Saturday, December 5, 2015

NEW BLOG ADDRESS

This blog has been moved to www.taylorbf.com
All future posts will be added on the new website, and this site will be taken down in the upcoming months.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Balkan Hospitality

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This post can be found at http://www.taylorbf.com/blog/balkan-hospitality-2/





I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia, after dark and without a clue where I was going, but luckily the guy who gave me a ride was willing to call the person I was staying with, take me into the city center, and drop me off at her apartment. This was the beginning of what would turn out to be a crazy month-long adventure in the Balkans, and this was my first taste of the incredible trust, kindness, and hospitality in the Balkans that fear, selfishness, and negative media seem to have exterminated from the Western world. Throughout my trip I would meet dozens of people who picked me up on the road and drove me out of their way to where I needed to go, saw me with a backpack and invited me into their homes for meals or for a roof to sleep under, and gave me food and drinks for the journey without knowing anything about me or even being able to speak my language. This kind of open trust and lack of suspicion towards strangers is the first thing that struck me as different about the Balkan people (and all of Eastern Europe, really) compared to my experiences in the US and much of Western Europe. It seemed that in the Balkans, there were many people who would immediately trust me and want to help me because they had no reason not to, whereas in Western cultures we are taught to be suspicious of anybody we don’t know until they prove themselves to be trustworthy. It’s a bit sad, really.


My first sleeping pad ran out of space so I gave it to a Syrian refugee who was sleeping on the ground near the Belgrade train station and found a new one to use as a hitchhiking sign

That night I spent at the apartment of the sister of a Serbian guy who I vaguely remember meeting at a music festival a few months earlier. We were facebook friends though so I sent him a message a few days before I came to Belgrade and he managed to find me a place to stay even though he wasn’t around. His sister, Marjana, was a great host and took me out for some Ćevapčići, the delicious Balkan meat sticks that are somehow way more flavorful than any regular meat. Marjana had a tiny apartment so she went to stay with a friend while she gave me the keys to her apartment for the night; another indication of a very trusting culture. This was the only time I stayed with someone that I had some sort of previous connection with in the Balkans, because I quickly found that it was totally unnecessary to plan accommodation in advance in a place where people were so welcoming. For the rest of my trip I was mostly traveling with a Polish girl, Weronika, and we would only stay with people who picked us up hitchhiking, people who walked up to us on the street and invited us into their homes, and one last minute couchsurfer who was hosting for his first time.


Weronika and I convinced our couchsurfing host, Vukasin, to come on an adventure with us and Milko, the man on the front right, saw us in a grocery store with our backpacks and invited us to stay at his house for a few days, and took us to his neighbor's house where they gave us fresh raw goat milk (in the bowl) and homemade cheese.


When I tell other Americans who haven’t been to the region that I’ve been hitchhiking around various countries in Eastern Europe like Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 90% of the responses I get are either: “Isn’t that dangerous?” or “where’s that?”. The answer to the first question: no, and to the latter question: it’s on google maps. Of course there is risk, but it is quite small compared to how it is often perceived; most of it is just paranoia. This is something that we as Americans need to get out of our heads: most other countries are no more dangerous than ours. “Danger” is an incredibly subjective measure, and it’s not fair to call another country dangerous because their police force is corrupt, when much of the crime that we worry about doesn’t exist in their culture in the first place. There are dangers and crazy people everywhere, but the risk is minimal, the benefits of this type of exploration are incredible, and the knowledge of how to get yourself out of a sticky situation is something easy to learn while traveling which will be useful in every aspect of life. We live in a country where anyone can walk into a store and buy a handgun, a device that has absolutely no practical use other than murdering another human being. Almost nowhere else in the world can you do that. We live in a country where police shoot people simply based on the color of their skin and school shootings happen more often than all of the rest of the world combined. Many people who live in New York City or LA will take a cab home after going out to the bars, even if they live only a short distance away, whereas in Belgrade it appeared perfectly normal for a female to walk home alone at 4am. They probably do have to deal with more bullshit on the streets like catcalls and creeps hitting on them, but the risk of violent crime is lower. The illusion of danger in these countries is created by negative media due to a war that was largely instigated by The USA and ended almost 20 years ago, but that’s over now, and they don’t have the culture of stealing from others for personal gain that so commonly causes street violence in urban areas of the States.  


