Slovenia & Croatia

This time I am writing atop the beautiful fort on Hvar island, Croatia. I have a cold beer and a view of the harbour below us with the gorgeous clear blue water. It's a great spot to write the next blog.

Once Jen arrived, we got the bus straight up to Lake Bled in Slovenia. I had seen many pictures of the famous lake with the teardrop island in the middle and it didn't disappoint in real life. We got to the hostel and headed straight up to the castle to get a breathtaking view of the lake and its little island. The water looked very tempting so we hired a little rowing boat to get out to the island. Yonna was up first for rowing duty and he was really good........once he'd figured out which direction to point the boat in! The island was very sweet with a small church on top. To the surprise of the surrounding and plentiful Japanese tourists, Yonna dive bombed into the lake around the island. It was a little too cold for Jen and I. The return journey was much faster and smoother as Jen and I rowed and we took a walk around the lake- about 6km.

The next day we set out from our hostel with a packed lunch in tow, for a full day of hiking. We walked through the beautiful Slovenian countryside up to Vintgar Gorge. Once in the gorge, the wooden boardwalk snaked all the way through the cliffs beside the beautifully clear, blue-green water, culminating in a big man-made waterfall. We at our lunch on top of a hill overlooking the farms and villages in the area. Pretty exhausted we headed out for a un-Slovenian (but cheapest option) pizza that night.

We'd heard that Bohinj lake was just as beautiful as Bled but less touristy so the next day, we took a bus out there. The lake was gorgeous and a lot bigger than Bled- about 10km around. We hiked up to a waterfall in the surrounding mountains and after a 10km walk and 500 steps up to it, we were rewarded with a huge waterfall through the cracks in the rocks. Unfortunately we couldn't have a much needed swim in it! After another exhausting walk back to the bus we headed back to our hostel in Bled.

The next day was a mega travelling day! We took a 6.25am bus back to Ljubljana to get a connecting train to Split, Croatia. We had to change in Zagreb and finally arrived in Split after a 12 hour journey. We found our hostel and headed out for some dinner. Our hostel was right next to the old, walled town which we wandered into for dinner. I have never seen anything like it- white rock, marble steps, ancient buildings, still inhabited...it is really beautiful. All lit up I did actually feel I was in Game of Thrones (apart from all the tourists and lack of dragons!). As expected Croatia is really expensive on our budget so we found some cheap-ish dinner and went back for a much needed sleep.

We'd been told about some secluded beaches at the other end of Split so set off to find them in the morning. We walked up (more stairs) through the gardens and after about an hour and a half of walking could see the promised beach at the bottom of the hill. We wound our way down to it and took a dip in the cool, lovely clear water. After a few hours there, we headed back to the center and had some sushi for dinner, being so close the sea!

We took a catamaran out to Hvar island a few days ago and arrived on the lovely, busy island. I can see why tourism is growing so rapidly here! When we arrived we hit the beach again for a couple of hours but it was a little cloudy so we headed back to the hostel which had its own pool area. After chilling there we headed out for our first proper seafood feast. Again prices are high so we were happy to be recommended this cheaper little place by our hostel. I had more fish than I could possibly eat- we shared a huge grilled fish platter with squid, tuna and prawns.

We also took a boat taxi to a nearby island and a little bay within it. I have never spent so long in the sea but the colour is so beautiful that you can't help but want to jump in. It was a great day of swimming and reading and really good weather. The fish seemed to have taken its toll on Yonna so him and I had a chilled out day walking round the fort (more steps) while Jen topped up  her tan more around the pool.

A few days later.............After Hvar, we set off for Dubrovnik on another boat, the home of Game of Thrones. Yesterday we walked around the old city walls which were spectacular but more interesting than the ancient history was the fact they were filming the aforementioned series as we were there! We could see the extras eating their lunch and a street set up for a later shot. Despite Yonna's best efforts in particular, we didn't find Khaleesi! (sorry to non-viewers for all that). We took a cable car up for some aerial shots that evening and today took a boat out to Lokrum island which wasn't really worth it as there wasn't much to do there. My overall impression of Dubrovnik is that the old town is very beautiful but there are just too many tourists here to make it 100% enjoyable.

So tomorrow we say goodbye to a newly tanned Jen and there ends the beachy section of our trip for now. Next we head deep into the dark modern history that awaits us in Bosnia & Herzegovina!  

