Safe as houses


Hama :: Syria

Pleasant surprises all round.

Places: Aleppo, The Dead Cities, Hama & Crac des Chevaliers.

Coolest thing I did: Took the taxi out to the ruined Byzantine cities in the desert around Aleppo.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: You can turn a single entry visa into a multiple entry one by writing "TWO" over the "ONE" printed on it. That's all the woman did when I got a dual entry and paid extra for it.

So, what do you know about Syria? If you are like me, you'd half have in the back of your mind that it was some kind of totalitarian military dictatorship full of terrorists and the like. It has a pretty bad rep, but just getting here, I've had to change that perception. It's a truly amazing place, made all the more so by the fact that there are not hundreds of Aussies getting drunk everywhere like there are in Turkey. I think the novelty of Westerners is still setting in here, because you don't get ripped off as regularly as you do in Turkey and everyone is so nice. I mean, very, very nice. People have been stopping me in the street asking where I'm from, do I need any help and then if I say no, just saying "welcome to Syria". In Morocco or Turkey, this would be a prelude to wanting to sell me a carpet. It's a nice change.

The other good thing is it's stupidly cheap, even more so than say Poland or Slovakia. This is due to the fact that people are pretty poor here, and mass tourism hasn't arrived yet. I've been here for 5 days now and I'm still on my first 50 euros! Having said that, I have been pretty sick from eating something (I'm not sure what) and I spent most of yesterday in bed with a fever and diarrhea (too much information?) and am avoiding too much of the stranger local food. I was having a pretty good run up until now, but I think yesterday's rest did me good. I think the heavy run from Greece into Istanbul the direct to Syria was taking it's toll a bit.

So, what's there to see? Well Aleppo isn't a real pretty place. It has some spectacular things in it (a mosque built under the first Muslim dynasty, a cidatel that's never been captured) but as a settlement that's been constantly inhabited for close to 10,000 years, all the layers are showing their age. Add to that some genius French city planner decided to run straight roads through it and destroy much of the old town hasn't helped. Add to this the fact that the Ba'ath party have been in power for long enough to turn it into a pseudo socialist paridise (ie lots of concrete and posters of President Assad everywhere) and it's probably seen better days. Still, the people are very nice and you make do. The souq here is a whole lot more real than the one in Marrakesh, as it seems to sell nothing a tourist could want. With motor cycles and donkeys running back and forth through the winding, irregularly paved streets you find yourself looking over your shoulder alot.

Myself, Paul (whose been traveling with me since Istanbul) and another bloke from the hostel hired a taxi off the street to take us out to some of the Dead Cities outside Aleppo. As this is the land crossroads from Istanbul (old Constantinople) into the Middle East, it used to be a a strategic point for the Byzantine empire. Many old cities and churches were built in the first 600 years after Christ but fell into ruin during the reign of the Turks, due mostly to a move to sea bound trade. This has left several hundred ruins all over the desert here, which you can see by day trip from Aleppo. The most famous is St Simeon, which is a huge Orthadox chruch dedicated to a monk who lived on top of a pillar. It's a long story.

Our taxi driver, Mad Mohammed was pretty good to us, even though the inspector at St Simeon reckons we were getting our ride around for about half of the going rate. He didn't mind waiting as we wandered around and took photos of the overgrown pillars and arches like proper tourists. However, driving with him is an experience. His use of the horn was not at all sparing and wild gesticulations at other drivers, usually with both hands were a little nerve wracking. He spoke next to no English but was highly amused by us knowing the words falaffel and kebab. He'd yell "falafel kebab!" at the top of his lungs and go into giggling fits for minuites on end.

I'm currently in Hama, which is famous for having water wheels in the river. That's it. Water wheels. It's also within striking distance of Crac des Chevaliers, the best preserved of the Crusader castles and possibly one of the best remaing castles in the world. It comes from the time when the hordes of Catholic Western Europe managed to retake much of modern day Syria and Israel/Palestine from the armies of Islam. When much of the Byzatine empire was taken from them by these uppity arabs, the emperor of the East asked the pope in Rome for a hand. He proclaimed a crusade to reconquer the holy land from the Muslims. The first 2 crusades were hapazard affairs, but managed to get a foothold into much of the coast. The real thing started with the 3rd crusade, which pitted the armies of Christianity under Richard the Lionheart of England (of Robin Hood fame) against Saladin, a Kurdish warlord. Unlike the resistance they'd met before, Saladin's army were professionals and this showed in the stalemate that ended the conflict. Big Ricky Lionheart knew he could retake Jerusalem, but did not have enough me to garrison it. This was the peak of the crusades and it ended with the reconquest by the Muslim armies. Crac des Chevaliers should have had 2000 men in it but had 50 when the Muslims arrived. They could have held out for 5 years, but abandoned it for safe passage. It was never taken and thus is in immaculate condition (with minor restorations over the years).

Saladin does play a big part in the Arab psyche too. Witness the fact that many of the propaganda posters in Iraq showed Saddam dressed as Saladin on horseback, holding off the Crusaders, which he equates with the armies of "Little Bush".

While everyone here likes to have a talk, it can turn quickly into politics with no warning. This is not such a problem, it's good to hear the other side of the story, but the following themes keep reoccuring:

• America is controlled by a Jewish consipracy.
  
• The Arabs have been persecuted by the whole world, whcih is why they are so poor here
  
• Only those with military power can shape their own desitinies.
  
• The recent history of the middle east is a divide and conquer tactic by the West.
  

Given this is a totalitarian state, there are secret police and state controlled media, it's easy to see how these conspiracy theories form, but I'm amazed at how uniformly accepted they are. Like anywhere, governments look for someone to blame when their own ineptitude gets them into trouble (look at the Australian government and those evil migrants), but we tend to have a liberal media to allow us to make more informed decisions. This makes George and his Axis of Evil making just that much more dangerous. People here are not hating their government more than America because they brought sanctions upon them.

Right, I think I've had to change of plan. I don't know how much I trust this multiple entry visa I've been given, so I'm going south to Damascus and seeing everything else I want to see in Syria before going into Lebanon. That way, if I have issues with my visa I can get a transit one at the border and go direct to Jordan.

How to cook a Syrian visa


Istanbul :: Turkey

Straight puttin' it down for Anatol-I-Ay.

Places: Istanbul.

Coolest thing I did: Realised I'd missed the best bits of Istanbul last time and got to see them for the first time now.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Australias are the biggest beetroot consumers in the world (thanks Khim, you're a babe). We even beat Borsch land, or Russia as the locals call it.

Man, do I hate 22 hour bus rides or what? Thank God it only took 20 instead of the advertised 22 to go from Athens to Istanbul. Bring a very long book and don't expect too much in the way of sleep. Every 3 hours the stupid driver decided he was going to turn on the lights and stop the bus because he wanted a smoke. Bastard.

So, here I am, back in old Constantinople. The best thing about being here this time is I don't have to rush about and do all the touristy stuff like I did last time I was here. I've seen the Grand Bazaar, Palace and all the mosques, so I'm working more on my kebab eating skills, hookah pipe smoking skills and cosuming beer that is far cheaper than in Greece. Thanks to the fact they've slowed inflation from 120% last time I was here to a mere 30%, things still cost roughly the same as they did last time. Kebab is still 1,000,000. Viva life.

My big adventure so far has been attempting to aquire a Syrian visa. One of the blokes in the hostel wanted to do the same, so we split a cab as it's miles into the suburbs. Not only did the taxi driver decide by Syria we meant the Czech Republic, but no one on the street could tell us where the address was, even though it turned out to be on the next street. Not only that, but when we did find it, we discover that you need a "letter of introduction" from your embassy. So we catch a bus to the Australian consulate, which is even further away and managed to bay about 20 euros for a piece of paper that has exactly the same information on it as my passport. So by this time, it's too late to go back and I have to return to the Syrians tomorrow. Oh, how I love bureaucracy. I'm almost afriad to ask what extra I'll have to do to get a multiple entry one if I want to visit Lebanon and go back through Syria to Jordan. That may go into the "too hard" basket.

However, I'm loving Istanbul again. This time there's less being hassled on the street as I know it's ok to say "no thanks", then "I said no" and then swear if necessary. The usually give up after that. I've also, quite by accident, seen some of the best views of the huge Ottoman mosques rising out of the skyline over the Bosphorus, which I didn't see last time. I think this place is unique in that regard. I tried to see similar things all over Morocco, but nothing comes close to that silhouette of minaretes rising over urbania like this place has. It's made me decide to stay on a few more days and just do not too much. I may even go rile up the carpet sellers, just to see how small a price I can get. I don't want a carpet, just to play the haggling game.

So, if all goes well, I'll be off to Syria later this week. I've met an Aussie whose just done my trip backwards (Egypt up to Istanbul overland) and he's reassured me over my (slight) fears of suicide bombings in Israel (or Occupied Palestine as the Syrian visa form calls it). He said he felt "safe as houses" the whole time he was there, so I do feel a bit better. Before him, I'd not met anyone who'd been there in the last 2 years, and in the Middle East, that's a lifetime.

By staying at the world famous Orient Hostel, I'm surrounded by Aussies for the first time in recent memory. Besides a few token Kiwis and Canadians, I haven't seen anyone else (except the Korean dude I was on the bus with from Athens). I think this may be due to the fact Americans now have to pay USD$100 (!!!) to get into Turkey. Man, I bet you they vote for the other guy now (or girl, I'm putting money on Hillary Clinton running for president next year, mark my words).

Short, but not so much time has passed since last time. Right, I'm off to happy hour (which goes for 3 hours...God I love this place).

Lots of old stuff


Athens :: Greece

Theres alot of this Greek history stuff.

Places: Litohoro (Mt Olympus), Kalambaka (Meteora), Athens, Delphi, Nafplio, Mycenea, Sparta, Mystras & Olympia.

Coolest thing I did: Ran a lap of THE olympic track the ancient Greeks used. Don't ask my time.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The greeks have more than one word for love. Awww. Agape.

