Vidin:
·
This was a stop just over the Romanian-Bulgarian
border to break up the trip to Sofia.
It’s the poorest city in the EU but wasn’t as shabby as I expected. Rough sidewalks but it felt cleaner and safer
than I expected and I think the living there seemed better than it did in many
of the small towns we passed through.
·
We walked the town square and along the Danube
(tour boats stop there at times.)
·
Bulgaria has lost over ¼ of her population since
Communism ended ad has a negative birthrate.
Vidin felt like a time machine back a few decades.
·
Our hotel room had wallpaper with huge cat eyes
on opposite walls. I thought they were
cool. KK voted for creepy.
·
We took a mini-bus with 19 seats from Timisoara,
luckily with only 8 riders. As the
driver was leaving town, he pulled over at a local bus stop and found someone
willing to slip him some cash to ride about 30 minutes. Our Serbian bus driver (55 seater) tried the
same trick, with no luck.
Sofia:
·
I had read warnings about Eastern Europe trains
but our ride to Timisoara was so good we tried it again. Still decent but not as good as before. The day was a school holiday to honor 18th
and 19th century reformers (teachers, philosophers, artists, etc.),
a holiday the Communists took away during their reign. So we were lucky to get on at the first stop
and get our reserved seats in first class for about $10 each. By the time we got near Belgrade there were
more riders than seats, with some heating discussions about who got to sit
where.
·
Tony, an engineer from Sitecore, took us to a
typical Bulgarian restaurant with singing and dancing. He is gregarious and a lot of fun to hang out
with. He spent 3 summers on a student visa working in an Alaskan restaurant
(working his way up from dishwasher to bartender as he learned English and used
his gregarious nature.) Tony introduced
me to sipping Finlandia Vodka on the rocks, with a Coke on the side. I’m still a beer guy but much smoother than I
expected.
·
We went on a 2-hour walking tour of the city with
Nikolai, a pianist who had studied in London.
Free (tips based) and well done, with about 20 people in the group. We met Xianshu from China, Chiago from Brazil
but living in Portugal and working in Spain, and Malcolm, a digital nomad from
the Netherlands.
·
Our next tour was 3 hours with Vasyl, who was
born in 1993, after Communism ended in Bulgaria. Nikolai had explained this tour was 14 Euros
because on the communist tour you couldn’t rely on tips. Vasyl said he would present the good and the
bad, which he did, explaining there was no unemployment and the literacy,
healthcare, and opportunities for women all got better. But he spent more time on the negative,
talking about the land-taking and suppression.
He said if you ask someone whether things were better under communism,
it depends on who you asked: His mother’s
family thought so, but his father’s side didn’t since they had their property
taken at the start. After the fall, when
people looked at the records of the secret police it turned out 1 in 4 citizens
was giving them info on friends and family.
We met some more people on the tour, including Chelsea from Australia
who was about to move to Mozambique.
Nobody in the crowd seemed to be a commie lover.
·
We ran into Xianshu again and ate dinner with
her, talking about her life in Switzerland and her parents’ lives in
China. She is 32 and not defensive of
her government but not critical of it either.
She was surprised to hear not everyone in America owns a gun.
·
I’m a little better at reading and writing foreign
languages
than I am at listening and speaking. At
first the Cyrillic script looked like hieroglyphics, but it started to make
sense. Seeing Sofia listed as София (S=C, o=o, f=ф theta,
и=I, and я=N) and other dual-listings helped with the
substitution of letters. But after 3
days I still struggled with “blah-goh-DAH-rya” (thank you) and kept pulling out
my cheat sheet.
Belgrade:
·
We teamed up with a Brazilian guy who was on a
6-month sabbatical and negotiated with a taxi driver to take us together for 2
stops for 10 Euros each. We had to pay
at the bus station to
·
Serbia is the first country we’ve been to with
smoking in the restaurants. We were
worried the bus would have it too but lucked out.
·
Similar to Tony, our waiter, Luka, had spent 3
summers in San Francisco waiting tables and was very sentimental about his time
there. He also spent a semester in
Charlotte for a basketball academy but wasn’t enthusiastic about that stint.
·
I messed up our bus tickets, so we had only a
few hours to explore, in the rain with our hotel a couple of miles from the bus
station. Maybe if we saw more we’d like
it more, but it’s in the bottom half of my places we’ve been so far.
