West Coast Canada Represent or Mountains Mountains Mountains

2011 was a travel year. After a bike trip through Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovinia, Montenegro, and Albania, we hopped to England, then the United States and finally to Canada. Our trip across the United States was like a never ending movie reel--Vibrant Vermont colors, rain soaked Great Lakes towns, armpit strip malls in Illinois, beige frozen fields from Minnesota through South Dakota, the deep Bad lands and the endless bill boards for road side attractions. We were quieted by the yellow and brown emptiness that was Wyoming and tramped through Yellow Stone National Park (stopped for a glimpse of those coughing geysers). Then flew across the highway in Montana, catching a glimpse of Idaho as we quickly descended into the dry prairie of Eastern Washington state, and then were sucked quickly into the rain and gaping temperate rain forests of the coastal mountains. Whew. By the time we reached Whistler, BC, our destination, my brain was spinning with pictures.

East Coast Americans aren't too sure what Whistler is. Many have some dim memory of possible Olympic Games. You can be sure that they've never heard of Pemberton, BC, the town next door with a history of farming, horses and gold. Pemberton is where we settled--due to cheaper rental prices, and a good 25 minutes respite from the resort mania that Whistler generates--and on clear days, snow streaked Mount Currie towers over us from 2,591 meters or 8,501 feet. (On other days, it is entirely enveloped by fog). The area was first settled by the Salish tribe of First Nations people, and now the neighboring town of Mt. Currie serves as the administrative seat of the Lil'Wat Nation. It was settled later by pioneers who were not-the-faint-of-heart. For a long time, you had to take a ferry from Vancouver to Squamish, and then travel by rutted dirt road up over the mountains and into the Pemberton Valley. Now, after a revamped highway due to the 2010 Olympics, Vancouver is a 2.5 hour car trip away. Because of its proximity to the Whistler Blackcomb ski mountain, Pemberton is one of the fastest growing communities in BC, though it lies in a low valley susceptible to floods. Here there are a few interesting juxtapositions--old farms with white fences stretching along the river bed and new condos built in a "frontier style." There are hunters and fishers and potato farmers living next to Whistler marketing managers, writers, artists and moms who jog with SUV strollers. The scenery is stunning.

Mile One Lake

Top of Whistler Mountain

Postcard from Olomouc

Jen and I took the train to Olomouc . Olomouc is a small city tucked into Northern Moravia in the Czech Republic, and it boasts two main squares, a Socialist themed Astronomical clock and a very large Holy Trinity Column which in part celebrates the end of the Plague. It also houses the densest number of university students in Central Europe, including a Theology Faculty at the Palacký University of Olomouc. We saw many young men in black robes roaming the streets before and after Sunday Mass. Church spires gleamed brilliantly in the cold, spring sun, and their bells pierced the air.
(March 2011)

Belgrade

From Podgorice, we took a night bus to Belgrade. Arrived at 5am, and wandered like ghosts until the bakery opened. Saw this graffiti on a street in the center. "Smrt" means "death". Dunno about the cyrilics, anyone?

Leaving Albania and heading North

What else would you rather do than cycle in mid-August at one pm in Albania on a highway that is being completely reconstructed? Nothing!

We said farewell to our friends in Tirana, young and old, and took a bus to Skodra, at the side of Lake Skodra. All attempts to find another bus to take us to the capital of Montenegro, Podgorice, failed. The road it turned out, was bad. Not bad, one taxi driver told us, very bad. We bought gyros at a fast food shop, and a guy eating pizza started chatting with us. Turned out he had lived in Michigan for six years. "You're going to cycle on that road?" He raised his eyebrows. "I just drove on it, it's terrible."

Lacking another choice, we went for it. The only positive part of the experience was that no one drove fast, as the gravel, dirt and rocks prohibited it. Giant trucks passed us constantly, and our mouths, nose and ears filled up with dust. The heat beat down. We passed an old bunker that had been refashioned into a tattoo studio. We finally reached the border with Montenegro, saw the lake again, and headed for the city.

