Pristina, Kosovo

Kosovo was probably the country that was at the top of my list of "countries I am most worried about going to."Really, I have no idea why. Well, I guess the reason why was because I had heard so much "bad" stuff about what the country was (is) going through.
Seriously though, you'd never know it when you were there. The center of the city is really beautiful and full of people. Not so many tourist (which is good sometimes), but lots of people enjoying the city.
Cool picture in the center:


It's weird, though. You go only like 2 blocks out of the center of the city (like where our [Elly and I] hostel was, and you see buildings (and entire streets) that have recently gone through some sort of war.
Who is Elly? I met a bunch of travellers in Skopje (Macedonia). I somehow convinced one of them to come along for part of my journey through the countries of Europe. Starting in Macedonia, we'll prbably make it through 8 or so countries together. Picture infront of a famous place in Pristina:
There's also a CRAZY American influence in Pristina (or Kosovo in general, I guess). The US really helped this country out, so there are American flags EVERYwhere, and when people find out that you're from America, they actually thank you. Elly is from New York City. It's probably the first time I went along with being an American for a bit.

Me with the statue of Bill Clinton (Bil Klinton as they would spell it).

Damn. Long post.

Skopje/Orhid, Macedonia

Getting from Thessaloniki to Skopje was fun. Well, aside from getting up at 4:30 in the morning to catch my 5:55 train. When I got on the train I met two American girls so we talked the entire way. After that we ended up going to the same hostel and then met some more Americans and some people from England. We hung out for the day and checked out some old castle thing:

The next day we all took a day trip to a place called Orhid, which was actually crazy nice. It's a city on a massive lake:

One of the American girls is from New York City, and it looks like we're going to be travelling together for a little while (maybe the next few weeks), which is really really sick.

Thessaloniki, Greece

Spent a day on the Aegean Sea in the North of Greece. Really cool city, I probably would have wanted to spend more time there, but I had already booked my time in the later places. Sunset on the water....
Some Greek writing - which sucks when you can't read Greek.

Cool place... :)

Istanbul, Turkey

I was in Istanbul for 3 days or something. I sat next to this Turkish guy on the (12 hour) bus ride into Istanbul, who was incredibly nice. He randomly bought me a croissant at one of the stops. Later, I was explaining to him how I wasn't sure how I was going to get on the metro because I didn't have any Turkish money, and it was going to be so early that the exchange places wouldn't be open. A few minutes later he just gave me some money.
Then, for whatever reason, Canadians need to pay 45 Euros to get into the country (which is WAY more than any other country). Later, when a border guard checked my passport, he only saw my 45 Euro stamp and said "Canada!! hahah!!"
But yeah, Istanbul was nice. My hostel was only a few blocks from the Blue Mosque... this thing:

It's also the only place on my trip where I've said to myself (outloud): "Holy Shit!" It's just an absolutely massive city. Pictures of lots of people and the sprawling city:


It was also the first place I've been in a while that had TONS of tourist. And, when there are tourists, there are Korean tourists. I met/hung out with a bunch... it was sick.

Look-a-likes

I've been hanging out with this guy from Finland since I've been in Bulgaria (I met him on the train over here). To me, he looks exactly like Mike Dynie... haha.

And while we are on the subject of look-a-likes. I spotted this guy in Moldova. Possibly Neil Fine's Moldovan brother?

Varna, Bulgaria

I took a few trains that took all of yesterday to get from Romania to a city called Varna in Bulgaria.
It's a city on the black sea. When I first got here, it was really cloudy (the only time I've seen clouds in the past month - and it happens to be when I'm on the beach). When I first got to the beach the clouds made the water look really dark. I thought to myself "Hmmm... I wonder if that's why they call it the Black Sea?"

The weather actually got really nice, but I didn't bring my camera when I went back to the beach because I didn't want to worry about it. So this sel-ca picture of me and the "Black" Black Sea will have to do.

I've also been hanging out with this Australian girl since I've been here. After hearing my story of how cheap I'm living, she offered to buy me dinner. My first instinct was to get pasta, but then I realized that I've been eating pasta for the past(a) 2 months. SO sick.

Oh, and Varna is actually incredibly sick. By far my favorite place on this trip so far.
Again, sorry for the long post. Lots to say, I guess.