This has been a big couple of weeks. I won't go into the usual tirade but rather treat each spot separately. Here goes:

Litohoro: It appears that the Greek gods got sick of their old home on Mt Olympus and decided to leave it to hikers and skiers. While I didn't do the 2 day hike to the summit (time is starting to get the better of me) I did go half a day to the point where you can see all of the 7 peaks of the mountain. It was made a bit better by the fact that there were no other tourists that got off my bus, so I wasn't surrounded by flash bulbs everytime I turned a corner. This has become a problem in places I've been since.

Meteora: This has to rate as one of the best places I've been, ever. Full stop. Scientists think (how come they never know, always think?) that the huge stone pillars that make the place unique were formed by the rushing water of an ancient sea that isn't there anymore. Thanks to the marauding Turks (always marauding those pesky Turks) the Byzantines decided it would be a cool idea to put their monestaries places that were hard to get at. So they built them on the top of the sheer stone pillars that dot the landscape at Meteora. If you are a photographer, you'll be in heaven when you see this place. Turn a corner and you see something that looks just a whole lot cooler than the very cool thing you just saw. I can't do this place justice in words, you have to see it. It is, however,easily accesed by tour busses. I walked the 17 km round trip to see all the 6 monestaries that still work, but it involves sharing it with the teeming hordes who caught the bus up. I don't usually get on my high horse about mass tourism, but this place would be so much cooler if it was only accessible by foot trail. At least my photos the stones wouldn't look like anthills.

Athens: Last time I came to Greece for my go-to-the-islands-and-get-drunk trip, I was in Athens for a total of 6 hours. It managed to leave me with a severe dislike of the place. That has now moved up a couple of notches into the low hatred level. How on Earth this place expects to host an Olympics next year is beyond me. The roads are chaos, there are two seperate bus stations linked by suburban busses where the signs are only in Greek (which most tourists that show up next year won't speak) and take a good 30 to 40 mins to reach from the centre. Add to this the fact there seems to have been super inflation since drachmas became euros and I'm not real enamoured of the place. Still, I only stopped here due to the fact it's the transport hub for the rest of the country.

Delphi: This was the best classical site I saw, despite promises of Olympia being better. You just can't beat it for location. The main temples and stuff overlook a huge rift in the mountains that open up to the sea. Even if there was nothing old and Greek here, this would be the place to come for scenery. The temple of Athena, where the Oracle used to do her thing is the pick of the bunch. I like the story of the oracle. Just say you're an ancient greek bloke, let's call you Jason. You want to go nick some golden fleece, but your mates, the Argonauts, aren't so keen. The best thing you could have done is gone to the Oracle and asked to check out if the trip would all be cool. She'd then gut a chicken, read the bits inside and say yay or nay. For the rest, read the ramblings of an old blind Greek guy called Homer. Who is not Bart's Dad.

Nafplio/Mycenea: This is a nice combo. Nafplio is an old Byzantine/Venetian town that has been restored to tourism level pristinedness. It's nice, but not somewhere you'd stay unless it wasn't the best place to stay to see Mycenea. Crete was the first place in Europe to have culture, but Mycenea was the first place on the mainland to do so. Now it's been stripped of most of it's treasures, which are in musemums, but it's a pretty cool place to visit none the less. It's the supposed home of Agamemnon, who was the bloke who led the Greek armies to attack Troy. Don't worry if you don't know the story, it's going to be a movie staring Brad Pitt next year. Urgh.

Sparta/Mystras: Sparta was the other big city state in ancient Greece, alongside Athens. While Athens is now the capital of the new country, Sparta hasn't got much to offer. No real ruins either. But it's 30 mins from Mystras, which is way cool. It was an old hill fort and town during Byzantine times and was the last place to fall to the Turks, even outlasting the old Captial Constantinople (Istanbul today). What's left is an impressive amount of ruins clinging to a hillside with one restored, operating Nunnery. Again, only pictures can do it justice.

Olympia: Prepare to be underwhelmed. It is a good site with some interesting things, but overall it's alot of rocks arranged with some imagination. The best bits were the coloums that used to line the temple of Zeus, which have been lefted in their toppled state, and the cleared olympic track, which, as I said earlier, I ran around. Man, you don't run for 6 months and this can be very tiring. I think I've lost alot of fitness. OK, maybe I'm being a girl. Anyway, the town of Olympia is a single street of tourist shops. This dosen't make for a huge Saturday night. I spent most of it playing the card game arsehole and talking about things travelers seem to talk about. These consist of where I've been, where I'm going, visas, train passes, showering in your thongs (flip flops for you Northern Hemispherers, not underpants) and tales of extreme stinginess. While this can been cool for your first month on the road, it's now approaching 6 months and I'd love to have just one conversation about something more meaningful, or even just different.

So, here I am, back in Athens. I have felt the bruising pace of the last couple of weeks should have been taking more toll on me, but if anything I feel better than I have in at least a month or so. I think it's been helped by the endless supply of Greeks who have been willing to talk to me about their life, even with no provocation at all. I've met expat Greeks who live all over Europe, North America and Oceania, most of them well over 50. I've found the expats to be rather open minded, in contrast to the younger types I met in Thessas, most of whom had never been overseas before. More proof that travel broadens the mind. However, the reality of the whole trip is now reaching me. I have now fixed dates for when I will be in Egypt and when I'm flying back to the UK, so I know exactly how much time I have left. I've also decided to go overland to Egypt, as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan sound safe enough. I'm a little concerned about the regular suicide bombings in Israel, but I'm going to take that decision much closer to the time. At the moment I'm leaning towards going there, leaving enough time to do so. We shall see. Now it gets pretty interesting. Tomorrow I'm off to Istanbul, so I should be out of Europe by the time you next see something here.

A stark contrast


Thessaloniki :: Greece

Wow. The EU does seem to work.

Places: Bitola, Niki, Florina & Thessaloniki.

Coolest thing I did: Joined the locals in Florina by sitting in a cafe and watching market day go by.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Greeks actually use the term FYROM for the country directly to their north, which they pronounce "Fi-rom".

International relations in the Balkans can make for some interesting journeys over borders between neighbours who hate each other (bearing in mind every country has been at war with every other country it borders down here). My trip from Orhid to Thessaloniki is 180km as the crow flies or 200 ish km by road. I took a minibus from Orhid to Bitola, took a 5 euro taxi ride to the border at Niki, walked over the border (despite being questioned over both my Bulgarian & Turkish stamps in my passport), hitchhiked to the nearest town, Florina (thank God I got picked up by a helpful Austrian Jehovahs Witness and his 2 young kids, thanks Christan, you're a dude) and then took a bus to Thessaloniki. Round trip time? 9 hours.

However, as a side bonus I did get to wait in Florina on market day. Despite having very similar attitudes to their neighbours in the North about how laid back to live life, it's immediately obvious there is a whole lot more money around if you are Greek rather than a FYROMian. I managed to be there on market day and the whole town seemed to be out. It's home to a rather large university so many of the cafes were filled with students who probably should have been in class. I have to say something else too, there is something in the water here. There is something abnormal about all these skinny girls with huge breasts. They are all either on track for massive weight gain or lower back problems in later life.

You would have to be pretty generous to call Thessaloniki pretty. Most of the waterfront has been converted into Greece's second largest industrial port and only Athens (if memory serves me) has a more hotch potch collection of high rise spreading back to the horizon. At least it's not as polluted.

However, it has a cafe scene that would put anything else I've seen, including Rome, to shame. There are rows of ultra hip cafes and bars that must have employed many, many interior designers. It seems to be the done thing to get very, VERY dressed up and sip either one cocktail or an iced coffee for a very long time. And with the prices most of these places charge for a drink, I'm not surprised. The other option of drinking 80 euro cent Amstels from the kebab shop on the square has been far more appealing to me. It seems here that the best thing to spend money on here is to be seen, and that isn't cheap. They probably aren't too keen on all these grotty looking backpackers sitting on their ruins drinking out of the can.

I'm finding my dealings with the young Greeks my own age and under a bit harder than I thought. Sydney has a huge Greek community, and like most immigrant groups to Australia, are as open minded as anyone else. Even in former Yugoslav war zones I've found people weary of politics and unchecked nationalism, in places where wars were fought over these things in my lifetime. However, all the students I've met here have been blatantly anti American, anit Turkish and uphold the FYROMians are after all their land. No debate, all these things are taken as fact. If theres nothing that gets me riled it's people who won't defend their shaky positions with some kind of logic. I haven't met even a representative number of locals, but students are usually open to debate or friendly conversation. This perplexes me a little.

So, things have been a little easier on me here. The fact there have been tourists here for hundreds of years means I'm not having much trouble with getting around or finding things. I did love the challenge of the Bosnias, S &Ms and Macedonias of the world, but sometimes you need a break. With the Middle East coming up in less than 2 weeks, I need to get my head together a bit. After a break here, I'm off to some old famous Greek things tomorrow.

The good, the bad and the ugly


Orhid :: Macedonia

After she bled on me, I decided to take the room.

Places: Belgrade, Skopje & Orhid

Coolest thing I did: Talked to the locals about things. Everyone here knows someone from Australia.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Sociologists belived the Macedonians were ethnic Bulgarians as late as the 1930s.

After the Romanian visa debacle I decided to use the return ticket I had to Belgrade (for some reason a return to Budapest was cheaper than one way) and overnight there before heading south to Macedonia. I have to admit, I was not prepared for Macedonia. One of my oldest friends (since 5th grade) is from Macedonia and I had a rosy picture of the place because I knew someone from there. This may have meant I was not prepared for a country that just dosent get a whole lot of tourists. As a result, I got knocked for six a bit on my arrival here.

Just to get a point across before I start, I'm going to call the country Macedonia, even though it's real name is the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". The Greeks wouldn't recognise the country unless they changed the name from "Macedonia". Despite this, the locals (the FYROMians I guess) quite cheekily call it Macedonia anyway. So will I.

