I give up, it took almost 1 hour to just write this small and tiny blog post and for you who understand it, we have 70% package loss. Chinas internet is broken and it sucks big time!
Our day has been lazy and we have been mostly chillin and spent a couple of hours at the arcade. Had bullfrog to dinner which actually was really good, much better than what it sounds like
A new attempt to write a post since the Internet didn’t work very good yesterday. To be honest it still doesn’t work any good but hopefully good enough for me to write this post,
We started the day with noticing that it was raining and gray outside. Not the funniest weather but we decided to head over to the Jing’an temple and check it out. Look at the map and off we went but maybe we should have looked a little bit more on the map because we never found any temple. We walked street up and down, block by block and we were 100% sure we were in the right area but we just couldnt find the temple. Instead we headed over to a coffee shop and had some sweet cookies, it may be the first failure on this trip but it feels like we seen so many temples already so it cant be that bad that we miss this one. Now when Im back at the hotel and having Internet connection I can see we walked just pass the temple but we never recognized it, epic failure!
We headed over to the arcade and for €4 we spent a couple of hours shooting zombies, going skateboarding, drove car, played air hockey and played bongos. Arcades are totally under estimated way to spend time and is a real life saver when the weather sucks and you just want to spend a few hours. The quality of the games was not the best but it was cheap so I don’t complain.
On the evening we went to a small, local Chinese restaurant and it as time to try the famous bullfrog. You kind a eat it like ribs and it was a challenge indeed to eat it with chopsticks without sending food all over the restaurant but once you succeed with a really taste frog, I give it 8 of 10.
So today our plan was to eat the weird stuff day but we kind a failed real time, we didn’t find any nice food market. We did find a more regular market though where they sold all other kind of things you can imaging. Most of the food was raw though and even if you could buy anything you could possible need to make a fest we were more into looking for cooked food, instead we found chickens, ducks, turtles, crabs, crayfish, all kind of weird vegetables and meat, plenty of meat laying on the tables in 25 degrees heat for the day, I wouldn’t buy that!
We did however found some cooked food and we started with some bread which kind a looked like a pizza but was just simple bread with seasons, pretty good. After that we went for some barbecued squid, the Chinese girl asked me something which I didn’t understood (as usual) so I just smiled and said yes and the girl took some sort of sauce on the squid and jesus, I have no idea what it was but Chili is for kids compared to this, lucky for me I had a huge beer just beside me and even if it was really good it that sauce almost was just to much.
Straight after the good market we went to a phone store, we just had to check the prices. A Galaxy S4 costs around €80, unlocked of course and that that would be like a tenth of what it cost in Sweden, pretty cheap!
To walk around in wet clothes after happy valley was maybe not our brightest idea and when I woke up this morning I had a cold from hell, in other words we took another calm day and where we mostly walked around in Shanghai without any plans. After lunch/dinner on a Indonesian place I felt much better, actually so much better that we decided to head over to Perrys which is a classic expat bar in Shanghai. Perrys is nice if you want to meet westerner people and for every day they have a theme, from “order one, get two” to free cigarettes day.
Anyway at Perrys we had a few drinks, smoked some cigarettes and discussed all you can think of, during this the place was starting to fill up with more and more people. As I told you before me and Anton is quite good to incite each others and yea, instead of going back home and sleep off the cold we ordered in a hookah, some Mojito’s and invited over people to our table.
The evening ended up with us partying with some Americans/British people and when we headed over to Maya club where we danced all night long to way to loud music.. Today a few hours later it still beeps in my ears but the club was really nice and since we were all westerns, we didn’t have to queue.
When the sun started to rise and we decided to get back to our hotel we for the first time on this trip found a taxi which actually could read our English business card, a short stop at local shop buying water and we were back at our hotel, sleeping! Woke up a few hours later all all traces of the cold is gone, believe it or not but you can apparently club away a cold.
To buy electronics in China is always interesting. Me and Anton walked around and looked at new phones, tablets and stuff like that and the prices are fantastic, the only “problem” is that the brand is Sumsang instead of Samsung but it maybe doesn’t matter since the price is so low as €40 instead of the €600 for the same model in Sweden. Anton couldn’t stay away from a good deal so after we verified that the phone starts, it looks ok in quality he bought one.
According to the information we found online and in the store the hardware should be the same as in the original, our first peek preview of the phone was also descent, I mean we know its a pirate copy but for that price, amazing. The truth is though that phone is not even close of having the same hardware, the RAM memory is 100Mb and the display doesn’t support tilting and maybe the worst part, the USB charger, I doesn’t even dare to connect it to my computer.
To summarize it I would say that you can find really cheap electronics here, you can do the deal of your life but you can also get scammed. If you go for the real deal, like Apple or Samsung its more or less the same prices as in your home country though.
This trip is almost over and this is our last day in Shanghai, tomorrow we head back home to Sweden. It was ridiculous hot today so we could barely be outside but during the afternoon we got so restless that we took a walk, played some air hockey at the arcade and at the evening we met up Martin, Greg and Chloe for a good bye dinner.
They knew a good Japanese place we went to were you payed a fixed amount (around €30) and then you could eat and drink how much you want. Thats pretty expensive for being China but it was no buffet or something cheap like that, instead you ordered dishes from the menu just as usual Tried a lot of different dishes I never even heard about before and the food was really great, pretty fun to see the chef prepare and cook your food just in front of you too! After the dinner, which took like three hours we went on to a bar and somewhere around 2am we headed back to our hotel and started to pack our bags, which our neighbors didn’t like. However our plan is to be tired so we can sleep during the whole flight!
So the day is here which means we need to take our backpacks and go back to reality and our home. I guess that I will get some questions if I never went home sick on this trip and I must say no. We have been so busy on so short time, met so many people, been into situation that you really cant prepare for and which demands your concentration that I never really thought about the life back home but of course, I missed my family and friends.
There are several different ways to get to the Shanghai Pudong airport, the most expensive but easiest would be to take a taxi. The not so comfy but cheap would be to take the airport shuttle bus and we decided for neither. Instead we took the metro for a few stations and then bought tickets for the maglev train. We had some discussion about how we should go to the airport but even if it doesn’t was attracting to go by the metro during rush hour with all our luggage the decision was easy. We should really end this trip with a train ride and what can be better than going by the worlds fastest commercial train?
A short walk to the metro in 30 degrees heat, a packed metro and we kind a started to ask ourselves if this really was the best decision but once we got the the maglev train station we knew we took the right decision. The maglev train is like in many cities, just a train ride between the city and the airport, its not the cheapest alternative but with that ends all my experience of train rides to the airport. A ticket cost around €5 /20% off if you got a airplane ticket for that day), the train is maglev which means its levitate using magnetism and while most other trains barely reach 200km/h this train march speed is 430km/h. I don’t know how many km the track is but we reached the airport in 7 minutes.
Shanghai airport was really nice, long queue to check in but no problem and their immigration was really cool. First time I ever seen that they scan your passport, your pictures displays and while you look at your picture they take another picture of you and let the computer compare them to make sure its the same person. I assume more border controls use this method but I never seen it so clearly before and it worked like a charm, even if my beard is pretty much bigger now than when I got my passport.
The Aeroflot flight was not a big hit though, it was cheap and I know why. Old plane with comfort like shit but after changing planes in Moscow we got a much smaller, but better plane and even the food was actually really good. Still I cant really recommend anyone to fly with Aeroflot as long as its not really, really cheap tickets!
Finally the trip has started and we are right now in a rainy and gray Czech Republic but lets start from the beginning. Per, my uncle came by with the car we going to use for this road trip, a Citroen C1. Maybe not the biggest car but it will be perfect for us two and already when we boarded the ferry in Trelleborg he showed off. Per tried to accelerate on the wet ferry tarmac and we didn’t move an inch and after a few seconds we started to feel the smell of burned rubber. A big laugh later we were parked and on our way to find our cabin.
The ferry between Trelleborg and Rostock is not a fun ferry but to move from A to B its perfect, the ferry leaves at 23.00 and arrives around 6 in the morning so even if its a boring ferry its ok to just grab a beer and then go to sleep and then you wake up, you are in Germany.
