This winter was an odd one, it took until March to say so because until last week I didn't believe that winter was really over. Last winter was full of rain, floods and a little bit of snow. This winter was cold and mostly dry with a whole lot of snow. We made it through December and early January pretty easy, it was cold but not that bitter cold with rain that plagued us last winter, in the middle of January we left for a Balkans tour with our former training site mate Sarah. The trio of us traveled to Dubrovnik Croatia, Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a day stop in Mostar BiH, Belgrade Serbia, Zagreb Croatia, Ljuljblana Slovenia, Trieste Italy, and finally Venice. The trip was wonderful. It was exciting and relaxing and tiring all at the same time. We had places to stay in every city that we travelled to, mostly hostels with a few AirBnB places, a couchsurf and a hotel in Venice, but no idea about the transportation. We knew that it was possible to get from one place to another we just had no idea of the schedules and exact costs. Thanks to a lot of research from Tiff, we had a pretty good idea though and took off from Shkoder bound for Dubrovnik.
They call Dubrovnik the King of the Adriatic, and its pretty easy to see why. The old city is a fortress that buts up against the sea on two sides, with the third side climbing up a huge hill. We were told that at times the city rivaled the power of Venice in the Adriatic. We stayed at a guesthouse up the hill from the old town, it was something like 600 stairs from the entrance of the castle to guesthouse. Although it was a workout the views were amazing. We sat one evening admiring the sunset over the Adriatic and drinking a bottle of Croat wine. The biggest problem with Dubrovnik were the prices. Croatia isn't on the euro yet but everything seemed just as expensive. A burger and fries was about 7 euro or roughly 10 bucks, a little steep for my liking.
Next we set out for Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mostar is a city that should really not be a city except that it has a huge Ottoman Bridge in the middle of its old town. This bridge draws tourists from all over, and even in January the city seemed to be bustling with tourists. The bridge was huge but you could tell it wasn't as old as people made it seem, but it wasn't until we saw the photos from 1993 that we understood why. During the Bosnian conflict with Serbia, (the one that the US brokered peace in Dayton) the Serbs completely demolished the bridge, so although the old bridge was from the Ottomans, it had to be rebuilt after 93. The best part of Mostar, after the bridge was the old man selling little drinks on the street. He said he was an engineer and that he made all of the drinks himself, what he was selling was a number of brandys made from different fruits and nuts. After forcing us to try them all, plus a pomegranate concentrate we decided to buy the walnut brandy. It actually tasted good, not like the cherry that tasted a bit like cough syrup, and a bottle of the pomegranate juice. Unfortunately when I opened the pomegranate stuff the other day I didn't take into account the pressure difference and it exploded everywhere, so what started out as a half liter container, which should have made 3 liters of juice, ends up to be about 3 shot glasses worth of juice, enough to fill 2 more nalgenes of pomegranate juice. The Walnut raki is still pretty good.
From Mostar we made our way to Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a beautiful city that was just a bit too Balkan for my taste. The wonderful thing about Sarajevo though was that everything was very inexpensive. A great meal, and we are talking serious food costs maybe about 5 euro. They have this wonderful thing in the former Yugoslav countries called cevapcici, which are little sausages like things they serve with grilled onions and sometimes you can also get kajmak, which tasted like cheese and butter mixed. you put a little kajmak on your cevap and it tasted like heaven. Especially for a red meat loving American who doesn't eat all that much red meat in Albania.
We took an early morning bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade is an interesting city, I was a bit nervous being an American living in Albania, 2 of Serbia least liked nations, considering Kosovo is mostly ethnic Albanians and that the US intervened twice during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Belgrade keeps a few of the buildings in the condition they were in after the US air campaign in Serbia. It was odd to be so close to buildings that the US had destroyed just a little more than 10 years ago. But the White City (Bel is white and grad is city) surprised me with it wide pedestrian streets, welcoming people and interesting museums. We visited the Nikola Tesla museum and after being told to come back twice to wait for an English tour we had an excellent guided experience of the work of Tesla.
ex's furniture everyday they were gone until they came back to collect it. Unfortunately for the ex they didn't get back in time.
