August 16-17 :: Albania

For our journey from Ohrid to Tirana we take a private minibus. It is another lovely day and as the temperature rises the weaknesses of the air-conditioning become evident and some our Aussie travel companions "become uncomfortable". Personally, I do not like a/c and would prefer windows that can be opened.

We head north around Lake Ohrid and after we cross the border into Albania we turn away from the lake and head west through the mountains towards Tirana, the trendy capital and largest city of Albania. Tirana is a relatively new city by European standards being founded in 1614 by Sulejman Bargjini and only became Albania's capital city in 1920.

From Balkans 2011

Skanderbeg Square

There is still a lot of the grey, dismal, communist era city, but there is also a lot of new, more colourful development. One example while we were there was the extensive improvements taking place in Skanderbeg Square.

Like most of the places that we visit on this tour our time is short. We spend the bulk of our time exploring the central area starting at Bulevardi Zogu I which takes in the National Historical Museum at the north end heading south on to Skanderbeg Square and numerous public buildings followed by Bulevardi Deshmoret E Kombit which is bordered on both sides by green space and takes in Rinia Park and the now rather delapidated Pyramid of Enver Hoxha.

From Balkans 2011

Bunker

Even here in the heart of the city and the seat of government you can still see remnants of the past, just off the main Boulevard, beside a bus stop, is one of the 700,000 bunkers built during the Communist era.

We decide that we've seen enough of the centre and take a taxi back to our hotel. We are staying a couple of kilometers northwest at Hotel Ferari, probably the best hotel on this tour with nice rooms and a pool. The local area provides a contrast from the grandeur of the city centre and we explore the small shops and cafes. Later in the evening we return to a small restaurant and enjoy a nice meal. The proprietor spoke English and tried to talk me out of the Albanian dishes on the basis that "foreigners do not like Albanian food", but I insisted and he was pleased to hear that I enjoyed it. A slight rephasing of the famous saying: When in Albania, eat Albanian food and drink Albanian beer!

We have one more stop in Albania and that is at Krujë, a small town about 20km north of Tirana in the mountains. We spent most of our time in Tirana at two museums, the Skanderbeg Museum and the National Ethnographic Museum.

From Balkans 2011

Krujë Castle

The Skanderbeg Museum is housed in Krujë Castle which is built on a hillside in the south of the town. The Museum honours George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, whose namesake square we visted in Tirana, a national hero of Albania. It is quite a small museum but is quite interesting and well worth the 200ALL entrance fee when we visited.

The Ethnographic Museum is just a short walk from the Skanderbeg Museum and is housed in an old merchant house and consists of perhaps a dozen rooms depicting life in the 18^th century. There are english speaking guides to describe the rooms and their usage. Strangely you pay when you leave, assuming that you aren't the sort of person to save a few lek and sneak out the way you came in. We both found the museum interesting.

Cultural activities done it is time to find somewhere for lunch. There are lots of shops aimed at the tourists in the Old Bazaar which we walked through trying to find an interesting place to eat. We didn't find anywhere very interesting but did manage to get a reasonable pizza.

That's it for Albania, all we have to do now is head north for Montenegro, still in our private minibus.

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Map of the route.

August 14-16 :: Macedonia

We were too late arriving in Sofia to attend the "trip briefing" but our guide has left us some information on our departure time and meets us for breakfast. We are booked on the public bus to Skopje, Macedonia's capital, departing at 08:00 from the Central Bus Station. The public bus is comfortable and we have reserved seating. We travel through attractive, mountainous scenery with a stop along the way.

From Balkans 2011

We arrive by lunch time so all afternoon to explore. It is a short walk to the Stone Bridge across the River Vardar. Along the way we pass a lot of modern statues in the streets and in Macedonia Square is a huge, 12m bronze statue A warrior on a horse with a rider on a horse rampant. The statue has only been erected in the last couple of weeks and is still not complete. The official name of the statue not withstanding, everybody knows that it is really Alexander the Great, much to the annoyance of Greece! Time to grab a snack and a beer.

Before crossing the river we walked up the pedestrian street that leads to the Old Railway Station, Museum of Skopje. The clock on the wall of the old station stopped at 5:17 when an earthquake struck on 26 July 1963. There is lots of statuary along the street including a couple of statues of Mother Teresa near the Mother Teresa Memorial House.