The cold water spring Part II

Even in the mountains, the heat was intense during the day. After doing some garden work, and eating the required hot milk with pieces of bread breakfast, and listening to the cranky old men, and washing some dishes, we holed up in our quarters (the family room that Hysni kept locked when he wasn't there. All rugs, blankets and a fireplace.) We listened to the BBC worldservice somewhat relentlessly. Clarence and Orgys were bored by this, so they disapeared to swim or fish, or ride the donkey down at the farm.

One morning, an old man from the farm below, also a down and out pensioner who Hysni had taken in, came into the garden where we were working. He said a lot of things in Albanian, and then took the garden hoe from me, to show me how to do it. There was only one hoe, so I began pulling weeds with my hands. "He says don't pull them with your hands, only with the tool," translated Orgys. The old man kept on with the hoe, and the rest of us stood around, watching him. Very efficient, very Albanian.
When the old man finally left, Orgys was mad. "He said Clarence and I stole his mobile," Orgys said. "He saw us at the farm, and he thinks we took his mobile." Orgys kicked the dirt. "He's a stupid man," he said, bitterly. I didn't disagree.

There was a spring from the earth ten minutes down the hill, and since the old men regulated their water pump with a Fascist spirit, we started collecting water there quite often. (Indeed, why didn't they tell us about it sooner? We were strong and capable, and very willing to please, we would have hauled water all day if they wanted). It was Monday, and it was reported that Hysni was coming to fetch us, and so both sides were happy. Michal and I went down to the spring to get water, and wash, and pick plums. The path there was steep and shady. Water poured from a fixed spigot, and the air was fresh and cool. Plum trees were everywhere, and yellow and purple fruit spilled onto the ground. We were filling our bottles when suddenly, out of no where, the tall, skinny frame of the mute man Boujar appeared, carrying an empty jug to fill.
"Hysni!" he gasped, though it sounded more like "Hoos!" He pointed at his wrist to indicate time, and then waved his arm wildly towards the house. "Hoos!"
"Hysni is coming? Now?" Michal and I looked at each other. Boujar repeated his message, stamping his feet impatiently.
"Ok, we get it." We nodded vigorously, and this satisfied Boujar for a minute. We stood surveying the cool scene. Then "Birra!" Boujar mouthed, making the motion of drinking from a can. He pointed to us, to him, to the can. "Birra!" He made a gesture that looked like money.
"Ah, he wants us to buy him beer," said Michal. Boujar nodded vigorously, and then said "Shhh!" and put a finger to his lips, his face utter seriousness. "Shhh!" and a slapping motion on his face.
"Don't tell anyone," we translated. He waved his finger in the air to say "no no no."
"Ok," we nodded. Boujar looked happy.
Michal took his jug to fill, and as he bent down to the water, Boujar put his arm around me. He made grunting sounds as he was wont to do, and then, as I didn't know what to do, he got closer. I felt his unshaved, concave cheek next to mine, and I smelled cigarettes. He gave me a passionate kiss on the cheek, which was enough for me. I moved away.

For a 50 year old man, Boujar was very weak. He couldn't carry the jug up the hill and neither could he walk 20 steps without a break. He slapped his legs and shrugged to show that they were weak. We waited for him under the fig trees as he caught his breath, and then he pointed at me, Michal, him and made the motion of an airplane. "Take me with you," he was saying. He looked defeated and repeated the motion. "Take me away with you."

When we returned, Michal bribed the men with money and beer. Boujar always waving his finger and saying "shhh!" The men looked happier for a while, but even this gift couldn't shift their position of being poor, family-less men in a rich family man's world. We learned after we left that they had all been transferred to the village from the city because they were capable of working, and because perhaps they didn't fit in in the house in Tirana. The crabbiest old man, it turned out, was an alcoholic who had mistakenly set his room on fire.

