February in Spain

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Come February, I still had no clue what I would be doing in the immediate or distant future and I was still very stressed about breaking up with my girlfriend, so I headed to Spain. Two of my best friends are currently living in Spain, so I went to stay with them for a couple of weeks while I figured out my next moves in life. Having a place to stay and the support of friends helped a lot and I left Spain 3 weeks later with some great memories and much more confidence in my future.

Barcelona

After Switzerland, I got a cheap Easyjet flight from Milan to Barcelona, and went to Spain, where I would spend the next 3 weeks. I was only in Barcelona for a night because my main destination was going to visit my friend Ryan in Portugalete, but going through Barcelona was the cheapest way to get there and it’s a city that I had always wanted to see.  I planned to go with Cassandra, but unfortunately due to some flight mishaps and a stolen passport, she ended up in England instead so I was solo in Barcelona. I checked in to a really nice hostel for 7 euros a night—the cheapest hostel I had come across yet (Morocco was cheaper but that hadn’t happened yet). I met some people right away, ate some paella that one of the hostel workers was cooking, and went out with them to a bar with free salsa dancing lessons. I failed miserably at salsa dancing, but still had a pretty good time drinking beer. The next day I walked around the city on my own, saw the big cathedral which was a pretty cool big tan gothic-style building, and then got on a train to Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain.

A big fancy cathedral in Barcelona

The North

I arrived in Bilbao pretty late at night and took the metro to Portugalete, a suburb, where Ryan is spending the year playing water polo and teaching English. That area in Northern Spain is called Basque Country, and it is pretty different from the rest of Spain. They speak Basque there, a language which seems to have basically no relation to Spanish, although everyone speaks Spanish as well. Also apparently they want to secede from Spain and become their own country.

I stayed there for about a week and a half, sleeping on one of the several extra beds in Ryan’s living room. It was one of the rainiest places I’ve ever been, I think it rained every single day and went through periods of torrential downpour mixed with hail and snow. But when the rain stopped it was beautiful. While I was there we walked down to the beach, checking out the wreckage caused by the storm over the weekend. That area is known for really good surfing, but unfortunately we didn’t get to surf because there was a boat flipped over and countless tree trunks being tossed around in the waves, and it was really ridiculously windy. We also drove up to the hills about 15 minutes inland, where there was a good 6-10 inches of snow and made a pretty epic faceless snowman.

During the weekend we went to Santander, a city about an hour and a half west of Bilbao by bus, and the largest city in Cantabria (a province in north Spain). We were hoping to ski at Alta Campoo, a small ski area in the Cantabrian mountain range “Los Picos de Europa”, but unfortunately it was closed all weekend because of the wind. So instead we checked out Santander and also went to the world-famous Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

the beach in Santander

the palace in Santander

During the days when Ryan was working, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out my future and also hung out with Ryan’s awesome flatmate, Marta. She didn’t speak too much English but we were able to communicate pretty well with a mixture of English, Spanish, and charades-like acting. In the evenings we hung out at the bars on Ryan’s street, which were always filled with a hilarious group of very talkative Basque men with whom I spoke some Spanglish. One of the guys hosted a party at a bar one night and we were the youngest people there by about 15 years, but everyone loved us and bought us drinks so it was pretty fun.

Penguins in Santander

The Guggenheim museum

Madrid

After a week and a half in Portugalete, I took a bus to Madrid, which was mainly just a stop to pick up some of my stuff from my ex-girlfriend’s apartment while on my way to Caceres. It was horribly awkward and sad but I got the clothes that I needed and I stayed at a hostel which turned out to be really fun so I stayed 2 nights. In Madrid I met some really cool people at the hostel—a girl from Anacortes, Washington, two girls from Canada, two guys from Australia, and a guy from Belgium who speaks 7 languages—and we all hung out together. The Belgian dude had just finished a trip around Morocco and told me all about it, which got me really pumped for my upcoming trip to Morocco. We went to a museum, then got some tapas, hung out at the hostel for a while, and went to a pub and had a great time.

Caceres

My next destination was Caceres, where my friend Matt is currently living and teaching English. I took a blablacar (carpool) to Caceres and the driver made sure to let me know that Extremadura (the region which Caceres is in) has the best Iberian ham in the world. I was only there for two nights and unfortunately never had a chance to try their self-proclaimed best ham in the world, but it was a really good time. The first night we went to a language exchange at a bar and the second night Matt had a party at his house. Matt’s housemates were all really fun and the party attracted quite an international crowd; I met a really awesome girl from Belgium there, as well as people from Mexico, Italy, England, France, Spain, and probably more. During the day we went on a walk in the hills outside of Caceres and bought duck costumes for Carnival from the most racially ignorant costume store I have ever seen (but it was the only option). The store was called “Kikes” and the costume catalog contained a couple normal categories like food and animals, but the rest of the categories were all making fun of other ethnicities, like Mexican, Arab, Black, Chinese, etc. If liberal arts students found out about that shop there would be a facebook outrage. That was one of the several “culture shock” moments that I've had in Europe where I realize that all of the discussions we've had in the US about racism and equality have made a big difference, and many other countries are far more ignorant but just don’t have the diversity or large enough minorities for it to be discussed as much as it is in the US.