From Zagreb we went on to Ljubljana (loo-bli-ana or loob-yana). We made it in around lunch time and stopped at one of the best fish restaurants I've even eaten at. They offered a lunch special of 3 courses for something like 6 euro, which was perfect a salad, soup and tuna fillet and fries. Ljubljana has a small river flowing through the center of town with the newer side of town on one bank and the older part on the other. Numerous bridges cross at points along the river. The Dragon Bridge was my favorite, as it was guarded by four stone dragons, but the triple bridge and butchers bridge were also interesting.
From Ljubljana we travelled to Trieste, Italy. This was more of an adventure than we originally planned on because while there used to be a train that travelled between the two cities, it had been cancelled due to someones economic issues. Also complicating matters was that we were travelling on a Sunday, so buses that normally ran didn't. We ended up on a bus at 5 am coming from Bulgaria and headed for Milan.
The bus was supposed to take 3 hours, but we arrived at the bus station in Trieste in just over 1. So we had some extra time to kill, and we didn't want to drag our bags all over creation we found some seats in the train station and memorized the schedule leaving for Venice. Trieste is a city in Italy that really shouldn't be in Italy, there is only a narrow strip of land that connects it with the rest of the country, and all roads, and tracks lead right past Venice, so no matter where you are going you're going to Venice first. Trieste was one of my favorite Italian cities, not because it overflowed with art, museums and fountains like Rome and Florence, but because you could tell it was a working city. People went about doing what they were doing. Many of these people are more Slovene than they are Italian, but because someone drew a line they were for many years cut off from their families in Yugoslavia, now that both nations are in the EU one can cross international boundaries like one crosses from Pennsylvania into Ohio. One thing that Trieste does really well is coffee. Illy espresso makes it home in Trieste, and the natives know how to drink coffee, they just aren't exactly sure what to call it. To order a macchiato will get you a cappachino, a nero is an espresso, and a capo is a macchiato, add on top of that you can either get your coffee in a little espresso mug or a shot glass like cup that usually has a wire handle to keep you from burning your hand, and you've got a real confusing order, but all the headaches of ordering is worth it. The coffee was divine. We have been told that depending on where you are in Italy, people will tell you differently who has the best espresso. In my opinion, Trieste has got it right, Illy can't be beat.
From Trieste we made our way to Venice. This was the highlight of the trip for me, as I've always been interested in Venice. How you built a city on a lagoon, no cars, dominate the Adriatic sea for hundreds of years and have collections of art and science rivaled only by a few others in the world. Venice lived up to all of the hype. We stayed in a little hotel just off the rialto bridge. We got it for a steal, for 2 nights we paid around 100 euro for the three of us. Now the same hotel is over 200 euro a night. St. Marks, although smaller than St. Peters in Rome, had more decoration per square foot. The canals were blue-green in color and didn't smell. We didn't ride in a gondola, but we did take a ferry across the Grand Canal. The ferry was a stripped down gondola, so it was kinda like we rode in one, and it only cost us 50 cents. We also stumbled onto a little wine house, for something like 2.50 for a two liter bottle we could try any number of local wines. The first night we tried a prosecco, and I'm not sure what we tried the next night, but I'm sure if we would have tried them all we wouldn't have found one we didn't like. I love the Italians for that reason, they have the best wine in the world and instead of bottling it and selling it to snobs all over the world, they leave it in the barrel and put it into old bottles for anyone who makes the trip. The sunsets in Venice were amazing, and it's the one place that I really didn't mind being completely lost. All you had to do was wander until you found one of the signs pointing you towards some landmark, and either you could follow them, or not and continue wandering until the next one. We finally had to go to the airport our flight was at 10:40 a.m., and after rushing trying to make our way out of the city, onto the bus and making it to the airport exactly 2 hours before our flight, we found out that Belleair had changed the flight time to 8:00p.m. We decided instead of paying to go back into town we would hang out in the airport, read, walk and play cards. After another delay of about an hour and a half we arrived back in Albania. Luckily our friend drove down from Shkoder to pick us up and take us back that night so we didn't have to spend the night in the airport.
