Bloody Mad Week

G’day all,

How can I explain my past week other than saying it was just plain crazy. In the past 9 days I’ve been to Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, and now I’ve just crossed the Croatian boarder as I type so I guess you could say I’ve been gunning it. The craziest off all my experiences in the past week actually happened hours after I wrote my last blog update. Ok so here’s the story bare with me. Firstly I’m on the overnight train from Serbia to Bulgaria happy as Larry enjoying the whole cabin I had to myself and was expecting a good night sleep stretched across my bench seat. I had previously read in my bible the “Lonely Planet” how I should be careful on these overnight trains as there have been occasions where travellers have been gassed with sleeping gas in their cabins and had their backpacks stolen while they’ve been sleeping. With that in mind I had my window down and had my bag locked and was feeling comfortable enough to zone out for a bit. Shortly after midnight a big unit of a man in a leather jacket strangely enters my cabin out of nowhere on this empty train and looking really suss. He puts his bags down, slides the window up, and told me to go to sleep before heading out of the cabin for about half an hour. I was starting to be very suspect after I saw him look through the air-conditioning duct with a torch then walk past several times and look through the window at me to see if I was asleep. After a while I started to feel very sleepy whether it was in my mind or not and decided bugga this mate I’m getting out of here. I slide the window back down, switched the light on, then stood outside my cabin with my head out the passage window. I was determined to stay away all night with the light on and window down reading my book to stick it right up this blokes clacker and ruin his plans. After about half an hour he comes back into the cabin with some full bin bags, a tool kit and a mini ladder and tells me to shhhhhh as he winked at me. He then changes into some old clothes, puts a plastic bag over his head and puts some leather gloves on and I’m think what the! He was a big intimidating guy not worth messing with and when he next pulled out a screwdriver, unscrewed the screws on the light, and pulled the fluro light off the roof in the cabin and asked me to hold it and the screws I wasn’t going to argue with him. As I unwillingly became his new partner in crime I noticed him get his knife out and cut open the bin bags and pull out hundreds if not thousands of packets of cigarettes. He then climbs his ladder and stuffs the packets into the insulation of the roof under the light as I cheekily say “cigarettes expensive in Bulgaria aye?” He then looks back at me sternly as I nose laughed and swallowed deeply as he says the not so relaxing word of “Mafia” back at me. After spending a good while completing his crime which was now ‘our crime’ 3 other large scary men come into the cabin and help him put the light back on the roof. They then ask where I’m from and I’m telling myself lie Pauly lie but the honest goob I am has to be tell the truth and say “erm Adelaide, Australia” Luckily that was the end of that and soon after we crossed the Bulgarian boarder and had our cabin checked by boarder police and passed the test. They soon ripped the light back off the roof, received their goodies (as in my cheeky photo), and got off at some random stop in the country side leaving me alone in the cabin with the light resting on the bag rack. It was an interesting night to say the least and I ended up having no sleep at all and when I arrived in Sofia in Bulgaria and found my hostel I ended up sleeping like a chronic fatigue sufferer for the rest of the day. I only spent one night in Sofia and didn’t exactly love the place so I decided to head up to Albania as soon as I could. My only problem was that Macedonia was in the way and I needed a visa for it so I decided to whip down to Thessaloniki in Greece then head on to Tirana the capital of Albania. It was an exhausting was to get there but the only way to get there and it meant I had another overnight train followed by an overnight bus the next night. After arriving in Thessaloniki I locked up my backpack at the bus station then decided to fill in my 13 hours between transportation walking around the city. Thessaloniki ended up being a great surprise and I had a brilliant day walking around the city in top weather. It was an amazing city on a cove of the northeast coast of Greece overlooking a snowcapped mountain and on a hill with streets flowing down to the dock. The city is scattered with ancient Greek ruins everywhere between a maze of streets filled with fancy clothes shops, cafés, markets and parklands. It seemed to be a very fashionable city with metro sexual Greek Gods and Goddesses wining and dining and frappe drinking along every café lined street. The day passed fast and I slept like a baby on the bus to Albania apart from the grilling passport check at 2am and I arrived in Tirana at about 6am without accommodation. As a self confessed adrenalin addict I was in my element as I’d never met anyone who had been to Albania before in my 8 years of travelling and didn’t know a single thing about the place. Following my bible and a compass and some nifty vibing, I located a hostel in the old communist area and slept on the porch for 4 hours until it opened and I could check in. There was no tourist information, tours, or maps of the city and it had been completely untouched by our globalized world which was a very refreshing feeling. I almost felt like I was the first tourist to ever enter the country as I walked around and saw nobody but Albanians living their Albanian lives in their own Albanian style. It is yet to be ruined by tourism but you can tell it’s just around the corner in months and years to come. I didn’t do a great deal in Tirana apart from admiring the originality of the place and walking past big plain communist style buildings. There is a few areas in Tirana where the buildings have now been painted into happy techno-colour works of art using buckets of paint and every colour under the rainbow. The amazing this about Albania is that there are bunkers everywhere. The government built 700,000 bomb proof bunkers around the country from the 50’s until the 80’s just waiting for the invasion that never came. I spend two days in Tirana and then decided to wing it through Montenegro to the war torn capital of Sarajevo in Bosnia. There is no direct coach, train, or highway linking the two capitals together so I ended up catching 4 minivans and busses over 15 hours and 3 countries overnight to finally arrive in Sarajevo. My style of travel is to do no research on where I’m going and to wing it without knowledge of what is ahead of me. My strange travel method paid dividends when I arrived at this random bus station on the outskirts of Sarajevo and had to catch a taxi 15km into the town. I had no idea of the beauty that was appearing before my eyes as we drove towards the main town and weaved between the ‘Sound of Music’ looking green hills scattered with cute village cottages. The sun had just woken up for the day and I was in ore of the unexpected visual bliss I was witnessing. I again found myself a hostel as soon as I arrived and booked myself onto an 11am tour of the city and the famous tunnel of Sarajevo. The tour was incredible as I knew I was in a recent mass war torn city but didn’t know much about it apart from watching the news in the mid 90’s and seeing many tanks and soldiers. I learnt all about the attack from Yugoslavia but never realized the extent of it and the about fight the Bosnians gave to keep their city and their lives. The story of the tunnel was brilliant and the tour of the surrounding hills was incredible seeing fields still covered in landmines and destroyed buildings. The city itself was nothing like I imagined as without exaggeration every single building had at least 5 or 10 to thousands of bullet and shell holes in it. Everywhere you looked are bullet holes in walls, windows, doors, roofs, bridges, churches, and even the odd car still. Apart from the scars of war on display throughout the city the general feeling and scenery or the city is like no other I’ve been to, it’s a real gem of a place. On both my days in Sarajevo I went strolling around the hillside getting lost in the labyrinth of small windy roads and footpaths weaving between the lush green cemeteries and amazing views of the city. Walking around the cemeteries you could see the effect of the war as almost every headstone you could see the date of death was been 1992 and 1995. Yesterday I met up again with my mates Alex and Tom and we just chilled out in Sarajevo before bussing it down to Split in Croatia today. I’m a little unsure what the plan is from here but I guess I’ll see wherever the wind blows me.

Feeling lucky as always,

Paul