Sevilla

After Caceres, Matt and I took a blablacar to Sevilla, where we spent one night on our way down south to Cadiz for Carnival. Sevilla is a beautiful city, sunny and filled with orange and palm trees. We spent the day walking around Sevilla, slept in a hostel, and met up with Andy and Ryan the next day and headed to Cadiz.

a famous building in Sevilla 

Carnival in Cadiz

Cadiz was one of the more ridiculous party experiences of my trip so far. Every year, thousands of people put on costumes and get hammered in the streets for a week and a half. Dressed as 3 ducks and a hot dog, we took the train to Cadiz equipped with several beers, rum, and nobody remembers what else. There were a few stages set up around the city with singing groups called “chirigotas” performing what were apparently hilarious satirical songs, but I didn't understand any of it because it was in Spanish.

quack

As the night went on, the streets became more and more filled with glass, beer, and piss, which didn't seem to matter so much at the time, but the next morning the smell of our shoes was a powerful reminder of what we had stepped in the night before. It was a really crazy night though, we met so many people whose names and faces I will never remember, saw so many incredible costumes, and witnessed the amazing spectacle of thousands of ridiculously dressed people completely disobeying the law and drinking and celebrating in the streets.

The aftermath

back for day 2 

Here’s a link to a video that will give you a glimpse into life at Carnival:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205927094080958 

Gibraltar

                After Carnival, we split up with Matt and Andy, and Ryan and I took a bus to La Linea de la Concepcion, a Spanish city just next to the British enclave of Gibraltar. We walked across the border into Gibraltar, a tiny peninsula owned by Britain but connected to Southern Spain. Gibraltar is known for its primary geographical feature—the Rock of Gibraltar—which takes up about 90% of the peninsula. The border crossing consisted of us holding out our passports and the security officers not wanting to look at them and waving us past. To get into the city of Gibraltar, we had to walk across the airport runway in between when planes were taking off or landing, in the shadow of the rock the whole time.

don't get hit by a plane

I felt an immediate cultural difference; in two minutes of walking we had gone from fancily-dressed Spanish people crowding the streets with that terrible bright red lipstick that they seem to think looks good, to groups of blonde British kids wearing shorts and yelling in thick English accents. It was the first time I had been in an English-speaking country in about 6 months and it felt really weird to be able to understand passerby’s conversations. We spent the evening walking around the perimeter of the rock and then had some British poutine at a pub, which was an amazing mix of fried potato skins, cheese, meat, and gravy. 

the rock of Gibraltar from the runway

The next day we woke up early, ate an English breakfast and hiked up the rock, into a nature reserve where a ton of Barbary macaques live in a semi-wild state. It was really cool to see the monkeys, although a bit sad to see how much the tour guides feed them to get them to crowd in certain areas for the tourists to take photos.

selfie with a monkey

Curious George

the rock fading into the clouds

mama and baby macaque

Tangier

When we got down from the rock, we got on a ferry to Tangier, Morocco, only about 20 km across the Strait of Gibraltar from us. The ferry was delayed several hours because of the wind, and when it finally departed it was a shit show. The waves in the Strait were huge, big enough to rock the ferry boat so violently that anybody trying to walk down the aisle was slammed into the wall, and several loud crashes rang from the café where kitchen equipment was sliding across the floor and shattering. When we finally docked in Tangier, puddles of puke stained the carpets. It was not a pretty sight. 

We got off the boat and it was immediately obvious that this place was far different from Spain. Within seconds, five taxi drivers surrounded us, telling us (wrongly) that there was no bus and their taxi was the only way to get from the ferry port into town. We eventually gave in and paid for a taxi and met up with our couchsurfing host, Anas, in the city. Anas is a student in Tangier and had a couple extra mattresses in his apartment which he offers for travelers to stay on for free (check out www.couchsurfing.com if you’ve never heard of it).

Mule parking

The next morning we went to walk around the Medina (the old part of the city), which contained a few markets and lots of tiny maze-like alleyways. It was a really cool area to explore but I've never been anywhere with such annoyingly persistent salesmen as Tangier's Medina. Since it was very windy that day and not during the tourist season, we were some of the only foreigners walking around, and the guys on the street were extra persistent because they had nobody else to prey on. They would follow us around, pointing out everything in the city while constantly telling us that it is free to look at everything, and then get very angry when we refused to buy their hash or pay them for their unwanted “tour”. 

But, other than those guys, Tangier was a cool city. Anas’s neighborhood also had a large market, selling everything from carrots the size of my forearm to live chickens, and the salesmen were much nicer there. It was possible to get a full meal of produce for about 30 cents and everything was fresh and delicious. The area fit my mental image of Morocco very well—a chaos of donkeys, camels, chickens, and children running across the half-dirt/half-paved streets with cars constantly honking and swerving to avoid the people and animals in their way. Somehow that chaotic-yet-semi-functional mess made it a very charming place. We had a really great time hanging out and learning about life in Morocco with our couchsurfing hosts, who were some of the most friendly and welcoming people that I've ever met. I definitely want to come back and visit in the summer when it’s better beach weather.

the windy Strait of Gibraltar

a mosque in Tangier

Granada

After Morocco, Ryan and I took a ferry back to Spain, which was also delayed by several hours and the waves were equally big as the last time, causing the ferry to constantly feel like it was about to flip. After a failed attempt to hitchhike to Malaga/Granada outside the ferry port (Spanish drivers apparently don’t like hitchhikers), we got a cheap hotel room for the night and took a blablacar to Granada the next morning. In Granada, we met back up with Matt, and spent the afternoon wandering around near the Alhambra, Granada’s famous castle, and eating the enormous tapas that come for free with the miniature Spanish beers. For 2 Euros, we could buy a beer at a bar which came along with a sandwich or small hamburger. Granada had by far the best tapas that I ate anywhere in Spain, and generally a really great vibe.