After our Balkan adventure winter showed up in Shkoder. In late February, Shkoder was buried twice with about 3 feet of snow each time. This wouldn't be bad in most places in the US but Shkoder has no plow, and isn't used to snowfall. So the snow sat around for weeks on roads, keeping kids from going to school, and generally being a nuisance. Marble steps were extremely dangerous when the marble got cold because it would create a black ice like layer overtop of the totally smooth surface. We slipped multiple times and the steps leading up to the World Vision office felt more like climbing a mountain than 10 stairs. Now spring has arrived, shorts are again being unpacked and the winter clothes are either going into the suitcases, or in somecases the donation pile. Many clothes just get plain worn out from the washing machines and extended wear they get here, which is a good thing because we have a lot of souvieners to bring home and we need some room in our suitcases to bring a little bit of Albania back to the US. Hope that all is well in America, and we will see you in June!!!
They call Dubrovnik the King of the Adriatic, and its pretty easy to see why. The old city is a fortress that buts up against the sea on two sides, with the third side climbing up a huge hill. We were told that at times the city rivaled the power of Venice in the Adriatic. We stayed at a guesthouse up the hill from the old town, it was something like 600 stairs from the entrance of the castle to guesthouse. Although it was a workout the views were amazing. We sat one evening admiring the sunset over the Adriatic and drinking a bottle of Croat wine. The biggest problem with Dubrovnik were the prices. Croatia isn't on the euro yet but everything seemed just as expensive. A burger and fries was about 7 euro or roughly 10 bucks, a little steep for my liking.
Next we set out for Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mostar is a city that should really not be a city except that it has a huge Ottoman Bridge in the middle of its old town. This bridge draws tourists from all over, and even in January the city seemed to be bustling with tourists. The bridge was huge but you could tell it wasn't as old as people made it seem, but it wasn't until we saw the photos from 1993 that we understood why. During the Bosnian conflict with Serbia, (the one that the US brokered peace in Dayton) the Serbs completely demolished the bridge, so although the old bridge was from the Ottomans, it had to be rebuilt after 93. The best part of Mostar, after the bridge was the old man selling little drinks on the street. He said he was an engineer and that he made all of the drinks himself, what he was selling was a number of brandys made from different fruits and nuts. After forcing us to try them all, plus a pomegranate concentrate we decided to buy the walnut brandy. It actually tasted good, not like the cherry that tasted a bit like cough syrup, and a bottle of the pomegranate juice. Unfortunately when I opened the pomegranate stuff the other day I didn't take into account the pressure difference and it exploded everywhere, so what started out as a half liter container, which should have made 3 liters of juice, ends up to be about 3 shot glasses worth of juice, enough to fill 2 more nalgenes of pomegranate juice. The Walnut raki is still pretty good.
From Mostar we made our way to Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a beautiful city that was just a bit too Balkan for my taste. The wonderful thing about Sarajevo though was that everything was very inexpensive. A great meal, and we are talking serious food costs maybe about 5 euro. They have this wonderful thing in the former Yugoslav countries called cevapcici, which are little sausages like things they serve with grilled onions and sometimes you can also get kajmak, which tasted like cheese and butter mixed. you put a little kajmak on your cevap and it tasted like heaven. Especially for a red meat loving American who doesn't eat all that much red meat in Albania.
We took an early morning bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade is an interesting city, I was a bit nervous being an American living in Albania, 2 of Serbia least liked nations, considering Kosovo is mostly ethnic Albanians and that the US intervened twice during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Belgrade keeps a few of the buildings in the condition they were in after the US air campaign in Serbia. It was odd to be so close to buildings that the US had destroyed just a little more than 10 years ago. But the White City (Bel is white and grad is city) surprised me with it wide pedestrian streets, welcoming people and interesting museums. We visited the Nikola Tesla museum and after being told to come back twice to wait for an English tour we had an excellent guided experience of the work of Tesla.
ex's furniture everyday they were gone until they came back to collect it. Unfortunately for the ex they didn't get back in time.
From Zagreb we went on to Ljubljana (loo-bli-ana or loob-yana). We made it in around lunch time and stopped at one of the best fish restaurants I've even eaten at. They offered a lunch special of 3 courses for something like 6 euro, which was perfect a salad, soup and tuna fillet and fries. Ljubljana has a small river flowing through the center of town with the newer side of town on one bank and the older part on the other. Numerous bridges cross at points along the river. The Dragon Bridge was my favorite, as it was guarded by four stone dragons, but the triple bridge and butchers bridge were also interesting.