In Rosttock we headed for the autobahn. We were not really interested to see anything special and the gray, foggy weather with clouds really close to the ground made us even more confidents that we just wanna go south as fast as possible. Somewhere outside Leipzig we decided to leave the autobahn for according to the map a pretty big road but as I soon have learned is that you cant trust maps. The road was more like a tarmac trail and it went up, down, left right all over , at some places we could only use the second gear on the car because the road was to steep. The landscape was really beautiful though and in Plasy we found an “small” monestry, it needs some renovation but it was impressive now and I can only imaging how impressive it was before it started to get abonded. Right now we are in Plzeň and even if its still rainig we need to try some of the famous Czech beers nd maybe see at least some parts of the city.
After an calm night in Plzen we hit the road again and towards what we should be calling the actual start of this trip, Ljubljana in Slovenia. To find our way out of Plezen was a breeze and rather soon we were on small, kind a picturesque roads through the lovely nature in Czech Republic and Austria. The roads were actually in really good condition and Austria showed us its best side with newly added asphalt on the roads, almost no traffic and a nice shining sun that you could spot between the alp tops. It also added some excitements then it was time to climb over the alps, our poor Citroën had to work hard (first gear only) to climb the Loibl pass but it was totally worth it, so beautiful and if you are in the area, you must do this pass!
120 miles later and we have now arrived in Ljubljana, Per has just interview Robin who is an local which we will spend the night at (Thank you couchsurfing). Unfortunately we arrived a bit late for examining the city but lets do that tomorrow instead and now Robin had given us some advices for what to see and what to skip.
Today we are in Serbia, well not really its more like wanna be Serbia while we are in Bosnia Herzegovina, the city Banja Luka and the area called Republika Srpska. This is Bosnia but beside the custom who gave us a very long and concerned look until he found a stash of beers in the trunk (that made him smile) we haven’t seen any bonsiaks, Bosnian flags or anything that could give an hint that you are in BIH. There are however plenty of flags here, Republika Srpska which is very similar to the Serbian flag, all signs are written in Cyrillic and yea, this is Serbia light.
We also saw the first trace from the war today. Some houses who were bombed and some with facades covered in in bullet holes but maybe that one who caught me the most was probably all the abandoned houses from the ethnic cleaning, now it feels like we are doing the real deal.
Before we left Slovenia we heard some warnings about flooding. We heard the rumors before and a warning is always nice but it was kind a more than we expected. In sweden we had a nice, hot and dry summer while on the Balkan, they wasnt that lucky. Corn fields laid under water, hay was floating around in what looks like lakes and the roads where protected by sandbags. We had no problems driving through and the roads may be narrow but they are in better condition the the swedish ones. The highway do cost money but as long as they keep this standard I have no problem to pay some extra.
The city Banja Luka is quite small but cosy. Filled with outdoor seatings, bars and cafe’s. Vi also found their stadium and by 1 part luck and two parts cleverness we succeeded to get inside and take a look, unfortunately no match today.
Today we arrived in Serbia, the real Serbia. The trip here went surprisingly easy and the roads are in really good condition however Im not jelous of the people who tried to get into Croatia from Serbia. I guess the border control into EU is a bit tougher than getting out of EU. Once we were closing in to Serbia we had a minor discussion, I guess its a generation question, google maps VS old school map. After our discussion we decided to give google maps a try and now looking back at it worked awesome. To get to Serbia we choose the “fast route”, that means drive back to Croatia from Banja Luka and then just head east through Croatia and into Serbia to get to Belgrade. If we had drove this way to Banja Luka it would be much faster but in other hand, we would have missed a lot of the countryside of Croatia.
Once inside Belgrade google maps showed us the way to hotel Moscow and even if its way over our budget we just had to stay at this classic hotel in the middle of the city. The evening was spent walking around in the city and you can really feel that its an bigger city than those we visited earlier on this trip. But even so we found some traces from the war even here, a huge hole in the former military headquarter (Thank you NATO) and you should be kind a careful what you order for dinner, in some way we succeed to order food for the whole hotel and even if its cheap it feels bad to throw away really good food.
I also have to kill one myth, the roads so far while we been driving in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia is way better than you can expect, actually way better than what I am used to and the worst roads so far has been the smaller roads in Germany, I guess that will change once we get to Albania.
Tomorrow we head for Pristine in Kosovo, it kind a sucks to doing a balkan express tour like this because I feel i’m not done with Belgrade yet but with limited vacation you have to what you have to do, one thing is sure, I will come back to Belgrade.
Serbia is a funny country, on our way out of Belgrade we decided to visit the mausoleum of Tito. This beloved father of the country Yugoslavia which is beloved and praised (at least in Serbia) has a mausoleum and you could guess that it would be signs so you could find it, wrong! We found the address on internet and google maps and after we checked both the ordinary map and and configured the GPS we started to drive. We knew that we were supposed to drive past the Red Star stadium and yes we did. We might be be warned here but even around this big stadium it was no signs what so ever about where to park or anything but we found a parking spot and walked over and took some photos of the stadium.
Back into the car and driving using the GPS and when the GPS we arrived, we were in the middle of residential area, not quite right. Well I thought the GPS freaked out which is not uncommon in big cities where the connection to satellites are blocked but nah, we found a park close by but no mausoleum. We drove around a bit using the ordinary map instead and realized that we actually were on the right address but where the mausoleum is located….we have no idea. Serbia, have you heard about signs?!? Anyway, we gave up and tried to figure out how to find our way out of Belgrade instead. Once again we configured the GPS and this time it took us to a half built resident area, probably the fastest/easiest road out from city once the road is finished and now we were really lost. Luckily for us we met a nice serb who first tried to describe how we should drive to find the highway but after a few minutes he realized that not even him understood how to drive so he took the lead and guided us out.
From that point we drove using both GPS and the old school map and once we got to Nis where we knew that we should turn the GPS said follow road 34, the old school map said follow road 25 and the road signs, they said 14. It kind a felt like Servia does everything to make it impossible to relax. The roads however were in good shape and the border control from Serbia to Kosovo wasn’t any problem at all, almost I got disappointed how easy it was to leave Serbia to a country they don’t recognize as a country.
In Pristina were we are right now the feeling is pretty much the opposite from the rest of the countries we visited. The whole city is breathing change and they are building everywhere. Our hotel is as many other hotels newly built and our neighbor next door is the KFOR base and some embassies. I guess you could say we chose the little nicer area in this city but so far I would dare to say that the feeling I get is everywhere in the city, not just here.
The day started with an early breakfast at the hotel before we walked towards the ministry of interior and the department of Culture, sport and youth. Per had an arranged an interview and myself tagged along pretty much to see what the ministry looked like. It was actually really interesting and I learned some new things but it was obvious that we talked to an politician. All answers was thought-through, impossible to misunderstand and he pointed out both one and two times that everybody had the same value no matter of skin color, race, religion and of course that Kosovo has forgiven Serbia for the cruelties that happened during the war. Well the graffiti on the walls over the city say something different but overall I think he have right and Pristine is not looking in the past, instead its bursting of optimism and a go-ahead spritit I havent noticed in any other country.
In other words it was a really nice start of the day and that we had our first really warm day didn’t it make it worse. We spent a lot of time on the small coffee shops and since they “when in rome, do like the romans do” Ive been drinking a shitload of espressos and smoked way to many cigarettes. I read somewhere that in Kosovo you can buy anything and by some reason I don’t doubt it, if you go for regular wares it really cheap or what about 2 beers, 2 coffees and one bottle of water for €2.50.
Something completely different, Kosovo is the first country i visited where while I sit on the toilet my feets are dingle in the air, what kind of giant are these kosovo-albans?
Yesterday we met Durim at the local hotel bar. Took a beer, talked about the past, now and the future and we picture Durim told us wasn’t exactly the same picture as the politician said early during the day and he told us about tensions between Kosovo and Serbia. After a few beers the question raised if we should move on to next stop and since Pristina skybar is closed because of maintains we went to Germia park. Germia park is really close to the city center but still pretty big for a park, we rented some mountain bikes and started to bike uphill (which was not so fun) to a restaurant. Once we were on top of the hill it was totally worth it though, so quite, calm and not a single car could be heard. The food was really awesome too and as a fun finish you had to bike down the hill to get home. Beside this park it feels like Pristina is a huge construction site and I got feeling of the “wild west” during the gold rush.
Today we aimed for a new country, Macedonia. This is one of the shorter stages on this trip and is only around 80km between Pristina and Skopje, however it took some time to get there anyway because the roads in Kosovo was jammed with trucks, I lost count of the number of concrete trucks we passed. The border was no problem at all and for the first time on this trip we really got the “eastern Europe-feeling”. The city may have been destroyed in an earthquake during 1960´s but its not an excuse. Its grey, its concrete, its boring and to make the city fun they placed statues, everywhere! It doesn’t work, it just feels weird with statues who often reminds about the Ottoman empire everywhere but the good part is that the food is good, the women are beautiful and its so cheap here, almost impossible to spend your money. With that in mind, I can agree to live in a concrete city filled with statues.