Spain's Sierra Nevada mountains behind Granada

The next day we went on a hike near the city. One of the best things about Granada is its location right next to the mountains. We took a bus up to a small mountain village and spent the day hiking back down to the city center, something that’s not possible in most cities. Although cloudy, the views were gorgeous and it was really nice to get out of the city and into nature with good friends. We met some other Americans on the hike who invited us over for beer pong in the evening, which was an excellent throwback to good times in college.

hiking just outside of the city

The next day was my final full day in Spain, and it was spent well, skiing with Ryan at the Sierra Nevada Ski Area, 45 minutes from Granada. This is what really cemented my love for the city. It’s possible to hike, ski, and get ridiculous amounts of free food with your beer all in one day. The ski area was pretty big, a lot of fun, and had incredible views from the top.

tons of snow just 45 minutes uphill from sunny, warm Granada

duck selfie

If I ever return to Spain for a longer period of time, it will definitely be to Granada.

Next up: French-speaking countries. Skiing in the French alps, adventuring deeper into Morocco, and returning to France to visit high school friends.

Winter Travels Part III: Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland

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This post is about hiking and exploring in Slovenia, getting dumped by my girlfriend while travelling together in Vienna, starting to recover in Germany, and skiing in Switzerland. It’s long, so feel free to just look at the photos (the captions tell a summarized story), or just read the sections that you’re interested in.

Slovenia

Slovenia was one of my favorite destinations on this trip so far. It’s a tiny country situated in the east end of the Alps, bordering Austria, Italy, Hungary, and Croatia, and has a small coastline on the Adriatic Sea. The country has everything. It has the natural beauty of Switzerland, the sunny beaches of Italy, an impeccably clean and beautiful capital city, the prices of Eastern Europe, and is a mecca for adventure sports enthusiasts. I arrived to Ljubljana (the capital city, pronounced something like Lube-lee-ah-na) in the evening and met some Australians staying at my hostel. I hung out with them for the evening and they were planning a day trip to Lake Bled the following morning, so I tagged along. Lake Bled is a beautiful lake at the base of the mountains, with a small island in the middle and a beautiful old Slavic church on the island. Though at first the lake didn’t look so amazing, when we walked to the far side we were treated to its real beauty, backed by mountains that are only visible from one side. We rented a rowboat, learned how to row a rowboat, and somehow made it to the island and back without tipping over.

Castle above Lake Bled, Slovenia, on the edge of the Alps, taken from a rowboat on the lake

                After Lake Bled, the Australians went back to Ljubljana and I continued on to the next lake, Lake Bohinj, to check it out before it got dark. Lake Bohinj was even more beautiful, with snow right up to the shore and surrounded on all sides by mountains. I did a short hike there, bee-lining it straight up a mountain instead of taking the trail so that I could get to a higher vantage point and beat the setting sun. After checking out the view, I headed to the bus stop and went back to Ljubljana, where I met up with Dan, a friend from my internship program in Germany who was also travelling around Europe.

Lake Bohinj, Slovenia, in the Alps

               Dan and I chilled around Ljubljana that night and got a bus to Kranjska Gora the next morning, a ski village up in the Alps. The entire bus ride was gorgeous but the last part was the best, as we came up on the Italian border where the mountains were even more huge and craggy. We got out at the last stop before the border and started hiking directly from there. After about two hours of straddling the Slovenian-Italian border, we finally reached the Austria at the top of the ridge. There was a large pole thing to mark the corner where Italy, Austria, and Slovenia converged on that ridge. The views were amazing in all 3 directions, but the mountains were the most impressive on the Slovenian side. 

Standing on the border of Italy, Austria, and Slovenia

                We headed towards Kranjska Gora as the sun started to set, making it there just in time to see the amazing view from our hostel. We were pretty exhausted from hiking for 6 hours, so we ate some crepes and went to a bar for a beer or two.

the view from next to our hostel, in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia

The next day we went on another hike, in the other direction towards the bigger mountains. It was pretty flat and easy most of the way, but the views were incredible. Huge rocky cliffs towered above us on either side with spiky peaks in every direction.

beautiful Slovenian Alps in the winter

more amazing mountains from a hike near Kranjska Gora

                That afternoon we headed back to Ljubljana to see the city. With 20 minutes until the bus came, we decided to try hitchhiking while we waited. Within a minute, someone had stopped and we were jumping in his car. It was a guy who worked part-time editing scripts for plays, and part-time as a tour guide. He knew everything about Slovenia and was able to answer all of our questions and was a really fun guy to ride with. After an hour and a half he dropped us off at a bus stop in the city where we could easily get to the city center. For the rest of the afternoon we walked around the city, spending most of our time in Metelkova—a semi-autonomous hippie/squatter community that is kind of like a smaller version of Kristiania in Copenhagen. The walls of every building were completely covered in murals, grafitti, sculptures, and some really cool art.

mural on the wall in Metelkova, the semi-autonomous hippie commune in Ljubljana

people live in this building

more art on the outside walls 

                That evening we walked up to the castle on a hill above the downtown where we could see a view over the city, and discovered a raw milk vending machine in the city center, which was maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was some of the best milk I've ever tasted. 

view over the capital city, Ljubljana, from the castle at night

Raw milk vending machine in the city center. Put in a euro and fill up a bottle. It was delicious. 

                The next morning I got a few liters of milk from the vending machine and wandered around the city until my bus to Klagenfurt, Austria arrived, where I would spend a night on my way to Vienna. Slovenia was a success.

Vienna

I don’t have anything really exciting to say about Vienna, since it was definitely the low point of my entire Europe experience so far. This had nothing to do with the city itself—I had a terrible visit because my girlfriend broke up with me there.  She arrived just after me and we had a great time together for the first half of the weekend, exploring the Habsburgs’ old palace and the musical history of the city, but I spent most of the second half of the weekend locked in a hostel room crying, which really tainted my memories of the beauty and personality of the city. It came as a huge surprise to me, one moment we were the happiest couple on Earth planning a Valentine’s Day trip, and then next moment she was gone. I felt completely lost with nowhere to go home to, nobody to make me feel loved, and no idea what to do or where to go next.

