[P.J!'s Blog] Balkans

[P.J! Parmar]

Welcome to the final installment of updates for my current adventure. Last update I left off in the Caucausus--Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. I caught a train from Tbilisi, Georgia to Batumi, Georgia on the Black Sea Coast. From there I crossed (via minivan, walking and taxi) into Turkey, then caught a series of busses to Hopa, Trabzon, Samsun and Ankara. Here is a map of Turkey. The pink line is this trip, the blue line is former travels.

Here is some scenery on the Turkish Black Sea coast, a beautiful area of mountains, water and mosques.

A scene from Trabzon. Note the many minarets. Small mosques such as these exist every few miles throughout the entire country of Turkey (and much of the Middle East). Also note the palm tree...this seaside area has a very nice climate.

The journey from Batumi, Georgia to Ankara took almost 20 hours. In Ankara I met with my friend Gurkan. You may remember Gurkan...I met him while visiting Turkey seven years ago. He then came to the U.S. and lived in Colorado with me for a few years! Obviously we had become good friends. Now he is married and working in Ankara as a paramedic.

Here is Gurkan and his wife Betul at home. Note the table spread with Turkish hospitality.

Although this was my second time in Turkey, I wanted to stay a few days, mostly to relax following recent tiring travels. With the few days, Gurkan managed to show me some parts of Turkish life. Here is a Turkish bath...it was sort of like a sauna with great architecture. One can lay on that mat and get a massage.

...and here is a crew making Pide at a fashionable snack shop in downtown Ankara. Pide is a meaty mixture spread onto something like pita bread and cooked.

...and another meaty creation...

...and if you eat too much of that...

...that picture was on the wall in a bar, it is from a Turkish cartoonist. Don't ask me the significance. On the other hand, I did ask Gurkan the significance of these blue eyes stuck to the ground outside the front door.

Gurk explained that the evil eyes were to keep out evil spirits...people have them on every wall and even on jewelry...in all colors and sizes...to ward off the spirits.

Here I am in a Turkish sweet shop. I think I am gaining weight here, especially along with Betul's cooking. Time to head on towards Eastern Europe. Here is a picture from the road heading to Istanbul (a comfy 6 hour bus ride). A note on Turkish busses: they are some of the most comfortable operations in the world. Dozens of companies compete, offering perks such as hot beverages and snacks on board.

Now a note on the above architecture, i.e. concrete. In much of the area I had been traveling (former Soviet areas), concrete is the standard construction. Same holds in Turkey. Some people try to help the grey scenery by painting the buildings...some parts of Turkey are quite colorful because of this.

I arrived in Istanbul at night (on new years eve), in time to see the Blue Mosque and Aye Sofia lit up, and the Bosphorous separating Europe from Asia...

...heading out of Turkey: I caught an overnight train from Istanbul to Sofia, Bulgaria. Here is another map for reference (again, pink is current travels, blue is former routes).

My goal was to visit the countries in Eastern Europe that I had not yet seen. First stop: Bulgaria. Not too much to report except a huge snowstorm, barely any English speakers, and terrible customer service at the bus station. My highlight was a young Malaysian (Chinese ethnicity) fellow who I met on the train to Sofia. He was stationed in Sofia for a while for his tech job. He invited me to stay with him and his Chinese roommates in their apartment on the outskirts of Sofia. This made for a relaxing night while the snow fell.

Next stop: the former Yugoslav republics. Here is a map of Eastern Europe in the early 80s, well before the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Checkoslovakia all broke apart

...and here is my attempt at history (warning, my version is likely incorrect in some fashion).

Yugoslavia (translation: "south slavs") was made up of many ethnic groups. At the core were the Serbs. After the Soviet Union collapsed, parts of Yugoslavia started peeling away. Each ethnic group wanted their own nation. First was Slovenia...this country has now become one of the most successful stories of Eastern Europe. It is a tiny nation that has a great tourism industry--which Strom and I visited in 2000. (it is blue below). Compared to the independence of the other parts of Yugoslavia, Slovenia escaped with very little bloodshed.

Second to peel away was Croatia. However, the geography of the ethnic groups was not clear cut. This resulted in Serbia (the core of former Yugoslavia) attacking Croatia as it tried to achieve independence. War ensued. Now Croatia has a quickly developing economy and a great tourism industry centered on the fact that most of the country hugs the scenic Adriatic coast.

You may not be able to read the text on this map, but the different colors are different ethnic groups in the region. Compare the colors to the dark lines, which represent the current national boundaries. The basis of much of the conflict in this region is people's attempt to have an independent country for their own ethnic group. This generally means capture as much land as you can, and then kick out or kill anyone who does not belong.

As you can tell from the above map, this has resulted in some parts where ethnicity corresponds to national borders, and other parts where it does not. One irony of all this fighting is that some of these ethnic groups are actually from the same "stock." Some can not be told apart until they speak.

The third country to break away from Serbia (the remaining core of Yugoslavia) was Bosnia, with significant bloodshed. As the map above shows, many ethnic groups still exist within Bosnia and Hercegovina. This is a result of the peace deal brokered by Clinton...