No pictures today, the wifi here t the hotel is not the fastest one.
Pretty nervous we entered the car and started our journey towards Albania. We are not afraid of Albania but everybody has scared us about the traffic, the road conditions and how hard it is to drive there. It couldn’t be more wrong an and the roads where in mint condition. On our way towards Albania we stopped in a national park, besides bullet holes in the road signs it kind a ironic that this park was the most contaminated place on the whole trip, plastic bags and garbage everywhere. To bad cause the nature was really beautiful with some mountains and green forests and it is kind a cool to look down at the clouds.
We also stopped in the small city of Ohrid, located close to the border and right beside a big like it gave more vibes of an greek village close to the Mediterranean than anything else. But now its an small Macedonian village and after some food and walk around the city center it feels like they live on tourism and selling pearls. I’m not the kind of guy wearing pearls so no shopping for me and instead we headed up the mountains to cross the border.
Just outside Tirana the newly built highway ended up in just an ordinary tiny road and from two files (which means four cars driving beside each other) we all had to go over and drive in a line, it was a mess and because the pope were in town a lot of streets were closed which made it even worse. I saw the drops of sweat on Pers head before we finally found a hotel where we could park our car and finally exhale and relax over that we didn’t hit anything or anyone. Our trip may be a bit stressed but that we should arrive in Tirana at the same day as the pope, without knowing it. What are the odds for that? A quick shower later and while we are walking down the streets in central Tirana we suddenly see a crowd of people, curious as we are we walked over and guess what. The people were waiting on the pope and a few minutes later he drove by in his pope-mobile and I can check see the pope from my bucket list.
We finished the evening yesterday over an beer at the hotel, our discussions went from communism-socialism-capitalism and religion to which is the best the beer and how to get to Durres. Durres is a city which almost built together with Tirana and you could say that its here most of the people go during the summer to get a swim in the ocean or just relax on the beach. It was really easy to get here but the day started with a shopping spree in Tirana.
The number of clean clothes are getting close to zero so why not use the opportunity that we are in the cheapest country in Europe? However god seems to be pissed that the pope left the city and rain and thunderstorm was a fact. Well I need new underwear whatever weather it is so I bought myself an umbrella and of I went. After an hour it stopped raining and I bought myself some souvenirs and Per bought himself a toaster, yepp its correct, a toaster. It was cheap, pretty nice and I guess Per needed a toaster, besides the salesmen verified that it worked before the sale so I guess it must be a good choice. We found some clothes and it is cheap, the problem though is that most of the clothes are really ugly, I got some underwear at least and I bought myself a pair of new shoes, Van´s for like €10 which is cheap, however I don’t think anyone believes that they are the real deal.
After the shopping we left for Durres, 28 degrees in the air, 20 in the water and a big shining sun made us really excited over to just check in at the closest hotel and jump into the ocean. We found a decent hotel with a nice balcony with ocean view and somewhere around 30m to the ocean, price? around €25/night for a twin room. Well the weather is nice and the ocean is lovely so I will leave you for some beach time.
After an minimal breakfast and some thinking if I should jump into the ocean once more before we leave we left Albania and headed for Podgorica in Montenegro. All talk about bad roads and crazy traffic is just nonsense. The road were in perfect condition, so good that sometimes we drove three or four cars beside each other on the one file road or used the pavement or the ditch to overcome that slow car in front of you. It took some time to get used to it but as long as you keep en eye open whats happening around the car and clearly show your next move its not that hard to drive here, just drive it like you stole it! I am though a bit disappointed that I didn’t see that many bunkers from the Hoxha era but well, I got some pictures and hopefully I they got good!
On our way to Podgorica we stopped at a bird sanctuary, our hope was to catch some pelicans or if we were really lucky a black stork but for being a bird sanctuary where 50% of europes birds has been seen we found zero and nothing except a bird watching tower and a couple of signs was to be seen.
We gave up and continued to Podgorica instead and I confess, I had no real expectations on this city. I kind a didn’t know anything about the city but once we arrived we was greeted by a kind a small, very green cozy city with parks, some rivers through the town and the sun was shining so everything looked really nice. After an interview with an editor of the local news station we ended up at the orthodox church’s restaurant, Ive eaten better food but at least the money we paid went for something good. Besides, even if Montenegro aint a member of EU they use Euro as their currency and speak really good english, pretty darn awesome!
With sorrow in my heart we left Podgorica after enjoying an awesome breakfast, on the terrace, in the sun, listening to the sound from the river. I’ll guess sometimes its totally worth to stay at nice hotels and this hotel, it was one of the nicer. After an short interview with PR-manager or something like that from Montenegro’s football association and even if I wasn’t interested at all I could ask a question or give a statement or two we hit the road towards the border to Bosnia and Sarajevo.
According to the maps its only 23 miles from Podgorica to Sarajevo and while we drove through Montenegro we were stunned how beautiful it was up in the mountains but once we crossed the border to Bosnia the road changed drastic. It was still very beautiful but they were narrow, winding, high edges on the tarmac and on the sides, it was far far down to the bottom and of course no crash barriers at all. We even saw a couple of places where the tarmac had been washed off by all the rain. Kind a spooky and those 23 miles took way much longer than we thought it would and “finally” we found those bad roads everybody has been talking about.
In Sarajevo the next shock came, we got stuck in rush hour and it took like one hour to get from the outer suburbs to city center, then our GPS told us to turn right but to the right there was no street..well there was but it was so tiny that it must be for pedestrians and bicycle only. We drive around and search but find nothing so after a while we were once again back at the intersection where the GPS told us to turn right. Scratching our heads and not understanding anything I jump out of the car to see what kind of street it is and guess what, it is an street for cars and the GPS showed us the correct way all the time, bummer! However I’m happy that we drove a tiny Citroën because it was tight, very tight. I doubt that if we had a normal Volvo or BMW we could have used those streets in the old city of Sarajevo. Today however its not any nice hotel, instead its more of a hostel with 2 rooms, and the owner live upstairs so in other words are we living just like the balkan is, sometimes luxury and fine, sometimes a little bit more simple.
Yesterday evening we started on the museum about the Srebrenica massacre and that was that evening, what a party pooper. Why do I never learn that genocide is never fun?!?
So today we continued our war tourism and to be effective we walked downed to the tourist information to get a map over the city and it ended up that we hired a guide/driver instead. Well almost the same thing and even if I’m kind a skeptical towards this kind of guides, Jasmin which was our guide was really good and didn’t try to sell us a lot of crap. Instead he really showed us where he grewup during the war, gave us hes point of view how it fell, why it happen and whats the situation is right now. He also showed us the famous tourist spots like the jewish cemetery, OS-village, the bob sledge track, snipers alley. We visited ruins where the “serb” snipers were located and shoot into the city. I put serbs in quites mark because it wasn’t serbs who bombed the shit out of Sarajevo even if the whole western world think so. I also met an very old man with an very polite goat in the former olympic village. Even if we didn’t spoke the same language we spoke the universal language of cigarettes and after a while Jasmin came and could help us translate and here we got our first warning; watch your steps because there is still mines all over the forest. Both me and Per chilled with our exploration after that and we have still both our legs left.
Into the city again and visit the only little life line who existed during the siege, the tunnel under the airport. Its a really interesting museum and clearly shows what people can do when they have to. The tunnel was 800m long, was digged by hand under the airport which UN-troops kept and made it possible to import food, weapons and other necessaries during the whole siege. The tour ended into the hills again with a cup of great, strong bosniak coffee and a view over Sarajevos older part, wonderful.
We also had time to visit the older parts of Sarajevo, well actually we live in the older parts so we don’t have much choice. Its really cool to see how how the city started in the east and the more west you go the more modern the city gets. You can really see the difference between the time periods and Sarajevo is not an city who belong to the west or east, its a total mix of everything. Now its time to head out in the Sarajevo night, we have a date with Amira who hopefully will tell us more about how it is to live in a city like this.
