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.

ohrid to belgrade

the hiking and physical activity lessened a bit this past week. we started our week of more-relaxation in ohrid, macedonia, spending 3 nights around one of the most beautiful places i've ever been. we arrived on the 3rd, having less than an idea of where we'd be spending the night, and of course it was during the night that we arrived. as luck, or something like that, has found us several times while traveling, a private-room-street-hustler named kate nabbed us immediately off the bus and presented us with a place to stay. we followed her back to the house (private rooms are those connected to a house, sort of like a mini hostel with community shower/kitchen/etc.) and gladly agreed to her taking the task of wondering around a town we don't know off our hands. so the lake; lake ohrid. lake ochrid is a tectonic lake said to be one of the oldest in the world (some 3-4 million years old), is 300+ meters deep at its deepest point, and is so clear that you could drop a (as was told to us) a white dinner plate 25 meters down and still see it -- it really is unbelievably clear. the 2 full days we spent in ohrid weren't doing anything overly exciting; walked around the old city seeing the different historic and non-historic sites, and of course finding the local street cuisine and eating our way from place to place. the one short expedition we did go on was a day-trip to sveti naum monastery. we were told by our hosts that spending time in ohrid and not visiting sveti naum was liking going to paris and not seeing the eiffel tower. after we had walked around the monastery we decided he had never been to paris...

lake ohrid


old town, ohrid

so then on a bus to montenegro we go, or so we thought. the once-a-day train into tirana, albania, which would serve as our connecting point to montenegro didn't exist -- at least at the time we got there. it wasn't a big deal, we just had spend the night in tirana and headed out way early in the morning for a bus to the border city. and it's turns out that tirana is nice -- getting to spend a night there was a good thing.

by this time it's the 7th and we just arrived in budva, montenegro. oh budva -- what a great place; right on the adriatic sea with plenty of warm weather. once again we arrived without a place to stay and without knowing much more than what the lonely planet book had told us. and once again a place to stay found us before we went looking for it -- pat actually predicted that all we needed to do was go to a cafe/coffee shop and someone would offer us a private room. longer story, short: we stopped for a cup of coffee, were offered a room, took the room, and stayed in it 3 nights. budva is quite the touristy place (when it's not the middle-ish of november), luring people with the 'old town' right on the sea and the beaches; both which we indulged in. of the 2-ish days we were there, part of 1 was spending touring the city of kotor (about 30 km north), wondering around the maze-like streets of the old town, and doing no more than relaxing by the water -- and taking a quick swim. the original plan was to leave budva on the 9th and travel north to durmitor, montenegro, but decided we couldn't leave the coastal town after waking up to a perfectly warm and sunny day. so then on to belgrade.

budva, from old town


budva


kotor, from the fortress

we took the overnight on the 9th, arriving the 10th, and will spend a couple days around the city.

rila mountains to mt. olympus

after spending a few days in sofia, we headed to rila mountains, where were hoping to spend 2 nights and 3 days of hiking -- conditions permitting. bulgaria, as well as other countries and some US states, have these great hut systems set up where hikers/etc. can stay for the night and eat all meals during their stay. we hoped they would turn out as we had heard, and they did.

the first day in the rila moutain was couple hour hike; the majority of it trying to hitch a ride to the trailhead in a small town just below the entrance into the mountains. anyway we made it to the lona hut, which is at about 1600 meters. the person running the hut was an older-ish guy name gorosch, whom we later found could hold his own singing traditional bulgarian tunes. so we stayed the night and ate supper and breakfast with him. we took off the next morning for the 7 lakes hut, which we heard was about 4 hours away. ...it's kind of annoying that all trails are marked with hours rather than a distance. we woke up early to a beautiful blue sky (the kind we were hoping for in romania) and headed to the 7 lakes. the 7 lakes area are exactly that, 7 lakes scattered in a fairly small area, considering the size of the mountain range, right in the middle of the mountains. they were amazing to say the least. by the time we reached the 7 lakes hut it had only been a fraction of the 4 hours which we were told it took to get there, so we put our packs down at the hut and headed out for the day to see the different lakes. after reaching about 2600 meters, and seeing all the lakes, we looked down the opposite side of the range and noticed another hut in the far off distance. we knew the ivan vazor hut was somewhere semi-close, but not as close as it actually appeared to be. so we sat around, resting and whatnot, when we decided to hike back down to the 7 lakes hut to grab our packs and hike back to where were, and then onto the hut we saw in the distance. well, we made it, but not without being absolutely dead tired. we stayed at ivan vazor, ate a few meals, and then headed off the next morning to our final destination: rila monastery. ...another early morning, another day of hiking, and another day of being absolutely beat when finally crawling into bed -- after a bus ride to thessaloniki.

levi chopping wood at lovna


random


several of the 7 lakes

seeing ivan vazov in the distance

we stayed in thessaloniki for 2 nights without any specific plans other than wanting to see the city. and we did just that. and for the bonus, we stayed with someone we met when we got off the bus arriving in thessaloniki, giving our accommodations budget a bit of a boost. after the 2nd night we heading to litochoro, which would be our starting point to climb mt. olympus.

we woke up the 1st morning on litochoro with clouds and endless fog in the mountains -- reminiscent of romania. our morale took a hit. so we bummed around the town trying to find out about the conditions on the mountain, etc. no one knew anything. then around 2pm or so we saw some hikers and asked them where they had been hiking and what the conditions where like. so had summit-ed the mountain and said the sun had actually been out above the clouds. morale was on the up and up. we packed up with food and headed to the trailhead. the fog didn't allow us to see everything we wanted to, but it didn't rain and the sun did actually shine through the clouds. we made it to the area we wanted to and setup camp for the night. when we woke up sunday morning it was nothing but blue sky. we were on the trail before 8am and had reached the summit around noon. it was up, up, and then a bit more in that direction. the views/etc. were like those on the postcards you can buy around litochoro. so anyway, we ate lunch at the summit and then headed back down to the half-way point where we had started that morning. since it was the weekend and the weather was so nice there were loads of people sightseeing and hiking around -- we were sure our hitch-hiking skills would get us back to town. and they did.

not happy with the weather


campsite


the throne of zues


nearing the summit

right now we're likely in transit to macedonia.