December 15, 2015

Falling in love with Lebanese Hospitality

There are 4 million people in Lebanon, and more than 10 million Lebanese abroad, and I had met many on my trips in West Africa, Brazil, and the Balkans. They are beautiful, educated, worldly people, and most everyone speaks Arabic, English and French fluently, switching between them without hesitation.

on top of Byblos’ citadel

My favourite guy was Assaad, who I met in Accra 2 years ago, but he was still in Ghana when I arrived in Beirut. But his mother Randa was in town, who I had also met in Ghana, and she took me in like a daughter. I spent 2 days with her, and we were more productive in these two days than the other 6 I spent in Lebanon. Randa took me from Beirut to Byblos, a town famous for its long history, old citadel, and beautiful Christmas Decorations. We drove through the churches of Batroun and nearly drove her car into the walls of the narrow old city, and then returned to Byblos to see the Christmas lights at night. We stayed at her beachhouse nearby, ate breakfast in Tripoli, and spent the next day preparing her home furniture and decoration store for opening day. Then we drove into Kadisha valley, passing the town where Assaad grew up, the home of Khalil Gibran in Bsharri, and finally the snow peaked mountains near the cedar forests. We ate lunch and took some hitchhikers back with us to town, and then went to the best hairdresser in Lebanon for a haircut and blowdry. All of these things being standard Lebanese fare.

at BO18

Randa introduced me to her friend, a gorgeous and famous singer who took me to the infamous BO18 80’s nightclub with her gay best friend. She lent me clothes to fit in and the bar gave out fedora hats, so this plus my new stylish hair cut had me feeling better than ever. It also helped to have a gay guy to grind on all night, they’re always the best dance partners.

The first snow in Kadisha valley

I couchsurfed the rest of my time with Ziad, who also treated me with inexplicable kindness. He slept on the couch, and I moved into the king sized bed in the master bedroom. His best friend, who fed us the best sandwiches in Beirut from his sandwich shop, also stayed with us, and I met many of his other friends on our outings for food, drinks, or partying (and there was SO. MUCH. GOOD. FOOD!). They smoked like chimneys and knew the lyrics to every old-school rap song I could think of, and noone ever let me pay for anything.

Jeita cave

I spent maybe one day alone, being a proper paying tourist, to the Jeita caves. They were an underground marvel of stalagmites and stalactites, and parts of it I visited on a boat on the underground river. I wanted to take a bus back but wasn’t sure if there was one, so I asked the only bus parked in the parking lot if he was going to Beirut. He didn’t speak English, but the woman beside him spoke a few words of French and I understood that I could go with them. When I got on the bus, there were a few sleeping children and eventually the bus filled with women coming out of the caves. It was a family trip, a bus full of mothers, daughters, cousins and grandmas, and some of them bellydanced in the isles the entire 1 hour journey back to Beirut while one of the younger girls played a drum. I was fed bananas and chocolate and coffee and chips and I really didnt want to get off after they invited me to finish their family trip with them. But, all good things must come to an end, and I wasn’t ready to leave Lebanon either, but I took my flight to Jordan with a pang of sadness for all the hospitality I knew would have to wait for next time.

November 21, 2015

A Gypsy Summer in Bulgaria

The first nights of frost had come in Skopje, and walking out in the morning onto crunchy green grass was a good reminder of coming winter. But the days were still bright and sunny, and by the time I reached Bulgaria, even the nights started to be warmer. The leaves had nearly all fallen, leaving only a few dots of gold in the now brown forest, but the season had now become a gypsy summer. It’s the time of year when all the branches are bare, the fields turn gold, and snow should start falling, but instead a warm wind brings back summer days of 20`c. People walk around in tshirts, and we share a small look of confusion when the sun starts to go down before 5 and the temperature drops 10 degrees in a matter of minutes.