So, I learnt from that tome of unchecked facts, the Lonely Planet that I could get a visa from the border. What they didn't mention was you had to pay 900 Macedonian denars for it, despite the fact you can't exchange MKDs outside the country. Hrmmm. As I had only Yugoslav dinars (which they don't take) I had to dig through my bag for any left over currency. I finally found 10 pounds in my shorts, which they took at a kind of unfair exchange rate. Want to make yourself unpopular with a bus full of people? Try holding the bus up for half an hour at the border. Ooops. I did, however, get much better treatment when I told the border guards I was going to stop in Macedonia, not just jet through to Greece. So the lessons are always have Euros handy and always flatter the country you are about to enter. Shave too, something I hadn't done in about 2 weeks.

Skopje (or C-K-O-square with no bottom-J-E as it's known to the Serbs and FYROMians) is possibly the most arse slappingly hideous "city" I've ever seen. I usually try to find the bright side of any place, but Skopje is a hole, pure and simple. There was an earthquake in the 1960s and all the aid money went to building the worst space age grey concrete monstrosities that the products of communist architecture school can produce. Grey concrete goes stained and ugly very quickly, and without money to keep up all these blights on the landscape, the place is stupendifyingly (is that a word) ugly. Somehow, they have managed to combine impracticality and hideousness in each one. Add to this that most of the rest of the city isn't high rise, it looks like a failed architectual grave yard.

Cheap accomadation isn't around. Not that many people visit the place, for obvious reasons, so there are only hotels that charge a small fortune to anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck there. I also got stung slightly by the taxi mafia. Skopje has no public transport that goes anywhere useful, so I was accosted by a young bloke who spoke good English and offered to take me to the hostel. He told me it was 6km away and would do it for 1000MKD (about 14 Euros). I looked on my LP map and saw it was about 1km, but those maps quite often have a warped sense of scale. I worked him down to 600MKD (10 euros), even though I didn't really want a ride. When he got to the hostel (which was full anyway) I handed him a 1000 note and he said he wanted 6 of those. I told him we agreed on 600 and he told me his English wasn't so good. I got out of the taxi and told him we should go into the hostel and have the owner adjudicate. I was pretty sure he would chase this bloke off for trying to change me 100 euros for a ride that did turn out to be about 1km. I was by this time pretty riled, so exited the taxi and removed my baggage. He asked me if I had a problem I wanted sorted out. Now, I'm not a real big guy, but he was a runt so I mentioned to him his mother was of ill repute. Then I told him if he wanted any money at all he would have to produce my 400 change before I would hand him over the 1000. He did this and drove off yelling possible unice things to me in Macedonian.

At least the hostel owner was willing to call his mate who had a hotel in town that was a mere 25 euros a night. His mate came and got me, which I suspected meant I was being as fleeced as I thought I was. Putting all this in context, I wanted nothing but to be out of Skopje, never to return. I was of half a mind to go right to Greece.

So, Saturday night in Skopje is kind of a mess. There's one row of cafes where everyone hangs out. The street is supposed to be pedestrianised, however new paving is being put down so young blokes speed through in their ancient Yugos and do burnouts in the dust. All cars here must play Beyonce and JayZ at top volume by law.

My arrival to Orhid almost killed Macedonia for good for me. When I got off the bus, and old lady and an old man were both arguing to try and get me to stay at their place, Croatia style. Though I saved YB from this, in these situations I like to get the two parties to auction off their wares. It never got to this. The old bloke got angry and backhanded the old woman over the face with his signet ring. This opened up a huge gash on her face and I had to look on in horror as the blood started rushing out of their face. Though I helped her clean up and went with her (I didn't like the idea of giving money to this woman hitting monster), I was secretly thinking "get me out of this lunatic asylum". She turned out to be very nice, cooking me breakfast, giving me tourist advice and telling me about her sister in Melbourne.

Orhid isn't Skopje. It's been one of the highlights of my whole journey. It's a crystal clear lake with a whole lot of history. It was the place where disciples of Sts Cyrill and Methodius set up show to teach people the Cyrillic alphabet. The two brothers from Thessaloniki were charged by the church of Constantinople to convert the Slavs to Christianity before those pesky Catholics did it. So Cyrill, being a bright spark, invented a new alphabet to write the Slavic language in to teach it to the new Slav priests. So it's his fault this place is spelled C-X-P-backwards N-little house on all the bus timetables. There are a whole lot of Orthadox churches, as a result, sitting quite photogenically over the lake on cliffs and stuff. All very nice.

The other old site is the castle of Simon, who was the Tsar of the Bulgarians at around 900ish AD. Bulgarians you say? Yeah, Macedonia was the centre of the first Bulgarian empire, and the castle he ruled from at Orhid is being restored now. Now, this is a bit of a sticking point. When the Russians decided to liberate the Bulgarians from Turkish rule in 1878, they forced the Turks to give the Bulgarians 60% of the Balkan peninsula as their new homeland, including Macedonia. This was the extent of the land holdings of the Bulgarians at their peak. This rankled the Western European powers (England, France, et al), who made the Bulgarians give Macedonia back to the Turks. All land claims and two wars have been fought over this ruling. Neither side is happy, and I can see it flaring up again in the future. Add to this the scientists of the early 20th century went around saying the Macedonians were Bulgarians under another name. Eeeks. Let's just say Balkan politics can be best explained that everyone thinks everyone else is in their land.

However, at every turn I have been reminded that what politicans say does not always reflect the will of the people. Most people I meet have been more willing to talk about their relations in Australia, which everyone seems to have. It appears most of them are ecconomic migrants from the former Yugoslavia. I also met one bloke who was perplexed as to why the Australian government wouldn't give him a tourist visa to visit his family. I told him I was perplexed about the same thing. It helped keep me out of Romania. Stupid Xenophobic government.

So my breakneck course in Balkan politics and history ends here. Tomorrow I'm going out of my way to avoid going back to Skopje by crossing into Greece the hard way.

Best laid plans


Budapest :: Hungary

"Unintended travel plans are dancing lessons from God." - Kurt Vonnegut

Places: Budapest

Coolest thing I did: Saw the right hand of St Stephen, the founder of Hungary (1000 plus years old!).

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The last song Johnny Cash did was a cover of the 9 inch nails song Hurt. How bizzare is that?

The twin cities of Buda and Pest have not failed to live up to the high standards I was only guessing at last time. It dosent look like I'm going to get to see any other places in Hungary, but this looks like the pick. I would rate it as one of the best capitals I've seen in all of Europe, and that's saying something. Despite being on the wrong side in 2 world wars and living through 45 years of communism, Hungary has managed to centre it's economic recovery on this one city, and it shows. Every corner seems to have a statue or building worth photographing.

Which is handy, as the nightlife here is starting to take me over a bit. It helps when you just randomly point cameras at things in a mildly hung over state that you are probably going to hit something worth photographing. It's been a while since I've been in such a lively city, and my liver hurts a little. Still having a ball.

So, where do I start? Let's start at home. The hostel I'm staying at is an old appartment in downtown Pest that is run by three young Serbian blokes who take it in turns so the place has someone sitting in the kitchen smoking spliffs 24 hours a day. They somehow manage to make sure there is a new hip hop CD in the stereo constantly throught the day and keep the place spotless. Free internet and laundry is also helping a lot. This kind of behavior has, however, gathered a clientel that isn't afraid not to sleep too much. If people are not our partying or eating, they are in the kitchen at all hours making merry. It's a good thing I'd rather join them than beat them. Most people who are in Budapest for things that don't include testing the 24 hour nightlife don't last past the first night.

I have witnessed possible the most heroic effort of self destruction ever though. Three Belgian blokes who are in my room have put in several nights in a row that have started mid afternoon and ended the following mid afternoon. It takes an incalculable amount of stanima to consume beer for that period of time. Then again, Belgian beer is stupidly strong, so maybe they are a bit more used to it. I feel safe leaving them sometime just before sunrise and witnessing the results than consider what kind of result that treatment would have on my body. Still, much fun had by all.

The city itself does look alot like Prague. There is a castle on a hill overlooking a bridge in almost the same positions as the one in the Czech capital, however the wider streets mean there's less space to cram tourist stalls together like in Prague. This is a good thing.

The Hungarians are really called Magyars, and came to Europe just over 1100 years ago. They were the last migration into Europe and were converted to Christianity by their king in 1000 AD, Stephen. I like that. There's statues of him all over the city and my ego won't let me not take pictures of them. His right hand is also in the main cathederal, and if you put a coin in, the glass around it lights up so you can see it better. I was hoping for music, but alas, there was none.

In the middle years, the old neighbours of the magyars in central asia came back to haunt them. The mongols (being mongols) under Mr Kubla Khan (Gengis' grandson) did a whole lot of rape/pillage/burning work to the Hungarians, then after a breif respite, the Turks came and conquered them. While this was probably bad for the Hungarian on the street, they did do one good thing. Baths. Budapest lies on a natural fault line and there are heaps of thermal springs in the city. Some of these now have posh bath houses built over them, and one of them is quite afordable. I spent an afternoon soaking in mineral springs inside a building that looks a whole lot like an Austrian palace. This is pretty cool. It's also likely to put you to sleep if you have been going out as much as I have. I found myself nod off in the sauna more than once. Still, an excellent way to unwind.

So, the Austrians kicked out the turks and took over Hungary for a while. By the end of the World Wars, having sided with Germany both times (d'oh!) the Hungarians found themselves without much of their old lands and under the rule of a friendly communist dictatorship. When ever the locals refer to this "liberation" they always make inverted comma signs with their fingers. The Russians showed up and stayed for 45 years. Not much was making them leave. After Uncle Joe Stalin died, the Hungarians were the first communist state to try free elections and pull out of the Warsaw pact, in 1956. This did not end well, with the uprising being crushed by the Red Army. This showed the world what the Warsaw pact was really about. In order to protect their lands during a land war in Europe against Nato, the USSR set up a ring of communist regiems around them, calling this "alliance" the Warsaw Pact. Everyone who tried to get out of it (before Poland in 1989) ended up getting tanks driven over them. People still, for some reason, hold a grudge over this.

So, while everyone else in Eastern Europe was pulling down statues of Uncle Joe, Lenin and Marxy, the Hungarians put them all in a park outside the city so tourists can take photos and feel ironic about it. This is worth doing, however it takes 2 busses way out of town into the bush, and the bus stop isn't well marked. I missed the stop and had to walk 3km back from the next one. Don't attempt this if you are perpetually hung over, it will only make you angry. However, the statue of the soviet soldier that used to stand over the city is worth the price of admission alone.