Time for another day in the car and now we left the narrow streets of Sarajevo and went to Mostar and finally Split in Croatia. Mostar which a lot of people has spoken them selfs warm about Mostar but myself, I think it was one if the biggest tourist trap in the world. People were trying to sell souvenirs to you everywhere and you had to fight your way through the crowd of people to be able to the see the famous bridge (which is fake since the blew up the original one during the war). Once you see the bridge you get wow…yea..its a bridge, Ive seen it before. Anyway, we where there, we saw it and we went to a restaurant and order a kebab, which looked like ordinary beef stew, tasted like ordinary beef stew and the price…like a really really nice steak. From here we left to Split and after a short while we came up on newly built highway so new that they wasn’t exactly finished with the exits, gas stations or road toll booths.
On the highway everything went on in high speed and what a difference it is between Croatia along the coast and Croatia inland, its like two completly different countries and here along the cost you dont see any bombed house, ruins or rusty old yugo cars. Here everything is newly built, modern and fresh. Not much left of our trip and in one kind of way it already feels like its over. Croatia doesnt feel like the rest of the balkan, to be honest this could be like any other western european country.
On our way north it really felt like we left the Balkan peninsula. We drove along the coastline and its just like I said before completely different from how it look inland. The road is perfect, if you had a MC, it goes along the coast with a beautiful scenery, a bit winding and up and down over the hills. Not the same feeling with a car, especially not our car but it works fine and if you think of how many miles we been driving the car is really awesome, even if not has started to squeak every time we turn right. I really recommend the road from Split to Rijeka along the coast if you have plenty of time, I think our average speed was around 50km/h and one bike after another passed but who cares when you have the Adriatic sea to the left and high mountains to the right.
Our only goal for the day was to visit the national park Paklenica in a last attempt to see some wild animals. However its normally a good idea to do some research before except looking at the map and say, there is an nationalpark, lets go there and see some animals, we failed! Instead of founding animals we found Croatia and one of europes biggest climbing spots, in other words not a single bird, goat or any other animal but a mountain filled with people trying to climb it in all sorts of way. We may have seen a dolphin in the sea but more likely it was just an ordinary buoy. Even if the park wasn’t really what we looked for we took a small walk and I understand why people go here. While walking a small creek uphill you had plenty of different routes to take if you wanted to climb, from easy to diamond and it looked really neat!
We drove on an once the sun were about to set we decided to stop for the night. My idea that Croatia could be any western country were for sure found a big concrete building to hotel that couldn’t be more “eastern Europe”. This is true Tito spirit and I guess this is the exception that prove the rule, even here in Croatia we can find traces from the old Yugoslavian era. Its not really cheap either but compared to that newly built 5-star hotel next door, this one is cheaper!
Like by a coincidence Per thought it was my turn to drive once the border to Austria were getting close and just after we changed driver the asphalt was replaced with something that looked like swiss cheese with all the holes and the road went more an more narrow while the altitude increased for every meter I drove. I suspect that Per knew exactly what he was doing when he suggested to change driver but I have now proof. Using low gears and high rev we finally succeded to climb the Plöckenpass and very warm, smelly brakes later we were down on the other side, inside Austria and 40 miles in 7 hours, that say something about our average speed on this road. Its however quite fun that the road we expected to find and everybody warned us about where found here, in Austria.
Driving through Austria was an easy cake and now we are in southern Germany, in a small city called Rosenheim. We decided to take a stop here and once we found a little hotel for the night we found out that they are celebrating 150 years as a city, and they a Inca exhibition. Things could be worse for sure and german beer is always german beer, sweet!
After we walked around the city it was time to get back to the hotel and after spending two weeks on the Balkan that shouldn’t be any problem. I mean we are used to find our way even if we cant read the signs or understand the language but in the german city, we were lost. After a lot of walking, scratching our head and many laughs later we finally found the road we drove on to get into the city. Using this we could backtrack our steps and finally found the hotel, I do really need to learn to remember the business card from where I stay since this is not the first time I cant take a taxi since I cant remember the hotel name/address.
A beautiful morning was spent at the Inca exhibition (now I really need to make my plans of visiting south America real). After the exhibition we needed to go shopping since Per had promised to buy some sort of colorful bath salt. I think it helps if you know what you are looking for but after visited every pharmacy in the city we finally found it and decided to go to the local brewery instead. Of course it was off limits but a small white lie later and we were inside and could both see the brewery from the inside and buy some local beer to a very attractive price.
Our plan was to drive on small roads, avoiding the autobahn towards Berlin however after spent 1.5 hours to get 2 miles we kind a gave up and just went up on autobahn instead. Somewhere around here we also started to talk about skipping Berlin and just head for the night ferry back home to Sweden. The target was switched and we aimed for Rostock with plenty of time to go, well at least until we got to Potsdam. Here it literally stopped because of an traffic incident and while we were waiting, the clock ticked.
With 20 minutes to go we did roll on the ferry together with a lot of polish, Czechs and Romanians. A neat rip of 85 miles was finished during one day (our longest during this trip) and our trip is now officially over. Tomorrow I will get back to Stockholm and try to summarize the whole trip in some sort of way.
So this express trip is over and I will try to do an summery of it, country by country. Of course since I spent a couple of days per country I don’t really know what I’m talking about but its an first impression after visited and talked to people. I´ll start with the overall impression and then continue to the country listed by the order we visited them.
In common for all countries I never felt unsafe anywhere or anytime. We tried everything from some tiny gravel roads to wide highway and overall they were really good, the worst roads we actually found in Austria and Germany which was kind a odd. English works overall without any problem even if you of course will find exceptions with the older population (works better in Slovenia/Croatia than in Serbia) and the euro works everywhere, even if the country has its own currency but keep in my that you probably get a better exchange course if you pay in the local currency.
Slovenia:
Slovenia is the country which remind me the most of western europe. The infrastructure are in good condition, the houses are in good condition, maybe since they left Yugoslavia with only 10-das or war. They had the best possibilities to to setup a good society but still they fail. According to Robin who we couchsurfed at in Ljubljana we learned that the suicide rate in Slovenia is skyrocketing and the alcoholism is a huge problem which you may see if you visit any gas station or other shop who sells alcohol during the evening/night. The problem might be that they are not western Europe, however they are not really “balkans” either and they doesn’t share the same culture or history like the rest of the Yugoslavian republics which gives them an identity crises and may explain their problems. Their mountains are thought really nice and i would recommend that you go here instead of the alps for your next ski/bike trip, I think it will be awesome!
Serbia:
Serbia is very, russian. Everything from the society, culture to how people behave. Serbia has a collective feeling that western world did them wrong during the war and like someone said, “Serbia never forgets, never forgives” and I think there is really something in this. Serbia hasn’t really forgiven the western world and while the rest of the republics has been closing in to EU Serbia has been running their own race which made them kind a isolated. It has started to change but its a big difference from the other countries. Belgrade is the biggest city in former Yugoslavia and a big city is always a big city, you can always find something for you here and I will return at some day.
Kosovo:
Kosovo is the smallest country and not even a country to some (Serbia) which may be a problem if you don’t plan your trip. Its not a problem to go from Serbia to Kosovo however if you try to enter Serbia coming from Kosovo you might end up in problem. Serbia claims that Kosovo still belongs to them they may accuse you form illegal entering the country even if you just been to Kosovo. In this country however the country with the biggest optimism and they are building everywhere without any regulations. Well, the former mayor tried to restrict some but he got shot on the open street. I would say that Kosovo is the closest to the gold rush in the wild west you can come.
Macedonia:
Macedonia didn’t showed us its best sides when we were there. Rain, gray weather and the hotel we booked had faked their address on booking.com so it looked like it closer to the city center than what it really was. Not an good start and after that Macedonia had to work in a uphill. That the city was gray and that they places statues all over the city doesn’t help much. But there is a couple of low cost flight flying to Skopje so at least its easy to get here and you are welcome to prove me wrong.
Albania:
Albania was probably the country I had the most prejudices about and not a single one was fulfilled during my trip. It may been because of the pope was visiting Tirana but the city was really clean and nice. English worked really good and I was expecting to see old Mercedes cars but I guess it was just my mind playing tricks on me. The road were really good, people were friendly and even if the corruption is supposed to be extreme I never saw anything. My guess is that in a couple of years Albania will be new the nr 1 charter resort, the beaches and sea are beautiful and once the standards gets just a little bit better, in the same class as Greece or Turkey.
Montenegro:
In Montenegro we had the opposite experience than Macedonia. The weather couldn’t be better and the hotel was even better than we thought. Podgorica may not be the best or funniest city in the world but who cares then you can sit on a outdoor seating and drink a cold beer and enjoy life. The country itself reminds pretty much of Serbia with the major difference that they do anything they can to get closer to EU. A big difference and it makes it way much easier to be a tourist here. If you like nature you big mountains and deep valleys you will love Montenegro!