Summer in Varna

There were other unusual things that happened to make Bulgaria more memorable. My first night in Sofia was spent couchsurfing in the office of some international volunteer organization. We visited the underground bar of an art hostel where everyone was higher than a kite and even my sober sense of normality started to feel abnormal. The next day I took a free walking tour, where my guide was more excited about the new subway system than the Roman ruins they destroyed to build it. A traveler I had met first in Albania was randomly on the tour as well.

Clearing out thousands of years of history for a subway

My next couchsurf host welcomed me to his place, fed me food and wine, gave me his keys, and over the next 2 days I probably only saw him for these 10 minutes. But he had another couchsurf guest and we hung out the whole time, exploring nearby Rila and Rila monastery, and got ourselves invited to Gabrovo by an actress we met thru other couchsurfers. It was a 2 hour drive to Gabrovo, where her theater was, and then she gave us the keys to her car and apartment for nearly 2 days while she practiced for her play’s debut. We drove to nearby Veliko Tarnovo, a relatively touristic destination, and the Bulgarian hitchhikers were very confused with the role reversal of tourists driving locals. We also visited the most impressive Soviet building ruins I’ve ever seen, the so-called spaceship or UFO monument called Buzludzha which sits on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere, with only equally creepy windmills reaching high up into the sky nearby.

The UFO building Buzludzha

I took a food tour in Sofia, where I learned that Bulgarians are very proud of their cuisine, which is very focused on yogurt, and I was lucky not to be lactose intolerant traveling there (but unlucky to not like dill). They have a type of corner store or convenience shop called ‘squat’ shops, which are in the basement of buildings and you must squat down to a window at your feet to see inside and talk to the salesperson. There they fixed shoes, sold books, and even baked pastries. Bulgarians have an equivalent headshake to the Indian booble head, where yes kind of means no and no means yes, so I had to ignore people’s “da da da’s” while they shook their heads from left to right, forgetting body language and focusing on the word I knew meant yes.

On top of the Bulgarian Soviet friendship monument

The final cherry on the top came with my last couchsurf host, Juan, who was appointed to me by the sort of couchsurf ambassador in Varna who took me to another Soviet monument in ruins, perched on the top of a hill overlooking the black sea. This one was not as impressive, but just as dark and ominous, since we could climb into it and ontop of the larger-than-life concrete soviet soldiers built into the monuments. My last night was spent eating Turkish food that Juan from Spain cooked, and after I taught him the basics of Argentinian tango… all this in a little Bulgarian city.

March 30, 2015

Spring days in Taipei

Before moving on to the next destination, people always ask where I’m going next. When Taiwan was the answer, I always got a positive respone. People love this island and Taipei city, so I grew more and more excited to go. I had stalked the weather forecast for a while and knew it’d be around 20`C, and that the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom. I didn’t expect it to be so humid , and sometimes windy, so the 20` quickly felt like 10` since the sun rarely shone through. It’s a weird sky in Taipei, gloomier than a London gray, but not as thick as Delhi brown. It didn’t feel foggy or polluted, but the sky was heavy and no pictures turned out well in that kind of lighting.

Gray skies over Tamsui

Still I loved Taipei too. It’s always intimidating traveling in a country whose language you cant speak and alphabet you can’t read, but most people knew enough words in English to help me out when I needed to communicate. It’s a tourist friendly city to visit, with cheap and regular public transport taking you anywhere you’d want by train, bus or free bicycle. There was free wifi nearly everywhere, one which was connected to my passport number. There was a free youth pass for people aged 18-30, which is so much better than the European under 26 rule (says the newly turned 28 year old). There was free hot and cold water stations in most public areas or tourist attractions, and every temple, palace and museum I visited was free except for the Taipei 101 tower top floor.