Belgrade, certainly safer than LA 


The region is certainly not without problems though; alcoholism is rampant, everyone seems to be constantly chain smoking cigarettes (I couldn’t figure out how they afford so many cigarettes when a pack costs 1-2 hours’ wages), the corrupt governments take tax money without investing much in anything useful for the people, and the idea of all people being equal has not yet taken hold so sexism is a big problem, women are marginalized, and prejudice against all other Balkan countries is a major issue. Even in the cities a normal wage is only $1-2 an hour, which effectively prevents most people from traveling outside of the region and makes it much more difficult to do things that we [Americans] consider necessities, such as fixing broken parts of a house or buying a smartphone and laptop. This also pushes a lot of the most skilled workers to move out of their home country and go to work in Northern/Western Europe, causing a brain drain. Many older-generation people I met lamented about how much more prosperous Yugoslavia was under Tito’s communist rule 25 years ago, but much of the industry was destroyed in the war. Though they now have far more freedom, the capitalist economy and the push of consumerism and individualism from Western cultures has brought about income inequality that never existed before, which, coupled with the decrease in job opportunities after everything was destroyed in the war, has made the majority of people poorer than they used to be while a select few make big profits.



Statue of Tito in Uzice, Serbia


The next night I stayed at the apartment of a guy who had traveled all over the world, hitchhiking from Serbia to China and back. Now he has no job and no money, but he was still welcoming travelers into his home and sharing everything he had, including his incredible cooking skills. I bought us some beers while he cooked an amazing meal from vegetables which were given to him by a local farmer and fish caught in the Danube River. In the evening two of his friends came over and we had a great conversation. One of them was a 60-ish year old British man who had been living in Serbia for about a decade and told me all about his extensive travels in communist Iron Curtain countries in the 70s and 80s. It was a really interesting glimpse into a life that I knew almost nothing about, a life with very little freedom but a life where personal profits didn’t matter and money had little value. I wrote a few notes from our conversation which are as follows:


  • Street food was exactly the same as 5 star restaurant food, except in a fancy restaurant they would give you champagne and caviar with the meal.
  • Every building was the same, every car was the same
  • A cheese shop in Prague had a roll of cheese for 50 cents. He tried to buy the whole thing but they would only sell him 100g because it was for the whole neighborhood.
  • In East Berlin he would buy beers for everyone in the bar because they cost so little.
  • He tried to give a man money on the street in Moscow but the man refused because he had nothing to spend money on.



Sloboda: "Freedom" in Serbian

The general attitude of the Balkan people that I encountered (especially the villagers) was much more relaxed about life and they were incredibly generous. Perhaps a remaining trace of the communist days, money and personal profits didn’t seem to be valued the way it is in American culture. Even those who had nothing would share it down to the very last penny. In the villages, life was more about producing enough food to eat, much of which was home grown and seemed to be very abundant in the summer/autumn months (I expect winter is harder, but I didn’t experience this so I can’t comment on it). Many told me that the life is very difficult in the Balkans, which is certainly true because of the lack of jobs and lack of money, but it also seemed that stress levels were much lower than in the American work-ridiculous-hours-and-don’t-get-a-break culture. How much has our consumption actually benefited us in the US, when considering overall happiness and satisfaction in life?