Romania, Hungary, Slovakia & Slovenia (via Austria)

Following on the theme of writing my blog from very cool places, we are currently sat at the top of an art deco building in Ljubjlana, Slovenia, which has a cafe on a viewing terrace. From here I can see the whole of the capital, although it is very small, with the hill top castle dominating the view. I will come back to describing this quaint little place at the end of this entry.

We spent a couple of great days exploring Cluj in Romania. It really is a lovely city. We visited the Catholic and Orthodox churches in the centre- the Orthodox one was packed with people lining up to take Communion and holding flowers to offer to the church. We found out later that it was 'Little Mary's Day', a semi-national holiday but no-one could explain why there was this one plus a bigger 'Virgin Mary's Day'. Anyway, we took a walk up a hill to look at the view of the city- older buildings alongside grey Communist blocks. After a chilled day we went to Jonny's company's office in Cluj to pick up some of his colleagues for dinner. They took us to an old hidden courtyard that had been converted into a lovely bar and restaurant. Jonny's colleague Andras told me that the courtyard and surrounding buildings, like many in Cluj, were offered back to the rightful owners who had been expelled or fled during Communist times and if they didn't want it/couldn't afford it, the buildings were sold on.

The next day, Karl had a day off so he drove us out to Turda salt mines near Cluj. We descended down a very long, smelly, damp tunnel and came upon an enormous cavern which had been mined bit by bit over a couple of centuries for salt. The area is so huge that there is a ferris wheel, crazy golf and a lake you can take a pedalo out onto! The air is meant to be very good for breathing problems and illnesses so we got our fill and found our way out.

We moved on to Turda Gorge where we found a little spot in the beautiful hills, for a BBQ. We'd bought meat, coals and fire lighters from a supermarket and I stepped back expecting the boys to want to do the 'man thing' and make fire! They were absolutely useless and I ended up having to build the fire and cook the meat. After we'd finished our food and come face to face with some pretty large, wild looking dogs, we started walking through the gorge. The scenery was beautiful with little rickety bridges criss-crossing the river through the rocks and the walking wasn't too hard- which I liked!

The next morning we got up early to catch a train to Budapest. The early train was cancelled so we had to kill 4 hours before the next one. The train was long but comfortable and we arrived in Budapest to get absolutely conned by a taxi driver :-( ! Our hostel was very cool (Multipass Hostel- highly recommended) and our room was Lawrence of Arabia themed as each room had a film theme. We didn't have long in Budapest so we headed straight out to the Gellert baths- natural hot spa waters. The interior was impressive and nice to relax in the hot waters but it was very expensive and quite touristy. After that we had what we were told was 'the best Goulash in Budapest'- it was very good. Unfortunately the weather was awful in Budapest so I think we will return one day to see it in a better light. Nevertheless, we headed to the Terror Museum first thing the next day. It is an absolutely brilliant museum in a building that housed both the interrogation rooms and prison of the Arrow Cross group- Hungary's version of the Nazi party which I had never heard of- and the Hungarian Communist party. A very interesting, if harrowing, place. We also managed to pack in the hop-on-hop-off bus tour, the palace in Buda, the Fisherman's Bastion and a night tour on the Danube. You'll note that I didn't get to go to the Great Synagogue (due to the weather and time mostly) so that's definitely a reason to come back!! We rounded our stay off with a visit to a Ruin Bar, a huge abandoned building that had been turned into a maze of bars inside. There was graffiti everywhere, half a car, furniture attached to the ceiling....it's best to look at Jonny's photos but it was very cool!

The connecting train to Bratislava, Slovakia was pretty quick and easy from Budapest and we arrived in the small capital in the afternoon. We headed straight out on a free walking tour of the city. The tour took us round the old centre and the newer areas. The old centre included the old city walls which were constructed to keep invaders out and some pretty cobbled streets. The most interesting part for me was when the guide explained the modern history- the movement from Austro-Hungarian rule to a united Czechoslovakia after WW1, to a German Protectorate during WW2 and then back into a Communist Czechoslovakia until 1989, when the Velvet Revolution brought down the Iron Curtain there. It wasn't until 1993 that Slovakia peacefully broke away and became their own country. The guide explained, interestingly, that some of the older Slovakians are nostalgic about the Communist era. It had never occurred to me that when a state system that gives every person a job and a home falls, the older people who have no belongings, no savings, no pensions and no capacity to earn money, are left with absolutely nothing. Their nostalgia made a little more sense then!