·
We had to pay an exit fee of sorts, 169 dinar
each (about 10 cents) to enter the bus platform. I saw no sign but another American traveler
told Karen he just learned that at the info booth. Just a different approach – maybe a token
amount to keep the platforms from getting too crowded.
Sarajevo:
·
One of my top places.
·
We took two tours, the first a walking tour with
Selma, including a mosque, a Catholic church, an Orthodox church, and a
synagogue. We saw the spot where Franz
Ferdinand was assassinated, somewhat by sheer chance. Selma, as several guides have, warned us to
be careful of pickpockets and I tried to keep my hand in my pocket when my
phone was there. But one woman lost her
phone midway through the tour and Selma gave her advice on what to do next (I’m
guessing on contacting police) – luckily she was with friends, whom I’m
guessing will cover her the rest of the trip as needed.
·
And we went on a second tour, with Armin, on the
war, which was 1991-1995. The focus on
the Tunnel of Hope, dug by volunteers in 6 weeks working around the clock. It ran from the airport, which stayed under
UN control, to the city, and kept Sarajevo alive while was it was under siege
for over 1,400 days by Serbian paramilitary.
Armin was clearly a fan of Tito, who died in 1980, although Armin was
born in 1996. There was a woman from
eastern Ukraine on the tour, who teared up during part, possibly when hearing
the UN had imposed a no-fly zone (Milsovic didn’t have nukes.) They went almost 4 years without power, heat,
or water.
·
We visited the middle of the bobsled run, which
was graffiti-covered (like a lot of Europe) and made me wonder if it could be
put back into service as a tourist attraction.
·
We visited the Children in War Museum, which
started as an author’s memories of being a child during the war, grew to
interviews with others who were, too, then included short descriptions and
artifacts, such as a doll a girl of 11 carried with her to the basement during
the artillery barrages or a pair of jeans a girl’s brother was wearing when he
was killed.
·
We talked a bit with Mustafa, the hotel desk
clerk, who had a brother who went to school in the Midwest as a refugee but
moved back several years ago.
·
My dad’s favorite Internet cafĂ©, Clik, is no
longer in business.
·
We had to pay an exit fee of sorts, 169 dinar
each (about 10 cents) to enter the bus platform in Belgrade and then again in
Sarajevo. It’s not posted but the second
time was easier to figure out that was the case. We also paid a few bucks extra for the 3rd
piece of luggage (via Flixbus we paid in advance.)
·
About halfway on the bus ride to Sarajevo, we
pulled over and I figured that was a good time to use the bathroom onboard. The driver didn’t agree and got really
pissed, yelling a lot of things I couldn’t understand but the gist was that I
should use the bathroom in the restaurant.
It wasn’t clear why, but he was really pissed. Luckily, I simply said back to him “OK, but I
don’t know what the big deal is” in a calm voice. Maybe someone will explain to me before this
Europe trip is over.
·
Great food in Sarajevo. And beautiful views, although it was foggy
most of the time.
·
I think 70% of the buildings in town were destroyed. There were still buildings scarred by bullets
and shrapnel. Pope John Paul II visited
soon after the war and said the church would rebuild but asked them to leave a
corner damaged as a reminder. To
oversimplify, it was mostly Christians shelling mostly Muslims.
Misc:
·
From what I’ve seen Europe has few double-hung
windows that slide up and down like we do in the US. Instead they have big ones with no mullions
(the pane dividers) and can tilt open from the top about 5 degrees or swing
open. But I don’t think we’ve seen a
screen yet and luckily only a few bugs.
·
Google maps and Apple maps aren’t as reliable in
Eastern Europe but still make travel so much easier that it would be without
them, especially to find public transportation options.
·
NASA is a fashion trend in Europe. Maybe it is in the US, too and I never
noticed.
·
Most public restrooms charge to use the bathroom
– usually about 50 cents each.
·
Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia are in the
EU but outside the Schengen area, meaning we have to go through border control
for each (unlike, say, Germany-Poland) and requires local currency for
each. Doable but makes me appreciate the
ease of travel among the EU countries.
·
If I ever travel Europe alone, I’ll stay in
hostels, which seem to be the best place to meet other travelers.
·
My laptop is heavy but I’m glad I have it –
using my phone for everything, including typing notes, wouldn’t work for me.
·
Balkans are tall – Boz would be above average
here but wouldn’t stand out as much.