Roasting fresh peppers to make Ajvar, a delicious pepper spread and the way that some of the people we stayed with make their money 

Throughout the next several weeks, I would wind my way slowly through Serbia and Bosnia and into Slovenia, travelling with a friend, Weronika, who I met in the rainbow caravan. We would hitchhike with vague destinations in mind but would usually end up going somewhere completely different that we had never heard of, when the drivers who picked us up offered to host us for a night or two. Fresh home made cheese, raw goat milk, amazing home cooked Balkan meals, and rakija would fill our stomachs for the next weeks thanks to the generosity of everyone we met. I had never experienced travel so easy as in the Balkans; I had never been to a place so trusting and hospitable before. The details of that adventure will be coming soon in the next post. Do keep in mind that everything I’ve said in this post are generalizations based on my limited experience as a male traveler, though, so don’t expect every person you meet from the Balkan region to think along these lines.


Hitching a ride to Mojstrana, Slovenia, to go explore the Julian Alps

Weronika and I near Uzice, Serbia

Sausage and cheese given to us by an old man who approached us on the road in Indija, Serbia and wasn't bothered by the fact that none of us spoke the same language. 

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Rainbow Snowball Caravan of Abundance

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To view this post, see http://www.taylorbf.com/blog/rainbow-snowball-caravan-of-abundance-2/







Due to a brutal hangover, most of my third day in Novi Sad, Serbia, was spent laying on a couch, eyes half-shut, half-staring at my computer screen, vowing never to drink rakija again. Something productive did come out of this lazy day, though, as I read the blog of the Rainbow Snowball Caravan and found that they were in Serbia. Originally I had intended to spend only a few days in Serbia and then continue on to Romania and Ukraine, but the magic of traveling without plans is that I was able to pack up my bag and instead hitchhike towards Vodopad Bigar, a small hidden waterfall next to a monastery in southeast Serbia. Following the instructions on hitchwiki, I ran across the fairly empty motorway, jumped the barrier in the middle, and stood on the shoulder to catch a ride as cars whizzed by at 70+ mph. I felt incredibly sketchy doing this, but everyone else seemed to think it was perfectly normal. There wasn’t much traffic since the road came from Hungary and the border had recently been closed due to the refugee situation, but soon enough I was in a car with a Bulgarian man who insisted on taking me out to lunch at his favorite Serbian restaurant and then drove me an extra 30 miles to the waterfall since there wasn’t any traffic on the small back road.



Too many possibilities

To paraphrase from the Who Are We section of the blog, the Rainbow Snowball Caravan is a group of travelers who began at the local Rainbow Gathering in Wales and decided to travel together to the European Rainbow Gathering in Lithuania. I met many of these travelers at the Lithuania gathering, which is where I began to follow their blog. At this Rainbow, there was a lot of interest in continuing the caravan towards the World Rainbow Gathering in Egypt this winter. The Jonesberries, a family who have been traveling for over 30 years (check out their website, they’re really awesome), graciously allowed around 15 dirty, smelly, but amazing hippies to pile into their camper-truck and the caravan slowly made its way from Lithuania to Serbia, where I joined them. The vision for the caravan was to travel as a flowing group, with people joining and departing as they wish, traveling with no plan but following the heart to determine the next destination, and living free of the confines of money by sleeping in tents or whatever space was offered, traveling by hitchhiking/walking/biking/any means possible, eating food that would otherwise be thrown away by bakeries or grocery stores and scavenging fruit from trees, and playing music on the streets to make money when necessary.



The Jonesberries truck, transporter of hippies

I’ve written a little bit about rainbow gatherings and the rainbow family in past posts, but for those who didn’t read them, I’ll do my best to quickly explain these inexplicable occurrences here. The rainbow family is open to anyone who wants to participate, and consists of everybody who attends rainbow gatherings or has any association with the rainbow, generally with the goal of spreading positive energy throughout the world, living peacefully and harmoniously with other people and nature, living non-commercially, and sharing with everybody. Rainbow gatherings are held in most parts of the world, normally lasting one month from new moon to new moon. They usually take place far out in the forest/desert/mountains and hundreds or even thousands of people make their way to the gathering location with tents and sleeping bags to live communally for the length of their stay. Meals are cooked over a fire and eaten together in a big food circle and workshops are held daily (e.g., yoga, meditation, tantra, contact, slackline, music, etc). It’s a fascinating occurrence because there is no leadership, there is no cost to attend, all of the location scouting, set up, cooking, and cleaning is done by volunteers, the location and timing is spread mainly by word of mouth, and all of the food and equipment is purchased with donations. In essence, the Rainbow is a chaotic-yet-functional anarchy with utopian visions and may be as close as one can find to a utopian reality. Its biggest problem that I noticed is that too many uneducated hippies show up with the glamorized idea of living off the land but don’t actually understand what it means to leave no trace, so the place ends up a lot dirtier than it began. This is the vision statement of the European Rainbow Family of Living Light:


"The European Rainbow Family of Living Light warmly invites all brothers and sisters from all places of Mother Earth to join together in the celebration of the beauty of life.We recognize the need for gentleness, kindness and to be in service so that in this way we raise the vibration of unconditional love which we give to ourselves, each other and to this paradise on which we live, Mother Earth.We recognize that we are one, that the divine consciousness is in each of us and our vision is to fully feed and live this one love and one consciousness as a family.We recognize that these are times of great change, both globally and individually. We are seeking enlightenment and to reconnect with ancient traditions. We come together with the vision of the rainbow in our hearts, creating infinite possibilities to manifest heaven on Earth. We trust in love."– Consensed in 2013 with the understanding that it needs to be updated and changed as the family grows and changes.


If this still makes no sense to you, the only way to really get to know what the Rainbow is, is to attend gatherings and decide what it means to you. In the meantime, you can check out these links to an article about the rainbow family, a book about Rainbow Gatherings written by a British brother, the Rainbow Gathering wikipedia page, and the Rainbow Family wikipedia page. Anyhow, the snowball caravan traveled Rainbow style, meaning we pooled our money in the “magic hat” (which, admittedly, was very little, but money isn’t important when you live Rainbow style) and cooked, ate, bathed, shat, meditated, and lived together, singing Rainbow songs around the fire every night and being constantly surrounded by an excess of smiles, hugs, and profound thoughts about energy and unity.


The camp site in Southeastern Serbia

When I first arrived after getting a bit lost in the forest, I was greeted with shouts of “welcome home!” and hugs from everybody. The people in the caravan were amazing; the easiest people to become friends with, the most open and accepting, positive-spirited people I came across. As the week passed by, I found myself skinny dipping in the waterfall several times a day, running barefoot up to the top of densely forested mountains, and getting to know all of my new friends and their stories of how they ended up there. It was a wild mix of people from all over the world, including several musicians, dozens of dreadlocks, a baby girl and her parents, the Jonesberries family with the truck, a few people who decided to take a vow of silence to try out nonverbal communication for a while, a guy who didn’t believe in borders so he traveled without a passport, and a girl who had eradicated money from her life and had been traveling for the last 11 months without spending a single penny.

Most of the caravan by our campsite at Vodopad Bigar


Puppy heaven at an eco village in Kalna, Serbia

Weronika showed up a few days after me. She had left her home in Poland with no money and very few belongings other than her guitar and incredible musical talent, but that was all she needed to travel. One morning, after I had been camping with the caravan at the waterfall for about a week, Weronika and I took refuge from the pouring rain in my tent and began talking about what would come next in our travels. She had to get back to Poland in a few weeks because her passport was about to expire and I had to get to London soon to see my family. With these time deadlines impending on us, we both wanted to move faster and we were looking for a different sort of travel experience; we wanted to make friends with the local people and learn about their culture and their lives and try to live the way they live. This would be impossible to do in such a large, disorganized group full of different visions of what would come next, so we decided to head out on our own and travel together for the next couple weeks. Armed with a tent, a guitar, some warm clothes, practiced fire-making skills, about $50, and smiles, we had everything we needed to survive the next three weeks. Within moments of standing on the road, a car had pulled over for us and the guy in the passenger seat handed beers back to us as a welcome to their vehicle. The next few weeks would be a whirlwind of adventure, meeting some of the most friendly and generous people on the planet, eating an absurd amount of homemade cheese, drinking fresh goat milk and moonshine (separately), and experiencing the rural Balkan lifestyle that we never knew existed.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Paradise in Slovenia