That night we headed for a traditional meal of garlic soup served in a bread bowl and potato dumplings (like Gnocchi) with sauerkraut and bacon. We stumbled upon a beer festival on the way back to the hostel and sampled some Slovakian brews. I hadn't been feeling great with a bad cold and stomach since Romania so I chilled the next morning while Jonny trekked up to the citadel.

The next day we took the train to Ljubljana....not as simple as it should be. It is about 4 hours driving between Bratislava and the Slovenian capital but the connections are not that great. We had to get a train into Vienna and then out to Ljubljana- all in all about a 10 hour journey. The train journey was well worth it though- one day we will return to Austria and stay in the countryside. The alpine hills with little hill top churches is beautiful. We got settled into our hostel on arrival and headed straight out for some Slovenian food. Ljubljana is my favourite place so far- it is all built around a river and has pretty little stone bridges linking the old and newer (13th versus 15th century) city. We did another free walking tour today and saw the beautiful architecture, market squares and churches. Again, the guide filled us in on the modern history. Slovenia again was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and after WW1 was split between Italy and Yugoslavia, a union between the South Slavic countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Herzegovina and Montenegro. During the Yugoslavian days they were led by Tito who was Communist but the guide said it was a much more liberal form of Communism employed here. When Tito died the union started to fall apart, splitting down lines of religion and ethnicity. Slovenia voted to leave Yugoslavia in 1991 which prompted a 10 day war, but as there were very few Serbs in the Northern part of the union, Slovenia was allowed to leave and the war travelled South. We will learn a lot more about that as we travel down further into former Yugoslavia I hope.

Anyway, my friend Jen is joining us tomorrow for a couple of weeks to travel through Slovenia and Croatia. The plan is to go to Lake Bled for a few days before we cross another border.......           

Moldova to Romania

I am writing this first blog in an Italian looking cafe in Cluj, Romania. The sun is shining through fold out doors in the front and very suave looking Romanian business people are knocking back espressos and smoking around us. It's been quite a journey to get here and a very interesting one so far.

We had a very early start and thanks to Jonny's mum, made our 6am flight to Venice from Leeds. Unfortunately we couldn't leave the airport to look around so had to wait in there for a good 6 hours for our late connecting flight to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

When we finally arrived, it was dark so we couldn't really tell a lot about the city. We wandered slightly lost trying to find the hostel when two rather large, rather Russian looking chaps directed us around the back of the buildings down a dark alleyway......suspicious. We cautiously followed their instructions and found the pretty miserable, grey, concrete entrance to 'Trotters Den' hostel. When we got up the steps an American guy told us that the owner had gone out and would be back in two hours! This wasn't really what we wanted to hear, feeling pretty tired from a day of travelling but we befriended another American guy and went to find some food.

The owner turned out to be another Russian looking and sounding chap who told us 'you stay in another place, not here. I take you'....alarm bells again! We piled into the back of his car and after 5 minutes we pulled up outside a concrete house with a tall solid iron gate- double unlock and we were into a courtyard with an abandoned Larder, grass growing through it's windows; quadruple unlock and we were through the vault-like door. Turns out we had our own private little house, admittedly with a strange smiling Czech pensioner sat on the sofa for the first night of our stay, but after that it was all ours.

The next morning we trekked back to base camp of Trotters to enquire about getting out to the famous wine cellars. A word about Chisinau....you can see in the architecture that the city is trying to slowly pull itself out of the Soviet era, but it is very slow progress. The skyline is dominated by huge Communist concrete blocks of flats and Russian Orthodox churches with polished silver roofs glinting in the sun. The country is noticeably poorer than it's neighbour, Romania but in typical Russian-esque style people spend their money on branded clothes, expensive cars and mobile phones. The people, whilst not aggressive or mean, cannot be described as friendly- a smile is amongst the rarest commodities in Moldova. In fact one American guy said it ranked lowest in a global national happiness list!