Hysni arrived with his brother, Clarence and Orgys's father. Their father was short and smiling, with a limp because of a bad hip. He spoke a bit of German, and was excited to show off his gun, talk about life, and his sons. We were sitting out in the yard as the sun was setting over the mountains, and Orgys's dad said to us " You did some good work here, the men are lazy, so you showed them how the house can look." We smiled uncertainly and then he turned to Boujar. He loudly mimicked his grunting sounds,and rolled his eyes. "You're lazy," he said to Boujar. "You're lazy and stupid." Boujar grunted and then nodded, and then sat down. This was all through Orgys's translation, so Michal and I sat politely, in disbelief. Orgys started talking about something else, and Clarence munched peanut snacks from a plastic bag that later he threw on the ground. Boujar looked blue.
"Hey," said Michal, putting a hand on Boujar's shoulder. "Ok?"
Boujar grunted, and nodded his head.
The twilight turned into dark.

The village behind Mt Dajt Part I

We drove into the village on a streambed. The Mitsubishi Galloper was flying like in a comic book, Hysni at the wheel smoking Marlboros and an older fellow from the home next to him, quietly throwing up out the window. "The road is good at the beginning," Hysni had told us through the translation of his 14-year-old nephew, Orgys. "It's bad at the end." To us, it hadn't even been a road. But in Albania, we quickly learned, the possible and impossible have a very blurred relationship.
Orgys was our teenage-going-on-forty-year-old friend and translator. He and his younger brother Clarence and Michal and I were packed into the back seat with all our luggage. We were headed to a small village behind Mt. Dajt, 20 kilometers or so from Tirana, where the Kuka clan was originally from. Hysni had a few of his elderly poor men living out here, and we were going to help them. We weren't sure how exactly we would help, but help we would.
At our arrival there was much fuss, and neighbors, dogs and cows greeted us. The small house where two men lived was fairly basic, with cement floors and some cots and a basic kitchen. It turned out that most mountain people cooked on a wood fired outdoor stove, and they even baked bread inside of it.
"bukë" (say boook) means bread in Albanian, and is synonomous with the word food. "ujë" (say the oy of boy) means water. I will never in all my life forget these two words, as they were the constant conversation topics in that house. Either there wasn't enough, it wasn't satisfactory, or in the case of water, the men needed a whole lot of it to pour into their washing machine--the one modern appliance in their small homestead. But this all comes later.

When Hysni was there, we visited nearby cousins and neighbors, and at every stop we were plied with strong turkish coffee boiled over gas camping stoves, and strong Rakije (plum or grape alcohol--homemade of course!) We had meat, soup and bread. The men smoked and discussed. When Hysni left, with a calf and lamb strapped into a trailer, banging back down the streambed, we learned that the men of the house had opinions about us being there. Their opinion, it turned out, was not a favorable one. The cranky ring leader, whose name I never learned, bossed. The tall, gaunt mute man named Boujar, was bossed. The quiet man who had come with us (throwing up) became ornery and opinionated, though we didn't understand him. It quickly became clear that they didn't want to share their scarce water with us, nor their food.

Orgys, still looking like a young boy, called the men dajë (judgay) meaning uncle, and in turn they called him djalë (dyal), meaning boy. And the kids we met in Albania were super subservient to adults, in a way that American children would be amazed and then scared about. So the cranky old man bossed Orgys too, and he translated for us. So then, we were bossed as well.

Luckily we were given the garden as a task, so I was happy to pull weeds from the tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. You could hear the tinkling of cow and sheep bells from every vantage point, and the mountains were a panarama. My other task, it became clear, was to cook. Duh! I was a woman, what was wrong with me? The men had ideas about what I should cook, how I should serve it, when I should wash the dishes. But they wouldn't do those things, only knew how I should do them. It took a couple of days to learn their wishes, but being a pleaser, I did. I washed a lot of dishes, heating water on the outdoor stove, and lugging fresh water from a underground spring, which was down a steep hill. The men usually sat outside in the yard, smoked and talked. They talked late into the night "blah blah blah bukë! blah blah blah ujë!" and then woke up early in the morning, and talked some more. We wondered that they never ran out of conversation topics, but talk they did. They smoked, sat around, and then did some washing in their washing machine.