So, thanks to my own lack of attention to detail, I only realised yesterday I hadn't applied for a Romanian visa yet. I was already on a bit of a time crunch (I'm now looking at the 2nd or 3rd week of October to be in Istanbul), however I only managed to make it to the Romanian embassy this morning. I have to buy a ticket before I leave and print out my bank statement, plus give them 48 hours to process it. Thanks to the weekend, that would put me at next Wednesday at the earliest to be out of here on the morning train to Transylvania. This would them mean either crossing Bulgaria in a day or missing out some of the Middle East/Greece. At this point, I'm more inclined to write Romania and Bulgaria off and head south through Serbia again to Greece. This is a bit of an admital of defeat, and if I had gone to the embassy on Monday, it wouldn't have happened. A bit of a downer, but I'm sure I'll get a chance again one day.

So you don't get my Vlad the Impailer, Nikki Ceausescu or dogs in Bucharest anecdotes next time. You may get ones from Macedonia instead. I have a fresh page to fill and I'm not sure what's going to go on it just yet.

The other side of the argument


Budapest :: Hungary

At home with those nasty ol Serbs.

Places: Belgrade and Budapest

Coolest thing I did: Saw the place they laid Tito to rest.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: No one in Serbia Montenegro thought anyone would make fun of the new initials of their name.

Before I start, I recently dubbed Croatia the new Greece. Well from the afternoon I have just spent here, I've decided that Budapest is the new Prague. I will explain more later. Just know it's good, and has lifted my spirits somewhat after all that war talk.

So, despite everything that the Bosnians and Croats told me in Sarajevo, the Serbs don't look, talk or even act very differently to them. In order to go to Belgrade by bus you have to cross the border into the other part of Bosnia, Republic of Serbska which is the bit the Serbs got control over after the Dayton Agreement. From the outset, you notice that not much is different, except maybe that there was less aid money to rebuild it, so it's got a few more bombed out buildings. Try telling that to all the people who looked at me like I was insane when I decided to tell them m next stop was Belgrade.

Belgrade, after all this hype, is a bit of a let down. Despite Nato's best efforts in 1999, there are no scars of war visible in downtown Belgrade. The locals are understandably still a bit pissed off with the Yanks, but telling them you are Australian is more likely to get them to tell you stories of their cousin in Melbourne than have them spit on you. I didn't meet any Americans, so I don't know how they are treated, but all the talk at the bars didn't look good for them. Understandable when most people remember cruise missles blowing up their bridge to work a few years back. The bars, however, are another thing. The place is like any other European capital, however it's not real geared up for tourists. There are no hostels, very few tourist shops, and even buying postcards was a chore. I loved it.

The castle itself, it's a castle. Seen one, seen them all is how I'm feeling at the moment. What they do have is a military museum that has the added currency that it lives up to it's claim of having all of Yugoslavia's military history under one roof. The hunters rifles with KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) carved on the butts and the peices of a downed US Stealth Fighter (which the Yanks claim to this day never was shot down) are pretty cool. Exhibits about WW2 are one thing, but I can relate so much more to things I remember seeing on the news.

I was told to avoid politics as a conversation topic, but this is only true if you aren't willing to hear both sides of the story. Let's start with the whole breakup of Yugoslavia thing. The way the Serbs see it, both sides had a hand in ethnic cleansing in both Croatia and Bosnia, however they don't point out the non-Serb ones were mostly revenge killings. As Yugoslavia was a soverign country, the UN stayed out of it's affairs. The Serbs point out none of the independance referendums were legal, even if they pointed out the will of the people. I still agree with the use of force by the UN to break up conflicts, but with all sides chomping at the bit to have another go at each other, I think the region could be in for more turmoil when the Nato troops finally leave.

I saw 2 graves when I was there. The first was of a bloke called Tsar Stephen Dusan (lets call him Steve). Steve is laid to rest in a Serbian Orthodox Catheral that is supported by 4 giant granite pillars. This is more impressive than it sounds. You'll just have to belive me until you all go to Serbia. Steve was an important bloke in Serbian history, because he lost the country to the Turks. Thats right, lost. At the battle of Kosavar Polje (which is part of the problem that sparked the last war in 1999) the Turks routed Steve's troops and ushered in 400 years of rule from Constantinople, starting in the 14th century. Aussies and Kiwis can think of it as kind of like the Serbian Anzac day.

The other bloke was Tito, who was the friendly dictator who both led the Partisan army that fought the Germans in WWII in Yugoslavia, but ran the Socialist Yugo for nearly 40 years. At the beginning of WW2, the Germans managed to set up a facist puppet state in Croatia and set the local facists loose on the Jews and Roma. They took things one step further and decided the Serbs should be sent to the camps too. This steeled up resistance from all the peoples of Yugoslavia and allowed the Partisan army, led by the communists of Tito's party, to become one of the fierces underground movements in the whole war.

After the war, Tito became head of state of the new Yugoslavia and held the country together for the rest of his life. This was no mean feat, and he used both a hybrid free marked socialist system (dont ask me to explain how that works) and a pandering to all the various minorities in the country to keep it all working smoothly. After his death, it became clear his policy of soliciting aid and loans by being friendly commies (they split with Stalin in 1948) would no longer work and the financial crisis that followed still haunts the former Yugoslav republics today.

As a testament to the man, he now resides in a guarded white marble mausoleum looking out over the city. Compare this to Romanias meglomaniac, who they shot and dumped in a ditch somewhere. A tip, dont try and walk there. It takes ages. Bloody Lonely Planet maps.

Post Tito is when the problems started. Another place I saw was the Serbian Academy of Sciences. These guys decided in 1986 to publish a paper saying the best way to hold Yugoslavia together would be to promote Serbian nationalism. Clap, Clap. Milosovic took this up as his cause when he came to head the Communist party in Serbia, and the rest is violent, bloody history. While Big Milo is at the Hague, his wife still resides in the official residence of Tito (which he never lived in) right next to his grave.

So, after nearly four weeks, my tour of Yugoslavia ends. I'm considering going to Macedonia, with a possible day trip into Kosovo later on, due mostly to the fact that one of my oldes mates is a Macedonian living in Sydney. When we were 10 he introduced me to the concept that Yugoslavia was a country set on it's own destructive course by telling me the nationalistic ideas his Dad had told him. I made the mistake of telling him Macedonia was in Greece (well, it partially is) and over the following years of high school, I took more notice of the conflict in the Balkans than I otherwise would, with his Dad chaneling opinions to us via him. This also introduced me to the crux of the problem. Everyone agrees that all the former Yugoslav lands should be demarked by historical borders, just no one can agree on the date. With so many empires, including Greek and Bulgarian ones, moving back and forth over the Balkans in the last 2000 years, everyone tends to pick the height of their empire as the grounds for their current land claims. With that in mind, compromise is the only solution. Try telling the locals that.

One last note. The Name. In what must be the worst editing decision since Osama Bin Ladens boys put blameless Norway on it's list of infidel countries that must be destroyed (I can see OBL raging around the cave yelling "Denmark you falafel for brains, not Norway!), no one noticed that the initials of the country are now S and M. Giggle. They should have gone with M and S. At least we could have only made underwear jokes, instead of ones involving horse whips.

On that, Im off to see what Budapest serves up as a Saturday night.

Pretty scary stuff


Sarajevo :: Bosnia Herzegovina

The war tour.

Places: Sarajevo

Coolest thing I did: Witnessed "sarajevo roses", the impact marks of shells on the pavement, filled in with red rubber.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The common link between the warlord Arkan and the murder of the Serbian Prime Minister this year is a pop star called Ceca.

I know this one comes pretty quick after the last entry, but it's something I had to get out of my head. This place is pretty unique in both it's ancient and modern history, and it's history of tolerence and intolerence at different times. I took the war tour today, and learned a whole lot about the breakup of Yugoslavia that I didn't know. Despite having watched the whole thing on TV and read books on it since, I was shocked at how little of my knowledge stood up to the light of day. I like it when I get taught things and humbled a bit.

I will start by saying that the ministry of bastardry for crane placement is as good at it's job here as it was in Croatia. Everytime you want to take a photo there's a crane in the background. However, here there's a pretty good reason for it. Everything is slowly being rebuilt, from the heart of the old town outwards. In the main shopping street there are very little in the way of signs of the war left. Go back a street at the windowless shells line both sides, only broken up by the occasional rebuilt shop or hotel. I tell you what, if you are a window glazier by trade, now is the time to be here. Nothing has unbroken windows that don't need replacing. A tradesman's paridise.

Just a note on where I'm staying. There are no hostels (the closest thing to one mentioned in the good old LP is now a car park) so you are best to do the whole private room thing. The travel agency put me in touch with a bloke whose house is covered in fold out couches. I'm sleeping in his kitchen with another bloke, who is on a fold out armchair. It's sort of more like a backpacker flophouse than a hostel. Still, he's a nice bloke, dosen't speak a word of English, but chainsmokes and makes a mean turkish coffee for everyone at the drop of a hat. Drinking coffee so tarlike you can stand a knife up in it is screwing with my sleeping patterns a bit, but it's still nice.

The war tour takes you through the city and the important sites of it's 4 year seige. The bloke who does it has patchy English, but manages to not give political opinions on something he feels very strongly about, which shows patience. He is also my brother's age (25), which means he saw the whole thing first hand. Pretty scary stuff.

By the time the referendum for independance in 1992 had been counted, there were Serb forces already ringing the hills around the city. Despite UN presence, the seige began on the announcement of independance and remained until 1995. The Serbs expected a 15 day campaign. The tour took us down the street to the airport, dubbed snipers alley. The reason for this? Walking the street down here, in clear sight of the hills got you a bullet in the head. Here is the first joke the tour guide told us: A Bosnian is sitting on a swing, going back and forth like mad. His mate comes up and says "what are you doing?". He repies "fucking with the snipers". The jokes here are pretty dark.