Bosnia Herzegovina:
Bosnia as a country is a dead according to me, it has been forced to one nation and the country is suffering from it. What many people doesn’t know is that Bosnia Herzegovina is an federation, just like Yugoslavia was (and that worked out so well). It contains three large groups of people (Croatians, Bosniaks and Serbs) . The only thing that consistent is that you never, ever see the Bosnian flag, instead its the flag for Republik Srpska or the Croatian flag and its here you really realize that the wounds from the war i still wide open and infected. Each group has its own president and for any decisions all three must agree and how often does that happen do you think? Amira who we met in Sarajevo described it as “we are sitting on a ticking bomb”.
Croatia:
Croatia has two faces, we have the rich part along the coast which every year get plenty of tourism and gets even wealthier from that and we the poor inland where you still find traces from the war. The coastline is pretty much like any other area in western europe around the Mediterranean and you can find everything you want. If you travel inland it gets poorer and poorer and and you will find abandoned villages and other traces from the war. If you go to Croatia I really recommend that you spend a day or two traveling inland, the nature is beautiful and you should have seen both sides before you can say that you been to Croatia.
During a late night in April 1986 something happen that is not supposed to happen, should not be able to happen, must not happen occurred. A combination of bad decisions, jerry-building and unknown science (which we now thankfully know) an explosion in reactor four triggered a full blown meltdown in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. While the soviet regime were trying to figure out what to do radioactive particles where spread by the wind and one of the worst nuclear catastrophe in human history was a fact.
Now, 30 years later the soviet is all gone and the world has moved on. The area around the power plant is still off-limits for humans but now its safe to visit for shorter periods so I took my backpack to fulfill my post-apocalyptic dreams and see how nature has taken back what once what the frontline of human civilization.
To be able to get inside the restricted zone (which is 30km in diameter) you must have an authorized guide, there is plenty of police officers and I understood pretty quick that my guides talk about always have your passport ready wasn’t just empty talk but that were more or less the only safety rules which was correct. You are not allowed to walk into any house, your not allowed to eat, drink, smoke, wear t-shirts/shorts and much more. The list was long over things the guide told us we were not allowed to do and once he were finished he drank some water, lighted up a cigarette and asked if we wanted to go inside the old theater
The city Pripyat may be a ghost town, deserted since the disaster but at the power plant there is full action. Whats interesting here is that even if the whole area is radioactive and one of the reactor had a meltdown they continued to use the other reactors. After intensive negotiation between EU and Ukraine (and a shitload of money), Ukraine finally agreed to shut down the other reactors 2000, that is almost 15 years after the disaster! The old sarcophagus were built in a haste and has been leaking radiation the whole time but now French workers are building an new one and cleaning up the closest area, hopefully it will stay intact for another 100 years.
A few miles away from the power plant we meet Sergej and his wife, both are two of all people who were forced to evacuate but they are also two of them who chosed to move back. They are living a tough life, almost subsidence by their little farm in an constant fight against the nature. The radiation is always there but you cant neither see or feel it but at the same time its the smallest issue. Today predators like wolfs, lynx and bears are their biggest threat and if the wild boars destroys their harvest there is no way they would survive.
During the weeks after the disaster soldiers and police officers had strict orders to kill every animal they saw because they were afraid that the animals would spread the radiation, today with almost no humans the place it has become one of Europes biggest safe zones for animals and even if the radiation is way above normal levels I get the feeling that humans are the biggest threat.
Chernobyl was an enormous disaster for the humanity but somehow nature has made something good of it.
Once again me and my backpack are on adventures and this time I set a new personal record, only 6kg including my backpack is by far the most lightweight luggage so far. The big question is, what did I forget? So far its only my toothbrush I miss.
My trip started yesterday with a short flight down to Copenhagen, here I had a few hours waiting before boarding the direct plane from Copenhagen to Tokyo. After a short delay since the Swedish air space was closed because of major radar malfunction. Anyway the plane was really old and not really fun but for the price I paid for the tickets I must say it was Ok. Once arrived in Tokyo everything went very smooth and even if I arrived in a huge city it doesn’t feels like it. No stress and everything was really clean and even the boarder control went without any problem.
With a jet lag from hell we decided to check in at our hotel and sleep for a couple of hours before our dinner with the yakuza, neither of me or Andreas really knows what to expect so this can be interesting
Ps. We got a remote control for the toilet, from controlling the heat to play music and I dont know what, how awesome isnt that? Gotta love this country
I survived the meeting with the yakuza and what a night. Just as we had decided they came and picked up us at our hotel. Im not sure if it was planned from their side but all the stereotypes was fulfilled in form of they came in a big, luxury, discrete in a form that you know exactly who are in the car even if you cant see them because of the tinted windows. A short, kind a nervous trip later we stopped at one of their restaurants and we started to try out the Japanese kitchen. Sashimi, chicken neck and a lot of other different dishes went down together with plenty of sake. Overall we were kind a nervous and we both know that how you behave is very important in Japan but none of us knew/know how to behave then you are at a dinner with the mob. Anyway we tried our best by looking on how they behaved and do the same. A really fun and kind a weird evening for a swede like me and since we got invited to meet them again I guess we passed the test.
With a dry throat and a slightly headache we jumped on the metro and made a visit to Studio Ghibli museum. Probably by more luck than skills we successfully took our way through this maze of metro, commuter trains and railroads and were greeted by a huge, smiling Totoro. The museum was really nice, kind a small and everything were on japanese and only a few things were translated to english. Thats a shame but the museum is still worth a visit if you are in the neighborhood. Besides sketches, pictures and stories about the different projects they also had a cinema. The movie was in japanese only (no subtitles) so I didn’t understood much but it was really cool to see.
On our way back to the hotel we took a detour through an park. According to my research it should be autumn now and i’m kind a surprised how green and beautiful everything is, around 25 degrees and a blue sky is totally an ok autumn for me so I don’t complain.
Today we have been good guys and been working, well…we can call it working. It all started that with a pickup up at the hotel and and off we went so Andreas could do some interviews and take some photos. Me? I just tagged along for who could miss an opportunity like this. 8 hours later we are back at our hotel and discussion what we should eat to dinner, i bet rice will be involved.
Publishing some random pictures from the trip so far:
That japanese are very polite is a well known fact but yesterday I think they went over the line. Somewhere around 02:20 me and Andreas realized that we wanna go clubbing. Of course we have no idea where to go so we ask the bartender at the karaoke bar we are at if he knew any place. Now the crazy part, the bartender didn’t know any place but he take up his phone and starts to call his friend, in the middle of the night. While he is calling his friends more people at the bar hear about our dilemma and after a while the whole bar was involved in where we should go. We for sure got a place to go to and it may not be the best area of the city or the best club but fun we had and with all work everybody put in finding an place for us we kind had to go there.Today I spent the day as a true tourist, visited temple, “Tomb of Ronin” which is the cemetery where the 47 samurai’s are buried and just browsed some major shopping streets, unfortunately in rain but it was fun. To bad that Asakyusa temple was closed but I guess you cant get everything.
If you want you can spend the rest of your life in Tokyo and still find new things to see and do everyday but I’m have limited time here so I aimed for the former capital, Kyoto. The metro system may be confusing in Tokyo but Shinshansen (the highspeed railway) was really awesome. Really easy to buy ticket however it would be even more cheaper if I bought the tickets from outside of Japan. Plenty of room and comfortable seats, Its not recommended to have much luggage but that’s not a problem for me and my little backpack easily fitted on the compartment over my seat. According to the net you can see Mt Fuji from the train but I fell asleep and missed it even that the lady in the seat next to me had a small baby. Ten thumbs up for the control they have on their babies and the train, well its like the opposite of going by train in Sweden.
In kyoto I decided to try out Nishiki market. Nishiki market is a huge food market and besides selling raw food they have plenty of cooked and let you buy samples if you want to try something. On my way to the market I found some temples and Shosei-en Garden, Japanese are famous for the gardens so why not check it out? It was really an marvelous park and even if I was more or less in the middle of the city it was so quite, calm and relaxing. Really beautiful and I didn’t even mind that it drizzled. Unfortunately my photo skills are not good enough to give it a fair show but t least I tried to.