We then cross the river via the Stone Bridge and explore the area around the Kale Fortress followed by the small streets that make up the city's Old Bazaar. As the sun is setting we find a quiet spot amongst the many small establishments in the bazaar where we can take our evening repast.

It is another early morning. We have now done Skopje and we take another bus to our next stop, Ohrid on the western shore of its namesake, Lake Ohrid. Ohrid is one of the few Cultural and Natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and it is not hard to see why. It is a lovely area with the town set on the moutainous shore of the lake.

From Balkans 2011

We take a walking tour of this small city and end up at the Church of St John the Theologian at Kaneo before returning along the lake front. The weather was delightful and we enjoy an al fresco meal at a waterfront restaurant. A pleasant, relaxing place where we could happily have spent another couple of days.

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Map of the route.

August 12-13 :: Budapest » Sofia

The journey from Budapest to Sofia should have been simple. A train to Beograd, a 40minute stopover then depart Beograd in a sleeper compartment for the overnight journey to Sofia.

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, …

From Balkans

Keleti pályaudvar

All starts well, we take the metro to Keleti pályaudvar, a rather rundown station that demonstrates that not all of Budapest has yet been modernised. We find our seats on the EC 345 train that leaves on time for a scheduled 7½hour journey to Beograd.

The journey south was through a largely flat agricultural area which was pleasant if unremarkable. We arrive at the Hungary-Serbia border a little later than scheduled and then just sat there, no apparent activity, so presumably all bureaucracy for the train operator. We then move a short distance across the border into Serbia and have a long wait while immigration officials "do their thing". Eventually we get going again but we are now more than 2 hours behind schedule. During this time we were sitting and chatting with a Serbian student on her way home to Novi Sad. She tells us lots about Serbia and Novi Sad in particular which suggests that it might have been a good place to stop if we'd scheduled more time. She also said that the time we spent at the border was not unusual.

After a slow journey in which we progressively lose time during each leg we finally arrive in Beograd at 23:05CEST, i.e. 2½hours late, and, no surprise, we've missed our connection, the D 293 is long gone. 10 hours after leaving Budapest we have covered ~200miles.

The late arrival is not a surprise to Serbian Railways and to be fair they are ready for a lot of passengers who have missed their connection. They rebook us on to a train the following morning and provide us with accommodation at a nearby hostel reached by walking west long the railway tracks. The hostel is not very salubrious but I've slept in worse. Since we hadn't planned on stopping in Serbia we had no local currency (Serbian Dinar) though it wouldn't have helped much as nowhere was open at midnight.

We get a reasonable nights sleep and are up early for the 7:30 train, the D 491. I manage to change a few Euros for Dinars and we grab some breakfast at the station. We have no reserved seats on this train and get on early to ensure that we get some. The train is crowded and many are standing in the corridors as we depart on time.

From Balkans

Hope they don't bring this one back into service!

The train is of the old communist-era variety with only two carriages consisting of compartments for six. Compartments had windows that could be opened which was great later when the temperatures got up to around 40°C. In our compartment there are two Bulgarians in the window seats and a Serbian lady with two children who kindly squeezes into two seats to make room for the two of us. The train is very slow as we head south from Beograd, it meanders its way to Mladenovac and then we go a little quicker. As we head south the terrain is very like that we encountered travelling from Budapest to Beograd but as we get closer to Niš we start to move into more mountainous terrain. We arrive in Nis roughly on time and take on a lot of passengers. The Serbian lady and her children leave and we are joined by a Dutchman and a Serbian. Now there are lots of people standing in the corridors.

The Serbian proved to be friendly and talkative. He talks about Niš, his home, which sounds like another place worth visiting. He also shares some interesting information about the railway system. We observe that the train is very full and he explains that is because they only schedule as many carriages as there are passengers. The explanation is corruption, the train is always packed to overflowing because people do not buy tickets, locals instead slip the conductor some cash when asked to present their ticket. In practice there are more than double the number of people travelling on the train than have tickets. The track we are using used to be part of the route followed by the Orient Express but has fallen into disrepair, hence the slow speed. Investment is on hold hoping that the EU will one day pay for the improvements.

Railway workers are not the only ones who are corrupt, border guards are also on the take. He tells us about smuggling cigarettes between Serbia and Bulgaria, these days it is from Serbia to Bulgaria, in the past it was the other way. There is small scale smuggling with individuals carrying 5-10 packets and larger scale moving 10 times that. Little did we know that we would get to see such smuggling in action.

