It's the end of the year, which meant a lot of work for me this time. I was trying to put together a photobook of 2011 and 2012 containing all my travel photos because I had a discount voucher that was valid until 31 December 2012 and also I was working on a list with my all-time favorite music.
I listened to more than 500 songs and ranked them with the initial idea to make a top 300. However, due to time constraints and the feeling that the songs after song number 201 were not really worth being in the list of my favorite music, I decided that a top 200 would be enough for this year.
Since Blogspot makes it impossible for me to post the list on my weblog, I had to put it on another old website I still have. Click HERE to view the list, which for the first time contains hyperlinks to the music videos of some songs.
A little more than one month ago I had a job interview in Eindhoven. The interview went well (although it didn't lead to a job offer) and when I got back to the train station I learnt that due to a train accident there were no trains going on the route between Eindhoven and my home town Houten, so I was looking for an alternative route. After looking at the map one more time I realized that I could also take the "touristic" route. For the Dutch readers (or the foreigners that love to use Google Maps): I would go from Eindhoven further south to Venlo, then to Nijmegen and finally I would travel back to my hometown Houten via Utrecht Central Station. I had no idea how long this was going to take, but it couldn't be more than the 3 hours I would have to wait at the train station if I didn't do it, so I hopped on the intercity to Venlo.
You should know that people in the southern part of the Netherlands are very social people who really like to talk. This led to an interesting situation. I was sitting in this train when a man sat down opposite to me. This is not special and I was reading a book, so I didn't pay too much attention to him. Out of the blue the man said to me (in Dutch): "Hi, how are you?"
Though this is uncommon in my country, I just replied in a friendly manner and asked him how he was doing. He was doing fine. Great. Now I could read more in my book.
Or not. The man had been silent for about a minute and then he started talking (more or less to himself) about how there was yet another disruption of the train traffic and how it could be that the Dutch Railways could not prevent such disruptions. I felt it wouldn't be very nice if I just kept on reading, so I put my book down and started nodding towards the man that was sitting opposite to me and took a better look at him. His hair was messy: he was getting bald but he seemed to think that as long as he would let his hair grow longer it would go unnoticed. Furthermore the man had dirty clothes and long fingernails. It was clear to me that this man was living alone. When he started talking about his canary and how much work it was to clean up the cage of this bird ("because it's always escaping from the cage! You know how difficult it is to catch a loose canary?!?"), I knew for sure.
I tried to ignore the weird things this man said to me and have a normal conversation with him, as this was clearly what he wanted. We talked about the beauty of the southern part of the Netherlands, getting stuck with your bicycle while cycling through the forest and the economic crisis. The highlight of the conversation was when the man told me he had to live from unemployment benefits and how proud he was that he came up with an idea to save money: not switching on any lights at night.
"It's really not a problem for me to pee in the dark," he said.
The man got off the train in his home town Deurne and I looked around in the train compartment. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like the people were relieved that this man and his dirty stories were gone.
I didn't feel relief though. In fact I felt a bit sorry for this man. As I started reading in my book again I thought about how this man was probably living a very lonely life, with his canary and his house without lights.
When that the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder, people are more likely to get a sad feeling. This phenomenon is known as the Winter Blues. This blog is written with the purpose to counter those sad feelings with music. In just 7 songs I will guide you to a happy feeling. Based on every song I will give you an advice on how to become a happier person. You can also see these 7 songs as your personal 7-step guide to happiness.
I guarantee you that you will have a happier feeling after listening to all these songs.
1. Wake up the right way (Alex Day - Good Morning Sunshine)
Have you ever wondered why British people always seem so happy? A happy feeling starts with waking up the right way. The video below shows how British people like to start their day. It's clear what you need to do with this step: wake up with a smile, sing a happy song, wear a colorful t-shirt and do crazy things with the people close to you.
You can start with that new lifestyle tomorrow, for now it will be sufficient just to watch the video below.
2. Be happy with what you have (Gerry & The Pacemakers - I Like It)
One of the first steps on your way to happiness is to appreciate what you have. It's always better to think about the things that you do have than to think about the things that you don't have. So please start up the video below, watch the old commercial about Mikey who gets used as a guinea pig by his older brothers, close your eyes, listen to the song and think about all the good things in your life. Friends, family, beautiful things you have seen or maybe even memories of a warm spring day in the park. Or just that delicious chocolate you always eat... Anything will do.
Are you feeling happier already? Yes? Good, you are well on your way to become a happy person. Are you not feeling happy yet? Wow, you certainly are a tough one. Maybe the next song will do the trick for you.
3. Jump up and down a few times (Munamies - Pomppufiilis)
You always feel happier when you are physically active. Therefore step 3 on the road to happiness requires you to jump up and down a few times. I know it sounds silly, but just do it. It works. To give you energy while while you're jumping, here is a video with an egg-man who is singing (in Finnish) about the bouncy feeling he is experiencing.
And if you get tired from the jumping, you may also sit down and just happily move your head a bit from left to right for the rest of the song with a huge smile on your face. That should also help to make you feel happy.