I made it to the Nishiki market before they closed down and here you could find anything that you can possible eat and some more stuff. Everything mixed from 5-star restaurants to a hole in the wall. It is kind of a tourist trap for sure but it was really fun to try to eat everything, don’t ask me what I ate though cause I have no idea.
A remarkable number of people ask how I live here in Japan. Do you stay in one of hose small cubes where you have to crawl in and back out. No, I don’t and I don’t have any plans for doing it either. Tonight I however stayed in a Ryokan which is a traditional inn originated from the 16-century. Tatami floor, sliding doors, communal bath and a bed…which is not like my ordinary bed. It felt kind a weird to more or less sleep on the floor but I slept really good and quite nice to take a bath, small talk to the owners and drink cup of tea. It may be more expensive than an ordinary hotel but for a night or two I really recommend it!
The day was spent in Kyoto, the city is located really nice in a valley surrounded by green mountains and towards the afternoon when I felt that I explored the city I climbed Kyoto Tower and yikes, the city never ends?!? Anyway it feels like I seen the “must do” regarding my limited time here so I jumped on the shinksansen for my next stop, Hiroshima.
A bit surprised and very confused I realized that in Hiroshima you travel by tram, not metro. That’ s not a problem except that its kind a hard to hear or read which is the next stop then you don’t speak or read Japanese. I confess my pulse raised for a moment but then I noticed that I’m still above ground and can use google maps, success! I got of the tram just outside my hotel and it couldn’t be better but come Hiroshima, please use Latin letters on the signs too!
In Chernobyl I checked out whats happening after an meltdown at a nuclear plant, here i see the result of a planned explosion. The bomb says contain 50Kg of uranium (Wikipedia say 64?) and less than one kilo was used in the fission however the result was over expectations for the americans and the disaster was an fact for Japan with over 200 000 deaths, which 20 000 was workers from Korea. In Chernobyl the reactor was contained and everything was made to prevent radiation while here, this time, everything was carefully calculated to explode on the correct height for maximum damage. More or less the whole area where the bomb exploded to wiped out and today its a huge park with monuments and reminders so the human population never forgets, what can be better than exploring this under a shining sun and blue sky.
After spent an half day in the park and museum I went for a quick city tour to find some food and get some new clothes before I headed for Hiroshima castle. The castle is only 600m from ground zero of the bomb so as you might guess nothing were left but now its partly rebuilt, just like it looked like and inside the castle is a museum about the castles history and about samurai. Really interesting to just briefly read about Hiroshimas history, how it was controlled but mostly about the samurai lived, had for clothes and gear. My theory is that if you plan to go to war you can dress in two ways
Normally and de facto standard today is to use some sort of camouflage but the samurais did the other one. Really cool uniforms with so many details just for good look, no really functions its crazy but I want one! You also had the possibilty to swing a real katana (samurai sword) so now I need to figure out how I can sell my soul so I could buy myself a new outfit.
Today Ive been on a train, for a long long time. After I checked out from the hotel I jumped on the tram towards Shinkansen and back to Yokohama, Tokyo. The trip was pretty fast since I was lucky and bought my ticket to a “super express” train which means only two stops on the way but still, it took over six hours. Once i arrived to Yokohama I somehow, don’t ask me how succeed to get on the metro without a valid ticket. It should not be possible but somehow I did it and it wasn’t a problem until I tried to leave the metro system, since you need to swipe your card to leave. Well, bummer for me but I just walked closed to the first person who left and I was a free man again.
On this trip I stayed awake but no sight of Mt Fuji, the nature was really beautiful but its hard to take pictures then you go by train in 300km/h,
Back in Yokohama and hanging with Andreas and our new, highly tattooed friends we had an interesting yesterday. For the first time as I know of I tried to eat innards, cant really describe exactly what since I have no idea but it was surprisingly good even if it was a bit chewy. However when I showed a little bit to much interest in that chili-soya souse the rest of the evening was done, our hosts wouldn’t rest before he could buy me a couple of bottles of it. Street up and street down, store after store until we finally found a small store who sold it. Guess I should be lucky I didn’t mentioned that cute girl cause they are really spoiling us here and doesn’t rest until we what we want…or what they think we want.
After a advice from a russian friend me and Andreas jumped on the train and spent the day in the old city Kamakura. According to the history books Kamakura was the old de facto capital of Japan, note it has never been the capital but it been more or less working like the capital. The city is only one hour away from Tokyo, has a nice beach and filled with temples and holy places so its a perfect one day trip to do.
Anyway, the first thing we decided to do when we arrived was to get breakfast. As we are growing tired of rice we ordered a classic toast, well at least we thought so. Instead of getting a toasted sandwich or two sandwiches with some melted cheese as ordinary we got something that was around 5cm thick, lightly grilled and some butter/oil topping..together with an salad. Now 8 hours later…I’m still not hungry
The rest of the day was spent walking in temples and just watching the view, walking down the small streets and of course, took a walk on the beach watching some surfers trying to catch the last waves for the season.
This is starting to get ridiculous and I dont wanna know what out hotel personal think about us but around midnight the same black, discrete to an not so discrete anymore level turned up at our hotel and after a short bowing back and for we jumped in and disappeared into Tokyos nightlife. On the highway we mixed watching TV, talking and drinking and suddenly we saw a road toll where the street racers had started to line up. Mazda RX7, Nissan Skylines and Mitsubishi evolutions were all on a row just waiting for the race to start, such a cliché.
Once we arrived at the first club we realized that we night will be epic. There might be an queue but guy like us doesnt stand in a queue and the metal detectors, well they was turned off just for us to pass by (is that really a good thing?!?). Anyway we continued to the VIP-area for drinks and there we got one heck of a night. We met alot of of different people, from DJ’s to I dont know and by some mysterious reason they all made sure we had a blast. According to rumors Club Harlem is one of the best hiphop clubs in Tokyo, I don’t know if its true but its one of the best clubs I ever been to for sure.
The night continued in the same theme and in the early morning when the dance floor started to get empty and you could see into the VIP-lounge we saw our driver laying down in a chair sleeping like a baby, I guess its a hard work to handle two swedes who wants to party.
Yesterday it was a big party at Art Baboo, the local bar we have spent a couple of evenings at under this trip and what a party. Live “music”, good drinks and of course one or two tequila shots. Really fun even if it was kind a hard to follow in the japanese singalong. The bartender and all the guest did their best to make sure that we have an awesome evening and we for sure did! You just have to love this country
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Didn’t bring my camera which may be lucky but I took some photos with my cell phone so you have to excuse the quality.
Its soon time to end this trip but before we can leave our host promised us and goodbye dinner. The japanese culture are using symbolics and gestures and I don’t know if it was a coincidence, because it was a really good place or just the symbolic that we had the dinner at the same place as we met them for the first time. Looking at the outside it doesn’t look much and inside, well I think the restaurant would have problem with the authorities in sweden but no matter what, it one of the best dinners I ever had. How about the symbolic that we kind a ended where we started? Well I liked it!This whole trip we kind a been spoiled by our hosts and this evening was probably the worst one ever. One dish after another and it was special this, special that, of course with a bottle of sake or two and a friendly conversation about everything. Its quite fun that they were at least as interested in our way of life as we was about their and I guess we are all way same, even if you choose different paths in our life.
Our idea to stay sober, get in bed early and wake up to get to the airport in time didn’t worked out. Actually it took like 5 minutes after we left the hotel we realized this and out plan change to lets stay out partying until its time to get to the airport. Our newly improved plan worked as a charm but as you probably understand we were not in out best shape once we were heading to the airport and by jumping on the wrong train it looked like it could be tight with time. Then for the first time in history we had some delays in train and suddenly a little bit tight would be very tight so off the train we went and instead took a taxi. 2 hour train ride were exchanged for 1 hour taxi drive and we didn’t even had time to leave the parking before we both were snoring in backseat.
The positive thing with our plan was that Ive been sleeping for like 90% of our 12h flight though, that is amazing!
Sometimes it’s an good idea to do some research before you start something. For example if you go on vacation the same week all schools are closed its quite likely there will be a lot of people at the airport. And don’t forget about Murphy, according to Murphy’s law (if something can go wrong, it will go wrong) the electronic check in system went offline and you don’t wanna know the length of the queue to check in. But to be positive I never really had any chance to get bored at the airport and since I had no time for breakfast at Arlanda my waiting time in Riga went really fast, even that Riga airport is really small and boring.
