I began the whole adventure with a night in Sofia with Kristen (capital of Bulgaria); going out to dinner for real American burgers (first time in 10 months!) and a movie at the theater. Then took care of some passport issues I was having (our friends at homeland security attacked my personal passport with a hole punch and now I need a new one) and boarded a bus for our first destination, Skopje, Macedonia. The bus ride was pleasant enough, but the weather outside was drenching rain. weather was not the best to us on this trip. Fortunately, by the time we arrived in Skopje it has stopped raining an warmed up. We couch surfed with some Peace Corps volunteers that lived in Skopje and they took us around the center and to some cool, hard to find, local bars. It was here in Macedonia that I decided I wanted to go on a Balkan beer tour, and try every local beer from every country that we visited (a manageable task given that these countries only have around 2 to 4 different beers in each of them, and we were gone two full weeks).
We spent the next day walking around the old town, seeing the old fortress ruins and having a traditional lunch at a small cafe in the center of town. Skopje is a real pretty town with lots of cool shops, but not all that many big things to see. It was nice and relaxing though, and we had plenty of time to see everything that we wanted to. We made it out to the bus station just as the weather turned nasty again, and boarded our night bus out to Tirana, Albania. I did discovered that Bulgarian is actually a very useful language all over the Balkans. It is very similar to both Macedonian and Serbian, and got us through most of the countries that we saw. It also enabled us to read the bus schedule that was written only in Cyrillic. This trip would be a bit more difficult for someone that couldn't read it.
Turns out though, that our night bus stopped first in Durres, that town that we were actually trying to get to. Unfortunately, it stopped there around 4 in the morning, when nothing was open. We were saved though when one of the other women on the bus offered to help us find our hotel (which we couldn't stay at until it opened anyway) and so we caught a cab and drove around town in vain searching for this place (We found out later that it had closed down). We then picked a different hotel and they dropped us off and she even offered to pay for our cab, since we still hadn't found an ATM yet. People in Albania are super nice. We ended up finding a cafe open where we could sit and wait till the sun came up and the town came alive.
Durres is an interesting town with nice beaches, old roman ruins, and fantastic food. We spent the day just wandering around seeing some of the old sites; ancient fortified walls, a roman amphitheater, the town center, ect. We also got to try some fresh Albanian sea food, which was delicious. The weather was nice for walking around town, but not quite warm enough for us to go swimming at the beaches.
From Durres we took a train out the capital, Tirana. Tirana is not really the prettiest city, and running through the traffic that passes through the town square might have been the most dangerous thing that i have ever done. It was downright scary. But the food is good, and the people friendly and I enjoyed my time there. We walked around the town and got a feel for where everything was and saw some sites the first day we got in, and on the second day we did a day trip out to a small mountain town called Kruje.
Kruje is a beautiful little town set on the side of a mountain not to far from Tirana, and is the site where the Albanian hero Skanderbeg lead the Albanians to fight back the Ottoman empire to retain their independence. There is a really cool museum now that is built to look like a fortified keep in the ruins of the old original castle, and the view from the area is amazing. Of all the towns that we visited in Albania, Kruje was by far the coolest and most interesting.
Finished with our sightseeing in Kruje, Kristen and I headed back to Tirana and met up with our friends Tyler and Emma, who had just flown in from Bulgaria and would travel the rest of the way with us. Once our traveling group was complete, we headed out to dinner at the 'sky resturant', a nice restaurant located on the terrace of one of the tallest buildings in the city. We had awesome service with a head waiter and assistant waiters, and had a real nice Italian dinner. I had brushetta for an appetizer, cheese tortellini as a main and a cold drink to wash it all down, and my whole meal, including tax and tip, came to about 8 dollars. That's right, full service fancy dinner on the roof of the tallest building for only 8 bucks. Gotta love countries with a low cost of living.
The next day we met up with another American and an Australian that were headed the same was as us and split a mini bus to help save some money. We traveled out of Tirana and up to Kotor, Montenegro, stopping on the way at Skroder, Albania for a bit, and along the main road along the coast of Montenegro to take some pictures and see the view. We arrived in Kotor in the late afternoon and quickly found decent lodging with a local woman for dirt cheap. I was able to carry on conversation fairly well with her, despite the fact that I was speaking Bulgarian and she was speaking Serbian. It was cool to be able to talk to the locals though, and once they realized that we can kind of speak their language, they warm up real quickly and are very friendly people. I think that one of the things that I enjoy most about traveling is meeting the people and getting a chance to hear their story. And I got plenty such opportunities to do so while in Montenegro.