Dealing with a breakup while homeless and travelling in a foreign country was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced emotionally. I didn’t want to break up, I didn’t agree with her reasoning, I was still head-over-heels in love with her, and I had grown to rely on her for my own happiness. I put everything I had, mentally and emotionally, into our relationship and suddenly it was all gone. This was compounded by the fact that my only future plans were to go live with her in Madrid and work there for the next few months while I learned Spanish, so I had to rethink all of my plans and I didn’t have much time to do it. I was really fucking depressed and had no motivation to continue travelling or to try to find a job and live anywhere else. I had to re-learn how to create my own happiness, a very difficult process after over two years of always having someone by your side.

 Looking back on it, she had valid reasoning—because we had pretty different ideas of what we wanted out of the next year of our lives. She wanted to stay in Madrid another year and really get to know the city, which I imagine is much easier without being tied down to a relationship, and I wanted to stay in Spain long enough to explore the country and learn Spanish, but didn’t want to stay there for too long because I wanted to explore the rest of the world too (like South America). At the time I was too overcome with emotion to think logically though, and I could not possibly think of worse timing for a breakup after the incredible experiences we had shared together over the previous few weeks in Israel, Jordan, and the first half of Vienna.   

Luckily I have an amazing family who talked me through it, and great friends in Germany and Spain who offered me places to stay for the next few weeks and gave me an opportunity to take my mind off of my ex-girlfriend while I figure out what to do next with my life.  I bought a bus ticket to Germany and the next day got on a 10 hour bus from Vienna to Frankfurt, to head back to Darmstadt the city where I had spent the last 6 months. For the next few weeks I spent a lot of time being sad about the break up, and I still go through sad spells, but I think what has helped the most was surrounding myself with friends, doing things I love like skiing, and going new places and meeting people who are excited about travelling to restore my motivation and excitement. 

Here's a picture to show that I did something that weekend other than cry in the hotel room the whole time. The palace in Vienna, where the Habsburgs used to rule the Austro-Hungarian empire from

Darmstadt

                After a miserable 10 hours of feeling shitty about myself on a bus, I finally arrived in Darmstadt and was greeted by some friends. It was great to see friendly faces and hang out with them and get my mind off of everything else. The first night I slept on some friends’ floor—other Merck interns—and the rest of the time I slept in my old apartment, which still had an empty room since nobody took my place. I hung out with my friends, went ice skating, made homemade pizza, and had a pretty good time.

While my friends worked during the day, I spent my time figuring out what I needed to do to extend my visa to stay in Europe longer. I wasn’t ready to give up on love quite yet (I have since given up, it’s hopeless), and even if she didn’t want to date me I was still determined to learn Spanish and enjoy the next few months exploring Europe.  I got my shit together for the visa extension, and also spent some time trying to figure out where to go next. I had a good friend who was going skiing in Switzerland that weekend, so I looked into the possibility of joining her. The prospect of skiing helped me slowly turn my mind toward the future and find motivation to explore new and exciting opportunities for the next few months.

Switzerland

                Somehow the ski trip idea magically worked out, and it was exactly what I needed. Two people cancelled their plans to go at the last minute, opening up space for me to stay at a house right on the slopes, owned by the parents of the girlfriend of the TA of the boyfriend of a friend. On a Friday morning I hopped on a blablacar headed to Switzerland (blablacar is a website for organized hitchhiking that costs money but is way cheaper than trains). The driver was in his mid-twenties and we got along quite well, having a great time as we drove through 4 countries—Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. He was going to a different part of Switzerland than me, so I had him drop me off at a rest stop about 2 hours from my destination, where I hitchhiked from. It was incredibly easy to find a ride there—I asked everybody coming out of the rest stop if they were going towards Bellinzona, and after about 10 people an older woman said yes. She was from the Italian part of Switzerland and didn’t speak a word of English, but we communicated pretty well in broken German.  She was incredibly nice and even gave me the phone number of her son, who she thought might be able to get me a summer job in Switzerland. After one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever been on past glaciers and snowy mountain passes, she took me out of her way to drop me off at the train station where I would meet my friend Cassandra.

Hitchhiking through the San Bernardino Pass in central Switzerland

                Soon after arriving, I met Hellen, Magda, Trevor, and Maddy, my new friends who I would spend the weekend with. Jaysen and Cassandra were also there, the only two who I already knew. It was an incredibly positive and fun group of people to spend the weekend with. The first night we stayed in Hellen’s house in Gudo, a little town in a valley surrounded by vineyards in the Italian part of Switzerland. Her mom cooked us an amazing meal of gnocchi, the first of a series of very Swiss and very amazing meals that we would have on this trip. The next morning we woke up and got on the bus to Bosco Gurin, a small ski resort in the Alps right on the border of Switzerland and Italy.

Fart, the bus company in Locarno, Switzerland

                The house was in the most amazing location imaginable. Right on the slopes, possible to wake up, ski the whole day, and come home without walking a single step. It had a small solar panel which didn’t seem to be functioning very well, and had no running water in the winter, but it had a wood stove to keep warm and had everything we needed. Some friends of Hellen came down from the slopes early that day and still had two lift tickets that were good for the whole day, so Jaysen and I took the tickets and went out for a couple hours of afternoon snowboarding. I didn’t want to pay to rent skis for only 2 hours, so I borrowed Hellen’s snowboard and attempted to learn how to ride. Being a longboarder, I had the balance down when going in a straight line, but I had to learn how to move my feet to control the snowboard, which is very different from a longboard. I fell on my ass countless times, but made it down the hill and had a good time. I still think skiing is way better though.

                The next day was a full day so I rented skis this time. After having to take it slow while learning to snowboard the day before, it felt amazing to feel comfortable racing down the mountain, top to bottom, as fast as I could. Though small, the mountain had some really fun runs which we lapped over and over.