Once we arrived in Israel I was able to take two steps on the soil before two guards stopped me. Since we landed way out in the middle of nowhere we were suppose to take the bus back to the terminal and the rest of the passengers did while still was on the tarmac questioned by the guards. Obviously its weird to travel alone according to them and once I said that I love to travel they started to examine my passport and I had to answer a bunch of questions what I have been doing in Russia, Turkey, Albania. Not really any problem but it took some time and once they felt happy I jumped on the next bus to the boarder and passport control and there it started all over again.
To be honest it took forever and I don’t really feel welcome here but at least I’m checked in at the hostel now and they were nice, time to be social for a while before I hit the bed, it will be an early evening since I leave for Jordan tomorrow.
One of the reasons I went to the holy land is to see on of the wonders of the world, Petra.It would however both the stupid and boring not use the opportunity to see as much as possible once I packed my backpack so this trip went to Israel and using Jerusalem as some sort of base, from here its quite easy to go to Jordan and Petra, With easy I mean you can join a guided tour or buy a bus ticket and its just crossing the Israel-Jordan boarder (leaving Israel is not a problem) and you are there, however Petra is kind a far away from Jerusalem so I really recommend at least a two day trip so you really can enjoy it, Thats what I did and the schedule for the first day is more or less just to get there with a stop at Jerash and Amman Citadel.
Jerash is an old excavated roman city. What make it special is that it was burried in sand which makes the city very well preserved. I must confess that I was sceptic to the idea to spend a few hours at another roman ecavation site but it was amazing and totally worth it. From starting with an huge arch there was and racing track, temple and a lot of different buildings/ruins so it never went boring. However instead of me just mumbling facts which I might not remember correctly I let my photos speak for them self instead.
Amman citadel is located more or less in the middle of Amman which is the capital of Jordan. You have a lovely view over the city and this is one of the places which has be inhabited for the longest period on earth. Of course there has been different leaders during time which gives the place different kind of styles and you can find churches, mosques in all kind of variants. I really want to go back to Amman and explore the city more and you are unsure if its worth a visit or not, i would say go go go.
As the evening arrived we left Amman for the last trip to Petra. You are not allowed to sleep in Petra but there are hotels just outside the area. I however had arranged a night in a bedouin camp. Great food, a lot of tea, singing and chatting before it was time to go and sleep in my tent, lifes good!
I slept like a baby and woke up to a shining sun and lucky for me, a light breeze. The weather forecast promised 20 degrees but it climbed up to 25 and to walk around among stone ruins and climbing on rocks, it was warm at least what you could say. Since the bedouin camp was just outside of Petra, which is an enormous area we were at Petra early in the morning, both before all the other tourists arrived and before the temperature went to high. Even that the whole group succeed to get an sun burn and the fat American lady gave up on reaching the parts there you had to climb. However don’t be afraid, everybody with a normal condition can make it and there is a lot of people who try to sell you souvenirs, rent you a horse/donkey/camel or horse with a wagon just to make sure that you can enjoy Petra (and they make some euros of course).
Petra was establish around bc825 and was habited until 1985 when UN classified it as a world heritage center. Well thats not completely true because the bedouins who lived there before 1985 are still living there even if they are not allowed to it today, however they have moved away from the tourist attractions. At the same time the bedouins now are working at Petra selling souvenirs and try to make money on all tourist, for example letting you sleep in their camp just like I did.
Going back from Petra to Jerusalem took us through the border control at King Hussain bridge, crossed the west bank and back into Jerusalem. Not that far and would be an easy trip if it not was for the Israeli border guards. In my little group 4 of 9 was “random selected” and then we guard found a keffiyeh i bought for protecting my head from the sun, I was fucked. Into an interrogation room, scan me and all my clothes and luggage for explosives and intensives questioning about who I am, what am I doing here, were have I been, why have you been to Turkey.
It sure took some time but finally they had nothing to go on and relunctantly they let me back into Israel after they marked my passport with a stamp I didn’t had before, lets see if that will give me problem then I will try to leave the country.
Jerusalem is not a big city, with its humble number of 850 000 citizens its more like my own town Stockholm than for example Tokyo, however it has far more interesting history. According to Wikipedia it is one of the oldest cities in the world and two countries has declared it as their capitol. If this is not enough to make it interesting the three major Abrahamic religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) has declared the city sacred and of course they share sanctums. Does it work? No, not really.
By above reasons its not an uncommon view to see soldiers with automatic weapons or police officers running around with the gun in their hands and during my free tour around the old city we ended up right then police stormed a house, since it was only we tourist who looked with a mix of freighting and curiosity I guess thats a pretty common sight in this city.
After the tour and when I thought that I had learned to navigate in this maze of streets and roof tops (yea, you walk on the roof tops then you go somewhere quick) I started to walk along by myself and it was no problem to get up on the roof, but where is the exit and which exit should I take? Instead of admitting my defeat I chose to ask my way around and even if my Hebrew is not the best (actually none existent) it went pretty and its the closest I ever get to Assassins Creed in real life.
Today I went back to the west bank and more exact to the city Hebron, maybe one of the cities which best show the situation here in Israel. In the city we have Israelites, ultra orthodox jews and Palestines and the conflict between them started way back in time, long before the state of Israel was founded. Both sides has been doing massacres so none are innocent and both sides are trying to show proof that they were here first. To solve the issue Israel split the city in two zones, H1 which is the Palestine part and H2 which is the jewish part. A jew is not allowed to H1 and vice verse and the city has somewhere around 200 000 Palestines against 700 jews. Even if Sweden among some other countries have acknowledge Palestine as a country Israel has not and its clear that the around 2000 soldiers which are deployed here has one mission, protect the jews.
To try to understand or at least to see it and be able to form an opinion by myself I took a guided tour where you during the morning spent time in H1 (jewish zone) and during afternoon spent time in H2 (Palestine). Since its really strict who are on which side its only us tourist who can visit both sides which means that we had different guides and in that way heard two completely different stories about whats going on. That setup was really good and I can really recommend it. Both guides let us meet an local families who lives in the city and both describes how good, friendly they are and that they only want peace but at the same time how blood thirsty the other part is.
To summarize my experience is hard and to be honest I still cant take any part, both sides act childish and I think our guide Muhammed said it best, “if we want peace we need to work together but neither side are interested in that”. In my view I think that both sides makes to much money on the conflict and as long as they make money on it, the conflict will continue and the common man are the one who gets stricken.
A rainy and rather gray day in Jerusalem screwed my plans of going swimming in the dead sea and enjoying some nice sun bathing, instead I hanged around in a wet Jerusalem. Indeed it was nice too and it gives me an perfectly valid excuse to return to the area another time. Anyway, I started the day browsing through the local market which is located more or less just outside my hostel. Everything looked so nice but I’m not sure its the best way to start the day with an basket of olives, instead I played safe and took a regular cup of coffee and croissant. Together with a cigarette or two its for sure a breakfast for champions.
After breakfast I tried to hunt down the book “Catch the jew” by Tuvia Tenenbom which a couple of people recommended me to read but even if I visited several bookshops I couldn’t find it, guess I have to buy it online once I get back home.
During the afternoon the rain stopped and I moved to one of the holiest place ever, at least if you are christian. I’m talking about the church of the holy. I’m not religious myself but people from at least six different branches of Christianity make pilgrim trips to this church so it must be worth a visit and yes it was. The church is huge and it was packed with people and just a briefly look at the queue down to the actual grave made me decide that no matter how holy this is, I will not stand in that queue. Instead I randomly walked around in church and once I felt that I know this now the big question raised, how do I find my way out? A couple of floors later and once again I see the sunlight and of course gets jumped by people who try to sell junk to you in form of souvenirs, tourist trap deluxe.
With a bitter taste of yesterdays bar crawl I decided to pack my stuff and head over to Tel Aviv instead. A quick look at the map and off I go, at the bus station I need to x-ray my luggage, find my gate for the bus and just before I gonna jump onboard I realize that my backpack is kind a light and have plenty of space, thats not good. Of course I forgot my jacket at the hostel so lets walk back and start over again in the security checkpoint, bummer. A few hours later than I planned I was finally on the bus on my way to Tel Aviv
Traveling by bus in Israel is the recommended way. The buses are modern with air condition, wifi, comfortable seats and its cheap. The alternative is taxi which is cheap compared to Sweden but you cant really compare them. Traveling between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv you actually can take the train too however its neither cheap, fast or comfortable and only recommended as an experience, at least according to the guide books I read and used to the Swedish trains I am not ready to give it a try.