4. Don't create a monster; fight your fears (The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray)
The next step is an important one. To become a happy person you must know yourself and your weaknesses. You should actively do something to make sure your bad qualities don't make you into a bad or annoying person. Moreover, you should never be afraid to do something that you want to do. Keep in mind that at the end of their lives most people feel more regret about the things that they didn't do than about the things that they did do.
Unfortunately Ray from the video below hadn't read my blog yet. As a consequence, he decided to create a monster. Luckily he has a friend who did read my blog and fights his fear, a.k.a. the monster.
5. Think about how it's all going to be alright in the end (He Is We - Happily Ever After)
It's not always easy to maintain a happy feeling. At times you may be worried about something or it may seem that things are going wrong. If you encounter such a situation, just think about how it will all be alright in the end. Can you imagine yourself 5 years from now still worrying about the things you are worried about at that moment? I bet you can't. See, you know it's all going to be alright. Then why should you let it ruin your good mood now?
In line with this, you can listen to the following feel-good song:
6. Do something you like to do (Alexander Rybak - Roll With The Wind)
If there is one singer who always gives me a happy feeling, it's Alexander Rybak with his everlasting smile and his violin. So if I select 7 songs to guide you to a happy feeling, I should also include a song by the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009.
I chose a song with the title "Roll With The Wind". It's quite difficult to come up with an advice from this song. I guess the main idea of all songs by Alexander Rybak is that everyone should just do whatever they like to do. If you like to make catchy pop music with a violin, then just do it. If you're happy being in love with a fairytale, then just do it. If one day you wake up and you feel like rolling with the wind (and you actually know what this is), then I guess you should also just do it.
7. Maintain your happy feeling throughout the day (Scouting For Girls - Gotta Keep Smiling)
There you go, you're in a good mood now. And is that a smile on your face? Yes! It is! Congratulations, you have made it to the final step and you already have a smile on your face. Now you just need to make sure that you will continue to have this happy feeling for the rest of your day. How can you do that? Scouting For Girls, my favourite band, has the following advice on how to do this:
Have a happy rest of the day and don't forget to keep smiling!
After three years of having the same old boring design, I'm confident that my blog looks a lot better now and invites you to come back some other time. The background photo may be a bit distracting, so it's possible that I change it later if I find a better photo.
List of changes:
- New background photo
- New, more attractive, font type
- The "about me" section has been removed
- It's now easier to find back old blog posts through the new search-function
- You can now ask Google to translate my words into your own language
- It's now possible to comment on my blog posts without having to login first
So if you have any remarks or tips about the new design of my blog, feel free to leave a comment. :)
Penpals are defined on Wikipedia as people who regularly write eachother, particularly via postal mail. In the early 1970s my mother already had penpals, with whom she exchanged long letters. Back then penpalling was a very exciting hobby: one did not know a lot about other countries and therefore it was a great way to get to know other cultures. It was however a very time consuming hobby and a lot of time would pass before you would know whether or not you got along with the other person.
With the introduction of internet penpalling has gotten a lot easier. It has not only become easier to find penpals with interests that are similar to yours, also a new kind of penpalling emerged: e-mail penpalling. Obviously this is a lot faster than the old fashioned snail mail and it allows you to quickly build international friendships. At the moment exchanging e-mails with people from other countries may be my biggest hobby. In this post I will share my experiences about penpalling and tell you where you can find your own penpals.
The beginning
I don't recall the exact circumstances, but in March 2007 I somehow discovered a website designed to help people find penpals. The website was simple: I had to fill in a couple of field about myself such as birthday, my hobbies and the languages I speak. After filling in these basic information I could start penpalling. In the first week I received a lot of mails, as my profile was listed under "new members". Unfortunately, due to the very basic design of this website, it was not easy to find suitable people to write to, since the information about potential penpals was also very basic.
I kept on writing messages to the few nice people that I met on that website until in November 2008, while being bored in the university library between two lectures, I discovered another website: Interpals. On this website one could make a comprehensive profile and besides this the search engine was just brilliant. I quickly signed up and in the past 4 years I never regretted this decision for a single moment.
Friends all around the world
Soon I started making real friends all around the world. Some of them wrote me lengthy mails that consisted up to 3 pages in Microsoft Word, others wrote me a couple of short messages and then invited me to chat on MSN or Facebook. All went well, until I got an idea on how to get even more fun out of this website. In the summer of 2010 I was planning to do volunteer work in Estonia and I wanted to learn a bit about the country before I would arrive there so I sent a message to some Estonian people on Interpals. In the end I became good friends with one of them and we decided to meet in Tallinn. My new friend picked me up from the airport, showed me around the city in such a way that I still believe Tallinn is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and I quickly realized that this was something I should do more often.