Cassandra and I skiing at Bosco Gurin, on the border of Switzerland and Italy

Cassandra, Jason, and I on the ski lift

                That evening we finished the day with beer and fondue, an amazing end to an amazing day. The next day was even better—I found the good pow. There was one run which leisurely switchbacked down the mountain, but the off-piste areas in between the switchbacks were lightly forested, pretty steep, and held the best snow on the mountain. One spot had a natural jump on a steep slope with the most perfect powdery landing, which was incredibly fun to lap over and over again, flying 20 feet downhill and landing in the softest pillow imaginable. It was another amazing day of skiing, though it ended a bit unfortunately when my tips went under in the uneven snow and my momentum carried me forward, careening down the mountain while my ejected ski chased me down and hit me in the face, cutting my lip. I finished the day bleeding in the snow, but I think half of the blood was because my lip wouldn’t heal since I couldn’t stop smiling.

From left, Trevor, Maddy, Magda, Hellen, Jason, Cassandra, and Me

The incredible view from the top of Bosco Gurin

                The next morning we woke up and said goodbye to Bosco Gurin, and headed towards Locarno, a small city on a lake where we hung out for the day. There was a monastery that we walked up a million stairs to get to, with an amazing view over the lake and surrounding mountains. We also tried the local hot chocolate, which was actually more like hot chocolate pudding. It was amazing. That evening Hellen’s mom cooked us another amazing meal, and the next morning we woke up and got a train to Milan, Italy, where a flight was waiting to take me to Barcelona.

Sunrise from Hellen's front porch in Gudo, Switzerland

Since then, I’ve spent the last three weeks in Spain—a night in Barcelona, a week and a half with my friend Ryan in Bilbao, a few days in Madrid at a hostel, a few days in Caceres with my friend Matt, a night in Sevilla, a weekend in Cadiz for the biggest Carnival celebration in mainland Spain with Ryan, Matt, and Andy, and then a night in Gibraltar, a British colony on the southern tip of Spain which mainly consists of a large famous rock. As I finish writing this post, I’m on a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar, headed to Tangier, Morocco, for a few nights and then to Granada, Spain for a few nights before returning to Germany for a little while. All of these Spanish adventures will be covered in my next post. Hasta Luego!

Winter Travels Part 2: Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia

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To recap from my last post, I was in Israel with my family for 2 weeks, and I flew from there  to Budapest...here's an overview of the next week and a half.

Hungary    

          

Just before New Years Eve, I left Israel to go meet up with a bunch of friends in Budapest. Ryan, Matt, Clayton, Timmy, Andy, and Amade all came to Budapest for a big Pomona reunion for New Years. The first night we went to a spa party at the Szechenyi Baths. The baths are one of the main tourist attractions in Budapest, and by day they have several types of spa treatment and massages for fancy people. Each Saturday night, everything changes, and the spa opens up as a party venue after dark. There are two giant outdoor pools, heated to 100+ degrees while the outside temperature is well below freezing. There is a stage in the middle with a DJ, and concert lights set up all around the pool. The steam rising up from the hot water makes a club-like effect, and the fancy old person spa turns into a crazy party venue. There is a bar on one side of the pool which requires a short walk through the snow and ice in a swimsuit, but is totally worth it for the $1 beers. The party was insane, one of the most ridiculous parties I've ever been to. Though it did made me cringe to think that the next day there would be old people bathing in that pool, thinking that the water is healing their skin when really it was full of puke, jizz (yes, a lot of it), and beer.

The next morning, New Year’s Eve, we woke up in our airbnb and set out to explore Budapest. With Andy as our tour guide (he had visited once before), we walked around the city and saw the palace, cathedral, and some other big fancy buildings.

The gang in Budapest. From left, Amade, Timmy, me, Clayton, Matt, Andy, Ryan

a big fancy building

                As the day turned into night, the streets became crowded with people braving the cold to get drunk and shoot off fireworks in the middle of the city. Mulled wine stands lined the streets and vendors sold giant fireworks to anybody who wanted them at about 3 bucks a pop. As the time neared midnight, the fireworks got crazier and crazier. Constant bangs came from every direction and sparks were flying everywhere. There was an area in the main square that had been cleared of people, and several tubes were set in the middle of it for fireworks to be shot from. Most of the idiot tourists didn't know what to do with the fireworks, and about half of them ended up exploding on the ground, sending showers of sparks at everybody nearby. Just before midnight we went to the river where people were lining up. We were expecting the city to put on a fireworks show at midnight, but instead it turned out that as the clock struck midnight the entire city exploded as people set off their own personal firework stashes all at once. There was no professional show; there were just hundreds of people shooting off their own fireworks in every direction. Though they were not as big or impressive as a professional show would have been, it was a ridiculous spectacle that never would be able to occur in the USA, especially in the middle of the city surrounded by breakable windows and peoples’ homes.

Croatia

                On New Years Day we woke up and got on a train to Croatia. I had to leave the Schengen Area (European no-borders zone) because my German visa was about to expire, and Croatia was somewhere that I had always wanted to go. The train was about 6 hours and got there fairly late, so we didn't do much that night other than eat sausages. The next morning we woke up and rented a car to drive to Plitvice Lakes National Park. The roads were incredibly well marked and finding our next airbnb was really easy. The multilingual and convenient signage was the first of many things that surprised me that Eastern Europe has and the USA does not. When we got to the airbnb, we dropped off our stuff and headed into the national park, well known as one of the most beautiful and most visited parks in Europe (google it if you've never heard of it). Though the main tourist season is in the summer when the lakes are bright turquoise and the area is lush and full of life, visiting in the winter was also really amazing because the waterfalls were half frozen with the most enormous icicles and craziest ice formations that I've ever seen.

