Fake Plastic Earth

This past week has been crazy busy and emotional. It’s been stressful wondering where my rent money was/is going to come from, interjected with moments of totally bliss from all the wonderful things I was lucky enough to experience.

Quick recap:

Interviews, bank account checking, slow emotional breakdown, more interviews, new friends, Birthday BBQ, World Cup football watching by default, trains, cars, buses, planes, boats, VENICE, photos, tons of walking[!!], sooo much wine, wedding, crying, blissing out, more interviews, BBQ, more wine and finally sleep.

This is what it looked like in slow motion:

I met up with Nick, the birthday boy, on the train from London to Whitchurch. It was above 30c and, apparently, I chose THE hottest train car available. We bonded by reading dirty jokes off Nick’s iphone and profusely sweating for the hour long journey. Good times!

Mel was the perfect hostess, while Aric manned the BBQ, Nick drank beer [as the birthday boy should] and I tried to make myself useful.

The weather was perfect and the BBQ was really fun. I stuffed myself as one should at such events, content to fall asleep smelling like a campfire.

Note: Aric has magical powers. He was asked to photograph his friend’s wedding in Venice and somehow got me invited as well. Not only was this completely spontaneous, but didn’t cost this poor girl a cent. I’m telling you magical powers.

Before we jumped on a bus to London, to catch our flight at exactly stupid o’clock, we took a stroll through Winchester with Nick and Mel.

Next stop, Venice! I think it deserves it’s own post, don’t you?

~Josie

As I sit cramped on a mini bus heading for Bangkok, I’m reminded of my least favourite part of traveling, traveling. I haven’t done a ton of “traveling” throughout North America, mostly vacationing, but I’ve taken enough budget airlines, taxi cabs and 16 hour Grey Hound bus rides (from Edmonton/Vancouver) to understand that a certain level of quality is to be expected and (most of the time) delivered. Day one of this trip I decided to throw that all out the window. It’s always best to have the lowest of expectations with these things. As we have migrated from West to Eastern Europe and finally to South East Asia my lowest expectations are more and more frequently not met. However, this is just par for the course, I’m afraid. Most of the time we just pay our (most definitely overpriced) fare and hope to God we make it to our destination. And, with any luck, our back packs will make it, too. Neil and I are pretty good sports about all the nonsense that goes along with budget traveling, but some times it’s just too much. Most of our journeys have included one or more of the following pleasures that will be burned in my memory forever.

Kids/Babies-Anytime you see the group of people preparing to board, the screaming, seat kicking shit monster is seated directly behind us.

Butting-This applies to all age groups. If there is even the smallest amount of room between you and the service counter someone will push you aside to go first.

Music-Why oh why is music always blasted at full volume at all times? Usually accompanied by a TV playing the corresponding video, and almost always it’s karaoke.

Bodily Fluids/Grooming- Nose picking, nail cutting, nose blowing, teeth picking, open mouth coughing, barfing(!), and flea picking. You name it, it happens. It’s always more appreciated in small compact transportation with no escape.

Talking/Yelling-Why people decide to have very loud very lengthy conversations with their neighbor (or their cell phone) will always baffle me.

Smells-Think of the smelliest food item available, then age it to slow rot and bring it on a bus for lunch. Yum!

Bathroom- If the transport in question has a so called “bathroom”, you better REALLY need to go ’cause it usually isn’t worth it. No TP, soap, light, or standing room EVER!

Time Line-Whatever they said X 3

Bitch! Bitch! Complain! Complain! It’s kind of fun thinking of all these ridiculous scenarios, because even at the worst of times I would still rather be holding my pee for hours while collecting baby drool on my lap than showing up for work.

That being said I’ve included our train ride to Istanbul…..

With both overnight trains, Neil and I have opted for a sleeper room. The price is usually quite a bit higher, but it’s so worth it!! Each time we’ve had a private room with a sink, mirror and big window. It makes the trip more of an adventure than a chore. I absolutely love traveling by train, it’s such a novelty. We began in Bucharest, scheduled to go through Bulgaria. We expected to arrive at the Bulgarian/Turkish border around 2:00am. With every border crossing (exclusive of air), there are two stops; one to leave the country and one to enter the next. The whole day goes off without a hitch. Traveling by train is always the easiest. All the passengers are just as excited as you; chatting in the hallway, snapping pictures, enjoying the view. Neil usually has trouble sleeping on trains. I passed out like a light. I think it’s the white noise of the the train along the tracks that does it. As expected, around the 2:00am the conductor screamed for everyone to get up while banging on all the doors. It’s takes about 30 seconds for the border dudes to check our passports, but we sit at the station for 40 minutes waiting for everyone else. Off to the Turkish border.