(to be continued)

The scenery

The house

Boujar and Michal

Orgys in the creek

Orgys and Clarence with their dad and his gun. Which he shot off for us. "Only for protection," he said. Then strung a bullet belt around his waist.

The glasses series

The Kuka's cement terrace has no shortage of stuff scattered around. Tidiness is not next to Godliness here in Albania, there are bigger things to think about. We found some broken glasses, and here is the photo series that followed:

A tent in Tirana

We set up our tent on the breezy, cement terrace of the Kuka family's house, which both confused the parents and delighted the kids. Hysni Kuka pointed at our Coleman blow up mattresses and then held his back, indicating we would have a painful if not crippling experience sleeping there. In three minutes, kids were lugging up mattresses to the second floor terrace, and in five minutes our tent had transformed into a certain type of bed heaven. We just hoped the mattresses weren't from the beds of any old, ailing old folks.
It looked like the kids had never seen a tent before, and they were in and out of the thing like lightening, testing out the headlamps, sleeping bags and our bike helmets with gusto. "tent! tent!" they tried out the new English word.
Below the terrace is the small, but lively street. The cafe and betting shop and the corner store all in the same house, people are chatting, playing football, preteen boys are constantly testing their strength and machoism with short and passionate fights, and then there are the dogs and cats, slinking around, looking for delicious morsels of trash (to be found everywhere).
It's like a mini village in a corner of the capital city.

A little bit about volunteering in Tirana

"Hello," says Jenny. Then, pointing at herself, she says, "Emri im është Jenny" (My name is Jenny). "Ju?"
"Sarah," I say.
"Ah, Sarah," she says. She grins and the tops of her false teeth press into her gums. "Here, Tirana," she points at the floor. Ju?"
"I'm from America," I say.
"Ahh, America." Then, "I love you." Kiss on both cheeks.
A man wanders by, smoking a cigarette. He never sits down, walks up the stairs, out into the yard, onto the street, back again. His teeth are missing, and I don't know his name.
Etem takes our laundry. Through a series of gestures, and through the Italian he speaks, he makes it understood that he will do our laundry for us. "Benissimo!" He says proudly, as in, that's what your laundry will look like.
"Hello, Emri im është Jenny," says Jenny. "Ju?"
"Sarah," I say, shaking her hand.
"Ahh, Sarah. Good," says Jenny. "Here, Tirana. Ju?"
"America," I say. It goes on like that.
Four hours later our laundry is still washing in Etem's machine. "Piano, Piano," he says, adding more water into the soap loader. "Benissimo." He points at his undershirt, which I must say is quite white.

Welcome to Residence Kuka, a house for elderly people who don't have a home. We ended up here through a series of cancellations, and it isn't really in desperate need of volunteers. At least so it seems. Hysni Kuka is the man in charge, and he chain smokes Marlboro cigarettes and comes and goes from his job at the ministry. He has six brothers, and they all live in the same neighborhood in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Hysni speaks absolutely no other language besides Albanian. Some words we have in common are "system", "no problem" and "d'accord." (Ok, in French). Luckily, one brother emigrated to Germany, and is visiting with his family, so the teenage sons translate from Albanian to German, which Michal understands. I'm mostly in the dark.
"Jenny," Hysni sighs. He makes a sign at his head to indicate that she's crazy. So far, she has managed to take my phone charger and a skirt from my bag and hide them in her cupboard.
"Jenny has Alzeheimers" says Argi, the older man who speaks English. He was a professor of law and lived for years with his daughter in Istanbul until she went to study in America. Now he mostly watches TV. "When there is something missing in the house, we go and look at Jenny's room."
Hysni has three young kids and his brothers all have kids. There is a cafe connected to the house, a store, a classroom for homeless Gypsies. People pile through at different intervals, some related some not.

