Blog Archives

For the first time in a long time I became so enthralled by the experiences that I completely forgot about the 20 lbs of camera gear on my back. You want to see it, looks like you’ll have to go yourself ; )

Of Bosnia I can say little, as we spent so brief a time, really. A return trip is in order. This time, little old ladies in headscarves pushing wheelbarrows down the road, dogs chasing our car (or possibly their reflection in our car) from a stoplight for two blocks in Brcko, snow in March, beautiful back roads (Caley behind the wheel kept me from overdoing the twisties), an international border in the middle of town, tv variety shows where everyone speaks v-e-r-y- c-l-e-a-r-l-y, old men wear biker leather, and scantily dressed women dance when no music is playing… cool old men completely unphased by girl jumping out of rental car to ask for map help, crossing a border we thought was a border only to realize it wasn’t, signs that could only indicate people running away from explosions, land mines in the river (fortunately unstepped on by us. even if the signs weren’t in english they were pretty self explanatory), a border guard saying “Brcko, for tourism??”…. I can only imagine what I’ll run into given more than 24 hours

Of Serbia there is of course more.

There’s no real way to tell if the people of Serbia were so friendly because we had been expecting problems, or if they really were just some of the most amazing people on the planet. It is entirely possible that our overall reception improved via our license plate. Hungarian as it might have been, it proudly displayed as its first three letters the name of the #1 beer in Serbia : LAV.

Writing proper will be attempted next week, but for the moment I feel the need to enjoy what’s left of my vacation. Though fundage dictates a cessation of travel, budapest remains a mere train ride away, and yet is not home. Yet. ; )

For now, a few moments to last ::

All You Need is LAV, do da do da doo…
Stand up! No, just stand up!
Don’t sleep, just drink!
Ken Leeee, Tulibu dibou douchou…..
Rakija! (oof)
3 for Serbia!
The Hroners
almost hitting a buck while doing 130km/h on a road more pothole than pavement
the Italian gypsy
beers in the never-ending planted fortress
Serbia v America tennis, Serbia v America beer bags
small town disco where everyone stood talking in a circle right in the middle of the dance floor
‘Bruce Lee’’s house on wikimaps
finding our host by going to the first cafe we saw and having a random guy get in the car and take us there
finding our town by asking and praying, since our host said it was too complicated to explain
singing in fluent Serbian, with the help of a little Lav
Mr. Mafia, aka Kristijan’s Hungarian Grandfather
free hugs campaign in downtown Novi Sad, with children
t-shirts commemorating every gathering
visiting a castle where the master of the house had filled the swimming pool with milk, and kept ostriches
every one of Kristijan’s friends showing up to visit the castle, even though they’ve probably seen it a million times before
getting lost on the way out of Hungary, even when both of us knew we were going the wrong way
getting lost in Novi Sad
whispering on the street for the first hour before we realized how cool the people were and just exactly how silly we were being
and of course Backo Gradiste, because the middle of nowhere can be a beautiful place…

Ziveli to our impeccable host Kristijan, and his constant companions (and between house phone, cell, sms and messenger I really do mean constant) Szila, Bruce Lee (aka Dida, aka Vladamir), and the rest of the infamous Hroners of Backo Gradiste

Living half an hour outside budapest, not entirely horrible.

Woke up obscenely early (for a saturday) in order to meet up with some couchsurfers who’d arranged a personal tour of the Zoltan Kodaly Museum. One couchsurfer’s mother had attended the school as a child; another went to primary school with the curator. The curator, in gorgeous English, showed us around the prior residence of this composer / conductor, a home so bursting with life that one rather expected the man to emerge from the leather-bound library at any moment and offer up a cup of tea.

Down the street we popped into a modern art gallery (check out artists : Bodor Lilua, Garami Richard, Nemeth Marcell), then onto the metro for a trip past Pest tourist central to a lovely fresh pasta restaurant I likely wouldn’t have found without the insider guidance of cs locals. I really can’t stress enough, even if you’re not the sort to have random people on your couch, the value of showing off your city to those who can’t possibly know it alone in the week or day they might have (and of course the same when you’re the traveller!). Not only did I get a great culture tour this morning, but I came away with piles of Budapest tips and Hungarian insight, word of the Nostalgia Exhibit (communist propaganda and the like) and the day they close a circuit of roads for rollerskating, and likely a teacher of Hungarian cooking (amusingly enough, an Austrian).

As the group split up for the afternoon, Thom and I decided to take advantage of the gorgous sun that had broken through to stroll down the riverside then along the island in the middle of the danube, eating cotton candy and laughing just a bit at the piles of people on bicycles build for two, or four. We cooled off with a beer at a lovely blue plastic table facing Buda, then split at the bridge where I headed for the train. Forty minutes later, eleven hours since departure, I arrived home smiling and exhausted in that I-just-had-a-fantastic-travel sort of way.

A little something I probably shouldn’t publicize : I inadvertantly paid for a grand total of none of my public transportation today. My HEV station doesn’t have a ticket office, so I have to buy on the train. This morning on the way in no conductor appeared. Hmm. On the first metro trip I bought a couple tickets as the car rolled in – the conductor literally handed my change through the door just before it closed. What I’d forgotten was that the punch machines are in fact not on the train but in the station, and as he hadn’t punched one at purchase I ended up with two ready to use tickets (well, provided there wasn’t a checker at the other end, which there wasn’t). On the way home I bought a ticket at the office (a steal at 430, considering a single ride no transfer ticket for the city is an outrageous 230) and watched others to see if/where to punch it. No one did, so I hung onto it, figuring there’d be a conductor. Yeah, there wasn’t one.