the big waterfall

                On the first day we went to the biggest waterfall in the lower section of the park (pictured above). The walk up to it was incredibly sketchy, on a boardwalk that went directly through a lake with no railings and was completely covered in ice. I honestly have no idea how nobody fell in the freezing water. I recommend crampons if you ever go there in winter.

the gang by the big waterfall

               

                We then walked further up the path, through a cave, and to the biggest lake where there was a boat going back and forth to each side. We took the boat to the far side but it ended up being the last boat ride of the day so we walked back along the lake as the sun set. The rest of the night consisted of hockey and beer, a perfect throwback to the nights spent in the A-frame at Mammoth the last few years. In the morning we drove to the upper entrance to the park, which was technically closed but there was nothing stopping people from getting in. We walked to the upper lakes which are even more beautiful than the lower ones, with brighter blue water and tons of waterfalls. We also discovered the coolest sound ever, skipping rocks across ice.

beautiful Plitvice Lakes in winter

                We headed back to Zagreb that afternoon and everyone else flew out that day or the next day. We went to a brewery that evening with some pretty good beer and ate a delicious Croatian meal of a bunch of meat. I went to the train station to figure out where I could go next, and decided to buy a ticket to Sarajevo for the next morning.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

                Bosnia was one of the unexpected highlights of my trip. I knew essentially nothing about the country before I showed up there, and my short visit definitely gave me a desire to go back. I knew my friend Zack was travelling around the Balkans but I wasn’t sure where he was at that time, so I messaged him to find out what his plan was right before I left Croatia. When I arrived in Sarajevo, I asked a taxi driver to take me to a hostel in the old town where I got a bed and checked my phone. I had a message from Zack saying that he was also in Sarajevo, and it turned out that his hostel was just one block away from mine. I walked over to his hostel right away, stoked to see another friend, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, in Bosnia of all places. We bought some 2 liter beers for $1.50 (yeah Bosnia is awesome) and hung out in the hostel where we met a bunch of other backpackers. Two of them were going skiing the next day so I decided to join them.

                In the morning I found the two Australians that I had met the previous night and we got a taxi to the ski mountain. The taxi ride was a little over half an hour and cost a grand total of $28, not too bad when split between 3 people. The taxi ended up being the most expensive part of the day—even more than the ski rental and ski pass combined. We went to Jahorina, which was the mountain that the 1984 Yugoslavian Olympics were held. Only a small part of the mountain was open that day, but the conditions were great. It had snowed all night and there was a fresh 4-6” on the ground, and in the morning the sun came out for a bluebird powder day.

Bosnian pow

                The next day I went up another mountain with some Canadians who had a car. We were originally trying to go sledding on the Olympic bobsled track, but the road was too snowy and we couldn't make it to the top in their tiny little car. Instead, we pulled to the side of the road and explored a big abandoned building. It appeared to have been an apartment building before the war, but it had been completely shot up and bombed and there was just a crumbling frame remaining. Sights like this were everywhere around Sarajevo, a very visible reminder of the war which ended less than 20 years ago. I learned a bit about the Bosnian history while I was there, and basically in the early 1990s, Yugoslavia broke up and the Serbian government didn't like the fact that Bosnia had so many Muslims, so they started a war. Sarajevo is located in a valley surrounded by huge mountains, and the Serbians posted up on the mountains all around the city so that they could prevent anybody from leaving. The apartment building we found was likely occupied by Serbian snipers at some point, as it had a great view over the whole city.

Abandoned apartment building in the hills above Sarajevo

The view from the apartment building over Sarajevo, likely occupied by snipers during the war

bullet holes in the walls

                Later that afternoon, Zack and I took a bus to Mostar, a smaller city in Herzegovina. On the bus I met a really interesting guy who told me his story about the war. He was 17 when the war started and after a year he managed to escape through Croatia to Italy. There was very little possibility to find a job and start a new life in Italy, though, so he tried to sneak into Switzerland. After 5 failed attempts to sneak in while hidden in peoples’ cars, him and his friend decided to hike to Switzerland, through the snowy alps in the middle of the night in the winter with no hiking or snow equipment. Somehow they survived, and 20 years later he is working for a TV channel in Switzerland and has Swiss citizenship.

                The main sight to see in Mostar is a famous bridge, which was bombed and destroyed in the war but has now been rebuilt. It spans the beautiful river that winds through the city. On our full day in Mostar, we walked around the city, saw the bridge, and went into a museum which had a video of the bridge being bombed. That afternoon we took a bus to the next town over, called Blagaj, where there is a river that comes out of a cliff. By that I mean, there is a giant hole in the side of a cliff and an entire river pours out of it. It is pretty cool.

Zack and I at Stari Most, the famous bridge in Mostar

the whole river comes out of that cave

Croatia (again)

                The next day, Zack and I got a bus to Split, Croatia. Split is a beautiful city on the Dalmatian coast in southern Croatia. We got there fairly early and set out to adventure around the city. Let me tell you, it was quite the adventure. We wandered around the old town for a little while, getting lost in the labyrinth of brick streets, and then headed uphill through a park that overlooks the city. We walked and walked and walked up seemingly endless stairs that appeared to be going right through peoples’ backyards, and finally we reached the top which opened up to an amazing view over Split, the bay, and the nearby islands. Rays of sunlight streamed through the clouds on the horizon shining light on the islands, which melted into the deep blue of the Adriatic Sea. Colors morphed together to form a beautiful image of wild nature meeting the neat and orderly city. The park seemed to contain every ecosystem imaginable, with Mediterranean sage scrub melting into evergreen forest melting into palm trees and cacti and playground equipment out of a Doctor Seuss book.  