This morning, after we were served our breakfast in the dark little cafe of warm milk and bread (you rip up the bread into little pieces and eat it like cereal in the milk.) we went upstairs to sit with the really old folks. There are men on the third floor who look like breathing is an exercise. One man has one closed eye and then one that is far too open. He sat with his back to us, spinning a hard boiled egg on the table. The other guys told us they were 85 and 65, even though I would have guessed 95 and 75, respectively. Gena, a young nurse and teacher takes care of them. She is blond and pretty, with Cleopatra eyeliner and wears a white lab coat. When we wake up, she is cleaning the bathroom, and when we eat breakfast she is cleaning the old folks. "Do you need help?" we ask her. "No, no," She smiles.

Today a boy from Hungary is supposed to arrive, and on Sunday a girl from Austria. Michal has regaled me with volunteering stories from Montenegro and Germany through similar organizations, but this one is different. "What can we do to help this afternoon?" We ask Hysni. "Oh," he says, mumbling and shrugging and then invites us to his house where there are visitors eating fruit. "You can stay here, relax and watch tv," he has his nephew translate.

Hard work happening here in Tirana.

Ancient Roman gladiators battle in amphitheatre, Durres, Albania

Gladiator Michal chose this ferocious turkey as his opponent in a true to life reenactment of an ancient Roman fight.

Map of the Journey

This is a post for Andre.

The red marker is our trip so far by bike * The blue marker is our trip by train, bus and in Montenegro, in the car of a couple of Dutch Nudists. (You can click to enlarge).

We're in Durres, Albania! The roads are something special, from lovely pavement to utter dirt, potholed nothingness, and then back again. Cement trucks have dropped cement on the road that has dried into ridges and mountains, manholes are missing, and there are sheep, cows, goats, people, mopeds, donkeys and carts, and lots of Mercedes from America. ie with license plates that say "New York." They sure drive like Albanians though.
One old man in one such car, all hunched, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, he approached us on a dusty, deserted dirt road in southern Montenegro. His car slowed. "Hey guys," he rasped. "Hey, how you doing?" And then he drove on.

About the Cycling

Our camping place...Look how big these thorns are!

After 1,000 kilometers of cycling, we have had 15 flat tires. The heat combined with the amazing amount of thorns in these regions, has had a disasterous effect on our inner tubes. More than once I was lured off the pavement by delicious blackberries, growing thick over the rocks and fallen fences along Skoeder lake in Montenegro. And more than once I was pulling thorns from my wheel, while Michal was once again applying another patch to the inner tube, both of us cranky.

In Serbia the hardest thing was the heat. We woke up early, sometimes as early as 4am, and then cycled until 10 or 11. The heat hit hard around noon, with the cicadas screaming from their shady trees, and it hung around until 6 or 7pm. So we would laze about during the hot part of the day. We visited Monastaries and public swimming pools, ate giant watermelons in the park and sat in air conditioned, smokey cafes. Then in the evening, as the sun set, we'd put in some more kilometers, often cycling into the dark, finding a spot to put up the tent and then fall asleep.

Well, fall asleep is rather a bad way to put it. Camping alongside corn fields, on old broken roads, and by the side of the Danube (worst night of our life. A story in itself. Barges, fishermen, and one very hopeful and protective doggy, who wanted us to adopt him), it's more like dozing and waking, dozing and waking....Since we've reached the sea coast we have had to pay for more and more camping, as there are more people and less corn fields. At least there aren't anymore late night tractors, blaring up the road.

The heat wave broke while we were camping on the Boca Kotorska bay in Montenegro. Clouds rolled in, and sat heavily, looking like rain but never following through. Suddenly, it wasn't 40 degrees celsius anymore! There was a breeze! It became a perfect cycling climate. We proceeded to cycle up a lot of mountains after that, so it was a wonderful thing, this new weather pattern.