I have to say here that Montenegro is by far the most beautiful country that I have ever been too. It is full of steep green mountains dropping right in to the clear water of the Adriatic, picturesque little towns and castles, and and some majestic views. The city of Kotor is no different, located on the edge of the deepest fjord in all of Eastern Europe. It is an old fortified town, complete with a moat, cobble stone alley ways, and an old castle that looms over the town from the cliff above. We spent most of our time there just wandering around the streets looking at the architecture and the mountains, chilling at cafes, and hiking up to the top of the castle to see the view of the whole fjord.
After our stay in Kotor we boarded a bus and headed North again to Dubrovnik, Croatia, another fortified maritime city, but this time much larger and much more touristy. I have to admit Dubrovnik is super impressive, but it also felt like it was overrun with foreigners. I don't know if that was just my impression after coming from countries that hardly anyone ever goes too (Macedonia, Albania, ect) or if this place really was flooded. All I know is that it didn't have that quaint small town feel that Kotor did, and most of the food and drinks were so high prices that we were forced to go out of the old town before we could afford anything for dinner. But overall I really enjoyed my time there and it is a beautiful place. I also hear it has some great beaches, but we spent all our time wandering around the town and never really got to go swimming. Actually, turns out that through this whole trip along the Adriatic, we never once got a chance to go swimming. Kind of a bummer, but since I live so close to the Black Sea, I wasn't too worried.
From Dubrovnik we headed East in to Bosnia & Herzegovina, to the town of Mostar. Mostar is probably most famous for an old Turkish bridge that crosses the main river in town and connects the Muslim and Christian sides of the city. The bridge was destroyed by Serbian attacks during the Bosnian war in the early 1990's, but recently was rebuilt exactly the same as a sign of progress and peace. In fact, scattered all over Mostar and Sarajevo are numerous reminders of the bloody conflict that took place there less than 15 years ago. Bombed out Buildings, bullet holes, and craters in the ground from artillery can be found all over that either haven't been fixed up yet, or were left as reminders. The weather there was less than perfect as well, which added to the "recovering war zone" feeling. That being said, Mostar is a rather nice town, and tons of cool little souvenir shops, restaurants and cafes have sprung up along the main boulevard by the reconstructed bridge. It was a very interesting city to visit, and unlike any other that I had been too.
After spending some time in Mostar we continued deeper into Bosnia and Herzegovina to the city of Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a cool town with tons of history. Franz Ferdinand was assassinated there in 1914, igniting World War I, it was host of the 1984 winter Olympics, and from 1992 to 1996 was under the longest siege in modern military history. It is also a very religiously diverse city, filled with catholic and Orthodox churches, mosques, and synagogues. We spent a lot of time wandering around the town seeing old buildings, churches and all that good old stuff. Our second day there we took a tour around the city and went to see the old Sarajevo tunnel that was dug during the siege to bring in food and guns and other supplies to keep the city alive during the 3 years. We also go to go through the Republic of Srpska (Bosnia & Herzegovina is split into 2 separate entities, the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina, and the Republic of Srpska). It was weird though because everything changes when you cross in to Srpska. They have their own gov, police, and although they speak the same language, everything changes from being written in Latin to being written in Cyrillic. Talk about a divided country.
Side note; we also found a Mexican restaurant while wandering around Sarajevo that was actually pretty good, although not at all spicy or very Mexican. But I can now say that i have had Bosnian Mexican food, which is about as random as it gets.
After a couple of days in Sarajevo we boarded another night bus to head back to Croatia, but this time to the town of Split, where we had to catch our flight back to Bulgaria from. Unfortunately, since we spent so much time in Sarajevo, we weren't able to really do much more than wander around the old town of Split in the dawn hours before having to catch a bus out to the airport. Still, it ended up being enough time to see most of the buildings and sights and eat breakfast before we left.
Our flight took us up to Austria, where we had to catch a connecting flight back down to Sofia (not really that many direct flights from Croatia to Bulgaria) but the good news was that our 6 hour layover gave us plenty of time to catch a train in to Vienna to see the town and grab some lunch. Our time there was understandably rushed, but I did get to see the St. Stephens Cathedral, house of Mozart, grand opera house, and have a Viennese Bratwurst and wheat beer from a street vendor. Victory was mine. All too quickly our time was out and we headed back to Sofia to end our Eastern European vacation (since we technically didn't leave Bosnia until around 3 or 4 in the morning, I was in 4 different countries this day!).
It was a good time though and everything worked out surprisingly well. I also did the whole trip under my expected budget and spent no more than 400 Euros. Not bad for two weeks. Anyway, check out the pics and I will talk to you all later. Peace. http://picasawe
