Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Week 3 Kosovo and Macedonia (before we got to Ohrid)

Kosovo or No Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Kosovo is certainly not the most desired tourist destination, but maybe that is why they really like tourists coming over. We go a special ‘Welcome to Kosovo’ from the border guard and a handshake when we came over to see the Museum of Kosovo in Pristina. We only went to Peja (in Albanian) or Pec (in Serbian) just for few hour stop on the bus journey from Podgorica and to Pristina. Other than both being very lively, bustling town with thousands of small shops, cafes there were not too many exciting sights. Oh, maybe just the peculiar library in Pristina and statute of Bill Clinton (probably the only one in the world).

But we had two lovely meals in our three days in Kosovo in two unrelated Tiffany restaurants. We went to Tiffany’s in Peja, because our plan to have lunch at the local market, apparently trading all kinds of goat cheeses failed as Tuesday was not a market day… Lonely Planet forgot to mention that the markets are only on Wednesday and Saturdays. In Pristina we had to book ourselves for diner at its hidden treasure, Tiffany restaurant with no menu and the chef just cooking local specialities from what he bought in the market. In Pristina’s Tiffany you rub shoulders with the diplomats from EU, UN and all possible NGO present in Kosovo, while in Peja you sit next to a few members of local hunters association sipping their coffees. At Peja’s Tiffany we had one of our cheapest meals of the trip considering the amount of food that was served; in Pristina’s Tiffany we exceeded 40 Euro mark for a single meal i.e. most expensive on our trip so far! The food or the service in Peja did not have Tiffany’s sophistication but it was just plain good food, especially two pieces of deep fried cheese, one Kashkaval and the other with Albanian name starting with ‘G’ (I forgot to make a note of a full name), that we swallowed with a bottle of the local beer ‘Peja’. In Pristina we had a selection of three local specialities, all oven cooked with the addition of cheese, with deeps made of cheese (of course) as a starter. This is the place where we also discovered mixed salad, I mean truly mixed beautifully presented salad: cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, leeks and beetroots and our introduction to Macedonian cooking, ajvar, paprika based dip sometimes mild sometimes spicy.

Now, the only thing that we missing in Kosovo is breakfast at Tiffany’s. If I hear that they open Tiffany’s serving breakfast, I will be back. I know I said it is not touristy spot, but hey there are places that live from within, have their own vibe and energy not defined by the visitors. And that’s exactly how Kosovo was!

Macedonia or collection of statutes

Just look at our photos! Macedonia loves statutes and monuments, and not only Alexander the Great, anybody, including Bulgarian cars, Roman emperors, national heroes, artists, writers, filmmakers, religious figures. We were stunned by the amount of various monuments that we discovered in the main square in Skopje. The shock was maybe even greater after arriving from Kosovo and Podgorica that even though it is a capital of the beautiful Montenegro, it is not really worth mentioning. The statues seem to the part of the national pride but I also think that history maybe what defines Macedonia for tourists. They do not have Croatian coast or the stunning mountain of Montenegoro so the appeal is being built around its importance for the world’s and European history. Macedonian government also advertises Macedonia as the food and wine country and rightfully so. We did not have one bad meal and the Macedonian burek proved also to be the best. In-between statutes and eating we managed to squeeze in two beautiful hikes from Skopje; two hour surprisingly strenuous hike up the Vodno Mountain marked with the illuminating cross looking over Skopje and amazing artificial Lake Matka with its deepest and not yet fully explored underwater caves.

But to me Macedonia, should not only advertise its history and food but its people. Even though my general assumption is that people are friendly to tourists, Macedonians clearly excel. It does not matter, if they speak good or little English or do not know the difference between am and pm in defining time, they all go out of their way to be helpful. Always curious where you are from and what have you seen and where else should you go. Really very special! The owner of the hostel Atlantik in Skopje deserves a special mention here!

This all is before we arrived, in Ohrid the heart of Macedonia. Lonely Planet says, if you have not seen Ohrid you have not seen Macedonia, so we must be for a real treat next week!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Week 2 Montenegro (and how we broke the backpacking rules, a couple of times)

We spent the whole week in this small country and the whole week was packed with WOW factors so this part of the blog will be really challenging to write succinctly. And I am sure my writing skills and even the photos from my small lumix camera cannot give justice to what we saw in Montenegro. It is really amazingly beautifully (this word might be slightly overused in this blog unless I find more sophisticated synonyms) and sort of surprising; at least surprising to me because unlike Gavin I have not really read much about it in advance. For me travelling through Montenegro was like I some 10 years ago I went to the movies and randomly picked “Beautiful Mind” and left the cinema thinking that this was one of the best movie I have ever seen. So kudos for this week goes to Gavin and his planning.
How did we break the backpacking rule 1?
We based ourselves in Kotor, at the top of the beautiful Kotor Bay and stayed in the quirky apartment in the old town, again by letting ourselves be hunted by the private accommodation owners. After the visit to the local tourist office and a few conversations with the most unhelpful tourist information centre we decided that we will be bored, cause other than climbing some 1000 steps through the ancient Kotor city walls there was nothing to do. The lady and other fellow tourist agencies personnel were all clearly surprised that we wanted to take a boat trip through the bay or hike the top of Mt Lovcen (highest mountain on the coast) or even rent a bicycle…. I guess mid-October is really a bit off-season.