Finally, sometimes it's a question of low moral. For example, we started one day in the town of Murici, which is rock bottom sea level, on the side of Skoeder lake. And low and behold, as we climbed, we realized we were biking up a mountain. (Not a greatly detailed map, we mused). We rose 916 meters in 20 kilometers. I was really lagging, kicking and screaming, like a child. It's not til we got to the top did I sort of calm down, and think, cool. I'm glad we did that. (I also saw a viper on the side of the road that was trying to digest a big lizard, but the lizard was only halfway in its mouth. It was hard to know who was more dead at that moment, the lizard, the snake, or me).

The view from Montenegro

We have been in Montenegro for six days or so, and it has been the most exciting, interesting and difficult cycling yet. From campground on the Boca Kotorska, to the mountain city of Cetinje to Lake Skoeder, to the sea coast at Ulcinj, it has been mountains, water, rocks, goats and donkeys.

Konjic, Bosnia

We took a local train through the mountains to Konjic, a small town in between Sarajevo and Mostar. I'd read an article about Tito and an underground bunker he'd built here, capable of housing 350 people for 1 year, in the event of a nuclear war. Recently, they had turned the bunker (already a tourist attraction) into a gallery of contemporary art. So the article said...

The town of Konjic is a hidden gem, just as pretty as Mostar with its own arching stone bridge above the utterly teeth clenching cold river. (8 degrees celsius). It isn't on the tourist radar however, so it has an absence of terrible souvenir shops and harassing women trying to persuade you to stay at their house for ten euros. The tourist office, when open, seems to be operated solely by 15-year-olds taking advantage of the free internet.
"Where does the bus leave to see Tito's bunker?" I asked the boy that seemed to be in charge behind the front desk. He looked at me. "I don't know," he said. "It leaves from the bus station," I said. "Where is the bus station?"
"There are two bus stations," he said. His friend giggled next to him, and the boy looked uncomfortable. He offered me the office phone, but it didn't work. "I can show you the bus stations," he finally offered, but I knew where they were. Only I needed to know what bus station. He shrugged.
In the end, we called from Michal's mobile phone. We should have just followed the giant hodge podge of a crowd, grouping up in one part of the road. Women in headscarves mixed with a German family, an Arabic speaking family and then finally a group of Belgian scouts. Where else would we all have in common besides Marshal Tito and his bunker?

The bus took us through the small town of Konjic and into a military area sectioned off by barbed wire. "Danger, landmines" was written everywhere. Bosnian soldiers ushered us into the front room of the entrance, and produced a map of the bunker. (See first photo above). A soldier then proceeded to explain everything in Bosnian, while an apologetic guy ("sorry for my English, I'm not speaking good") translated into English, and then the leader of the Belgian scouts proceeded to translate into French. It took a llllooonnnggg time. People got bored, and they were talking. "Quiet!" Shouted the soldier. We all followed him into the dark, cold underground, where the tour began.

A strange place indeed. You could feel the fifties and sixties everywhere, old orange carpet, gray linoleum, cheap desks, and old rotary phones. Once you got deep enough, past the air filtering systems, the water reservoir, and heating, you could see the art exhibits. The apologetic fellow was trying his best to introduce people to the art, though it sounded like this: "This unit is made by German artist, and he is trying to say uhh umm...he is meeting the time of Communism and uh he is saying he can't live in it." The Belgian scouts, all teenagers in soft canvas shoes (is this a scout thing?) looked bored. There was a soldier in the back, trying to get our giant group to walk more quickly. "Quel est son problème?" one scout asked another.

Offices, living quarters, endless hallways, unexplained abstract art displays, the tour was exhausting. When we got to the living rooms, most people sat down blankly on the tweed sofas and stared at the wallpaper, all vintage. When we finally emerged back into the sun, the apologetic fellow was thanking people for visiting. "It's not a museum yet," he was saying, apologetically.
"Oh, will it be a permanent exhibit?" I asked.
"We hope so. We must talk to the municipality and agree on it."
"So it's in transition?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, happy that I had given him the right word. "In transition." Then he added quickly, "Just like Bosnia-Hercegovinia." He laughed. Our big group got back on the hot bus, and drove back to the road side station. Then we all went on our separate ways.