Once I arrived in Tel Aviv I walked over to my new hostel which has just open. I was one of the first 100 guests so I got a little goodie bag but to the honest, they were not really finished building it yet so it was kind a construction place. The standard at the hostel is quite high though and its more like an hotell than a hostel, unfortunately for me its quite low on people here so I have to go out in the city to meet new people, on the other hand I got a 6-bed room by myself which feels kind a luxury right now.
Took a short walk down to the beach and got a briefly look at the city and the differences between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is like day and night. I haven’t seen any big hats or whiskers on the whole day and the city feels like any other european city. The weather is really warm and nice and even if the water is a little to cold for me to take a swim the beach is just marvelous.
Heard rumors about an concert at Ozen bar and since I didn’t had any other plans for the evening i grabbed a beer and walked out, into the nightlife of Tel Aviv. What I found was an small cozy bar and I was wondering if I really was on the right place until I found a bigger room inside with an stage and once the band entered the stage the atmosphere went really good. The band, almost 10 persons played something called “middle east fusion” and even if I dont haven an better name for it I think it had similarities with balkan/gypsie music. Tried to film with my phone but the quality is not that good
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Met alot of fun and nice people and even if I wasnt on a “real” club I really recommend the nightlife in Tel Aviv, people here now how to party!
Woke up today to a shining sun and after breakfast I walked over to Old Jaffa (old city). It was quite nice, kind a cozy but a tourist trap with much higher prices then any other part of the city and people are trying to sell stuff and barkers everywhere. Its totally worth a visit but I think we all can agree that Tel Aviv cant compare with Jerusalem regarding their history or culture while Jerusalem cant compare with Tel Avivs nightlife. Tonight I will meet up some friends I met during this trip, we will probably drink a beer or two, maybe an arrack and and tomorrow I head back to Sweden again,
My own private crusade-tour is over for this time and after walking through several security checkpoints, flew over a trigger happy Turkey and Ukraine I’m now sitting at Riga airport and even if I’m not home yet I dare to say that I survived this trip too. Trying to summarize the trip it feels like Tel Aviv is the shit if you wanna go out and party. The beach is fantastic and located in the middle of the city and nightlife is awesome but for people like me who easily gets bored of hanging on the beach and the club life Jerusalem is an better option.
Jerusalem is always up to something, sometimes good and sometimes bad but there is always something happening. Its here I were escorted out of the neighborhood by some ultra orthodox jews because “We don’t like people like you”. Its here, in this tiny area you find tons of sacred places for both Islam, Christianity and Judaism and you can really feel the tension between them. The contrast from one neighborhood to another is like different worlds and as a European you cal always backtrack your countries history here.
The winner is however Jordan, so beautiful nature, great good, friendly people makes me wanna go back and explore more of this kind a unknown country. A big plus is that their police/border control does not call you terrorist just because you are traveling alone. Petra may be a tourist trap but with some common sense thats not a problem, most people accepts an no and I really recommend to go there to see this wonder of the world.
Some statistics from the trip
I’m not sure if they got the idea to lasagna from Romes history or vice verse but a good metaphor it is. From ancient and really old to modern via ordinary old Rome has grown and the result is an maze of small streets, cozy squares with fountains and street artist. You see top modern buildings in a mix with ancient buildings and everything is built in layers, just like the lasagna.
To walk around the Colosseum and Roma forum and letting your fantasy wandering of is amazing and you can really hear the crows cheering, at least until our guide told us that we have been fooled by Hollywood. It wasn’t big, extremely fit gladiators who fought here. Instead it was rather short Europeans and if you think about their diet they were probably more fat than fit. So, the Gladiator movie should have Danny DeVito instead of Russel Crowe as the protagonist, it would be more accurate but if it would sell? I doubt it.
The Vatican state has done what all religions and leaders have done over time, they collected art and wealth from all around the world. Since the Vatican state is really tiny area for an state it almost gets ridiculous about how much art there are but you should go there, look at the statues, the paintings, feel the atmosphere and become breathless of the Sistine Chapel, I cant describe with words how beautiful the roof painting was. However, if you want to see everything, be prepared to spend a week or two because the popes has been good collectors.
The most important thing in Rome though is the street life. Go out on the streets, have a cup of coffee or a beer, smoke a cigarette and do like the romans, talk to your neighbor and enjoy life. If you are lucky you will get invited up to one of all rooftops with incredible view over the city. You might also be called barbaric monster by an Italian beauty but to my defense, we discussed pizza toppings and she was from Sicily (well known for their temper).
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When I looked for tickets to Cape town almost all flights had a stop in Dubai or Doha, always around 6 hours which is a worthless time since its to long to just sit and wait but its to short to leave the airport. I dig deeper and after a while I got tickets which gives me 10 hour stop in Dubai on my way down and only 2 hours on my way back home. That is perfect since it will give me at least some time to explore Dubai city on my way down and since I’m landing in the middle of the night the temperature should be OK. It was a good plan, it didn’t work out well but it was a good plan.
We arrived according to schedule and even that they scared me that I wouldn’t be allowed into the country because of my Israeli stamps in my passport both passport control and custom went without any problem. I don’t think he actually looked at my picture during passport control and he seemed most bothered with the issue to find a blank paper to stamp. There was no problem finding the metro, understand how it works or finding which station I should get off at either but as soon as I left the metro station I was struck with an enormous heat and a humidity who could kill.
I realize directly that this will bad but I give it an try but just after an block or two I must confess I’m defeated and I’m melting away, I sit down at an coffee house and while the other people were drinking tea and smoking hookahs I ordered a barrel of water. They looked kind a suspicious at me but come on, I am a swede, I’m not made for conditions like this. Drinking my water I started to think over my options and finally I decided to take the tram around Palm Jumeirah (you know the island the made looking like a palm). Using the tram I will see but without melting, win! I looked at google maps where the closest tram station is and walked over there and then I finally finds it, I just missed the last train and the tram is closed for the night.
With a pretty bitter taste in my mouth I decide to stop the first taxi I see and head back to the airport, my driver who came from Pakistan shone like the sun then I told him I’ve been to Kashmir and as a bonus for me he drove so I could see the impressive Burj Al Arab (hotel that looks like a sail) and Burj Khalifa (worlds tallest house) together with some classic big city skyline. Taxi here is cheap, really cheap and even if I tipped him plenty I didn’t pay more than what it cost to order a taxi in Sweden. And yes, it feels like a failure to not seen more of the city but I spent a couple of hours in the city at least and now I will spend the rest in an air conditioned lounge…and maybe take a shower.
Was easier than I thought to spend a lot of hours on Dubai airport and just as quick as a thought it was time to board the plane to Cape town. I confess I was not in my best condition and before the plane took off I was sleeping like baby. I woke however up to the smell of food and I still think that the Emirates food is one of the better when we are talking about airplane food. With some food and a glas of wine in my stomach I fell asleep again. Both the flight to Dubai and to Cape town was with an 777-300 which means you sit in groups of 3-4-3, on both my flight I was lucky though so I had my 3 by myself and I could use the extra two seats as a bed, really nice!
Once in Cape town Jonatan met me at the airport with our rental car and we drove off to Hermanus. Here we stay at a small hostel filled with Australians and Germans. I didn’t get much view of Cape town but more of that later but the view over cape town from the mountains we drove past was really beautiful. According to the signs the are driving along the “Whale route” so if I’m lucky I might even see a whale on this trip, so far its been most beer and beef jerky those few hours Ive been to Africa.
We went up early today and left our hostel to get to the coast and go out on the sea and do some shark diving. The weather couldn’t be any better with blue sky, shining sun and almost no wind at all. The waves were kind a big but come in a slow set and none of us got seasick. Normally this kind of tour takes up to 25 persons but since it low season right now we were lucky and it was only 14, that means more time in the water for us.But to the honest I’m not really impressed. The sharks were tiny, the biggest were somewhere around 3m and they couldn’t care less about us. The swam around our cage and a couple were really close (you could poke it) but my heart rate didn’t raise for that. The dream would be to be inside the cage while an huge great white attacks the cage and trying to get a bite of the swede but I guess I have to continue to dream about that. The Atlantic water was not really warm but our wetsuits help some and at least I can say that I took a bath in the Atlantic this year too.After our little shark adventure we continued west and got to the soothest point of Africa. A rocky beach and a tiny landmark showed us were we where and its also here where the Atlantic ocean meets the Indian ocean, I should get into the water just to be able to say that I took a bath in both oceans. We decided to stay here over the night at a really nice and cozy hostel, unfortunately we are the only guests.