Anyway, back to the wine cellar trip...A taxi picked us up at midday and we made our way out to Milestii Mici. Needless to say Moldova really is not geared up for tourism- the wine cellars are highlighted as the top tourist site in the country and our taxi driver didn't know where they were! We found them eventually and bought our tour ticket. After some waiting around for our tour guide to be bothered to come join us, we drove into a massive tunnel entrance. The temperature rapidly dropped as the tour guide explained that these were the biggest wine cellars in the world. The tunnels used to be a mine and after it was abandoned the wine makers moved in. The wine is stored, matured, processed and bottled under ground and all by women. The winery is 100% state owned by Moldova so I suppose everyone in there is a civil servant. We arrived at a door within the dark tunnel and the guide led us through to see where the wine was stored...all 1.5 million bottles of it! It was an incredible sight. She led us to the back to a false door left over from when the Russian Communists took over the country and alcohol prohibition was introduced. Behind the door, the wine makers hid thousands of bottles of wine which weren't discovered, the rest were destroyed, and so a bottle of pre-Communist wine is very rare in Moldova and fetches over $2000 a bottle. We made our way through to the tasting room where we sampled the white, red and dessert wines whilst being 'serenaded' by a man on a fiddle and one on an accordion.  After a truly unique experience, we headed back to the city for dinner.

The food is meat, pastry and potato based mostly. Pork is plentiful and the cheapest so I have eaten a lot of pork chops. Yonna's favourite is the Chorba which is clear broth soup with potato, vegetables, meat and a lot of herbs in it. They also serve dumplings which are like Japanese Gyoza by much thicker and filled with pork, potato or cabbage. All in all the food was pretty nice!

The next day we took a minibus out to Orheiul Vechi- a monastery carved into the limestone rock face. It took us a little while to locate the secret door into the monastery but once we did we ventured down the dark stone steps into a cave with an altar and an old, white-bearded, robed monk guarding his candles for sale and counting his money. The star of the show was out the other side of the small cave where the door led out to a ledge which overlooked a vast valley between the white limestone cliffs. The view was breathtaking and we spent some time there taking in the men ploughing the fields with old fashioned machinery, shepherds guarding their cattle and horses grazing on the plains with their foals. This place is obviously preparing to be a tourist spot one day as we had lunch in a very fancy, huge hotel/restaurant which was lovely.

On our final full day in Moldova we took a bus out to Transdniestria- a self-proclaimed independent republic that sits between Moldova and the Ukraine. People at the hostel had talked about the area a little nervously as there are concerns that the Russians will repeat their actions in the Crimea in this area too. But we asked the owner and he reassured us that it was 'as safe as safe-box'....sounds pretty safe! After an hour we reached a border crossing (again this isn't recognised by anyone else as a country so a border guard is a bit of a novelty) where the Russian speaking guard questioned each person on the bus as to their intentions in the 'country'. He demanded our passports...we only had the photocopies with us....he refused to let us in...we pleaded, did the whole 'we're dumb tourists'....he refused to let us in....we stood looking at him for a while...he refused to let us in...we returned to Chisinau to get our passports! Take two and the crossing was fuss-free with our passports but I was a little perturbed when the border guard gave us a knowing smile and wished us 'good luck'. I was further convinced that we were never leaving when another man on the bus wished us 'good luck'! We arrived in Tiraspol, the main city, and there was pretty much nothing there! We had to change some cash as they have their very own currency and went for a walk around the streets for a while. The one thing they are known for is producing Cognac- we purchased a bottle of their best produce for 2 Euros and got back on the bus. I have to say I was relieved to cross the 'border' back out of there!

We got an early bus to take us across the border into Romania the next day. A journey that should take a couple of hours due to the distance, took a good 8 hours thanks to the convoluted route, multiple stops, checks at the Moldovan and Romanian borders including a bag search and the bad road conditions. Oh and the bus hit what we assume to be a dog at very high speed....we heard a bang, the driver stopped, checked for damage and then carried on regardless.

We arrived in Suceava in the Moldavia region of Romania late afternoon and met up with Jonny's workmate, Karl, who has relocated out to their Romanian office. The next morning we set off in Karl's car to tour the UNESCO sites of five painted monasteries. We hadn't really acknowledged that it was Sunday so the first one we rocked up to was like stepping back into a Medieval sacrificial ceremony with monks dressed head to toe in black, chanting and women on the floor praying vigorously, some crying. The five monasteries we visited were all beautiful- all set within their own walls with rose gardens. They were painted externally and internally with religious scenes, much of which had lasted since the 15th century. Cluj was a good five hour drive away so we set off in the afternoon on an epic and sometimes scary car journey. Karl has mastered the Romanian driving well but no one can account for the madmen that overtake on blind corners on mountain roads. Nor can they avoid the police cars, one of which stopped us on the drive. There was a bit of panic as Karl had forgotten all his documents in Cluj but after a slapped wrist for very mild speeding the nice policeman let us off!

We're going to spend a couple of days in Cluj and meet up with more of Jonny's work mates out here before taking the train to Budapest where the adventure continues.