Meeting the Sea

The Adriatic coast is like the jewel on an Empress's finger. Big, bold and sharp blue, the sun flares off this aquamarine and the world looks better in its light.

First, we got to Slano, a small village turned tourist spot, its modest stone homes somewhat dwarfed by the new monstrous hotel, square like a prison and fenced in to boot. It was a horseshoe town built around a quiet bay, popular with yachts and small tour boats. We were hot and bothered, having cycled a whole hell of a lot up hills and down from the first Croatian border town of Metkovic. We managed to muster enough energy to cycle around the bay to a camp ground full of Polish people. "It must be a cheap one," said Michal, grinning. And, after our next campsite in the elite Dubrovnik, we found that it most certainly was! We were told to put our tent under a tree, which had lots of sticky stuff under it. We blew up our mattresses and promptly fell asleep in the shade. After a lazy afternoon of doing nothing in the shade, we were approached by a Polish woman. She asked where we were from, and then incredulous, she asked: "Don't you like the sea?" Indeed, we laughed afterwards--it must seem strange to these people who had traveled many hours away from their windy Baltic coast to this turquoise paradise, that we had rented a campsite next to the water and then stayed away from the sea. The truth was we had swam before 9am, and then cycled on for another four hours, the sun parching our skin and turning my nose a lovely scarlet color. There was no respite from this deep, strong heat, and I couldn't face sitting on the beach.
"We've been cycling," I said, lamely. "We're tired." The woman nodded, and walked away. Probably to the beach.

Some photos of Bosnia-Hercegovinia

View from the Hostel in the center of Sarajevo
And our first view of Sarajevo, coming from the bus station out of town


Medjugoria, where in 1981 a few ten-year-olds saw the Virgin Mary. Wow, now a major shrine site, full of kitch. I bet those kids had no idea...


Neum, Bosnian coast


Boys near the bridge at Mostar. Water was sooooo cold! 8 degrees celsius!


Mural in Konjic. This little town was super deduper interesting. Houses Tito's bunker. More stories here, for another time.


The Mostar bridge and surrounding town. So many tourists! Every July there is a diving festival off this bridge, kind of wish I could have seen it.

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovinia

Editor's note: don't travel in Eastern Europe without a computer if you expect to use the internet. This internet spot in Igalo, Montenegro, doesn't allow for usb uploading. So no pictures this time.

We took a break from cycling last week, hopped a bus in Sabac, Serbia, and within five hours (the bus overheated on one of the mountain passes. everyone got off and watched the driver pour water into the engine) we were in Sarajevo. The sun was setting against the mountains and the air was thick and hot. We cycled past tall soviet apartments splattered with bullet fire and big blast wounds, laundry on the balconies, people coming and going. We cycled past mosques, some beaming and freshly made from cement. The call to prayer sounded, and we finally found the center, some 12 km's from the suburban bus station.

The city was packed with young people. Everywhere you looked, they drank coffee, walked, biked, chatted on their stoop, drove their cars, and went to work, church, home. After living in Karlovy Vary, where the average age must be 83, this was a welcomed change.

The hostels in Sarajevo were booming, and the prices were a bit steep in comparison to our Serbian experiences. Tourists were thick like flies. We met a healthy looking girl from Canada-Canadians have a way of just looking so healthy- who had been traveling for a year. "I did Czech Republic," she said. "And then I did Hungary and Croatia." Been there, done that.

Michal didn't like Sarajevo, called it an Urbanist's LSD Dream, but I found it fascinating. I think if you come from living amid Communist Era cement bohemoths of buildings, like in CZ, you don't get a kick of their southern Slavic counterparts. To me this is still exotic.