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Slovenia, a tiny country of only 2 million people, a bit smaller than New Jersey, contains some of the most impressive natural beauty in all of Europe. Unlike the other parts of former Yugoslavia where mountains and rivers are littered with trash, nature seems to be a prized value in Slovenian culture and they have the infrastructure to keep it nearly spotless. Thanks to that, they have one of the cleanest countries in the world. Largely unaffected by the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, Slovenia is now a part of the European Union and had a very rapidly growing economy before the crisis in 2007. The population is overall very well educated and nearly everyone speaks English, making communication easy for a traveler. The mountainous landscape, the close proximity of snowy mountains and the Adriatic Sea to the capital city Ljubljana, the abundance of extreme sports opportunities, and the locals’ friendliness towards travelers and hitchhikers make this the perfect place for an adventure. I started my second trip to Slovenia at a campground in a small mountain town called Bovec.
Immediately I made friends with the others staying at the campground and by day we hiked to gorgeous waterfalls and lakes and by night we played endless rounds of king’s cup. Amy, the first American I had met in at least a month, was a great hiking companion for our trek up to Krn Lake, an amazing lake in a lush mountain valley with happy cows, purple wildflowers, and giant rocky peaks. I had been loving being the only American in all of the groups of friends that I made along the way, but it was really nice to meet Amy and hear an American accent that I could always understand and be able to use my full vocabulary. Being the only American makes me feel unique and I find it exciting to make foreign friends, but it is definitely nice to meet like-minded people from my own country once in awhile.


The waterfall near Bovec, Slovenia with Amy and Natalie

Happy Slovenian cow at Krn Lake

Self-timer above Krn Lake
After a few days spent at the campground and exploring the area around Bovec, it felt like time to move on and achieve my goal of climbing the highest mountain in Slovenia: Triglav. The hike began in a village called Trenta and rose steeply up from 693m to the peak at 2,864m above sea level. Triglav National Park is full of huts for hikers to stay in, some free and some not. There are three huts near the base of Triglav’s peak, and due to cloudy weather at the peak that afternoon, I decided to stay in a hut at 2,150m the first night and go the rest of the way to the peak in the morning. It was a good choice. That evening was spent sipping wine with some Germans in the hut and listening to the extremely drunk men from a Slovenian Alpine club play traditional Slovenian mountain songs on the guitar, singing at the top of their lungs. It was quite entertaining, and they were very good musicians considering their alcohol consumption. Though the mountains in the US may be more wild, it is unique experiences like this that make me treasure hiking in Europe.


