. I don’t really know anything about Macedonia so I thought a day here would be fine. I looked into hostels, but there weren’t really any that fit what I was looking for. On my bus ride here from Sofia, I met a girl that lived here, Ivana, and she helped me plan my day, even drawing a pretty good map in a moving bus. My first goal was to see The Stone Bridge, then head to the old part of the city, and finally just walk around the city center. I did all the above and although I could slog away and tell you about the sites, I think I just add pictures. I should say that the old part of the city was really nice. It had the feel that I’ve come to love, the semi-restored feel, some modern, but enough of the old that you can imagine what it must have been like living there hundreds of years ago. There was also a castle or fort that they are restoring that I wandered around a bit on.
I’ve got about two weeks left before I have to be back to Dubai and I still want to see about four countries, Romania, Ukraine, Croatia, and Hungary. I may have to cut out one of them though since the next two days I’ll be spending them in Tirana. It’s now about 5, just a couple of hours before I leave for Albania, and I have to get cleaned and eat something. There is nothing so fun as changing clothes and “cleaning up” in a Soviet Era bus station bathroom. The floors are usually wet, the stalls are tiny, and the smell is so strong that it numbs your senses. I usually end up bumping into stuff for about ten minutes just because my brain has been left incapable of concentration from the smells. :)
So my 36 hours in Sofia, Bulagria is pretty much over, and I can’t really say that I’m sad about heading to my next destination. It rained the first day I was there, and despite of that Sofia was nice, it had a lot of interesting architecture and in a lot of ways was similar to Irkusk, Russia (still one of my favorites). The major difference being that I really didn’t have the same feeling as I did when I was exploring Sofia as I did exploring Irkukst (and I still can’t spell that city either). In Irkustk, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of the Soviet Union which allowed me to get a feeling of what it must have been like during the Cold War. In Sofia I got a little of that, but in general the people don’t seem to be a happy bunch. I wasn’t in the city more than twenty minutes when I thought a friendly station attendant offered to give me directions, which soon ended in him asking me for money. Not ten minutes later I asked a tram attendant what tram I should take, and she said something in Bulgarian, I said I don’t understand, she said the same word again only a little bit louder. I replied with a sheepish grin and said I speak English, so she said the same word only this time louder. The process continued until she was yelling at me the same word and I was feeling like an idiot. She finally wrote a “9” on a piece of paper and gave it to me. :)
What’s kind of funny while I was writing that last paragraph two security guards came up to me, there was one good one and one bad one. The bad guard yanked my electric cord out of the wall and threw it towards me, the good guard said that it was not permitted. The bad guard was really angry though so angry that the nicer one pulled him by the shoulder to get him away, then he came back about 5 minutes later and asked me to move. I guess sitting on the floor is not allowed here, I’ve only done it in about every airport, every bus station over the world but it’s not allowed here. Like I was saying the people don’t seem to be a very happy group. Back to my examples, then I was asking for directions and an old man told me that I was rude to not speak Bulgarian. He said that he learned English and if I come to his country it was my responsibility to learn the language. I couldn’t argue with him, but there was a younger guy that did. He said that there was no need to learn it. So they argued and I sulked off. Believe it or not I have about three other examples that I won’t bore you with, just suffice to say they just didn’t seem to like me much.
I spent much of my time just walking around and taking some pictures. My last day here was a day that I walked around until I was so tired that I didn’t feel like walking anymore and then went to the bus station to wait for my trip to Macedonia, and right now it’s eight-thirty so I still have three hours to kill and my battery is about to quit, I’ve got finish later.
Tue 04/08/09 09:50
This is my last night in Varna and to be honest I’m a little bit mixed on my time here. The hostel and the people staying here are great and it has been fun in that regard, but the city itself didn’t do much for me. I guess it’s probably because there wasn’t a lot to take pictures of, in other words, I didn’t see too much that was that interesting… besides the women that is, but I don’t think it would go over too well if I went through the city taking pictures of all the pretty women. The city is pretty in the tourist parts, and it was fun just walking around, but nothing really to do if you’re not into shopping.
Tomorrow I head to Sophia for one night and then I’m back to not knowing for sure where I’ll be.