Split, from the top of Marjan Park. There are huge mountains further east (left) and Italy is about 150 miles to the west (right) across the sea

As we made our way back down from the park we decided to take a different route, through the woods and back into the city from the other side of the park. We got a bit lost after seeing the sea and walking towards it, without realizing that we were on a peninsula and were walking towards the wrong coastline. After failing to get directions from a lady who looked more witch than human, we suddenly found ourselves right back in the middle of the city, with absolutely no idea how we ended up there. We headed back to the hostel, where we met another traveler, Chris, invited him to come out to the promenade for some drinks with us. Split has a beautiful promenade along the beach, which, though fairly empty in the wintertime, was a great place to hang out. Outdoor bars lined the promenade, situated under umbrellas and tents with portable heaters to stay warm. It was a great atmosphere and we hung out for several drinks, getting to know Chris and drinking the free Rakija (Croatian moonshine) shots that the bartender kept bringing.

The Split promenade

                The next day we spent walking around Split, visiting an art museum, drinking ridiculously cheap beer, and we went to a bar at night. Being a Friday, the bar was a bit more packed than it had been the previous night, and we met several interesting locals there. At some point we stumbled back to the hostel, fell asleep, and Zack and Chris left early the next morning to continue south to Dubrovnik. I went the opposite direction, north up to Zagreb, slowly making my way back to Germany where I had left many of my belongings when my internship finished. In Zagreb I couchsurfed with a great host, Dijana, who had just recently moved to Zagreb and was hosting me and one other couchsurfer for her first time there. She told us stories about her travels through the USA and made us an incredible breakfast the next morning. It was a quick visit to Zagreb for me, and the next day I headed north to Ljubljana, Slovenia, which was probably my favorite destination on the trip so far.

To be continued…

Winter Travels part 1: Turkey, Israel, Jordan

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About a month and a half ago, on December 12, I finished my internship in Germany. Since then, I’ve been travelling basically the whole time, but I haven’t had my laptop with me until recently so I have quite a bit to catch up on. When I finished my internship, I had flights already booked to Istanbul for a few days, then Israel to meet up with my family for 2 weeks, and then Budapest for new years with some friends. Beyond that, I had no plan other than to end up in Madrid a few weeks later, where my girlfriend at the time was living (then we broke up, so the adventure has been extended a bit longer until I figure out where to go instead). This post will cover the first 3 countries that I visited, and my next post(s) will catch up the rest of the way.

Turkey

Two days after the end of my internship, I flew to Istanbul. I was headed towards Israel to meet up with my family, and Istanbul was right on the way so it seemed like a fun place to stop for a few days. Unfortunately I ended up spending about half of my visit in the airport trying to get my lost luggage back, but the rest of the time was a good experience. I couchsurfed there with an old mining engineering professor, Orhan Kural, who is apparently famous in Turkey. He was a nice guy and had travelled to essentially every country in the world, but was also so busy that he barely had any time to tell me about his adventures. He was very nice though and provided me with a free bed, a bit of food, and everything I needed for the 2 nights I was staying there.

When I wasn’t at the airport trying to get my bag back (which took 13 days by the way, never ever ever ever fly with Onur Air), I walked all over the city. I saw the famous blue mosque, the palace which used to be the headquarters of the Ottoman empire, a couple of markets, and took a ferry across the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia. The blue mosque was nice, although I personally didn’t find it quite as thrilling as the hordes of tourists with selfie sticks did. But maybe that’s just because I’m not quite as excited by cities and buildings as I am by nature and mountains. I didn’t go inside the palace because it was ridiculously expensive, but the outside was pretty. There was one area where they dressed people up in sultan king costumes and took photos. The guy taking the photos conned me into letting him take a couple of me.

King of the castle

Then, when I went to the cash register to look at my photos and decide whether to buy one, the guy working there turned out to be a super nice dude and loved the fact that I was travelling and couchsurfing because he often hosts couchsurfers, so he gave me a bunch of the photos for free. Really nice people like this seem to be quite common in Turkey (apart from the airline workers)—I met several other similarly friendly and incredibly hospitable people who went way out of their way to help me find the place I was couchsurfing, help me get my bag back, and give me advice on what to do. I’d love to hitchhike and backpack all over the country at some point if that doesn’t become too sketchy to do as an American Jew.

Other notable things I saw/did in Istanbul include eating terrible döner kebabs, a bunch of markets—for food and pets—and riding a boat to Asia. I was really surprised at how bad the döner kebabs were compared to Germany. I had always been told that the German döner is way better, but since it is almost always made by Turkish people in Germany, I never believed it. Well, it’s true. I hate to say it but the döner in Istanbul was dry, tasteless, expensive, and generally just worse in every way than Germany. I even ate 3 döner kebabs because I thought I had just gotten a bad one, but they were all the same. So my advice is, eat döner in Germany and stick with baklava in Turkey. I also went to several markets, many of which were essentially the same, all selling spices, Turkish delight candies, and other food to go.  But there was one unique market, the pet market. It was a really terrible place from an animal cruelty standpoint, but interesting because I had never seen anything like it before. They had a bunch of stands with thousands of birds, rabbits, mice, lizards, fish, and even a few puppies and kittens pent up in little cages. I felt horrible for the puppies and it was really difficult to resist rescuing one. On my last day in Istanbul, I took a boat to Asia since I was flying out of the airport on the Asian side. Istanbul is divided by a big waterway, which is the official border between Asia and Europe, and it is kind of fun to take a ferry just to say you rode a boat to another continent. Unfortunately it was so smoggy outside that I couldn’t see much, and I don’t have any photos because my camera was lost in my luggage. After that I got a bus directly to the airport and headed to Israel.