The beginning of the hike in Trenta

Looking down on the trail from the hut

The entry in my journal about Krn Lake and the first day on Triglav


My second day in Triglav national park was the best day. Graced with a perfectly cloudless blue sky, I headed out towards the highest point. This part I hiked alone, getting lost in my mind thinking about origins of nature and evolution and people’s place in the natural world. I spent my time gazing in awe at the rock masses that lay ahead, contemplating the absurd amount of energy that caused tectonic plates to crush together and push rocks 9,000 feet into the sky, which then eroded to a point that soil covered the rocks and plants could grow on them. How do humans fit into this enormous power that is nature? We are nature, nature created us, but we have more power than any other being on the planet to alter the systems of nature which created us. How do we direct this power to do the most good? Is it possible to define what constitutes “the most good” with our limited knowledge of how nature works? Would it be best to direct our human energy and resources in one direction to try to shift the balance that humans have with the rest of the world, or would it be best to go with the flow, guided by the natural powers that allowed us to evolve here in the first place?
After about an hour I reached the point where the hiking trail turned into a cliff and the climb began. Many other people had helmets and via ferrata kits with them, but I found that the climb was just fine without any gear. It would only be really necessary to have technical gear if there was snow. I climbed the ladder rungs drilled into the rock and clung to the cables as I neared the peak. I found this part much more enjoyable than the hike up, getting to use my hands and feet was fun! I felt like an animal effortlessly scaling the mountainside, at least for a while until I realized I was completely out of breath. Well, an animal scaling the mountainside, definitely not effortlessly. I hadn’t quite reached the level of mountain goat yet. Finally, exhausted and pouring with sweat, I reached the summit, joining the few dozen other hikers who had come up for this beautiful day. I felt a rush of accomplishment, having scaled the highest peak in my new favorite country, having completed my first semi-technical solo hike, having walked and climbed over 7,000’ uphill in the last 24 hours. This sense of accomplishment faded a little bit when I noticed that another guy had managed to carry an entire case of beer up the mountain on his back and was selling it at the top, but I still felt amazing as I looked out over the rocky ridges and valleys that divide Slovenia, Italy, and Austria.


The 900 foot cliff that must be climbed to reach the peak

Climbing

The view from the top

Celebratory liter of milk at the peak 


For Slovenians, hiking Triglav is a sort of right of passage, and part of that tradition includes being whipped on the butt with a rope by someone who has already hiked Triglav. When a Slovenian guy first told me this, I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to make people laugh at me, the silly foreigner, or if it was actually a hilarious tradition. Anyhow, I obliged, and later internet research proved that he was not joking. Next time you meet a Slovenian, ask them if they’ve been whipped in the ass by a climbing rope on top of the highest mountain, they’ll likely say yes.

Earning my right of passage as a Slovenian


My journal entry after the second day

I descended from the peak with a Canadian and a Slovenian guy that I met at the top. We opted to run down the scree fields rather than follow the trail, but they were practiced trail runners and eventually I couldn’t keep up any more. I decided to slow down to my own walking pace, and soon met some older Slovenian men. They told me about a crazy mountain man who lives near the top of Triglav, and has lived there alone for 30 years. Apparently this man has some sheep and only goes down to the village a few times a year. It’s a tradition for hikers to bring him food and come say hi to him, but unfortunately his home was in the other direction so I didn’t get to meet him. My destination for the night was the Triglav Lakes valley, which I reached a few hours later.


One of the Triglav Lakes

As I walked down into the valley, my mind wandered back to the questions about humans’ place in nature which I had been contemplating previously. I came up with the analogy that humans are to nature as a sci-fi robot takeover is to humans. We are nature’s creation, but we have gained the power to alter it. This is akin to a person building a robot which then becomes too powerful and gains the ability to injure its creator. In this analogy, human genetic material is equivalent to the software with which a robot is programmed, and our cells and organelles which process DNA and RNA are similar to the hardware inside the robot. If robots were to become too powerful, they could cause great harm to humans, but would likely be eventually wiped out because humans control their power supply and a few crazy robots are no match for 7 billion humans armed with explosives and wire cutters. Similarly, people can cause great harm to the natural world, but if we cause too much harm, nature has the ability to wipe us out because we rely on natural resources to sustain our own lives and even 7 billion humans are no match for the natural powers of fire, lightning, wind, drought, flood, etc. We as individual humans need to find our place where we’re living inside the energy flow of nature, rather than counteracting it, but of course nobody really knows what that means.