The street goes to the airport, which the UN moved in to secure in 1994, two years into the seige. This allowed the Bosnians to dig a tunnel to the outside world under the airport, the remaining section of which I visisted. Engineered from two sides, dug with spades and picks in 4 months and the two halves managed to meet right on target, first time. Smart blokes, these Bosnians. This tunnel kept the troops inside alive until the embargo on arms was lifted and the Bosnians could buy proper weapons.

There is a joke. A Bosnian soldier is under fire, out in the open, digging a hole. His mate yells at him "what do you think you're doing?". He replies "Digging for oil". This was how the tour guide explained how the Bonsians felt about the UN and NATO at the time of the seige. What changed it all? The Serbs shelled a marketplace in the middle of the day, the single worst atrocity during the war. The NATO airstrikes knocked out the serb artilery in 5 days. This is a bit of a sore point after 4 years of living under the threat of said artilery with the Bosnians. People here don't like to talk politics with the tourists, and you can see why. It takes alot of discipline to hold your tounge in such circumstances. Politics is a messy business and the decisions made very rarely effect those in suits that make them anywhere like those on the ground that see the results.

The troops of SFOR (Stabilisation Force) still walk the streets and patrol in vehicles, but these days you don't see them do so with assult rifles over their shoulders. The locals explain it like this "They come here, they spend money, they eat in resteraunts and they look at pretty Bosnian girls. They are tourists in uniform".

The people here know they need tourism. Bosnia wasn't the richest part of Yugoslavia, and there is alot to rebuild. They are nice to you, try and speak all the English they can, and accept any money you give them. It's alot easier to tip waiters in places like this rather than the snooty bastards in Paris. You know they really need the money here. The dual effect of seeing just how resilient the human spirit can be and to realise that a brutal, genocidal war happened two hours flight from London is worth the visit here alone. Add to that you will be helping these people rebuild a country more than foreign aid can ever hope to also helps.

This part of the trip has been one of the more educational bits. All I knew about this place was intolerence and war. However, it's been dubbed the European Jereslum because it's the only place on the continent where you will see Mosque, synagogue, Catholic and Orthadox cathederals within 100m of each other. When the turks took over, they tended to not try and convert those who wanted to keep their own religeon. The Jews here came from Spain, fleeing the inquisition. For all the talk these days of how intolerant and violent Islam is and how peaceful and brotherly Christianity is, this is a good lesson to learn.

So will the peace hold? It's hard to be optimistic under the current agreement. While the Bosnians and Croats are living side by side in a federation, a seperate serb republic has been formed for seats in the power sharing goverment, that borders Serbia proper. The ease at which racial tension has been stirred up in the past shows just how easily it could happen again. The only bright spot is the youth here seem more sick of war than their parents are. These are the young men and women that will have to shoot at each other if it comes down to it, so let's hope they are not willing to do what the angry old men tell them this time. If the messy compromise of the Dayton agreement is to hold, that's very important.

Tomorrow, I go to hear the other side of the story. Joy of joys, a 9 hour bus ride to Belgrade. Man, do I love busses. Not. My sleeping patterns are also a bit off due to the call to prayer that comes from the mosque down the road. They come at 5, 9, 13, 17 & 21 oclock, but after that 5am wakeup I just can't seem to get back to sleep. I think the well oiled machine that is Stevil on Tour has been falling apart in the last week. This being by myself again thing is taking some time to readjust to.

Of Svetlanas and Gorans


Sarajevo :: Bosnia Herzegovina

Two big bits of the Yugoslavian puzzle.

Places: Zagreb, Opatija, Pula, Krk, Zadar, Dugi Otok, Split, Hvar, Dubrovnik, Mostar & Sarajevo.

Coolest thing I did: Walked down the former frontline between the Croats and Muslims in Mostar.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: I have the classic signs of dyslexia.

I will start by saying the biggest change from my routine over the last couple of weeks has been the fact that I have not been traveling with strangers for a change. In Zagreb I met up with my companion through all of Croatia, whom I'm not going to name to save her from the gossip harpies. From now on, she will be refered to as YB. Everyone who needs to know knows who she is and why we met up in Croatia. If you are spesh, you may find out in due course.

Right, public service announcement over.

Croatia appears to have become the new Greece. Just about everywhere you go on the Dalmatian coast you find hordes of backpackers from the UK and her former colonies sitting on docks, waiting for ferries. This is about the 3rd or 4th year in a row I can remember alot of people talking about going to Croatia, and in stark contrast to Slovenia, the locals appear to have become a bit blase about the whole thing. It's not yet the land of hostels and cheap food, but it's getting that way. Having a traveling partner helped a whole lot with avoiding alot of this early on. In Zagreb, YB had the spark of genius to decide we should hire a car and drive around the northern coast, on the bit of Istra lower down than Piran, where I'd just come from in Slovenia. This is a good idea and it got us to see a whole lot of the country we would never have seen.

Driving on the other side of the road takes a whole lot of getting used to. I started out by driving the wrong way down a one way street and habitually hitting the mirrors of cars parked on the right hand side of alleys. The hardest thing is working out how wide the car is on the side you aren't sitting on. It's not something you have to remember when the steering wheel is on the right. I also increased my bad passenger status by visibly flinching everytime we approached a corner when YB was driving and quite often inexplicibly swearing like I had torrets syndrome. The only time she really deserved it was when she almost hit a boat being towed by a car she was overtaking. Like a sailor, I proceeded to swear at that point. Still, it was a bit of fun, and I've forgotten how much I missed driving.

We also had the joy of organising private rooms as hostels were few and far between. This seemed to net us the company of old women who were either slightly deranged or very grandmotherly (they all seemed to find it cute that YBs rucksack was almost the same size she was). The digs also varied alot in price and quality, but every place is going to hold a special place in my memory for one reason or another. The choice pick was the one in Dubrov, right in the middle of the walled old town where the old woman gave us ice cream. I'm a sucker for bribery of this kind.

What's Croatia got to offer? Well first of all, it's on the sunny side of the Adriatic so all the same reasons you'd go to costal Italy, you come to Croatia. Hundreds of islands with beaches. The beaches don't have sand for the most part. The most common makeup is small pebbles, but in some places you end up with huge slabs of stone thrusting down into the ocean at funny angles. The water is crystal clear, and you quite often mistake the depth as you can see the bottom clearly.

The history of the coast makes for insteresting old towns too. The Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Venetians, Austrians and finally Yugoslavs all had a bit of a rule over Croatia and they all left their mark, sometimes right on top of each other. My favorite example of this is in Split, where the Palace of Diocletian still stands. Dioceltian I will come to in a minute, but for now all you need to know was he was a Roman Ceaser who decided the best spot to have his retirement palace was Dalmatia. He built quite a palace for himself, and all the other Roman emperors used to use it as a holiday home. After the fall of the Roman empire, the locals took refuge in the walls and built up a city inside it. The layers of different architectures built on top of each other makes for a strange effect. The later Venetian walls were knocked down after WW2 to reveal the original Roman ones, right on the sea front. They also at one stage turned the temple of Jupiter into a cathederal. I didn't know this at first, and when the church service started inside I expected them to start singing "Hallelujah, for Jupiter is Lord!". Not to be.

On the island of Hvar, I rode a bike for the first time since I was drunk in Germany. I don't know why I thought that was worth mentioning.

We built up a habit of refering to all male Croatians as Goran and all female Croatians as Svetlanas. It's hard to explain, but I found it funny, despite dragging the joke out for two weeks.

Dubrovnik deserves special mention as being the place that lived up to the hype. Dubrov was an independant city state through much of Croatia's history (only Napoleon changed this by capturing it with the rest of Dalmatia) and to protect this, it established thick walls all along the seafront. It's a unique city, and the mix of stone and light at sunset makes for an awe inspiring effect. It also looks new for a very good reason. One of the two frontlines during the 1991 war of independance was the southern Dalmatian coast and Dubrov took the brunt of the Serb forces attack during a 7 month seige. There is a map inside one of the walls showing all the damage done by direct hit by shelling, shrapnel and fire and not much of the city made it out unscathed. There are very few places that haven't been restored, giving it that new car smell. The difference some tourist euros can make on the impetus to fix one place over another is apparent. I didn't appreciate this until I went further East.

Besides seeing Kat in Gottingen, Joerg in Munster, Anita in Berlin, Lisa in Berlin and Grantos in Prague all breif encounters, I havn't seen anyone I knew during this trip, and no one for more than a few days. Traveling with YB was a bit of an experience as I haven't been together with one person in and out for 24 hours a day in this entire trip. I think we both took it all in stride and it was a definte winner of a time. I also got to take a break from forcing myself on complete strangers, and in the other times, a break from my own self. I needed to have proper conversations, out loud, with someone who I didn't have to start all over again with. It gets grating asking everyone the same questions and talking mostly about where you are going and where you have just been. I liked talking about real things again. It's been hard to readjust to being in my own company again. Thanks for letting me in on your holiday, YB, it was a blast.

So, early in the morning, I left the safe arms of Croatia and entered into the unknowns of Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH to it's mates). You can see the difference money has made to the reconstruction efforts of both countries almost right away. BiH took the brunt of Yugoslavia tearing itself appart, the 4 year war being a territorial struggle with Croats and Serbs trying to integrate bits of the country into their parent provinces and the Muslims being caught in the middle. Whilst Croatia has had the tourism to restore itself for the most part, BiH has suffered from a lack of tourist sights people want to see and the bad press only a genocidal war lasting four years can bring. And it's all Diocletian's fault.

See Dio was a bit of a bright spark. He decided that this whole Roman Empire thing was a bit big to manage in one chunk and split the thing into too. As fate would have it, he decided the line would go smack bang down the current border between BiH and Serbia Montenegro. When the Romans adopted Christianity a bit later on, the Western half (Slovenia, Croatia and BiH) came under Rome and the Eastern half (Serbia and Macedonia) came under Constantinople. This made the western half Catholics and the eastern half Orthodox. Not a problem, except it's one of the only things that defines whether people are Croats or Serbs. Add to the mix the Turks took a whole bit (BiH and Albania) and converted them to Islam. This left Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs all sharing the common land of BiH. After the Ottoman Turks Empire broke up, BiH went to the Austrians, who weren't real popular. This led to a Bosnian Serb called Princip, a member of the shadowy nationalism movement called The Black Hand, to kill the heir to the Austrian Empire in Sarajevo. After that, we had this thing called WW1. Whoops. Talk about unintended consequences. After a bit of Yugoslaving, BiH ended up with 3 distinct racial groups in one place. When the Serbs started to rant nationalism in Belgrade, BiH decided it wanted out. This left it rife for ethnic tension and the 4 year war that resulted.