Bucharest, Romania

I got to Bucharest early early yesterday morning - after taking the night train from Chisinau. Borders are really starting to annoy me... because every time I go from one country to the next, there is always an exit border and an entry border. I'm happy to be in the EU and going to another EU country on my next trip tomorrow (to Bulgaria)
Bucharest is nice - Although I looks like the entire city needs a paint job. It looks like the city once was incredibly beautiful, or it has the potential to be incredibly beautiful. Everything here is a darkish gray color.

I also went to what all the people at the hostel were saying was the "second largest building in the world." (Somehow, in Bucharest). Obviously its not the tallest, so I was thinking it was maybe the biggest by volume?
Wikipedia says its the heaviest building in the world, lol. Whatever that means. Sick enough, I guess. The picture really doesn't show how big it is.

Also, another food picture. I've been carrying around a big 1kg bag of rice with me for weeks, and I've finally finished off all my pasta to start cracking into it. I had this for dinner tonight. It was absurdly massive, but was just what I needed (that's what she said). I kept getting looks from the guy beside me who couldn't speak English. I'm sure he was thinking "there is no way he is going to eat all of that."
Sorry for the long post :)

Chisinau Market

I've been to some dirty and crazy markets in my day. But none as dirty and as crazy as the one here in Chisinau. Everything from toothpaste to fine china to entire bodies of dead animals can be bought. I wish I could have taken a picture of the massive pigs that were flung over some of the counters, but there were signs everywhere saying "no pictures."

Instead, how about a picture of me at the entrance:

Also, a video that kind of shows what Chisinau is like:



I'm leave for Romania in a couple of hours... just killing time before my bus leaves.

Chisinau, Moldova

Right at the top of the list of "countries you never knew existed in Europe," even above Liechtenstein. Moldova is just about as Eastern European as you're going to get - both culturally and geographically. Actually, it doesn't even remind me of Europe all that much. It's more like South America or Malaysia or something... except for that the people look like they're in the Russian Mafia or something. They're actually all really nice, though.
Picture of me infront of some sort of Moldovan ghetto... or maybe these are their mansions - I don't know:

Typical Church shot:

Getting here was a little bit of an adventure. I took a local city bus from my hostel in Lviv to the international bus station. The city bus was by far the most packed I've ever seen any form of public transportation. With my sort of big bag = adventure.
Then I took the 17 hour bus ride from Lviv to Chisinau. I've done some long bus rides before - including something like 24 hours with Dave and Neil in Brazil. If I had to choose, though, I'd take 24 hours with my friends on a bus over 17 hours on a bus being squished by an obese gypsey. Obese gypsey = adventure.
Then I got to Chisinau at 10am this morning, in the crazy heat. I had to take another local bus to get me to my hostel here... somehow, it was twice as busy as my bus in Lviv. I wish I had a picture to show how insanely packed it was, but I literally couldn't move.

I'm here. In Moldova. It's weird, but it's sick.

Lviv, Ukraine

The past few days have been really good. After being sketched out when I first arrived, everything got better after that. I've been walking around the city a lot, checking out different things. I don't really know how to describe the Ukraine. It almost reminds me of South America just because everything is so chaotic and there are tons of things that could be much safer/cleaner than they are... but nobody seems to care.
The fashion of both men and women is funny, too. Everybody seems like their in the Russian mafia or something.
Few pictures from the past few days:

Me in some random ghetto market (that doesn't look too ghetto in the picture). Mostly taken to show the cyrillic writing:

Today I climbed this mountain-type thing to get a view of the city. Sel-ca picture:

There's a big screen set up for people to watch the World Cup. Me showing my support for South Korea:

You can think what you want of this picture:

I've also had the chance to eat some Ukrainian food. Last night I had something called Salo... otherwise known as raw pig fat.

The Ukraine!

Today was weird.... probably the weirdest day I've had since that random day I went to Thailand. I was in Krakow (in Poland) earlier on in the day, but I had to take a 10 hour day-time bus to the Ukraine. Day buses are weird - taking a bus all night is fine because you can sleep a bit and you get there and its the start of the day. But sitting on a bus all day while the sun is shining and arriving in a foreign (very foreign) city kind of plays with your mind a bit.

So, today at 11:30 (well, I was there at 10:30 because I'm always stupid early) I was waiting for my bus. Every bus going in to and coming out of the Ukraine is late, so it didn't come until 12:30. I sit for about 6 hours until we get to the border leaving Poland. That takes about 30 minutes... and then we pull up to enter the Ukrainian border, which takes another hour or so.
I've been reading a lot about the Ukraine, for the sole purpose of planning for this trip. There is very little information regarding how to get to/from places here, so I've needed to do a lot of research. As my bus got closer to the my final destination (Lviv), I started to get more and more worried because it was getting darker and darker. As I said, getting into a city at night always sort of freaks me out because I don't know anything and it's dark, and you don't know if its safe. Arriving in Vienna at night would probably be fine, but I'm not sure about the freaking Ukraine.