Exit Festival

The first person to tell us about Exit was one of the priest's helpers at a monestary in Bac, Serbia. "You aren't going to Exit?" he asked us incredulously. "To what?" we asked. "The rock festival in Novy Sad." We had come into the monestary for two reasons, the first was that we were hot, and we thought the monestary looked cold. The second was that we had time to kill before the heat resided (maybe around 5, but really around 7pm)and we could cycle again. The priest was happy to have visitors, and he was busy showing us the ancient alters, old paintings and historic architecture of his monestary: Medieval, Baroque, Ottoman and Renessaince styles, a real show of the history of Central Europe.
"Ahh," said the priest, in his clear Serbian, waving his hand, and if the outside world was slightly beyond him. "The festival is full of Narkomen and Alcoholics."
"Yes," said the helper, rather wistfully. "I don't need those big rock concerts, too many people." He paused. "They say 2,000 will be there."

While we were cycling late that night, with our head lamps on, we got a lot of stares. I said hello to a lady with her kids. "You going to Exit?" She asked immediately.

The next day, a farmer began gesticulating at us from across his field. If Michal hadn't been there, I would have swore he was saying something like: "You're sitting on my property, get away from here. Go go go!" But before I knew it, Michal was walking towards this man, and thanking him. What he actually had been saying is "Come here, I have some apples for you. Come over here!" Michal came back with his shirt full of summer apples, sweet and tart and good.
"Guess what he wanted to know," Michal said. "He asked if we were going to Exit."

It wasn't until we got to Sarajevo, and saw this poster advertising Jamiroquoi and Arcade Fire, that we saw how big the Exit festival actually was. We spent the weekend sweating and cycling and sleeping in corn fields instead. Maybe next year....

Hot, Flat, Dry.

This clip pretty much sums up the wide valleys of the Danube in Northern Serbia. Corn, soybeans, sunflowers. The cobblestone street was a surprise though, we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly the road was paved with stones so elegantly. Just paint it yellow, and it could be the movie set for Wizard of Oz....

Welcome to the Serbian Danube

From Mohacs, Hungary we took a ferry to the other side of the Danube, and after a few, very flat kilometers, we crossed the border into Serbia. I have to say I was a little nervous when we wheeled our bikes up to the Serbian border crossing. It was around 11:30am, and hot. In his little office, the border patrol guard looked up from his crossword puzzle. His face was ruddy from heat, and he looked at us, expressionless. Then he took our passports, ran them through the computer, stamped them. That was it.
We stopped to exchange money in the dusty exchange bureau next door. A female border patrol guard was on her break there in the shade. Her hair was dyed platinum, and she read from a novel whose pages were written in fairytale script. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes was at her side. Cicadas screeched, the air was still. The bathroom had Turkish toilets, the bad ones-the ones that hadn't been cleaned ever.

What followed was some of the flattest terrain I have ever ridden on. After the rolling hills of Hungary, it was a surprise, as was the unforgiving heat. The villages we rolled through all had shutters pulled tight against the sun. The houses were smaller, more gray, more square than what we had seen in Hungary. And at noon, there was no one to be seen.

Following a trekking map from a German website, we cycled into a weekend village along the Danube. The houses were built up on cement stilts, or wooden slats, and you could see the flood marks from the river. They were built incredibly close together, some defying gravity, some reduced to a small pile of bricks. A group of men were sitting outside, and we asked them about the flooding. "You never know when. It could be May, it could be December," shrugged the man who spoke English. "It's the Danube, if you don't like it, stay in your village."

At the charda, or fish restaurant, I found that I could understand basic Serbian language, after studying Czech for two years. At the toilet, a few women were fussing. "It doesn't have a light," complained one woman. "Tell the waitress," said the other, and called up to the kitchen. "Hey, the bathroom doesn't have a light." The waitress only shrugged. "I don't know about it," she said. End of story. No bathroom light, pee in the dark.

Well, the fish was good, the beer was good, and staying out of the heat was even better. Welcome to the Serbian Danube.