Just before the border a lot more people joined the train, seemingly the smugglers. A couple of old ladies squeezed themselves into our carriage and stowed all their belongings. We watched a guy constantly moving along the corridor in a real sweat. Our Serbian fellow passenger said that he was one of the larger scale smugglers secreting his goods in the train. When we got to the border it was just our luck that the officials were a little more thorough than usual and searched the train. One of the ladies was caught with a couple of packets in her socks and was carted off. The other lady in our compartment was used to the procedure and just raised her clothes so that her bare middle and bra were exposed to demonstrate that she wasn't hiding anything. We finally got moving again after about two hours at the border, it had been very hot what with the outside temperature combined with the crush of people and we were thankful for the old fashioned windows that we could open.

As soon as we left the Bulgarian border post the smugglers started retrieving their contraband and immediately started selling it on the train. The old lady who had exposed herself turned out to be smuggling and had carefully secreted about 10 packs under my seat.

We eventually arrived at Sofia at around 19:30CEST, a couple of hours late. A 12 hour journey to cover ~250 miles. Slow but it turned out to be anything but boring!

From the station it was a simple 20 minute walk to Scottys Boutique Hotel. We found somewhere to eat and I enjoyed my first Shopska salad which we shared along with a very good pizza and some beer!

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Map of the route.

August 9-12 :: Budapest

During our visit in Budapest we stayed at the Carat Boutique Hotel, this turned out to be a good choice, a nice hotel, conveniently situated in Pest half of Budapest, a short walk from Deák Ferenc square.

 

View Budapest Walking Tour in a larger map  

Lynn always likes to plan her trips and on the agenda were pretty much all of the major highlights in our guidebook (Budapest, AA CityPack). The weather was superb so we will make the most of it spending our time outdoors.

To get an overview of the city we took a walking tour with Budapest Tours, this was a half day tour and only covered Pest (there was another tour for Buda). The walk started near the tourist office at Deák Ferenc Metro and ended at the Great Market Hall but we continued on to Ráday utca, a street with lots of nice restaurants, for lunch. Although I have visited Budapest a couple times before I found the couple of hours for the trip to be both informative and useful.

Terror House Museum

Over the few days of our trip we revisited some of the places we had briefly visited on the walking tour. The Terror House Museum is related to two recent periods in Hungarian history, the fascist and communist regimes. During the Second World War the building was the headquarters of national socialist Arrow Cross Party. After the war it was occupied by Hungary's State Security Agency (AVO). It's name is well deserved. It was well worth the hours we spent there, fascinating!

Széchenyi thermal bath

There was one other activity high of Lynn's list, a visit to a spa. There are lots to choose from but the list is reduced when the constraint that it must be a traditional outdoor one is applied, we settled on Széchenyi Gyógyfürdo Uszodája in City Park.

While Lynn luxuriated at the spa I spent the time exploring City Park taking in Vajdahunyad Castle and a quiet bar.

Also on the list was Nagy Zsinagoga, The Great Synagogue (the largest Synagogue in Europe). The only item of interest to me was The Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs in the rear courtyard. Lynn found much more to fascinate her so once again I sought out a nearby cafe to chill out and do a little people watching.

We managed to find some really good food, not too difficult a task, at reasonable prices. On some occasions a single portion was enough for both of us.

We will have to visit again one day, I'm sure Lynn would enjoy exploring Buda. Budapest has changed a lot since my first visit in February 1997, in many ways the changes are for the better, but I'm afraid that it is losing some of its original unique charms and becoming a typical northern European city. The last time I was in Buda I felt that it had retained more of its charm than Pest, that is why I'll have to bring Lynn back -- to see Buda.

First milestone on Triples

After ringing a Quarter Peal of Plain Bob Minor I set myself some goals, the most challenging of which was to master something on 8 bells. While I cannot claim to have achieved mastery, I have satisfied myself with ringing a Quarter Peal (recorded on Campanophile) of Grandsire Triples in a time of 44 minutes.

It takes eight people to ring Grandsire Triples and I could not have done it without the kind assistance of seven people willing to give up their time on a Friday evening to help me ring this for the first time.

Once again I have to decide what I want to tackle next. I will continue with Stedman, both Doubles and Triples, but I'll have to think a while about what new to tackle.