one of Taipei’s many night markets

The number of markets, and different types, was overwhelming. There were tourist markets, night markets, fish markets, flower markets, and jade markets, all spread out all over the city, and each and every market sold delicious cheap street food and a hundred varieties of teas. You could buy soup, wontons, dimsum, tempura, meat on a stick, sweet buns, fried noodles, Nutella crepes, or a whole squid on a stick for $3. Sometimes the market was hidden down a pedestrian alley, and sometimes it was in the middle of the road, but they were always crowded and easily reachable.

the pretty gardens at Chiang Kai-Shek plaza

If you’ve ever been to Chinatown in Manhattan, imagine an entire city of Chinatowns and you’ve got Taipei. My favourite part of Taipei was all the shiny streets and lights balanced out by huge parks and green spaces. Even the garbage trucks were pleasant, since they drove thru the streets playing Fur Elise on a loudpseaker, which reminds me of the icecream trucks in Canada that play The Entertainer. The highlight of my visit was when the Taipei Symphony Orchestra gave a free concert in Daan Park, where they played only the most famous and beautiful songs on an open-air stage. That was the one day it actually hit 20` so it was warm enough to sit outside, but a little bit of rain cancelled the last few songs and I biked home along the streets which turned into mirrors reflecting all the shiny bright city lights. I got a little too into it when I skidded to late for a stop light and crashed my bike into the curb… the bike survived, but not quite my knee. I also think I got lice from my couchsurfer’s dog, but atleast they’ve both left little scars that tell a good story.

March 13, 2015

Saipan & Guam

When you’re in Guam, everyone tells you to skip Saipan, and when you’re in Saipan, everyone asks why you’d bother going to Guam. I don’t understand why there’s so much hate between them, since they’re really similar, very close to eachother, and share a common Chamorro heritage, but its just as confusing how they’re not the same country when one is an American unincorporated territory and the other one an American commonwealth. They both have a lot of American military, mostly navy guys affectionately called ‘ship guys’ in Saipan. Guam has a fully operational naval base and air force, teeming with weapons, planes, helicopters, ships, submarines and muscly guys.

the lovely Hyatt beach in Garapan

I didn’t see or feel much of the military presence, but both my hosts were navy guys. Dale was a rescue swimmer and just finishing up his 4 year contract on Guam, so we celebrated that and my birthday with a bucket of beers on the beach. My other host was a 40-something year old retired navy guy, and now spends his time scuba diving and working at a scuba dive shop.

me and Kevin drinking from our sippy cups on Managaha island

In Saipan I stayed with couchsurfers who worked at the hospital, but they were all from mainland America and still acted like the probably did as freshmen in university. Kevin was always RTR, ‘ready to rage’ – his reference to any sort of drinking or dancing; his roomate was a retired Special ops military guy who took me out to a rotating restaurant (housed in the previous Nauru embassy from back in the golden days) and popped champagne on the beach for me; and his best friend took me on a sunset dinner cruise for my birthday that I had to carry him home from (it was all you can drink screwdrivers and he was finished before sunset). Needless to say we raged together and with half of Saipan, and I acquired alot more party friends along the way. Patty was bat shit crazy, in the best kind of way, and cooked us the most amazing spread of chamorro food. I had lunch dates with her and with another doctor I met who got drunk after one sip of rose. We had brunch with bottomless mamosas at the Hyatt, and toured the islands tourist attraction (most of them being kind of morbid Japanese/American conflict points during WWII).

Patty and her brother join me for yet another beach day

In addition to some sun and sand, I felt like Saipan was the Vegas of the pacific, not just for me but all of mainland asia, since downtown Garapan has more Chinese, Japanese and Korean shops and signage than anything else. It’s a raging resorty destination for alot of sunshine seekers, and pampers well with spas and restaurants for honeymooners to love. I had my 21st birthday in Vegas, and celebrating my 28th birthday in Saipan will be just as memorable. But maybe its time to grow up a little for the next one – Im getting too old for this kind of raging. (*thank you Kevin for a 5 day hangover!)