After 3 lovely days in Kotor from where we did short hike through some 1000 steps of the city walls, and to some old church, self-organised short boat trip to a monastery from Perest, we rented a car….. to drive north to the Durmitor National Park and then through Tara and Moraca Canyons with small detour to Lake Skadar back to the coast for some more beach in Budva.
I never heard of backpackers renting a car but we did and it was great. Me, slightly anxious about the driving through the windy and not the best quality mountain roads, decided to pick a small Mercedes but it broke right when I was trying to drive off the car rental parking lot on a hand break.(this paragraph is dedicated to my friends working for Mercedes in Poland:-)) so we ended up with a small cute Suzuki.

The drive was amazing and actually with a few exceptions that roads were really good. Through the drive we made probably a hundred 360 degrees turns and went through fifty mountain tunnels and after each more and more beautiful view emerged. After driving through the green and lush Tara Canyon, I thought we would just go on a boring motorway leading to Podgorica but no, we entered Moraca Canyon surrounded by the beautiful slightly dramatic rocky mountain. The roads have a lot of signs with just the exclamation marks which I think are there just to refocus the drivers on the driving instead of admiring the surrounding scenery…
How did we break the backpacking rule 2?

As we were driving from Kotor to Durmitor we wanted to stop on our way at the Ostrog Monastery, a Montenegro highlight resting on some 90m cliff over the Zeta river somewhere half way through Podgorica and Durmitor. Given that it is one of the major tourist attractions in Montenegro we were hoping for plenty of accommodation…. To our surprise when we arrived there was only one sign for hotel in the area all the way down the Zeta river valley. I took the challenge of a steep drive there just to find out that the huge but completely empty communist era hotel offered double room for 40 Euro with the shower so dirty that even that hard-core backpacker would refuse to stand in! By then it got dark and our only option appeared to be a near-by second largest Montenegro town of Niksic… that is so unattractive that even Lonely Planet (that sometimes tends to overstate certain locations) did not mention in it in its guide… And even there accommodation was very scarce. It seemed to have only one sign posted hotel Marshal with **** clearly designed for business visitors. Lacking other options, tired and in the dark we ended up staying there for 75 Euro in the room with the view of the motorway and the hotel breakfast from the terrace with the few of the same motorway J This is probably the only time where Montenegro was not looking beautiful.

How did we break the backpacking rule 3?
After 3 days of driving, we were back on the coast in Budva, the aim was to chill out from the overwhelming beauty of the central and northern Montenegro and see another tourist highlight, Svety Stefan. On the very sunny and very windy too Sunday morning we set ourselves for the 8km walk on the coast. We reached Svety Steven after 2 hours of beautiful (of course) coastal walk just to find out that the island closed for tourist 2 days ago. But the view from the beach was still beautiful. After the quick (and way overpriced soup lunch) in the only open restaurant in town, we started our walk back but even too much beauty can be boring so we debated whether to take a local bus back to Budva… and then we saw it. The forest in the mountains above the coast was on fire and you could see Budva and the entire costs covered in smoke! Once we got back from the beach to the main coastal road we caught a taxi thinking that we could just drive through the fire area back to Budva. We were in the taxi for some 5 minutes just to find out that all the roads, and also the pedestrian beach walk were closed. We waited about 2.5 hours until it was quasi-safe to walk back again. We walked through the smoke still seeing patches of the wood burning out. The damage was heart breaking. I am not sure if this fire was reported in any word news (probably not) but if it was and you were worried, we are safe! 

This is the packed week in some 1000 words but I still have to make 3 closing remarks before we move on later today to Kosovo via Podgorica.

One: The highlight of Durmitor National Park is the Black Lake set between Durmitor Mountains, but I would not be Polish if I did not make a comparison to Morskie Oko in the Tatras. As biased as I may be our Morskie Oko is even more stunning than the Durmitor Black Lake…. Gavin of course did not like me saying that but I got my validation over diner with a travelling Australian couple who said the same, or maybe they were also biased cause the man claimed to have polish ancestry from Zakopane
Two: Coming to Montengro in October is clearly off-season so one has to ‘endure the hardship’ of limited facilities or closed attractions like Svety Stefen but I think I wouldn’t have come in any other time because in turn you have much the (now famous) beauty to yourself and the small windy mountain roads are certainly easier to drive not being packed with the tourist buses.