The conductor started screaming again. Unexpectedly, this time we had to go outside to get our visas. I felt pretty vulnerable standing in jammies, passport in hand, waiting in the cold with a hundred other shivering travelers. This place looked like the end of the world; cold, dark, guys holding machine guns staring at everyone existing the train. Not the place to mess around. There were two lines formed; one to purchase your visa and one to get the visa checked and your passport stamped. As far as we read in our Lonely Planet Guide book, people who are traveling with a passport from anywhere in the EU (which included us) the visa was free when entering from the Bulgarian border. We got to the front of the line, showed our UK passports and……we owed 30 Euros??! What?! Why? We didn’t get an explanation. We only had 20 Euros between the two of us (Yes! We’re stupid). No bank machines. No stores. No nothing. We were going to be left at the Turkish border! I started begging. Seriously. No hesitation. I started asking the other people in the line up for money. What the hell else were we going to do? Freezing cold, stressed. Finally, some French kid heard our desperation and was generous enough to lend us 10 Euros. Yay! We’re not going to be detained at the Turkish border!! We ran at top speed to the visa counter and then to the second window (they were 150 meters apart for each other for some reason). We were the very last kids to get through.

Word to the wise. If you are traveling to Turkey, have enough cash to pay for your visa. I’ve carried more than enough over every border since.

~Josie

It’s not possible to take a train from Sighişoara straight to Istanbul. So, we bought train tickets from Sighişoara to Bucharest and planned to stay in Bucharest one night before heading to Turkey the following day.

As we waited for our train, tickets in hand, looking like keener tourists, a Bucharest train pulls up 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. Confused, we asked the conductor if it was our train. Neil showed him our tickets and the conductor confirmed it was ours. We grabbed our gigantic bags and rushed to the nearest train entrance while he hurried us along. The train barely stopped long enough to let passengers on and off. My last foot just made it on and away we went. It didn’t take long before we started to notice things were a little off. As explained in an earlier post, Northern Romania is very different from Southern Romania. We expected to see backpackers heading to Bucharest, instead we saw older Romanian couples with packed lunches, knitting supplies, wearing home sewn clothing giving us the usual odd stare. We immediately inquired what the end destination of the train was realizing that WE WERE ON THE WRONG TRAIN!! Ahhh! I ran up and down the walkway looking for someone in charge to tell us when the next stop is. No one to be found. A passenger informs us that the train has made little to no stops most of his trip. Not good news. We slowing came to accept our fate; we are heading North and it might be a while. We didn’t really need to be in Turkey at any particular time, but we felt our time in Romania was sufficient and were ready for a new country. We began looking into places to stay and sorting out what we could possibly do once we arrived. Surprisingly enough, 20 mins into our unwanted adventure the train slowed to a stop and we ran off that train as fast as we could, laughing at our stupidity.

After the excitement, we took into account of where we were….no where. Literally. As I sat on a rickety wooden bench, Neil read the name of the town out load. D. U. M. B…The tiny little nothing of a place we arrived in was called “Dumbrăveni“. I couldn’t even make this shit up. We killed ourselves laughing at our situation and started thinking of a plan. We hunted someone down who worked there and used some form of made up sign language to convey where to we needed to go. Finally we managed to purchase a ticket back to Brasov, because, “no train Bucharest”. Womp. But, it was better than nothing.

Slowly people started to show up in the waiting area. Now these people have never seen a tourist before. For some reason we never thought to pull out the camera during this whole mess, but if my eyes could take pictures I would show the you faces of people who honestly thought they were seeing aliens from another planet. Children we’re literally pointing and giggling. Old ladies smiled from a far. Funny stuff. I loved it. It’s rare to be in a place so untouched by modern day. You think the world is so connected and then you’re confronted with the very opposite idea.

So long story long, a train arrives and we can’t believe our eyes. It’s the train we were SUPPOSED to catch, but for some reason it was 45 minutes late. We hopped on with huge(!) grins from ear to ear. The conductor does his rounds checking everyone’s tickets and all is well. We crack the cold beers stashed in our bags and let the train take us to Bucharest.

Because we didn’t take any pictures related to this post, I’m including pictures of the cute kitties and puppy that live at the Blue Beach Resort (where we are now). Introducing, Yoda, Smigel and Dude!

~Josie

Our last day in Brasov we took the tram to the top of the local mountain. I can’t remember how much it cost, but I’m going to guess cheap; probably a dollar.

The view was incredible. It made the hike to the towers seem like nothing.

With such a small city to tour around, we were bound to bump into the same couple of tourists now and again. Funny enough, we happen to run into the same group of Croatian guys everywhere we went. They even stayed in our exact dorm room at our hostel. Naturally we made friends. And, of course we ran into them at the top of the mountain. They offered to take a picture of us at the look out point. I think they must have taken photography tips from Nathan ’cause they jokingly snapped all the pictures at every moment EXCEPT when we were ready for the photo. I think these turned out pretty good, regardless.

We spotted a church with an amazing looking graveyard from the look out point. We made sure to check it out.

The graveyard looked abandoned, but a sweet old lady showed us the way in.

This was the eerie Transylvania that we were looking for. Even though it was broad daylight, I’ve never felt more haunted. Not a soul was in sight. Most of the graves were overgrown slowly becoming entities with personalities all their own.

Our time in Brasov was exactly what I hoped for. Next, a short train to Zarnesti for some serious small town action and a little bit of nature.