March 1, 2015

Yap, Micronesia

The country Micronesia is a group of 4 main islands, Kosrae, Chuuk/Truk, Pohnpei, and Yap, and are still sometimes referred to as the Caroline islands. They are not atolls, but actual islands, the Jurrasic park kind of islands, tall and big and lush, spread out long and far between Palau and the Marshall islands. The only way to get to these islands is with United Airlines, who has a complete monopoly on Micronesia, and only connects them with cumbersome little island hopper flights. So, if you want to go from Majuro, Marshall Islands, to Palau, like I did, I had to stop at every Micronesian airport, except Yap (which came after Palau). The only thing I knew about Yap before going was that they used to (and still today) use stone money from Palau to settle disputes and mark wealth. The bigger the stone, and the more men whose lives were lost at sea bringing it back to Yap, the more its worth.

a traditional Yapese house and some stone money around it

Yap was a pleasant surprise, maybe my favourite Micronesian island, but the one I spent least time on. Because of the United flight schedule of only one flight a week in each direction, I could stay 3 or 10 days, and being this close to the end of a 6 month trip means I dont have much choice other than rushing through 3 days. I magically found a couchsurfer, the first one since Samoa 6 islands ago, at the very last minute, and this guy Graham was one of only 9 profiles, and randomly studied in Isafjordur, Iceland, for his masters degree three years ago. What an awesome coincidence, except that we probably spent more time talking about Iceland than Yap, but I still got so much more out of Yap in 3 days because of him.

slaughtering lunch

He lived in Tomil village, with a local family and all their Philippino workers (the owner ran a construction business), so it was like living in a village within a village. I arrived in the middle of the night my first day, and we sat up drinking rum and eating smoked fish with our fingers until I succumbed to a food coma in the little blue treehouse that was my ‘couch.’ The next morning I woke up to the sound of pig squeals, which continued for a few minutes until the Philippino’s finally had her tied down well enough to slit her throat. She was then roasted in a sealed oven of burning coals and served for lunch, including pigs head bits soaked in pig blood – which happens to taste much better than it sounds.

the beach house in Maap

The food kept up to this standard throughout my stay, with boiled crayfish dinners and midnight snacks of fish soup. I only ate at 2 restaurants – Oasis, which felt kind of like an Irish pub meets pirate tavern, where I had a super American-styled burger and fries, and once at Village View Hotel up north in Maap, where the okonomiyaki was better than I’d had in Japan (its like a pizza with en egg/potato pancakey crust instead of dough).

the women prepare for their sitting dance

Graham took me to Maap because him and his friends share a beach house there. It was a tiny shack on stilts, with electricity run over on an extension chord from the neighbours. There was no toilet but a shower, but of course the sea served both purposes just fine. I only wish I could have stayed there for 3 more days, since it felt like the type of place you would automatically fall into meditation just from being there, totally alone and relaxed without a care in the world.

practicing for Yap day

But luckily I also spent some time in Graham’s village, where upcoming Yap day (March 1st) sent every man, woman and child into preparation for dances, costume making, or more pig slaughters. We went around the villages to watch some of the dance practices, and the women’s sitting dance was so touching. It was a line of nearly 30 topless women, ranging from 2-60 years old, wearing beautiful bark skirts, green leaves and colourful headresses. They sang these sweet and somber songs while sitting cross legged and dancing with their arms and heads, and watching them gave me goosebumps. The men’s dance was a little more commanding (and had twice the number of men), erotic even (their skirt is tied and hung to resemble a big ball and penis), as they thrust their hips around and yelled staccato words at the tops of their lungs. The mixed dance was the most technical one, when men and women of different heights, ages and skill danced together with bamboo sticks, synchronizing their dancing and singing with hitting their sticks together. Graham participated in the men’s dance, the only white guy, but they cover their bodies in tumeric-infused coconut oil so everyone just looked really yellow and greasy from far away.

