Bled

If you’ve read Erica’s post you probably understand why we haven’t posted in a while. Looking back, I wish I had taken a few pictures of Niki, the backwards little border town we got stranded in; however, there comes a point when you are no longer interested in documenting your own suffering.

I’ve always been under the impression that the Greeks were a hardy yet rough and unforgiving people. I remember reading another traveler’s account of a Greek shop owner ruthlessly berating a handicapped young man for crowding his retail space with a wheelchair. Our experience in Niki pretty much confirmed that generalization; people were friendly until they realized we might become the mildest sort of burden.

Since we were running short on time and interview fell through, we decided to forgo our trip to Bulgaria. I’m still a little down about that because it was one of the countries that I was looking forward to the most. Instead we took the train back to Belgrade for one night, and the next day on to Ljubljana.

To end our trip on a high note, we took a bus to Bled, Slovenia yesterday. The town is situated on a beautiful alpine lake near the Austrian border. For those of you that have seen Band of Brothers, it reminds me of the lake they are stationed on in the series finale. One of my favorite places on the trip.

We are headed back to Venice tonight, then London the next day, then Atlanta after that. Even though we are towards the end of our trip, stay tuned because, as we have learned, you never know what will happen next.

**For some reason I can't post photos under my account, so I've put the Bled photos in under Erica's in the post above.

Last Days in Macedonia

Our next to last night in Macedonia did not go well for me. For the past year I have been taking an over-the-counter sleep aide called melatonin. Anyone who has ever lived with me knows that I am an insomniac. Melatonin has been a fairly effective sleep aide without the side effects of some of the other options. What I didn´t know was how dependent I had become on my magic sleeping pill. I ran out in Macedonia with no possibility for a replacement bottle, which resulted in me staring at the ceiling until 5:30 in the morning. I mention this to give you reference point for my state of mind over the next few days.

The following day we took an hour bus ride to the southwest corner of Lake Ohrid to one of Macedonia´s most famous churches, Sveti Naum. It is a beautiful area, bordered on one side by Lake Ohrid and on the other by a completely clear spring-fed lagoon. Dramatic mountains punctuate the backdrop. After having lunch at the monastary hotel, we decided to skip the next bus and check out the local national Park. Having had a good lunch we were feeling ambitious and decided we could walk the road up to one of scenic view points in the mountains. As with most of my excursion into the outdoors, the hike became a little epic; we spent the entire day hiking only to see the last bus going down the road while we were still a mile away. After standing around in the middle-of-nowhere Macedonia, in the dark, we started hiking to the next town. Luckily we managed to flag down a taxi headed back to Ohrid.

So, where are they now?

We took a train to Skopje, Macedonia two nights ago. We spent the morning in Skopje and were not impressed. It was hot (over 90, like everywhere else we’ve been lately) and the lodging situation didn’t look good. So we decided to catch the afternoon bus to Ohrid, where it would be cooler and we would have more room choices. Nice place so far.
I’ve put up a couple of posts from Belgrade that we did not have the opportunity to upload. Hopefully we will be able to post at least once more before we leave Ohrid.

On War

We also visited the Serbian National War museum which has one of the most amazing pre-WWII collections I have ever seen. It contains objects from the early conquests of the Ottomans and many rare weapons and pieces of armor from the middle ages. The museum is very plain and minimally maintained yet contains exhibits that the world’s great museums would kill for. The museum is also unapologetically nationalistic, which means it is less true history and more true to the Serbian mindset. While some people might be put off by this, I found it a very helpful window into the Serbian identity. However, the last exhibit is a little hard to stomach for me as an American, as it held the uniform of a captured US soldier and the flight suit and plane wreckage of a downed USAF pilot. The rest of the room was dedicated to the “war crimes” of other NATO members and of the other former Yugoslav republics (excluding Montenegro). Of course there was no mention of Srebrinica.


Am I bitter that the Serbs are displaying US service uniforms like they were Somalis dragging corpses around? No, not really. The people of Serbia, to lesser extent than the Bosnians, have been through hell in the last decade. The pain was mostly economic, as Milošević’s mismanagement of the economy led to record setting inflation. At its worst point, inflation of the Serbian Dinar reached 600,000% annually and 3% hourly (3% is a annual target rate for most countries). This resulted in the printing of bill with 11 zeros! (I’m looking for one of those on EBay when I get back). The NATO bombing campaign definitely destroyed some infrastructure but it is really more an issue of damaged pride and isolation from the west that Serbs cannot forgive.

Belgrade: A Second Look

We had a much better time in Belgrade this time around. We have decided that our affinity for a city is usually determined by our lodging situation. The Belgrade Eye was a vast improvement over our last experience at The Three Black Cats, which was an apartment the size of ours turned into a smoke-filled filthy hostel. The Belgrade Eye was clean, spacious, and staffed by professional and helpful people.

On our second visit I discovered Belgrade’s charm that I overlooked on my first pass.




Kalemegdan is a massive layer cake of ancient fortresses on the bank of the Danube which has been ground zero for many dark pivotal events in history; Turkish Vizier Kara Mustapha was brought here to be strangled after he was defeated outside of Vienna and the first shots of World War I were fired at Kalemegdan from an Austrian battery on the opposite side of the river.


Zemun is located on the other side of the river and was once home to Belgrade’s Hapsburg overseers. The area still shows a stronger influence of Austrian architecture than central Belgrade.

The path not chosen...

Buried in the suburbs of Belgrade I found the remnants of a little known branch of communism. If Lenin had scrapped the “workers revolution” in exchange for the “leisure sport revolution”, the world would be a very different place today. I know my dad and several of my friends would have converted.

Back in Ljubljana

We are in Ljubljana, Slovenia and having a good time. Celica, our hostel, easily qualifies as the most unique and enjoyable of our lodging situations. It is a prison that has been converted into a hostel, art gallery, and restaurant. Rooms/Cells are reasonably priced and the food is an even better deal; for under $4 you can get a cheeseburger or chicken sandwich the size of your head. There is also live music every night. I'm using this down time to prep for some interviews in Belgrade later this week.

Milan

We took a night train from Bonn to Milan. We got some quality sleep and got to see quite a bit of the city. Milan has one of my favorite city parks of the trip!

A big promenade in the old town.

The 1,000th big cathederal I have seen on this trip.

Some unique park furniture. You can tell when I have a good, cheap internet connection, can't you?

A few more TASA memories worth sharing...

Celebrating the 4th of July on a long bus ride. Jesse Cragwall pictured above, just making sure the non-Americans didn't forget what day it was.

This is the UT Group. Fun Fact: The guy on the right once staged a mock crucifiction of himself to make street preachers in Knoxville mad. He says he wants to be a televangelist. Sigh....

TASA ends

This post is dedicated to Tim and Jesse, without whom TASA would have been quite lame.

"Ludacris speed!!!" Spaceballs anyone? Anyone?

Sorry Tim.

It's the little things...

So I pushed the envelope of the language barrier and got a haircut; things did not go well.