~Josie

Transylvania was the perfect jump back into our Eastern European trip. Like I mentioned in a previous post, it’s one of those places I thought I would only read about. Bucharest was fun, but I was more interested in seeing the small Gothic towns of Romania. Brasov was our first stop.

We flew into Bucharest from the Netherlands and took a train headed North.

Our 2.5 hour train ride turned into 7 hours. Hardly anyone spoke English and the only info we could get was ‘accident’. We had a lot of time to kill.

Crazy 8 Count Down

Day one didn’t go past noon before we found ourselves in a tattoo shop. We were looking to get tattoos in Amsterdam, but it was wickedly expensive. We took a quick browse through their work and decided to just go for it. The shop looked remarkably clean and the Heavy Metal dudes, that ran the shop, seemed stoked to have us. How bad could a ridiculously cheap Transylvanian tattoo really be?

Neil went first

The day a new chapter began

The rest of the day was spent checking out the sites. The first point of interest was Biserica Neagră or Black Church. The latter name was due to a fire in 1689. Unfortunately, like most other churches, they did not allow photography. We snapped some photos of the outside. Still impressive.

We climbed the two watch towers that over looked the city

Both towers had a million rickety old stairs that made me realize just how out of shape I really was. The view was totally worth it.

The city itself didn’t have a lot of typical tourist sites. It didn’t need to. Just being there was the experience. Most of the streets were cobblestone surrounded by buildings literally built hundreds of years ago during the Gothic Era.

Literally the weirdest statue ever

Little ‘ol baba’s sold $1 ice cream and homemade crafts in the popular walking square. Flocks of swallows dive bombed tourists enjoying their coffee in one of many cafes along the main walking street. The smell of fresh popcorn filled the air; only $0.50 a bag.

I loved it! This was the Romania I was looking for; trapped in time. Now all I needed was Dracula…..

I knew little to nothing about Serbia, but our new found friends Max and Will talked about how cheap it was to stay and eat there, so we thought, why not?! We bought the Eastern Europe Lonely Planet and read up on it. Seemed interesting enough and we had tons of time to kill. So we ventured away from the beaches for a little city action.

From Montenegro we hopped on a 12 hour bus ride up to Belgrade. The bus was almost empty and air conditioned! Great start for the next chapter on our trip. Everything was peachy until about 8 hours in when our bus broken down in the middle of no where.

Not exactly ideal, but soon enough another bus pulled up almost full to the brim. With just enough room for a couple skinny Canadians, we squeezed on the sweaty bus. Little did we know that there was yet another stop on the route and even more people got on the bus. There wasn’t enough seats for them so they stood in the aisle. For almost 4 hours we had kids screaming and kicking the back of our seats, people eating, talking, sweating, all cramped on this hilarious bus ride heading north. We finally arrive long after dark, I’ve never been so happy to get off a bus.

Neil is captain navigator again. We wander towards our hostel, The Eye of Belgrade, in search of food.

You seeing a pattern? I feel kind of like a cave women always in search of something to eat. In our case we are always looking for cheap and somewhat “healthy” food to eat. Ahahaha Good luck team!

We stop at the very first decent looking kebab shop. And, it’s BRILLIANT!! What a treat for us starving kids! All be it not the healthiest option, but so bloody tasty and pretty cheap; $12 for two huge doners and a drink each. We made a mental note to make a second visit to this place. We stuff ourselves with meaty garlicky goodness and hike up to the hostel.

The next morning started off with a huge breakfast at Biblioteque.

The decor of the restaurant was really fun. It was like an old library (hence the name) there were shelves full of books available for people to pick up and read while they ate.

Terrible service, as usual for Eastern Europe, but the food was on point. Typical greasy eggs and bacon; unhealthy and tasty.

I swore I was never going to eat again I was so full.

We realized that it was Monday (who’s really paying attention these days?) and that meant the Museums were all closed. Instead, we window shopped and adventured around the city.

Like Lonely Planet described, Belgrade was not a beautiful city. It was kind of a mix of communist and slightly more modern architecture. The sun was shining and the main shopping/cafe area was buzzing with people happily enjoying the day.

There was tons of graffiti everywhere!

We accidentally stumbled upon the Citadel and had a bit of fun.

The Military Museum had tons of tanks and paraphernalia all around the outside.

War is fun!

Randomly throughout the city center we saw clay art sculptures.

Some of them were quite cool. We even caught a shot of the guy who was making them.

That night we caught a movie. For two admissions, two BEERS (!), popcorn and a water it was $10. Unbelievable.

Also, this was the most interesting theater I’ve ever been in. Every screening theater had a classic movie star theme and fun statues from tons of other films decorated the lobby.

Definitely worth a second visit. We saw the new Harry Potter movie and Bruno. Both were played in English with Serbian subtitles.

The third day we finally visited the Museum properly. The military clothing and fatigues were the most interesting. The crazy outfits that men fought in decades ago are really outrageous. Unfortunately, they were all behind glass so all our pictures had major glare.

With one more stop at the infamous kebab shop we were on our way to Bucharest, Romania.

I was so excited for my very first train ride. We opted for a sleeper car since the train ride was a 16 hour overnight ride. Best idea yet!

Off to Romania!

~Josie