Mostar gives you some feel about just what happened. This is a Muslim and Croat town. The very name means "guardian of the bridge" refering to the Turkish garrison that built up around the bridge in the middle of town, Stari Most. It divided the Croats and Bosniaks during Yugoslavia, and when the civil war started, was the target of Croat shelling. It is now slowly being reconstructed with World Bank money and Turkish engineering. The loss of the bridge left the community seperated by the river, and much of the ethnic tension remains, though at a lower level. There are still UN peacekeepers walking the streets, however most do so unarmed.

If you want to see what happened though, you should walk the former frontline. Appartment blocks line both sides of the streets, windows smashed, walls either destroyed by shelling or pock marked by small arms fire. There are warning signs all over the ruins to stay away, due to the possiblity of landmines or unexploded ordinance. This is pretty real stuff for someone who as only seen a real war zone on TV. This isn't a war that happened in West Africa, or the Europe of my grandparents, I was in Uni when this war ended. The guys my age drinking at the cafes saw this with their own eyes, and may have participated in it. That's even more scary.

So, what do people do in a recovering warzone on saturday night? Much what people do everywhere. Young women walk the streets dressed like JLo and the blokes circle the blocks in their hatchbacks pumping 50 cent out of their stereos. I did have the heartening experience of watching young Croats and Muslims all sitting in a cafe by the ruins of the bridge watching the BiH football team playing Norway to get into the European Cup. The only shirts they were wearing were the yellow and blue of BiH, not those of their ethic origins. At least they can forget their differences in a common football team.

I just arrived in Sarajevo, so more on that later. I've been typing a while now.

A little bit of everything really


Ljubljana :: Slovenia

I know, I'm still here.

Places: Bled, Postojna, Piran & Ljubljana .

Coolest thing I did: Watched everyone go orange as I swam in an Adriatic sunset.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Slovenia has a lot of good stuff in it.

Bled is what you would call a dictionary definition of picture postcard territory. What you get is a glacial lake, surrounded by pine covered forrests, a castle perched on a rocky cliff face looking over it, with an island with a monestary in the middle of it that can only be reached by gondola. Any one of those things could be anywhere in Austria, but nowhere has the whole thing all mashed together, in a handy, photosized area. Very thoughtful, these Slovenes. Thanks to the fact the lake is very shallow, you can go swimming in it in the middle of summer and it dosen't offend even those as ill prepared for the cold as us Aussies. I spent half a day walking out to a nearby gorge, which, with all the water around, seemed almost tropical in the heat. Again, a stark contrast from Bled itself. The Austrianess of the place is not too surprising, when you consider the pedigree of the place. It's the setting (or near to) the war bit of A Farewell to Arms. The Italians in the book were fighting the AustroHungarians over the Julian Alps, all of which are located in present day Slovenia. This also explains the Ernie Hemmingway cafe/hotel/truckstop/supermarket/tollbooth you see all along the road. I would have stayed out there another day, but the Italian weekenders (the place is closer to Trieste than Ljubers) had it all booked out by Friday, so I had to return to the capital.

My next trip, to the nearby Postojna caves was, to put it lightly, not one of the better days I've had on tour. I started out badly, by loaning one of the girls in the hostel some money for dinner the night before. Not an issue, but had I realised how rarely the busses come on the weekend, I would have insisted she checked out before 11am to give it to me. My bad. So I had to wait until 1 in the afternoon until I could get a train out there. This itself, would have given me pleanty of time to make it to the caves then onto Piran on the coast, however, disaster struck. The board on the platform told me the train was off to Postojna, however they changed it just as the train was pulling out. I guess that's what the Slovene talking over the loudspeaker was telling me. So I was on the express train for the Austrian border. A four hour round journey took me back to Ljubers, far too late to see either the caves or make it to Piran with time to look for somewhere to stay. I then had to trudge around looking for another hostel to stay in (as the one I was in was booked out), which added to my foul mood. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, so I went off to the park to sulk. Just as I'd laid down to read, with my shirt off, a huge dog bounded up and slobbered all over my back. My mood took another couple of notches down as I went home for a shower.

Thankgod for 21 year old Irish blokes. I found myself sharing my room with 3 of a group of 7 Dubliners Eurailing around for their summer holidays. Whilst I turned down the offer to go out on the beers (I knew how quiet Ljubers is), they did cheer me up with their youthful enthusiasm. I was also happy to talk to them over breakfast about the resulting crapness of their night out, and how well they took it. It made me realise I was being a grumpy old man over nothing.

So, take two. Postojna is what mass tourism is all about. The caves themselves are wonderful, after all, mass tourism needs a product to sell. However, I knew something was up when we were ushered into the kind of little trains that take you around Disneyland. The trains whip you into the caves at breakneck speed, rushing past rows and rows of stalic-things. I found this funny. I kept asking when the bar was going to come down over my lap, but this joke was lost on the Germans next to me. Humorless people, they were. After 2km of this, we were hearded into 4 groups, based on language spoken and then led through the caves by a ranger. The poor woman. Everytime she told us the limestone was light sensitive, about 100 flashbulbs would go off. My favorite bit was the "human fish". These Anglosaxon coloured salamanders are the largest things they've since found living in the caves and they are totally blind. There was, however, a whole lot of the Mona Lisa Syndrome ("Is that is? I thought they would be bigger". Go to the Lourve, see what I'm talking about).

After the caves, I finally made it out to Piran. Piran is an old Venetian town that looks like Venice would, if it had less tourists and no canals. The second I walked off the bus into air so thick and warm you could spread it on toast, I forgot all the troubles of yesterday. The water is so warm, and there was a perfect sunset to swim under. While there is no beach, the girls all line up on the rocks over the bay and brown their breasts, something that can only add to the ambiance. Very impressed. I was ready to spend another whole day out there, except a storm rolled in off the Adriatic overnight and didn't let up. Instead, I'm back in Ljubers writing postcards.

Man, this country needs more vowels. It's like playing A Wheel of Fortune when you are reading roadsigns "John, can I buy an 'e'?".

Tomorrow, I'm off to Croatia, baby! (for some reason, I can't say the word Croatia without adding the word baby).

Exercise is hard


Ljubljana :: Slovenia

How to work with the Bosnians.

Places: Innsbruck, Graz & Ljubljana .

Coolest thing I did: Spent hours and hours walking along the ridge tops in the Alps.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: You can learn all about world politics from hostel toilet doors.

If the first near week didn't convince me that mass tourism was alive and well in Austria, nothing could have prepared me for Innsbruck on the weekend. It's a town on the Inn river (funnily enough) in between two arms of the Austrian Alps. Having never seen Alps of any nationality, I was quite excited to be going out there. What I didn't realise is a) just how close the place is to the Italian border and b) just how many Italians flock over for the weekend. Walking down the main street you couldn't move without bumping or shoving someone (by accident, I swear). After wanting to get away from the loud American tourists walking around Vienna yelling "gee, isn't that big/old/pretty" or explaining how they thought it was unreasonable to be charged 7 euros for entry to a museum when they (and I quote) "kicked your asses in the war and then paid to rebuilt this goddam country", I was hoping for some peace and quiet. Not to be.

However, thanks to Innsbruck being one of the biggest European ski resorts, the surrounding peaks are all accesible by cable cars. I took a couple of days to get up early, go up on the first lift and then walk along the ridges at 2000m + and leave all the hordes behind me. Some of the paths are a bit sketchy (in places, it's all on a 45 degree angle and covered in loose stones), but there's nothing like slowly crunching along just above the treeline before dipping down into a steep alpine forest on your way down to town. The fact that the only people I saw in 5 and a half hours were a guy walking his dog and two young girls was just what I needed. You keep trying to find the best place to take that perfect photo, fir trees in the front, peaks in the middle and glaciers in the rear, then once you've taken it, an even more perfect shot is just around the corner. I'm starting to think I'm wasting too much time in cities getting annoyed with the other tourists.

This was, however, the most exausting thing I've done to myself in a long time. Despite sharing a dorm with 11 other guys, I was asleep by 9 and having a good 10 hours every night I was there. I also regained my appetite, which was cut down a bit by the record heat Central Europe has been experiencing over the last week.

While I think of it, Austria must have the best tasting tap water in the world. It's cleaner tasting that anything you buy in a bottle.

So, a quick overnight stop in Graz saw me climb the hill to the castle to look over the city, and discover that the local soccer pitch is known as the Schwarzenegger stadium. That's all I learned in Graz. I then took the morning train to Slovenia. On the way, I read Franz Kafka's "The Castle". The guy is brilliant. In one of those strange coincidence moments, I happened to look up and notice the young bloke across from me was reading Kafkas "Der Schloss". It took me a while to realise it was the same book in the original German.

So, Slovenia. What did I know about it? I read a book just before coming away by a travel writer retracing a trip through Yugoslavia she made in the 70s. From this I learned that in the 1991 independence war, Slovenia fought for a mere 10 days before the Federal Yugoslavian troops pulled out. Apparently, the Slovenians, being far too European, prosperous and clever saw Milosevic's annexing of Kosovo in 1988 for what it was and made plans to be out of Yugoslavia before all the trouble started. Wise move when you see just how unspoilt this is compared to the pictures of Sarajevo after 1995. In it's pre-Yugo history, Slovenia spent most of it's time as a part of the Holy Roman/Austro Hungarian Empire. This shows in the architecture. You wouldn't know you had left Austria if it wasn't for the fact the road signs have far less vowels. In fact, if it wasn't for Napoleon splitting off the Hapsburgs Adriatic possessions for 20 odd years to land lock his opponents, Slovenia would have remained a little Austrian backwater famous for only being the southern fontier against the Turks. The French gave them an education system and stirred up nationalistic intrests that hadn't existed before, which led eventually to the Slovenians to seek protection from the Austrians after WW1 by becoming a part of Yugoslavia.