October 31, 2014

Bougainville

I had heard of this island state, but always heard “Bogan Ville,” which made sense since it was Australian occupied for so long, but didn’t add up why there would only be bogans. But, its actually named after some French guy Captain Louis-Antoine de Baugainville who mapped it for the first time a long long time ago but never set foot on land when he sailed up the east coast of the island in 1768. It was the burial ground of many Japanese during WWII, while Australians and Americans also left some dismal footprints, and It just came out of a bloody “crisis,” a war waged between Bouganvillieans and the Australian over a ludicrous mining industry that took copper and lime-stone from the land without proper land-rights compensation. After being discovered in 1964 and thousands of people and millions of dollars were invested in the mine, Panguna mine was shutdown in 1989, and a civil war broke out as Papua New Guinea’s richest town became a black hole, deserted by the government and declared an independent republic in 1990. Some 12 years later, Papua New guinea recognized Bougainville’s claims to autonomy, and now that peace has been restored, only the burned-down remnants of Arawa, the mining town now squatted by locals, and a few road blocks to the mine still remind one of what actually happened.

Bougainvillians are usually black all over, but these kids have some red or brown blood, with light hair, and oh so cute

I flew from Rabaul to the auntonomous state of Bougainville, where a smaller island north of the main island called Buka with a city of the same name has remained largely unscathed and now full of expats (they say its one of the fastest growing cities in Papua, along with Kokopo). I stayed with some Kiwi girls, who volunteer for the Volunteer Service Abroad, and also the head guy for Australian Aid there. He comically explained to me its not fair to be white in Bougainville, since everyone can always seem him at night but he always jumps out of his socks everytime someone passes him and says “Evening!” and he can barely make out the whites of their eyes right beside him. They really are as black as night, and one of the independence slogans I saw for Bougainville was “Black is beautiful.” They call other people, who aren’t jet-black, brown or red, which I nearly could have resembled as far as skin tone, but since I didn’t have the fluffy hair, I was white as white. Some of the super-black skin had brown or red hair, which looked almost blonde in the contrast, but I haven’t really figured out why. It cant just be sun-bleaching, since I’ve never seen that in West Africa, but it could be genetic, or even a sign of malnutrition.

I took a PMV from the north of the island accross the Buka passage to Arawa, a 4 hour journey, and made the mistake of not peeing on our pee break. So when I finally got the courage to ask the driver to stop for me, he nearly broke a sweat trying to find a place, since everywhere he slowed down to check out, he’d speed off again saying “no no, plenty people.” I couldn’t see a soul around, and quite frankly I thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but finally he liked one patch of jungle more and let me out to pee. The woman beside me came to guard watch, and after 3 mosquito bites on my rear end, I returned to the car relieved.

I couchsurfed with a german guy who works for Geneva’s International Committee of the Red Cross, and his project there is fascinationg. They’re helping families find missing persons (which are mostly bodies in unlocated mass-graves) to facilitate the process of closure to many people’s grieving. The energy in Arawa made me strangely aware of this unfinished business, with the spooky energy of a destroyed town and its forgotten history never properly dealt with. People were peaceful, but also incredibly timid, shy and quiet, their inaudible voices rising only out of a whisper if you were more than 5 m away and heard a friendly greeting of “abynoon” (pidgin for “good afternoon”).

Toby took me snorkeling at one of the most beautiful coral reefs I’ve ever seen, and if you could ignore the sunken car batteries and floating plastic, you’d almost believe you were creeping up onto the Great Barrier reef. More than that, it was on a totally deserted beach, backed only by a few private fwellings, so keeping with their very sensitive land-use rights, we paid for our snorkel with a few beetel nuts to the land owner.