Israel & Jordan

                My family all met up in Israel for a few weeks during my dad’s winter break, and we also went to Petra in Jordan. It was my second time in Israel and Jordan, having first gone there on a birthright trip 3 years ago. I arrived in Tel Aviv and my sister picked me up from the airport. She is currently teaching English for the school year in Netanya, Israel, which is a city on the coast just north of Tel Aviv. It was really late so we didn’t do anything that night, but the next day we went down to the beach and rented kayaks. We had a nice adventure kayaking around the Mediterranean, and I also bought some clothes since I still had no bag. We went to an interesting Shabbat party that evening at an army base, where everybody was completely sober but dancing crazier than most drunk people I’ve ever seen. After the party we went to a chocolate restaurant with Caitlin’s friend Dan and ate a healthy dinner of chocolate pizza (yes, it exists), which consists of dough covered with chocolate and marshmallows. The next day we explored Tel Aviv a little bit and then my parents arrived. They rented a car and we drove up to Tiberias, a city on the Sea of Galilee, which is where Jesus apparently decided physics is bullshit and walked on water.

                We went on a walk around a nature reserve in the north right by the border of Lebanon, where we saw a nice waterfall, and the next day we drove to Tsfat and Haifa. Tsfat has a big market area and a few ancient synagogues and Haifa has huge beautiful gardens overlooking the sea, and we ate a non-kosher dinner in the German quarter (it’s really hard to find non-kosher food in Israel). The next day we drove to Ein Gedi Kibbutz on the Dead Sea, which was a really amazing place. Kibbutzes used to be sort of socialist settlements where everyone in the community would work together to grow food and maintain the community, but now they are more often just businesses with nice hotels for tourists to stay in. We went on a hike through the oasis at Ein Gedi, passing by some cool animals like the Rock Hyrax and Ibex.

Rock Hyrax

Selfie with an Ibex

In the afternoon we went swimming. The water is about 10 times as salty as the ocean, and the dissolved salt makes it really dense so it is much more buoyant than normal water. When standing upright without touching the bottom, I would float with my shoulders completely out of the water. Dead Sea mud contains lots of minerals which are supposed to be really good for your skin, so we covered ourselves in mud, let it dry, and washed it off in the water. The results were amazing—my skin has never felt so soft.

Dead sea mud

After the Dead Sea we drove down to Eilat, on the southern tip of Israel, with a stop at Masada on the way. Masada is a mountain next to the Dead Sea with a long history of Jewish-Roman conflict. I hiked up the mountain while everyone else took the cable car. The hike began at the lowest point on Earth, around 1300 feet below sea level, and barely made it above sea level at the top of the mountain. At the top of Masada there are ancient ruins where Jews used to live until they were invaded by the Romans. When the Romans broke down their walls, the Jews, not wanting to live as slaves, committed one of the largest mass suicides in history.

The next day in Eilat was an amazing day for me, as it was my first time scuba diving around a coral reef. Israel has a small strip of coastline (about 6 miles) on the Red Sea, an extension of the Indian Ocean that is well known for its scuba diving opportunities. I did two dives, one 60 feet deep and one 10-25 feet deep at an area called the Japanese Gardens in Eilat. I thought the shallower dive was more interesting because there was more coral and fish. It was inside a nature reserve which was not accessible by land, we had to take a boat to the outside of the reserve and then swim in. A lot of the coral was dead, which has apparently happened in the last 10 years due to pollution and disturbance of the water by nearby developments. But there were a couple areas which were teeming with life, and they were amazing. Entire boulders seemed to breathe as the coral covering them expanded and contracted with colorful fish swimming everywhere. The crystal clear water made the experience even more amazing, being able to see well over 50 feet in any direction.

                After Eilat, we went to Petra for a day. Petra is a site of ancient ruins in the desert of Jordan. The Nabateans, who lived about 2000 years ago, carved their civilization into the sides of mountains, with incredibly intricate and impressively huge designs. The entrance to the park is shown in the third (?) Indiana Jones movie—a giant slot canyon with 150+ foot walls which then opens up to the treasury, an enormous building carved into a cliff, hundreds of feet tall.

The Treasury

Much of the rest of the park contains smaller tombs and cave dwellings where people lived, all carved into mountains in an incredible maze-like formation with tiny staircases that wind up and down the rocks and canyons of the rugged landscape. My photos only show a tiny fraction of the park, one could spend many days exploring the area and still never see everything hidden in the rocks.

Petra

                The final stop on our journey was Jerusalem. We drove 5 hours through the Israeli desert to get to the city, stopping at the Tel Aviv airport on the way where I finally got my backpack back that had been lost in Turkey!!!

 

A road sign on the drive from Eilat to Jerusalem

                In Jerusalem, we hired a tour guide give us a private tour of the old city. He knew everything about everything, and was a great guy to lead a tour. He told us all about the history of the city, from the Jews that settled there many thousands of years ago until now. Unfortunately whatever had made its way into my digestive system put a bit of a damper on things since I had to sprint to a toilet every 20 minutes and shit my brains out, but otherwise it was a really interesting day.

Jerusalem

                Israel was an interesting place to visit because people are so friendly and live such normal lives, while much of the rest of the world thinks that Israelis are all war-loving racists. In Germany whenever I would tell people that I was going to Israel, I got the same exact reaction every time “vhat zee fahck! Vhy vhould you go zhere? Don’t you know it is dangerous?” It’s really sad because all that the Europeans know about Israel is what they hear in the news, which basically shows only the kill count for the war and nothing else. They don’t understand why the war was happening, they don’t understand the long history of conflict and a need for at least one Jewish state somewhere in the world if there are going to be so many Islamic and Christian countries, they don’t understand that Israelis didn’t take the land from Palestine, the country was created by the UN after World War II, they don’t understand that it is a perfectly safe and really beautiful place to visit and that the people who live there are just normal people.

That’s all for now, in a day or two I’ll probably get another post written about Budapest, Croatia, Bosnia, and the rest.