Macedonia (in yellow above) also managed to achieve independence, leaving behind the regions of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. These 3 regions were a country called "Serbia and Montenegro" until Montenegro became independent a couple years ago...leaving Serbia (still containing the region of Kosovo).

From Bulgaria I caught a bus to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. Macedonia may conjure up images of Greece. This is because Macedonia is a region that is mostly in northern Greece...but also partially where the country of Macedonia now is. This region that broke away from Serbia needed a name, but Greece did not want the name Macedonia used. So the small country was officially named FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). For all purposes, most people just call the country Macedonia now.

I noticed a couple things in Macedonia. First, I noticed that the capital Skopje is perhaps one of the only places in the world that has pj in the middle of the name. Second, I noticed this statue below (women and children better grab their arms too!). Next, I found a restaurant serving vegan Balkan food. That was a rarity...I ate quite a bit there. Finally, I noticed that I could take a bus north to Kosovo.

In the below map, Kosovo is part of the brown ethnic group, i.e. the Albanians. However, it is still part of the country now called Serbia. So the Serbians have tried to cleanse their country of the Albanian people (i.e. remove them from Kosovo where they live)...and the Albanians have fought back. This conflict happens to be along religious lines as well (the Albanian people are Muslim and the Serbians are Orthodox Christian), but religion is not the problem per se...ethnicity is the problem. A fragile peace currently exists in Kosovo only because of UN and US peacekeepers.

On the two hour bus from Skopje to Pristhina (the main city of Kosovo, in the center of Kosovo), I met an English speaking fellow sitting next to me. After talking for a couple hours, he invited me to stay with him and his wife in Pristhina. He had a unique interest in Buddhism, which he admitted probably made him the only one interested in Buddhism in Kosovo. We spent the evening at his place eating well (by candlelight since the power kept going out), looking at his pictures of Buddhist deities, and learning everything I wanted to know about the Kosovar Albanian people. To protect his identity, I won't post his picture, but here is a picture I took while walking back to the bus station. On the right is his head (in the hooded sweatshirt), and in front is a sign pointing to one of the UN bases which we passed.

Of note, when entering Kosovo, your passport is stamped UNMIK (UN mission in Kosovo), and not by the country of Serbia. Also, Kosovo uses the Euro, which is different from Serbia. The friend I made was quite hopeful that Kosovo would be gaining independence as a nation soon.

This picture above was taken at the bus stand in Pristhina. Note that Doner and other Turkish foods are for sale...this region has heavy Turkish influence (not the least of which is the Muslim religion left from Ottoman conquests).

At least they speak my language here:

Actually I think that pjese means repairs (and maybe it is pronounced reyes), because I saw it written on alot of auto repair shops. Anyway, I enjoyed seeing permutations of P's an J's...even on Ksovo's finest beer.

After a night in Kosovo, I returned on a two hour bus to Skopje, Macedonia, and then caught a 5 hour bus to Ohrid, a town in southwestern Macedonia. The town is known for its beautiful lakeside setting.

Lake Ohrid is part of the boundary between Macedonia and Albania. I caught a public bus to the border, then walked the mile across the border to Albania. Here is the welcome sign (Albanians call their country Shopirise) on the south end of Lake Ohrid.

I arrived in Pogradic, Albania, a nondescript border town just as it was getting dark. I had no intention of staying there, but no onwards transport existed, so I found a freezing hotel. The next day I caught a packed minivan to the capital Tirana.

Albania was not part of Yugoslavia. It was sandwiched between Yugoslavia and Greece, and was itself communist from the 1940s to the late 1980s.

Tirana has alot of concrete, as seen in the above picture of the main square. Recently people have been painting the concrete all sorts of interesting colors, making the scenery less grey. I found a minivan heading from Tirana 3 hours north to Skhoder, a town on the border with Montenegro. Skhodra is known for being a more dangerous area..some ethnic tensions have caused conflict nearby. I arrived in the city 5 hours before the next transport heading to Montenegro. I didn't feel like sitting around for 5 hours, so I decided to walk. Here is a sign giving distances to towns in Montenegro and beyond. One sign said the border town was 14km (8 miles). This took me a few hours, and I passed some interesting sights along the way...

...like these bomb shelters. During communist rule, hundreds of thousands of these shelters were built in people's yards. I'm not sure who they were running from, but these things were made to withstand attack from a tank. Now they are just an eyesore, providing entertaininment for peole like me who happen to be walking by...

another interesting site near the border: a church (cross on the left) and a mosque (minaret on the right), just across the field from each other. I saw this in a few places in the region, highlighting that religious tolerance is not necessarily the problem here.

I walked a couple hours to the border, crossed, and attempted to find a ride...I was unable to until I walked another couple hours to the nearest town, making for about 12 miles total of walking in the beautiful countryside between Albania and Montenegro.

Montenegro is the newest country in the world since it split from "Serbia and Montenegro." The tiny country was featured in the latest James Bond film, which was not actually filmed in the country. Montenegro has a beautiful Adriatic coastline--just as great as that found in popular Dubrovnik (Croatia) to the north. However, the tourist industry is lacking a little...transportation is not the easiest and customer service is lacking. Anyway, I found myself staying the night in Ulcinj, the southernmost coastal town. Here is a picture of an internet cafe full of children playing warlike video games. Don't they restrict these games to older people?