From Ljubljana we travelled to Trieste, Italy. This was more of an adventure than we originally planned on because while there used to be a train that travelled between the two cities, it had been cancelled due to someones economic issues. Also complicating matters was that we were travelling on a Sunday, so buses that normally ran didn't. We ended up on a bus at 5 am coming from Bulgaria and headed for Milan.
The bus was supposed to take 3 hours, but we arrived at the bus station in Trieste in just over 1. So we had some extra time to kill, and we didn't want to drag our bags all over creation we found some seats in the train station and memorized the schedule leaving for Venice. Trieste is a city in Italy that really shouldn't be in Italy, there is only a narrow strip of land that connects it with the rest of the country, and all roads, and tracks lead right past Venice, so no matter where you are going you're going to Venice first. Trieste was one of my favorite Italian cities, not because it overflowed with art, museums and fountains like Rome and Florence, but because you could tell it was a working city. People went about doing what they were doing. Many of these people are more Slovene than they are Italian, but because someone drew a line they were for many years cut off from their families in Yugoslavia, now that both nations are in the EU one can cross international boundaries like one crosses from Pennsylvania into Ohio. One thing that Trieste does really well is coffee. Illy espresso makes it home in Trieste, and the natives know how to drink coffee, they just aren't exactly sure what to call it. To order a macchiato will get you a cappachino, a nero is an espresso, and a capo is a macchiato, add on top of that you can either get your coffee in a little espresso mug or a shot glass like cup that usually has a wire handle to keep you from burning your hand, and you've got a real confusing order, but all the headaches of ordering is worth it. The coffee was divine. We have been told that depending on where you are in Italy, people will tell you differently who has the best espresso. In my opinion, Trieste has got it right, Illy can't be beat.
From Trieste we made our way to Venice. This was the highlight of the trip for me, as I've always been interested in Venice. How you built a city on a lagoon, no cars, dominate the Adriatic sea for hundreds of years and have collections of art and science rivaled only by a few others in the world. Venice lived up to all of the hype. We stayed in a little hotel just off the rialto bridge. We got it for a steal, for 2 nights we paid around 100 euro for the three of us. Now the same hotel is over 200 euro a night. St. Marks, although smaller than St. Peters in Rome, had more decoration per square foot. The canals were blue-green in color and didn't smell. We didn't ride in a gondola, but we did take a ferry across the Grand Canal. The ferry was a stripped down gondola, so it was kinda like we rode in one, and it only cost us 50 cents. We also stumbled onto a little wine house, for something like 2.50 for a two liter bottle we could try any number of local wines. The first night we tried a prosecco, and I'm not sure what we tried the next night, but I'm sure if we would have tried them all we wouldn't have found one we didn't like. I love the Italians for that reason, they have the best wine in the world and instead of bottling it and selling it to snobs all over the world, they leave it in the barrel and put it into old bottles for anyone who makes the trip. The sunsets in Venice were amazing, and it's the one place that I really didn't mind being completely lost. All you had to do was wander until you found one of the signs pointing you towards some landmark, and either you could follow them, or not and continue wandering until the next one. We finally had to go to the airport our flight was at 10:40 a.m., and after rushing trying to make our way out of the city, onto the bus and making it to the airport exactly 2 hours before our flight, we found out that Belleair had changed the flight time to 8:00p.m. We decided instead of paying to go back into town we would hang out in the airport, read, walk and play cards. After another delay of about an hour and a half we arrived back in Albania. Luckily our friend drove down from Shkoder to pick us up and take us back that night so we didn't have to spend the night in the airport.
After our Balkan adventure winter showed up in Shkoder. In late February, Shkoder was buried twice with about 3 feet of snow each time. This wouldn't be bad in most places in the US but Shkoder has no plow, and isn't used to snowfall. So the snow sat around for weeks on roads, keeping kids from going to school, and generally being a nuisance. Marble steps were extremely dangerous when the marble got cold because it would create a black ice like layer overtop of the totally smooth surface. We slipped multiple times and the steps leading up to the World Vision office felt more like climbing a mountain than 10 stairs. Now spring has arrived, shorts are again being unpacked and the winter clothes are either going into the suitcases, or in somecases the donation pile. Many clothes just get plain worn out from the washing machines and extended wear they get here, which is a good thing because we have a lot of souvieners to bring home and we need some room in our suitcases to bring a little bit of Albania back to the US. Hope that all is well in America, and we will see you in June!!!
