Time to get on the ball and talk about the Balkans trip!
The locations: Serbia. Macedonia. Albania. Montenegro. Bosnia. (Drove through Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria.)
The participants: Myself. A, British. J, Aussie. B, Floridian. K from South Carolina joined us in Bosnia for the last weekend.
The ride: Trusty red Honda hybrid.
The tunes: Just about everything. (We drove a lot.)
We took off on Tuesday the 30th. We'd all been to Budapest so we just stopped for lunch in a smaller Hungarian town and took a look around at the cute stuff to see. Drove all the way to Belgrade and stayed in a very nice hostel. Had a four bed dorm all to ourselves. There was a really nice bathroom, kitchen, and garden area to sit and visit and hang out. Belgrade is a strange city. It has all the new world feel of a McDonalds on the corner and all the old world war-torn feel of bombed out buildings just sitting there doing nothing. They've brought in the new but haven't cleaned up the old. It gave it an eerie feel. We enjoyed a couple of days there though. Walked along the river, went to the semi-famous ? cafe, sampled the beer, and hung out in markets and cool center streets. The most interesting thing was St. Sava Cathedral. It's the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Balkans and one of the largest in the world. And it isn't done yet. Before leaving we hung out on a small lake with a rocky beach. I did some swimming and sunning.
Moved on to Macedonia and stayed with B's friend in Skopje, the capital. She lived in a nicer area than what drove through to get there. Lots of shanty-town-esque houses and gypsies out and about. People cleaning car windows for money and little kids carrying babies around. The first real feel of Eastern European Adventure Time. It helped that everything there is in cyrillic so it's hard to read street signs...if you can find any. Anyway, her family was very hospitable, but her parents didn't speak English. Her father gave us homemade rakia (local liquor) and advice on what to do in town. There happened to be a Beerfest though, so guess where we went! Lots of different kinds of beer to try, lots of people, and a crappy Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band to jam to. Fun stuff.
The next day we saw a bit more of the city center and said our goodbyes and moved on to Lake Ohrid. A touristy, but really beautiful lakeside town from which you can see Albania across the lake! Our hostel was more like a mom and pop bed and breakfast (minus breakfast). There was a cool old center with an ancient theater and lots of churches. We basically hung out on the lake for two days. SUNBURN. I still have flakes of skin making a break for it after that one.
Into Albania! I'm so glad I wasn't driving. And that my mother couldn't see the roads we were driving on into/over the mountains. Thin, windy, not always guard-rails, cows randomly filling up the road. etc. There were some really beautiful, mountainous views though. Tirana happened to be a happening city though. Lots of cocktail bars and markets and a little kid carnival, etc. Albanians are extremely friendly and they love Americans. American flags all over the place, excitement when me and B told people where we were from. Unfortunately the city center was basically under construction, so no hanging out in the square.
Then we moved on to Montenegro. BEACHES!!! We found a great hostel with a big common area and patio. Aussies galore! J usually says how Aussies are everywhere but we hadn't run into any up until this point. There was a married couple, two sisters, a guy on his own, and a girl with her American boyfriend. A couple of Germans were there too. The guys who ran the place were very cool and friendly as well, and had obviously worked hard to make it a cool place. Music played all the time, books on shelves, a big equipped kitchen, two computers with internet, etc. We wound up staying there two nights. Basically just hung out on the beach and explored the town a bit. Moved north to another small beach town and stayed in a cheap but decent hotel for one night.
Bosnia! The drive into Bosnia was really incredible. We basically drove alongside a mountain next to a huge glacial lake below us. It was bright blue and dammed off (is that even a word/phrasal verb?) at the end of it. Looking across the lake you could see caves in the mountain side. Really beautiful and scenic. We stopped in Sarajevo for a few hours to look around. I wish we'd stayed longer it was so cool! Lots of markets and people and things to do. Once again, it's a little weird with the old signs of war still around. Bullet holes and much bigger cannon blasts in the sides of buildings can still be seen. They call them Sarajevo roses. Then onto Bana Luca where our friend S lives. His parents were also very hospitable and his mother cooked for us. He took us around the town and one night there was an outdoor concert at the fortress. Apparently it was Yugoslavia's first rock group and they'd been around since the '60's. Even though we couldn't understand the words, they were really good and everybody around was singing along. We stayed at his for three nights and mostly took it easy. (It was nice having an Eastern European Maminka cooking for us.) Sunday we drove all the way to Prague. Pretty uneventful but it went smoothly.
It was a great trip, but I think any longer than two weeks would have been too much. It felt like forever since we'd started out until the end of it. It was nice to be out of Prague for a while though, and spend time with my friends. And especially see new places I probably never would have thought to go to before. (Occasionally we'd say something like "Guys, we're in Albania....Why are we in Albania?!"