A Solomon Islander/Bougainvillian couple gave me Fanta and icecream before our boat journey together from the market in Buin to the airport in Balalae

Eventually I ended my tour of Bougainville on the southern end, where the town of Buin is closer to nearby Solomon Islands than Arawa. It took another 3 hour PMV to get to the end of the island, and while I lucked out with the passenger seat up front, the rest of the men sat in the open-air cab of the jeep, hooting and hollering the whole way. I’m not sure if they were screams of joy or just normal greetings, but all the passerby’s hollered back and the fireflies seemed to twinkle more in response.

October 21, 2014

South-east Asia to the South Pacific, via Australia

There are only 2 direct flights out of Dili, the one from Bali that I took to get in, and the one to Darwin I took to get out. Landing in Australia was only a 90 minute flight, but years and worlds away from Timor. The last time I was down under was 2007, when I lived in Brisbane, and the North Territory is totally different to the east coast. It’s gotten a lot more expensive, according to my memory of the average price of a meat pie and gingerbeer, and the Australian dollar is also stronger, so I was happily couchsurfing to avoid the $30/night hostels filled with German teenagers.

Maguk Pool at Kakadu

I wanted to go from Timor to Papua, since they’re sort of geographically contingent, but of course that doesn’t matter to airlines. If I wanted to do that, I’d have to go to the Indonesian side of West Timor, fly to the Indonesian Paupa, and cross overland to Papua New Guinea and take a handful of days to travel overland to Port Moresby. Or, I could fly to Bali and pay another $35 visa on arrival and $20 international departure tax just to use Denpasar. But, the easiest and probably most enjoyable way to cross from South-East Asia to the South Pacific is through Australia.

I didn’t spend much time in Darwin, but landed on a Friday and spent one roaring night out with my host Nick. In our brief introduction chat, he suggested Kakadu national park as a place to spend the weekend, since he had never been there either but had a jeep and the weekend off. So I spent Friday afternoon rushing around Darwin trying to take in some of the shops and sights, and made it as far as the post office to send some post cards and birthday gifts. I saw the man-made beach, but didn’t make it down the 80 steps to the crocodile-free lagoon.

My couchsurfing accomodation

To get to Port Moresby, I coulnd’t fly from Darwin, so I took a 2.5 hr internal flight to Cairns. I once drove there from Brisbane, and remembered the low-lying square blocks around the CBD which reminded me of an old Western town – just replace the cowboys with European backpackers and swinging-door saloons with tourist booking offices.

I couchsurfed with Willy Chu, whose name made me want to break out into singing Beyonce, at an apartment that slightly resembled a resort in Bali. I ate some pies and actually made it to the crocodile-free lagoon there, and Willy took me hiking to a freezing cold water hole where we could swim under waterfalls without worrying about crocodiles.

Willy Chu at Bahana Gorge

June 10, 2014

Lithuania loves Iceland, Basketball, and Dill

Trakai Castle

Iceland was the first country to recognize Lithuania´s independence from the former Soviet, and they´re still really happy about that even though everyone else also followed suit. There´s a street in the Old Town named Iceland street, and it has a plaque commemorating the event on February 11, 1991. It´s not a very long street, but its packed with bars and nightclubs, so the street turns into party central until the wee hours every morning.

I couchsurfed in Vilnius with a tiny Lithuanian artist, who especially loves Iceland, and we spent most of our time together talking about Icelandic music and drinking Lithuanian beer. I met some of her friends and then collectively we made more friends, and one of them was working at a Medieval festival in Trakai, the former Lithuanian capital and an important medieval town. We went horse back riding there, under some strange angel totem poles, and enjoyed the view over the water to Trakai castle while larpers fought with swords nearby.

riding some big horses

It was really summery in Lithuania, my allergies as proof, so I wanted to go to the beach. There´s a coastal town 3 and a half hours away from Vilnius called Klaipeda, but I didn´t realize the Baltic weather would be similar to Reykjavik. It was grey, rainy and barely 12°C, and even the wind started blowing so locals disappeared into the warmth of their houses whiles I wandered around an empty town and a half-stocked market. The actual port was cozy, even in the bad weather, but I was there all alone and wasn´t sure I should hop on the next ferry or just turn around and go back inland.