The lake next to the hut

That night I was unexpectedly reunited with a group of Belgian guys who I met at a campground a few days earlier, and after a few beers it seemed like a good idea to teach them how to casually shotgun. So, several miles into the backcountry, we drank half liter beers in under 5 seconds through holes in the bottom of the cans. Not exactly the type of backpacking experience I was used to, and a huge contrast from my philosophical thoughts earlier in the day, but it was great fun nonetheless. The weather began to turn for the worse the next day, with fog and rain forecasted in the afternoon, so I headed back down to the village in the morning.
Six hours of downhill walking later, I stood on the road to thumb a ride back to where I had left half of the contents of my backpack. The car which stopped for me was exactly the type people who I love to meet. They first told me that they just wanted to say hi and wish me good luck because they were full, which was clear by the backpacks piled up to the roof, but when I told them I was just going to the next village, we decided it would be possible to make some space and squeeze in. In the car were four Germans, all around my age, and I found out that the other two people in the back seat were also hitchhikers. Immediately we all felt like good friends. They told me they were going to the spring where the Soča River comes out of a cave in the mountain and asked if I wanted to join them for a small adventure before going to pick up my stuff. Sticking to my rule of never saying no to an adventure, we went together to the magical Soča spring, lacking swimsuits but armed with Slovenian honey liquor to combat the frigid water. One after another we stripped down and lowered ourselves into the cave where the crystal clear water came from the mountain into a beautiful pool about 12 feet long and maybe 50 feet deep. It was a truly magical place and I was so thankful for having such amazing people pick me up on the road.


The hole in the mountain where the river begins. Looking down into about 50ft of water in a cave. 


One great group of travelers

My final journal entry from Slovenia

That evening I made my way to Ljubljana, the small and charming capital of Slovenia, where I stayed with some friends of a friend (now just friends) for the next few nights. The last time I was in Slovenia I had discovered a “mlekomat” in the center of the city, which is a vending machine with a tap that pours fresh raw milk into a bottle right in front of your eyes. It is refilled by local farmers daily and is the most delicious milk I’ve ever had in a city. My first time discovering this was the moment that I knew I could happily live in Ljubljana for the rest of my life, and this visit just reinforced those feelings. Unfortunately, though, my time was short, as my Schengen travel visa was about to expire and I had to leave myself some time to get to England a few weeks later. Soon I found myself hanging out at a rest stop with three other hitchhikers from Poland and Kazakhstan, asking every car that drove by for a ride towards Belgrade, Serbia.

Friday, September 18, 2015

From the Baltics to the Balkans, via Wrocław

 THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO A NEW WEBSITE, www.taylorbf.com





I left the Baltic countries in a truck driving to Olsztyn, Poland. It was 10pm in Kaunas, Lithuania, and I was at a very empty gas station asking the few cars that came by if they were going in the direction of Poland. Finally, after about an hour of no’s, a truck with Polish license plates pulled up and I asked him for a ride. He had a lot of stuff in his front seat and looked a bit apprehensive about letting me in his vehicle, and after a moment’s pause he asked me if I speak Polish. I replied “Cześć! Kurwa! Poproszę piwo!” (Hello! Shit! One beer please! -- my full Polish vocabulary) and he laughed so hard that he waved me in. Nearly three weeks earlier when I had asked my new Polish friends, Mija and Kuba, what the most important word to know in Polish was, I had no idea that “Kurwa” would actually turn out to be so useful.



Traveler's tip #2: If you ever go to Poland, remember the word “Kurwa” (pronounced kur-vah, with a rolly r)



We got to Olsztyn around 4am and I was exhausted after sleeping on and off in the truck, feeling like I should talk to the driver since he was giving me a free ride but also just wanting to pass out. This is the downside of hitchhiking, especially overnight trips or if you don’t feel like being social. I walked about 200 feet away from the road and set up my tent in a field to get some sleep, only to be brutally awoken two hours later to realize that very busy road had materialized about 10 feet away from me, just out of range of my flashlight earlier that night. I packed up my tent and walked 6km across the city since the spot I was in was terrible for hitchhiking and found a much better spot at a bus stop right next to a beautiful lake. This is the other downside of hitchhiking, sometimes you get stuck in a bad spot and have to walk a lot. [Side note: I just realized that I’ve started thinking of long distances in kilometers but still think of short distances in feet and inches. Weird.]



The lake near the hitchhiking spot, perfect for a refreshing swim and a few back flips! 


