In Hawaii and not-so-much blogging

BUT...you're in luck because jill is. soofingtom will indeed be back in full effect, but for the current time the interet costs and accessibility is really bumming me out.

see what jill and i are up to: islandhopperjill.blogspot.com


-tom

final days: stuttgart, germany

my time in eastern europe came to end monday morning when i flew to stuttgart. my friend jordi is in his second year of playing hoops on a pro german team, so i thought i'd pay him a visit and see exactly what he's up to. the plan going into visiting jordi was to hang out, catch up, see the scene in stuttgart, and drink a few german beers. without too much effort all was accomplished.

so i had 3-ish days in stuttgart, and they went something like this. monday: arrive in stuttgart around 2pm. get back to jordi's around 3:30pm. hang out. eat supper. hang out. go to bed.

tuesday: sleep-in a bit while jordi is at work. visit jordi's place of work. hang out. pick up food along the way. watch the cold rain ruin our plans of walking about the city. hang out. go to bed.

wednesday: make pancakes for breakfast. take the train into stuttgart. drink a piping hot mug of glühwein. tour the city. eat a bratwurst and drink a heff. continue our wandering around the city. hang out. eat more food. hang out. hang out. go to bed.

thursday: wake up at 4:15am to make my 7:05am flight. fly to paris to make my connection to atlanta. arrive in atlanta and board a plane for south bend. arrive in south bend around 5pm. back in goshen around 6pm.

top of stuttgart train station


in-city vineyards


the man, the myth, the legend: jordi

so now i'm back in the states for the next month+ before the wwoofing continues. yes, wwoofing, not just traveling. the plane leaves from portland to honolulu on the 5th of january.

blog to be continued in early january 2009.

belgrade - sarajevo - zagreb - stuttgart

we arrived in belgrade around 7:15am and, like we've come accustomed to, we didn't have a place to stay. so our first mission was to find a hostel (we actually did do a bit of prior research), so we set out in the general direction of where we thought a few of the hostels were. to make a short story shorter, we found one in the downtown of downtown spots. we dropped off our bags at the hostel and headed out to explore city. belgrade is roughly 3 million people, which is the largest city we've visited, meaning there is plenty to see. we aimlessly wondered about the city, going through street markets and picking up a few pastries here and there, until we got to the danube river, and the belgrade fortress. we explored the fortress grounds for a while (it's huge), went back through the city toward our hostel, ate lunch on a street-side cafe, and returned to the hostel for a bit of relaxing. the second day we spent in belgrade was much like the first with a shift to a other side of the city; stopping for coffee in the morning, a pastry (or 3) while we were walking, lunch somewhere on the street, etc. this day, however, was the day levi was taking off back to the states. we said our 'good-byes' in the early evening and just like that levi was off to the train station, heading back toward bucharest to catch a flight. so we're down to 2; pat and myself.

danube river from the fortress

belgrade

the next day (wednesday) we woke up with the intent to get to sarajevo. we got to the train station with plenty of time before the scheduled departure, but after were were told to go to track 1 and then be told by a conductor it wasn't the right train, we missed it. luckily we got our money refunded, and luckily there were a few buses out of belgrade to sarajevo that day, so we hopped on a bus about a half hour later and were on our way to sarajevo. the bus ride was about 8 hours long, getting us to sarajevo around 7pm. we found our hostel, put down our bags, went to the grocery store, made sandwiches, watched champions league with other hostel-ers, and went to bed.

it seems that everyone's first thought when hearing 'sarajevo' is the war. of course. but usually the thought of a bombed out sarajevo is still assumed. this wasn't the case at all. sarajevo is great. minus the spattering of bullets holes here and there, you'd never know that a war was in the city. i mean, it's a city of 300,000; a lot of people are out and about just like belgrade, sofia, chicago, or wherever. the city is full of churches, mosques, and religious monuments, illustrating the religious diversity of the city. so anyway, there isn't much to tell about our whereabouts -- we wondered around the city, ate traditional food, visited historical landmarks, etc. the second day we were in sarajevo, pat went on the city tour with our hostel host and i took the day to figure how i was going to be getting to zagreb, croatia. after i had walked my legs to death and pat was back from the tour, we said our 'good-byes' and i took off for an overnight train to zagreb. pat was staying in sarajevo for another day before heading south to mostar and then onto southern croatia. from 3, to 2, to just myself.

sarajevo

sarajevo: cafes, shops, restaurants 

when i arrived in zagreb the next morning (the 15th) i had 2 days to see the city before flying to stuttgart. the first day was spent in the city, seeing all the sights, and the second was spent on a day-hike in the medvednica mountain range to the medvedgrad fortress. city: i was surprised how clean the city was, compared many of those we visited. i think it was the first time since arriving in bucharest that i actually saw someone pick up a piece of trash rather than throw it on the ground. croatia might be considered eastern europe, but it sure doesn't feel like. western europe comes to mind before eastern europe. the hike the second day turned out to be a bit longer than i was told -- maybe an hour more each way, but i was able to get there, eat lunch, and come back down before the sun went down. the next morning i woke up early and took a bus to the airport and got on a plane to stuttgart, germany.

i arrived in stuttgart around 2pm, met jordi at the airport, and headed back to his place.