Luckily I had talked to some Ukrainian girls on the bus ride. They acted as my translators while the Ukrainian/Polish customs people came on to talk to each person. When I got to the bus station, I realized it was about 30 minutes from the center of the city, which is where I needed to be. I had some stuff written down in crylic (the style of writing you see in Russia/Ukraine/etc) for a cab driver to look at to get me to my hostel, but I was feeling really weird about the bus station. Apparently, the English speaking proficiency here is essentially zero, so I needed to have some Ukrainian written down.

It was SOOO sick. The girls that I had talked to on the bus had asked one of their dads if they would drive me to my hostel, and he agreed. He couldn't speak a word of English, but he was willing to drive my ass to my hostel. It actually helped me out SOO much.

So much shit could have went wrong today.... and everything went right (aside from the bus being an hour late). I'm in my hostel now, which has tons of old relics from the old Soviet days. Pretty cool place.

I haven't really been walking around yet. I'm going to bed, but there will definitely be some Ukrainian style sel-ca pictures tomorrow.

Warsaw is much better than people make it out to be...

I'm in Poland right now. People have always been telling me "don't go to Warsaw, go to Krakow instead." When I say "people," I mean people that I've met along the way travelling here, and Polish people I know back home.
I don't know what that is all about, Warsaw is an amazing city. After I found my hostel (which took an hour of me asking people on a street corner that the hostel was on), I've been really enjoying the city.

I don't really know how to take a picture that shows how cool the city is... so I'll just put another sel-ca picture:
I'm just here for the night and then I make my way to Krakow (also in Poland) tomorrow morning.

In case anybody has been wondering what I do for food... I'm actually living incredibly cheap. And when I say 'incredibly,' I mean stupid cheap. I'm probably living on less than 1 euro per day for food. I manage to get a lot of free food from hostel "leftovers" (when people leave, they dont want to bring the food back with them, so there is usually a 'for free' cupboard). And then I've been buying a lot of rice, oats, granola and pasta in bulk, which keeps me going for a long long long time. And then when I want to make a meal, I'll buy some stuff to go with the pasta (for example) for like 50 euro cents, and I've got myself a meal. The picture is an example of my new specialty: The 20 minute lasagna.
I got a bunch of free lasagna at a hostel - enough for 4 meals of a "family sized portion" (which I eat myself. For example, one meal would be two plates of the above portion. So I buy some pasta sauce and vegetables for 2 euros, and then I'm good for 4 days of dinner.

Vilnius, Lithuania

No more Riga - yesterday I took a bus to to the capital of Lithuania, as I continue to make my way south in Eastern Europe. I got off the bus around 6 or 7 and was pretty sketched out by the area. Whenever I first get to a weird city I'm always like "hmm.... I'm not sure if this is safe/cool/whatever."
Whatever those feelings were, they left me as soon as I got to my hostel. I managed to meet up with a couple of Australian girls that I had met earlier in Stockholm:
Today I walked around for about 10 hours or so... I REALLY like Vilnius. It's something about it. Already I'm putting it as my second favorite place I've been on this trip in Europe (second only to Oslo). During some part of my 10 hours of walking today I made it up to the top of a hill to check out a sick view of the city:

I've been able to keep up regular exercise since I've been traveling. Aside from all the walking, most days I'll go to a random park and do a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups or whatever. Just random body-weight exercises. In Tallinn (Estonia) I found a really nice outdoor workout park... and today in Vilnius I found this:
I was pretty happy when I found it. I haven't been able to do chin-ups since I left Malaysia. In a pretty random place, but still cool.

:)

Riga, Latvia

I took the bus from Tallinn to Riga (Latvia) early today, and got here around noon. The old town is really nice, and tomorrow Im going to go on a walking tour of the city, which should be sick. Ive been on a few of these tours around various cities, and theyre always pretty cool because you learn things about the city you otherwise wouldnt have known.
Later on in the hostel, there was a bunch of Vietnamese people cooking, and they asked me if I wanted to join them. Obviously I couldnt say 'no' to free Asian food and chilling with Asian people.