After swimming, I was really lucky and found a truck driving directly to Wrocław (pronounced vrots-wav). What should have been a 6 hour drive turned into 9 when the extremely slow trucker decided to take only back roads rather than pay the tolls on the freeway. He spoke no English and very minimal German, so I got quite a bit of blog writing done on the road since all we could talk about is stuff like “My name is x I am from y” type of thing.



Traveler’s tip #3: Trucks are great for hitchhiking because they’re going long distances and the drivers are usually bored and appreciate the company of a traveler, but they are also very slow-moving and foreign truckers rarely speak English.



The Sky Tower, Wroclaw's phallic landmark


Eventually l got there and spent the next week having an awesome time in Wrocław. It’s a really amazing city; big but not too crowded, full of students and events, and I got the impression that it was a very liberal and open minded city. Go there if you ever visit Poland (which you should). Mija and Kuba, who already felt like very close friends after basically living with them for the last couple weeks since we met at the gas station, introduced me to their amazing friends and I immediately felt like I could fit in in Wrocław and have a great time living there. Wrocław also has an incredible fountain show at night, with a fountain that lights up to the music in an insanely trippy display.



The fountain show

The fountain show


Aiko, my new favorite dog


After a week of chilling, exploring Wroclaw, and getting quite a bit of work done on my current editing project (a grant proposal for an Israeli psychologist), I wanted to go to the mountains. I made Zakopane my next destination, in the center of Poland’s Tatra mountains. After some thorough research on hikes in the Tatras and consulting with several other hikers and travelers through the Couchsurfing website about the least touristy and most wild hikes, I felt prepared for Poland’s mountains. Just as I was about to leave to hitchhike out of Wroclaw, my plans took an unexpected 180. As I stuffed the final t-shirts into my backpack, Mija looked up from her computer, “dude, a guy just posted on the Poland hitchhiking facebook group that he’s going to Slovenia tonight and has space for an extra passenger.” I stopped in my tracks. Change of plans, I’m going to Slovenia! Ever since visiting Slovenia in the winter, I had wanted to come back and hike Triglav, the tallest and most sacred mountain in former Yugoslavia and the Julian Alps. This was the perfect chance. So I jumped on a tram in the opposite direction and met up with this trucker who was driving overnight to Slovenia, extremely thankful that I had no bookings to get in the way of this spontaneous decision.



Traveller’s tip #4: Never book anything in advance. Anything! You never know what great spontaneous opportunities you’ll miss out on if you don’t leave your options open. The best things happen at the last minute.



This time I couldn’t hold back from sleeping, and fell asleep immediately in the front seat, feeling a bit bad that the driver was listening to me snore instead of having a nice conversation to keep him awake, but he was really nice about it. After 6 hours of driving, we pulled into a rest area so he could take a nap also, and he let me sleep in the bed above the truck cab for a couple hours. That was a unique and cool experience, being in a tiny compartment above the truck cab where the floor was covered in mattress foam. When I woke up, I took advantage of the free wifi to decide where I was going in Slovenia, but a few hours later my idea to go to Maribor changed when we took a different route. So my next idea was Ljubljana. I sent a bunch of last minute couchsurf requests and got a couple responses saying they could host me later in the week, so, a few miles outside of Ljubljana, I finally settled on going to the mountains. 

The trucker dropped me off at the turnoff to Bovec, and I hitched a ride with another guy the rest of the way. He was really nice and had some free time, so he took me on a little tour of the area, showing me a spot on the river where there are music festivals and nature parties all summer, and eventually taking me about 30 minutes out of his way to my destination. People are so, incredibly nice! Hitchhiking really restores my faith in humanity; it’s the best way to meet the nicest people, because only really nice people are willing to pick someone up and take them to their destination just for the sake of helping out. And yes, I still have both of my kidneys. I arrived in Bovec with the warm fuzzy feeling in my heart, knowing that there are millions of people out there who always have my back.


 The Soča River, on the way to Bovec, Slovenia