Three: I even woke up at 6 am this morning to write up this blog and keep the disciplineJ and not to disappoint Asia and Florka… Though my English rambling at this hour might not be the best quality, so sorry:-)

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Week 1 Croatia (or Dalmatia rather) and Bosnia (or really only Mostar)

BeachesIt is only fair to start the blog with the beach highlights as the trip is all about chasing the sun. We were very lucky to get the last days of the summer weather on the Dalmatian coast before Bura (the northern wind) cooled down the air. We spent 3 days on the beaches in Bol on Brac. I did not expect that the stony Dalmatian beaches are superior to the sandy ones… Why? Because after all day at the beach you do not carry the sand with you everywhere on your body, in your hair, in your shoes, clothes, towels and bag. Surprisingly, they are quite comfortable too, even without any padding, just lying down on a pareo. Sure they leave some marks but hey it is like a massage where elsewhere you have to pay for.
Another ‘beach’ highlight was the amount of fkk beaches. Not sure what it stands for but it is a symbol used to mark pieces of the cost designated for nudist. On Brac they were typically much nicer and more secluded ones, as one would expect…
And this is the photo from the sunset on our favourite beach in Bol.
Sightseeing
Dubrovnik is as beautiful as they say in every tourist guide or an article so my blog would not add any more value in describing its charm. It is just a must see place when you come to Dalmatia. My favourite tourist attraction in Dalmatia was Zadar’s sea organs. The peculiar music created by the sea breeze or wind is very pleasant, especially during the sunset. Hitchcock apparently said that Zadar has the most beautiful sunset in Europe (or maybe in the world) at that was before the sea organs… So obviously I have to add the picture of that sunset too. I promise I will not bore you with more sunset photos at least until we get to India.


The second highlight was Mostar. The bridge is in fact very impressive. I have even sat through a 15 minutes movie that was talking about its reconstruction in 2002-2004. The view of the bridge from every angle was beautiful although most of the time obstructed by masses of fellow tourist… Maybe I should not call them fellow tourist as they were all at least couple of dozens years older and they all flocked to the bridge from the big bus parking lot and moved rather very slowly. Luckily they also had more money to spare and paid the local diver €50 for the famous jumps from the bridge to the Neretva River. When asked about the next jump, we only heard: ‘No money, no jump’.  Mostar is not only the bridge though. The old town surrounding the bridge is really old. You could see more of it if the tat/trinket (I had to use both words as I  learned these two synonims of junk in Mostar) vendors did not decide to convert every little old structure to the junk stand.

Food
I sometimes felt this week as if this part of our trip was the equivalent of the ‘Eat’ of the Elizabeth Gilbert’s famous book ‘Eat, Prey, Love’ where Italian food is replaced with the Balkan specialities. Dalmatia of course is all about sea food. I think that mussels provencal I had once in Brussels would keep the first place but the Dalmatian white wine, garlic, parsley version comes very close second. My by far favourite dish is octopus salad (or salata od hobotnice); very soft octopus with olive oil, onion and parsley, or its peasant and cheaper version with potatos that we had in Zadar, or sometimes more sophisticated with capers we had in Bol.

Also there is the almighty burek, with cheese, spinach and cheese or our favourite, with meat in Bosnia. You can have it any time during the day; it is equally good for breakfast lunch, liner or diner. And it is cheap, too.


Accommodation
This week we let ourselves be hunted by the private room or apartments owners at the bus stations in each destination. Right when you step out of the bus you become their prey when they approach you with the offers of ‘the best and cheapest in town’. It is all a matter of bargain and luck… We were very very lucky in Dubrovnik where we ended up in a lovely small apartment right outside the city walls and in Bol where we stayed in the beautiful private stone house with a terrace with the sea view through the lush plants spinning through the house. The owner gave us even a plastic half litter bottle of home-made wine and the recommendation of the hidden family run restaurant with the cheap daily menus. We were double lucky as it was on the other side of town from the crowded corner with expensive hotels and close to the small beaches surrounding the old monastery (see the Bol sunset photo). We were not so lucky in Split, where we ended up staying downstairs from the studio where they practiced folk music and dance to the late hours of the night or in Mostar where the lady decided to put the anti-insect powder everywhere in the room and did not tell us about it…
Summary
The week went by very quickly and the day we departed from London seems like ages ago. The only downside was that we exceeded our budget by hmmmm 60%:-) Croatia it is not really a cheap destination but it did let us get some tanning (so that we would not be the whitest people next time we go to the beachJ and eat its wonderful food). Let’s see how we’ll do next week in Montenegro.

The rules of my blog

Gavin says that the blog has to have discipline. So my discipline will be to blog once a week…I am obviously much less disciplined than my boyfriend who is doing a daily blog/chronicle. So if you want more detailed information here is Gavin’s detailed account of our travel: http://dorotaandgavin.blogspot.com
Also my blog will not necessarily be chronological… I’ll just focus on highlights