Kaunas

I decided to take the next bus to Kaunas, the second biggest city in Lithuania, 100km away from Vilnius. The weather improved and so did the number of people, and since it was a Friday night right after the local basketball team had won the National championship, it became a huge crowd, filling the streets and bars, and the skies with fireworks and green smoke. Lithuanians love basketball, more than Americans love NBA, and it must have something to do with the tall people. There aren´t that many, but the ones who are tall, are a lot taller. I also noticed that Lithuanians were all pretty good-looking people, and the grandmas are even cuter than Russian babushkas. I could barely take my eyes of them, which became a problem near the markets, since they all stand or squat on the side of the road holding a handful of either flowers or dill for sale. I don´t know how long it took them to sell one bunch, or how much money they got for it, but I guess it must be one form of retirement that´s working out.

one of the many newlyweds

They also love dill in Lithuania, the smell of it pouring out of every traditional kitchen. Every single produce vendor sold dill, and even though I don´t usually eat it, I made an exception and eventually started to like the taste of it. Lithuanians also love to get married on the first summer Saturday, which was apparently June 7 this year. I saw atleast 20 brides in Vilnius, and every church I passed had rose petals scattered all over the entrance. The limousines and beautiful bridesmaids hid behind every corner, and I actually stopped one local to find out it there was a movie being filmed or if there really were this many weddings that day.

May 25, 2014

From Belgrade to Ljubljana

I wanted to go Bosnia after Belgrade, but the roads were closed. Floods and landslides all over Bosnia and Serbia had forced buses to cancel their routes, and there was no train to Sarajevo. I thought I was having a bad couple of days, but then food trucks and suppliers also couldn’t reach parts of both countries. Electricity outages and flooding made the disaster worse, and Serbia declared a state of emergency. I wanted to stay and help but didn’t know when or how I’d get to Bosnia, so I went to Zagreb instead.

the lower town square of Zagreb

I’ve been to Croatia before, but only around the touristy coast. Zagreb is somewhere landlocked in the middle, halfway between Bosnia and Slovenia, but has been a major settlement for thousands of years with a typical hill-on-the-river kinda setup. Now its split into the medieval upper town, formerly known as Kaptol, and the lower town, filled with larger pedestrian streets and lots of shops. The most interesting attraction was definitely the Museum of Broken Relationships, which displays tokens of people´s break-ups and lost loved ones and the stories behind it. It was really sad, and many that entered left with tears. They consider it some sort of therapy, since everyone has gone through a broken relationship, but it was strange to see how personal things were – one donation was his mother´s suicide note.

I couchsurfed with a Croatian woman who speaks English, French, Russian and Croation (and the related Slavic languages nearby) fluently, plus a handful of 4 or 5 other languages. She was tiny in stature, but got a kick out of driving big trucks (like 18-wheeler big) and hanging out with big, tattooed motorcycle men. I got a kick out of them too; one was half my height and another had an all-white eye. I entered (and forfeited) a drinking competition with one of them, but hope to go back and ride on one of their choppers (or maybe even an 18-wheeler).

traditional Slovenian costume, in front of the pink church

From Zagreb, I took a train to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, which means “beloved” town. It was much smaller, but same set up: a small hill and a river winding around it. There was an old castle fort on the top, looking down over a few narrow streets of red-roofed buildings. There were two beautiful churches, one pastel yellow and the other one bright pink, and the opera house and all the buildings surrounding it were bright yellow. I took a free walking tour and learned mostly facts about poets and architects, since much of the city was built or influenced by the poet Preseren and the Slovenian architect Plecnik.