...and a photo of the Montenegro coastline.

I caught a bus through the costal towns of Bar, Budva and Kotor into Croatia to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik has become perhaps the hottest spot in the region for tourism, with good reason. Here is a picture of the town walls and the sea, and another picture of the streets in the old town.

From Croatia I found a bus heading to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia Hercegovina. For those interested in geography, note that this bus headed along the Adriatic coast, crossed through a few miles of coastline that is Bosnian territory, entered Croatia again, then entered Bosnia en route to Mostar. I found this tiny ocean front property of Bosnia to be quite interesting.

A note about couchsurfing.com: a great website that pairs travelers with folks offering a place to sleep or even just to meet and talk. People of all ages and interests are on there. I found someone in Sarajevo....

I arrived in Sarajevo at night and called my newfound Couchsurfing friend, who instructed me to meet him at the main bar in town. The streets were sheets of ice and freezing rain was falling, but I found my way. There I met him and the other two folks he was currently hosting from couchsurfing (many couchsurfing.com hosts are very generous, hosting multiple travelers at once). The group was content on staying at the bar for a while, so I spent the next few hours in a crowded smoky bar full of the partying youth of Sarajevo. For those that know me, you know how wonderful I thought this was.

A note on the bar scene: for some travelers, bars define traveling. One of the other couchsurfers I met that night was spending a few days in each city in the Balkans...and his schedule included about 8 hours at a bar every night. This same individual couldn't understand how I could really get to know Sarajevo in just one night. Of course I can't, but I'm not sure that hours in bars achieves that goal any faster...

Here is a picture of a cemetery near downtown Sarajevo, with many graves from the recent wars. Other sites in the city include shrapnel holes in concrete structures, and the bridge where Archduke Ferdinand was when he was killed (sparking WWI).

Continuing east by bus I crossed into Serbia and arrived at the capital of Belgrade. It was Christmas Eve (Xmas is Jan 7 in Orthodox areas), so the streets were empty save for folks heading to the markets to buy last minute decorations.

...and continuing east from Belgrade, I caught a train to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. The freezing ice had become worse, and I was not having a great day anyway...so I skipped the side trip to see the Transylvanian castles just to the north. I roamed Bucharest for a day, then continued by rail to the tiny country of Moldova and its capital of Chisinau.

I knew from previous travels that all USSR areas had a different width of tracks than neighboring countries. When crossing from Romania to Moldova (a former part of the USSR), I experienced, for the first time, the changing of the wheels. This happened while everyone slept. The box part of the car was lifted off of the undercarriage, and then placed down on new wheels. Here is a picture I took during the endeavor.

On the train to Moldova I met a Swedish traveler named Matt who has been to much of the world (including some interesting places like Seychelles, Galapagos, Brunei...). (Note that extensive travel is commonplace to many young folks in Europe, Israel, and Australia). Together we met with some couchsurfing folks in Chisinau (pronounced Kishinev). Below is their picture in front of an orthodox Christian cathedral in the central park in the capital city. We recently hosted them as guests on a a podcast episode about Moldova...please listen to the latest episode (#41) of The World A La Carte podcast (click here http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=26038 or find it on iTunes).

I wanted to visit parts of Ukraine including Kiev and the Crimea (with Odesa, Yalta), but post-Christmas travel had filled all the busses. So I continued my travels with Matt heading north from Chisinau to Lviv, Ukraine. Lviv is known for its gothic architecture....statues and churches like these are all over the place.

here is a pic of the train leaving Lviv, heading for Budapest...

I headed to Budapest to catch my return flight. Actually I was supposed to return from Ekaterinburg (Russia) to Budapest on Hungarian Airlines, and then continue via London to the U.S. The agents at the airport did not mind at all that I had skipped my first segment...I arrived at the airport a couple days early and made sure of this. Then I spent a couple days seeing the iconic sights of Budapest.

Here is a fun permutation on the Russian nesting dolls, found at a market in Budapest (these same characters can be found many other places). Note the one with Osama: inside is Saddam, then Arafat, then Hitler, etc.

...and thus I end this trip, from Budapest via London via Chicago, to Boston for a day, then via LAX to Vancouver. With 2 free stopovers (i.e. over 24 hours), creative use of maximizing layovers (i.e. under 24 hours), and returning to a different city from where you started (aka open jaw) a flexible person can have quite an adventure for free with a frequent flier award ticket (nevermind the environmental damage from all the flights).

Quiz: what am I flying over in northeastern Arizona in the next picture below? The answer is below the picture.

Answer:

that is a neat picture from above of Monument Valley!

Above is a picture of the docks near Tsawassan in Vancouver. Below is me with my grandfather (in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island), which was my reason for visiting there. He is well decorated from long service in India...

...and I'll finish off with a picture on the Turnagain Arm just south of Anchorage!

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Posted By P.J! Parmar to P.J!'s Blog at 1/21/2008 07:51:00 PM