Ljubljana looks like somewhere in Northern Italy. Cafes line the streets on either side of the river, old white Austrian style bridges string back and forth over it to join up the cobbled streets. It's not got that much in the way of living history, but the cafe culture is nice for a few days. And sitting watching the pretty girls walk past is good for the health. So the locals tell me. Having only met cafe owners though, this may be a biased viewpoint.

In a small panic, I belived the Lonely Planet and some bloke I met in Graz and thought I had discovered I needed to get a visa to enter Bosnia-Herzegovina. So this morning, I treked into suburban Ljubljana to the Bosnian embassy, which is in someone's garage. The nice woman assured me in broken English that they were desperate for tourists to come and spend money and I had no need for a visa. Hooray. They were kind of more happily curious that I wanted to go, which is a good change from these countries where the embassy staff think their job is to discorage anyone from trying to visit them.

I really have to start thinking of the LP like it is, a guideline rather than gospel truth. It's the best solution out there, but research becomes so out of date so quickly.

Right, a week more of seeing the sights of Slovenia (which goes from alpine to beach in about 80km) then off to Croatia next week sometime.

The hills are alive with the sound of music


Salzburg :: Austria

Hapsburg overload.

Places: Cesky Krumlov, Vienna & Salzburg.

Coolest thing I did: Saw what is claimed to be the Spear of Destiny.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for govenor of California. Arnold Schwarzenegger! What is this, the twilight zone?

After Prague, the village of Cesky Krumlov was a whole lot of doing nothing. It's one of those rare tourist spots that was made by it's listing in the Lonely Planet. Walking down from the bus station you get the feeling every second building houses a hostel, internet cafe or cheap restaurant. I can also see why. It is a village that has changed very little since the 18th century, with a Bohemian castle perched on the cliff face over looking it. Besides that and a Dali museum, there is very little else to do tourism wise. This forces you into a endless cycle of cheap beer, cheap food, lying by the river in the sun or riding down said river on a tire inner tube. The last is made even more lazy by the fact the village is on the bend of a river, so you start at one point and nearly half an hour later arive at close to the same point you started at. It was all very relaxing.

I met up with a couple of English blokes (21 year olds, bless) and the 3 American girls they were traveling with. We decided that the 6 of us should have a few shots of absinthe before going into town. Let it be said that if you aren't aware how strong Bohemian absinthe is, it's the stuff that killed Hemmingway and made Van Gogh go nuts and cut his ear off. At roughly 70% abv, its not something to be taken lightly. So what did we do? Finish the bottle between 6 of us before going out. As you are required to carmalise sugar on a spoon and mix it into the drink before drinking it, we also managed to melt a hot spoon onto the table of the hostel. Not a very popular move. Anyway, the kind of madness you would expect from this occured. We managed to play one game of pool for close to 2 hours because we couldnt remember who was bigs or smalls, whose turn it was or even who was on whose team. One of the American girls managed to vomit inside the club and pass out so we had to take it in turns carrying her home. However, much fun had by all.

It was fun watching people a bit younger than be go about doing the silly things I used to do without thought of consequence. They didnt belive I'd been where they were going and I knew what they were going to see any more than I did at that age. Bless.

So, Austria it was then. I met up with a group of three Aussie girls and their pet Canadian (sorry Jase) at the bus stop and we all worked out we were going to Vienna. In a series of well meaning, but misguided moves, we managed to make a 5 hour journey take close to 14 hours. This is what happens when everyone is too polite to make a firm decision. Still, it was a fun ride and it's that kind of randomness that makes traveling fun. I did, however, refuse to get involved with charades. That's my perogative, and I chose to firmly exercise it.

Vienna is much of what you would expect. Palaces, churches and statues of people whose last name is Hapsburg. I felt a bit overwhelmed by just how much there was to see, and by the very high price of tickets to see anything. I managed to restrict myself to a good gallery viewing (lts of Rubens and Raffaels) and the inside of the Hapsburg treasury.

So, who are these Hapsburgs of whm you speak? After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Germanic states of central Europe were a bunch of barbarian hordes, spending most of their time pillaging and looting and whatnot. The pope at the time, being a srewd fellow, decided that the best way to sort these lot out was to set up an elaborate scam called "Catholicism" to scare the barbarians into thinking they would go to hell if they kept their pillaging ways up. He handed out kingships and titles to the warlords who converted, and many of the Goths, Vandals and Franks decided that having the ligitamacy provided by this "God" fellow was a good way to keep their unruly subjects at bay. This went all well until one of the Franks (French), a king by the name of Charlemange (Chuck to his mates) decided he wanted the whole ball of wax. He went out subjugating the other Germanic tribes until he was on the very steps of the Vatican. The Pope of the time, again with some quick thinking, told Chuck he would give him the title of "Holy Roman Emperor" if he would stop with the trashing and conquering. For some reason, Chuck bought this, and the Holy Roman Empire became the scam that held central Europe together for much of the middle ages. In the 10th century, the house of Hapsburg in Austria took over the title and held it for the next 1000 years. The got to elect Popes, tell kings what to do and kill Czech Heritics like Husso. If you are stuck in a pyramid scheme, it's good to be near the top.

So Vienna was the capital of Europe's biggest land empire for quite some time. This allowed them to get alot of treasure and build heaps of palaces and stuff. However, the coolest thing they have is the Spear of Destiny.

The legend goes that what they have in the Hofberg palace is the spearhead of the Roman soldier's spear that pierced Christ's side at the crucifixtion. It was said whoever brought it with them into battle would become invincible. Chuck had it, so did his grandpa who fought off the Islamic armies in Spain, Charles Martel. Napoleon tried and failed to get it. But the bloke for who it became an obsession was Adolf Hitler. Legend has it when the US soldiers captured Nuremburg and got a hold of the Nazi treasure horde (including the spear) was the exact moment that Hitler took his own life. Probably not true, but a cool story none the less.

So now, now I'm in Salzburg. Where they knocked down the city walls in Vienna 2 centuries ago to make ring roads around the city, Salzburg still looks like Mozart could be walking around here. Except for the fact it's full of tourists in tank tops and thongs.

A plan from here still hasn't fully formed yet. I think I'd like to go to the Alps, but I'm still researching that. Should that fail, I will make my way into Slovenia next.

Let the Czech-secution begin!


Prague :: The Czech Republic

And Grantos makes a cameo.

Places: Prague.

Coolest thing I did: Met an Italian bloke who's going to be working on restoring an old castle in the west of the Czech Republic over his Uni holidays. I just went to the beach alot when I was on Uni holidays.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: "Skall", which the Nordics say instead of "Cheers" means "lets drink from the skulls of our enemies". Still barbarians at heart, I love it.

I have now been in Prague 2 more days than I expected to be. I keep finding that I'm learning new depths of history, culture and nightlife I never thought existed here. It's like I either walked around with my eyes closed last time I was here, or it's become a bit easier for me to get beneath the surface. I did some of the same things I did when I was here last, visiting Castles, churches and that world famous 5 story (yes 5!) nightclub on the river. However, every day I come across some famous fact about Prague I should have known, or some ultra cool bar or cafe that seems out of place in a city I thought was nothing but an example of what damage mass tourism can do. If nothing else, I feel more impressed with this place than I was 3 years ago. It may also be that the last vestiages of communism are all but gone from here. You could be anywhere in Western Europe, except for the fact things are still reassuringly cheap here (except accomadation, which is now on par with places like Germany and Italy in cost).

I think it may be a bit to do with how much of the history of Europe I've learnt (and am still learning) all comes to a head in this city. It's a place that's now such a tourist mecca by virtue that the Germans didn't bomb it to the ground, but it's given so many cultural gifts to the world, and continues to be an inspiring place. Call me naive, but on this trip I learnt that Franza Kafka did his best work in Prague. I've never read him, but I have heard of him, and with the name plastered on tshirts in every gift shop, I have no idea why I never noticed before. Mozart? He premiered some of his most famous (apparently, I know little about classical music) works in the opera here. Havel, one of the leading intellectuals of dissident during the Cold War? They made him president of the country after the overthrow of communism. Everywhere you look, the stamp of culture is all over this city.

I'd never heard of Alphonse Mucha before this trip. He was a poster designer turned into every feasible kind of designer by his sucess. He was one of the early proponents of art neuvo, and as a result he was given alot of commissions here. Buildings, furniture, jewellery, so many things have his stamp on them. Even oe of the stained glass windows in the Cathederal here was designed by him. He was a nationalist at heart, when the Czech Republic was a part of the Austro Hungarian empire, and dedicated his later work to political ends. His collections of giant canvases called the Slav Epic are a tribute to the biggest events of all the Slavs, from Poland to Russia, to the Czech Republic and down to the former Yugoslavia. The fact he also does his work in a realistic fashion, that a layman like me who dosen't "get" modern art like me can grasp, also helps.

Where does it come from? It may have alot to do with the constructively rebellious spirit this place has always had, the spirit that gave birth to the very word bohemian (before it was the Czech Republic, Prague was the capital of a country called Bohemia). In the main square is a statue dedicated to Jan Hus, Husso to his mates. Husso was a Catholic preist who, after being influenced by the writings of an Englishman called John Wyclef, decided that alot of the things the church were doing were against the spirit of Christianity and protested against it. They called his followers the Hussites (funnily enough). The boss of the empire Prague was in at the time, Sisigmund, decided that this kind of thing wasn't on, so he decided to get a few prominent church heads, including Husso, together to "talk these new ideas out". What he meant was "give Husso over to the inquisistion to be burnt at the stake". This didn't go over well in Bohemia, and there were some fights to kick out these "protestants" as they were known. This went back and forth for a while, until some of the Bohemian nobles decided enough was enough. What they gave to the world was the political tool of "defenstration". What this means is if someone dosen't agree with you, you throw him out a very high window. The Prague defenstrations were protestant nobles throwing their catholic counterparts out the windows of Prague Castle. Ouch. This sparked off the 30 years war, tearing middle Europe to peices and causing the Austrians to gain control of Prague and enforce Catholicism at the point of a sword. There's nothing like liberal, rational thought to get this kind of reaction from the church and state.