My couchsurf hosts

I couchsurfed in Ljubljana with a Slovenian guy and his stepson, who were nearly the same height and size with bleached blonde hair but 20 years apart. He was the second guy I met that weekend with only one functioning eye, and I wondered again what its like to ride a bike with no depth perception. He took me on a pedal bike tour on the rain which was a cosy way to first experience the empty town. He has this wonderful idea of expanding couchsurfing into something more than just sharing a roof and a couch, so he shares his kitchen for couchsurfing cooking events. I arrived just as an Indian couple was leaving, and the place still smelled like coriander and curry, I tried some of Marko´s Slovenian cabbage and potatoes, and I made a typical fish and potato dish before leaving. Check out the videos here.

May 5, 2014

The Czech Republic

I think I made it through my whole visit in Czech-land without accidentally referring to Czechoslovakia, but it definitely slipped my mind a few times. Its cumbersome to say ‘the Czech Republic’ every time you ask a question, so I came up with Czech-land which was maybe an equally stupid tourist thing to say.

charming Telč

Czech land is a wonderful land, a green and charming place where summer love is in the air. PDA is out of control here, with frisky couples making out in the central squares and casually having sex in public parks, hidden only by the girl’s flowy skirt and not the broad daylight shining down on their bench of choice.

Karlův most, Charle’s bridge in Prague

My allergies have confirmed that its really summer, but never get in the way of spending more time outside lying in freshly cut grass. There’s so much green space around Brno, the second largest city, and its by far the dog-friendliest city I’ve ever visited. People take everything from toy-dogs in purses to rottweilers yielding teeth guards on public transport and inside the bars and restaurants. Prague had less dogs but a bazillion more tourists, since I ended up there over a long-weekend without knowing it and got lucky enough to find probably the last possible couch on couchsurfing to surf. Every hostel and hotel was fully booked, and the central square in Prague bustled like a circus fair, attended by every nation in Europe to see the bubble blowers, snake charmers and horse carriages parade around. My Czech host was a tango dancer, and we avoided the crowds by spending our nights tangoing and ballroom dancing, where I learned the not-so-significant difference between English and Viennese waltz.

the castle in Lednice

The Czech Republic is a very outdoorsy-kinda place; its popular among the locals to take camping, hiking, climbing, or biking trips around Czech-land, and even horse back riding and yoga is easy to find. This also means people walk around with big, back-packing back packs all the time, so I really felt like I fit in when I was wandering around the train and bus stations lugging my life around. Other things that were popular were not very Czech, like shisha bars, tea, and lemonade that’s usually made without any lemons. They think that if its fruity and carbonated it counts as lemonade, but whatever they want to call, its damn good, home-made stuff. Even more wonderful than that is the fact that vineyards cover the south-east countryside with delicious, affordable wines, and beer is actually cheaper than water. I heard they tried to pass a law against it, stating that beer could not be the cheapest drink on a restaurant menu, but as far as I noticed, this was rarely true.

Punkva cave in Moravsky Kras

My couchsurf host in Brno was not a local, but for a Jewish American guy he spoke pretty good Czech and had a hold on all the restaurants and local food culture (and makes killer bbq’d burgers). We were pretty active too, as I followed him through his various work-out days at yoga and the swimming pool. I met a dutch guy who took me horse back riding on his big dutch warm blood, and I spent all my free time hiking around little Czech villages, churches, castles and caves. The Moravian caves were magical and wonderful for many reasons, although they kind of smelled like bad breath and I never figured out if that was the odour of the cold, underground humidity or the wafts of air leaving the tour guides’ mouth. The more famous Punkva cave included a boat ride on a river through the cave, after standing at the bottom of a 200m sunken-cave hole, and then there was my very own name-sake cave, ‘Kateřinská jeskyně’ which literally translates to ‘Katrin’s cave’. I pretended they knew I was coming, but they didn’t get the joke. They don’t joke much in Czech-land, so I’ve also stopped calling it Czech-land, but if people did smile a bit more and spoke a language that wasn’t impossible, I could easily find myself staying here forever.