This is the same spirit that caused the Czechs and Slovaks to be one of the more rowdy communists around. The famous Prague spring I've already mentioned, but the spearhead of liberal thought and writings against communism was here in Prague, Havel who I've already mentioned it's leader. Where communism was brought down by the unions and church in Poland, it was brought down by rational thoght here. It's a heartening thought.

I also visited the Jewish Quater, which I didn't do last time. I'd never heard of the Golem of Prague before, but I like the story. It's about one of the earlier mass hatreds against Jews in the 16th century, when for no rational reason, talk came about that the Jews were eating babies and whatnot. There were alot of hate killings and whatnot. The story goes one of the Rabbis, very faithful to God, took it upon himself to create a big clay man. He then inscribed words from the Torah the Jews consider all powerful on it's head and brought it to life. It then went of a killing rampage, defending the Jews from their persecutors. There's no happy ending, as the Jews still perscribe to old testament justice, rather than the forgivness Jesus taught. I like European tales that haven't been censored for our Anglo Saxon sensibilities.

The nightlife is also killing me. The Czechs make the best beer in the world, I'll stand by that conviction. They invented Pilsner, and know what they are doing still. It's dangerously cheap too. I think my liver needs a rest.

The strain of not sleeping a whole lot, on either side, showed up when I met up with my mate Grant. Grant has spent most of the same time I've been on this journey being a tour guide for Busabout. People who know Grantos will tell you he's exactly the kind of good natured bloke that would thrive in a job like this, and he looks like he's enjoying it. He was, however, at the end of an 11 day stretch without a break and did look a bit tired. It was excellent to see someone I know quite well from the London days, and to see him doing something he's enjoying. I was also happy to hear his uncoerced testament that Berlin is one of the best, if not the best, cities in Europe. I was starting to think it was just me. I have been thinking alot, however, how much I'm missing all the guys and girls from London on this trip. I'm having a blast making new friends, but you forget how much better it is to be with friends who you've know for a while, you tend to enjoy their values and opinions because you wouldn't have known them for so long if you didn't. All these very short term friendships give you a glimpse at what someone thinks and does, but you don't get to know many of them very well. I miss not having to make everyone's acquaintance from scratch sometimes.

I will probably have to physically drag myself from this place tomorrow, but it's time to move on. I'm heading to the village of Cesky Krumlov, which used to be an undiscovered gem, but is now a mecca for backpackers. I don't mind that so much, as it's off the tour coach route. I'm hoping the locals are still catering to the types of tourists that aren't into buying tshirts that say "was in prague, but can't remember" on them.

Hard to work out


Bratislava :: Slovakia

A whole lot of mountains.

Places: Zakopane, Kosice & Bratislava.

Coolest thing I did: Stood on the border of Poland and Slovakia at 2000m above sea level.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Slovakia is the world's biggest exporter of Semtex, the explosive most favoured by the IRA.

Zakopane in the Tatras (an arm of the Carpathian mountains that stretch across Eastern Europe) is one of the more favoured domestic destinations for Poles to visit on their holidays. Being in the middle of summer, the place was jammed with other tourists (though, I was pretty much the exception as a native English speaker). In winter, it's a large ski resort, but in summer, people come from miles around to do things like mountain climbing, bushwalking and rafting. I came as a rest from cities.

The scenery is nothing short of breath-taking. My first day was an easy-ish walk up the face of a rocky bluff looking over the town. From this vantage point You can seen the large cuts of ski runs through the giant pine forests, with chair lifts and funiculars making their way slowly up the mountains. I can only make comparisons with the only other ski resort I've ever been to (Borovets in Bulgaria....man, what a week!), but this looked far more set up for business. I think it may be worth anyone in London looking for a cheap ski resort this winter to keep it in mind.

I had originally decided to take the two cable cars up to the highest peaks in the range, but on arriving (foolishly) at 10am I found a 3 hour queue waiting for me. I instead decided to wake up at 6am the next morning (which is a first for this entire trip) and get on the first car up at 7. I'm very glad I did. The Tatras form a natural border between Slovakia and Poland and it's not easy to see why no-one would bother enforcing them. After two cable cars high over the pines you end up 1900ish metres above sea level. You are then able to walk to the ridge and have your picture taken with the border marker, one foot in each country. From either side of this you are faced with a sheer drop of no more than 100m on either side. I took the 1 and a half hour gradual climb up along the ridge following the border. The view on either sides (even with the morning mist restricting some visibility) includes rows of craggy peaks dropping off into glacial lakes and surrounded by dark pine forrests. Like Norway and Southern Germany, these are the kinds of landscapes you just don't get to see in Australia. Add to that the whole jumping back and forth saying "now I'm in Poland, now I'm in Slovakia" and it's a morning well spent. It was also the first sunrise after sleeping I've seen in probably a year or more.

I also walked, officially, across my first ever land border. I took the bus to the border with Slovakia (this time at a mere 1200m) and walked into Slovakia. I could have waited 2 hours for the next bus, or pooled in for a mini van with some Poles and Czechs waiting at the bus stop. This was enlightening because a) the bus driver was mad and b) people mostly drive on horses and carts around the mountain tracks. The sheer white knuckled terror of having this lunatic weaving around the mountains past donkeys in the wet was better than any amusement park ride. I was just waiting for the bar to come down over my lap first.

So, what about Slovakia? It's a hard one to define. It's surrounded by countries everyone wants to visit, yet it's hard to work out where it fits. This has benefits. It's by far less touristed than Poland (though I'm finding more English speakers in Bratislava than I did in the East) which seems to make the people more willing to talk to you. I think I've spoken to more Slovakians than any other native peoples of the countries I've visited thus far. They are quite often still at the stage where just practising their English is good enough reason to strike up a conversation. Those days are gone in Poland. However, I don't think the locals have a real strong grasp on their own nationalism. Most slip up and say they were born in Czechoslovakia (I guess technically true) and when asked what makes them Slovakian, they mostly reel off events and dates with a bit of bordem (as opposed to the fire you get in the Balkans at the same question). I think it has alot to do with the fact not many people really cared whether they were independent from Prague or not. Like most things in the world, the politicians were the only people that really cared about an indepentent Slovakia, most of the younger people I've met don't seem to care either way.

The other seems to be the history. I went to Devin castle near Bratislava to look at one of the last strongholds of the Great Moravian empire. In the 800s and 900s, the Slovaks were the centre of a Slavonic state covering most of central Europe. That was the last Czech-Slovak political entity for 1000 odd years. The Hungarians took that over in about 1000AD, themselves being taken over by the Austrians and the Slovaks remained in this state until 1918. After WW1, the Czech and Slovak nationalists decided to unite together now they had been freed from the Austro-Hungarian empire and to form Czechoslovakia. In WW2 the Nazis took over the Czech bit and set up a puppet facist state in Slovakia. This was the first Slovakia for about 1000 years and the only one to bear that name. After WW2, communist Czechoslovakia came about and there was again, no Slovakia until the divorce in 1993. This must make it hard to point at some contribution, hero or event and say "that's Slovakian". Then again, many of the Balkan states make claims to land that are far more tenuous than this, with far more passion. They do, however, seem quite proud of their part in the Prague Spring uprisings.

The Prague Spring is what happens when you were in the Warsaw Pact and didn't want to be. The Czechoslovakian government decided to make things better for it's people and introduced democratic reforms in 1968 that would make people's life better. This wasn't seen as good in Moscow and the Red Army drove tanks over people and stopped these reforms. That's cutting it short, but you get the drift.

Bratislava looks like the Hungarian capital is was built up to be. After the Turks took over Budapest and besieged Vienna, the leaders of AustroHungary decided it was a good idea to move the capital inland. The good thing about there being less tourists is I've been able to walk around palaces and castles pretty much by myself sometimes. It's also the most cosmo part of the country, but even that is relative. You can sit in a cafe as nice as any in Prague and get a coffee or beer for about 20p. And the wine is something else. Whilst most of the beer is Czech, the local wine is both cheap and good. Not as thick on the reds as Bulgaria was, but none the less, an experience.

The east shows the scars of communism a bit more. There was a big move to industrialise East Slovakia and very little of it made good sense. Now the rusting factories of steel mills line the skyline, and the cities in the East are just that, ugly cities. Kosice has one restored old street, but most of it is a grey, post-communist wasteland.

However, the surroundings are dotted with fortresses and old towns. In the 1200s, the mongols decided to take their ravaging and pillaging on the road, but realised that after doing a number on Central Asia, needed more manpower. So they subcontracted much of their raping and looting out to the turkic tribes they'd just conquered, which the Russians called the Tartars. After carving up Persia and Russia, the hordes of Mr Kahn (you should always refer to anyone who feasts on the remains of his enemies as Mr) turned their attention on Eastern Europe. The Hungaian invited some Saxon knights to set up shop in the east of their empire (much in Eastern Slovakia) to build castles and slow the barbarians down. To some degree, this worked, and there are still many castles left from this period. Most are in ruins, however, as a few hundred years later, Napoleon's troops decided blowing up AustroHungarian castles was good fun and did alot of it.

I have to say, I've been suprised by Slovakia. People are quite willing to talk to you at very little pretense. Whilst the number of English speakers in the east is limited, those that do are still excited to have a chance to practise. I've got this feeling Prague won't be like that.

So, I get my Hungarian visa today, then I'm off to Prague tomorrow (yes, I know it's not in Hungary...I'm planning ahead!). Prague is the first place I've visited before on this trip (I went there for New Years Eve in 2000) so it will be interesting to see how much it's changed. It was still quite cheap then, and you still saw lots of 1970s Skodas driving about. The fact I've seen none of these in the poorer Slovakia makes me think I'm about to walk into the new Vienna or Munich by entering Prague. Three years is a long time in post-communist Eastern Europe.