In the years that followed I traveled a lot. A few months before each travel I would use Interpals to find friends in the cities I would visit, send a message to them and then see how it would go. In 2011 I made a trip of 11 days during which I met 4 penpals from Interpals and I still consider that trip still to be the best trip I have ever made. I learnt that there is nothing as good as being shown around by a local in their home town. They can show you all the good places in town, take you to places that a normal tourist would never see and if you're lucky you become good friends afterwards.
I may have gotten a bit off-topic here, but at least you know now why I always seem to have friends abroad to meet up with during my travels.
My experiences
Over the years I had lots of penpals and despite the fact that every long e-mail communication is doomed to end one day I stayed friends with quite a few people. Below you can read the stories behind three of my longest lasting international friendships.
My oldest penpal is Yodit from Ethiopia. She first wrote to me in March 2007, when I was still new to this. We quickly started talking on MSN and became good friends. One day she asked me for my home address in the Netherlands. I was confused and didn't know what to expect, but I gave her my address. I had already forgotten about the fact that I gave her my address when one week before it was my birthday I suddenly received a big brown envelope in my mailbox. It was a birthday present from Yodit: a cd with traditional Ethiopian music. It gave me a really special feeling to receive such a present from a relatively unknown country. Over the years we haven't always been that close friends, but we never lost touch. I still plan to go to Ethiopia one day to meet my first penpal in person, but I'm still not sure when I will have the possibility to do that.
The second penpal that ever sent me a real letter plus some gifts was Reinhardt from South Africa. We started off writing in our native languages (Dutch and Afrikaans are really quite similar), but changed to English soon as long messages in Afrikaans are not really easy for me to read. The messages kept on getting longer and longer and in the end Reinhardt even sent me photos related to a certain topic in each e-mail. Those e-mails were always a pleasure to receive, although it took me quite a long time to reply to them as well. Even though we have stopped exchanging e-mails we still talk from time to time on Facebook or WhatsApp and I still have an outstanding invitation to come to South Africa.
The story of how I met the third penpal I'm going to mention here is an interesting one. In my final year at the university I met a lot of exchange students. Soon I started to like a Lithuanian exchange student and we had a lot of classes together, so I had plenty of opportunities to go and talk to her. I just didn't know what to say. So I decided to search for a Lithuanian penpal who could teach me some funny pick up lines in Lithuanian. This is how I met Rima. It never worked out with that Lithuanian classmate (one day I tried to talk to her, but my pronunciation was so bad that she didn't even recognize my words as Lithuanian), but I became good friends with Rima. We already met eachother three times (once in 2011 and twice when I was in Lithuania last summer) and always have a good time because we share the same sense of humor.
Final words
I could have mentioned many more wonderful stories here, but I won't, because otherwise this blog post would be way too long. I hope that my stories have gotten you as enthusiastic about this hobby as I am (if you weren't enthusiastic already).
If you want to meet new people from other countries as well, you can register yourself at www.interpals.net.
I always love a good sense of humor. Whether it's a joke in a comedy series, a comedian doing a one-man show or just a funny remark by a friend: I'm up for it. A couple of days ago I discovered a new song with funny lyrics and then I came up with the idea to share some of the best funny songs that I know with you guys. Here it goes...
1. Weird Al Yankovic - Amish Paradise
The master of the genre is of course Weird Al Yankovic. This guy has been making parodies on popular songs since the late 1970s and millions of people have already enjoyed his music. His most notable covers are White & Nerdy, Pretty Fly (For A Rabbi), Like A Surgeon and Eat It! (on the music of Beat It by Michael Jackson).
My favourite song by Weird Al however is Amish Paradise: a parody on Coolio's Gangster's Paradise. This song has everything: good music, good lyrics and a very funny video.
2. Napoleon XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha
My all-time favourite funny song. From 1966. About the things that can happen when a girl leaves her boyfriend...
3. Sons Of Maxwell - United Breaks Guitars
How do you get back at an airline that has done you harm by breaking a guitar and not taking any responsibility for it? Exactly, you write a song about it and make sure that more than 12 million people watch it.
4. Shawn Elliott - Shame And Scandal In The Family
A couple of years ago my dad heard an old song on the radio while we were driving in the car. The volume was turned up and this way I was forced to listen to this song. My dad said the lyrics were quite funny so I started listening to them. I didn't quite get them yet, but remembered the song in the back of my mind. Some years later I heard the song again and started paying close attention to the lyrics, which were in fact quite good. I recommend that you listen to this song at least twice, so you can fully understand why the title of the song is Shame And Scandal In The Family.
5. Bowling For Soup - No Hablo Inglés
Some funny songs can also give you advice on how to live your life. In the following video Jaret Reddick, lead singer of the band Bowling For Soup, will tell us exactly what to do in situations where someone asks us to do something that we really don't want to do.
6. Cory Williams - The Mean Kitty Song
About a little kitty that didn't turn out to be as cute as it looks...
7. Ylvis - Stonehenge
This song is a very serious song (maybe a bit too serious) about one of the more important questions in life. At first it seems like there is nothing funny about this song, but as this Norwegian talkshow host gets closer to the end of the song it just gets crazier and crazier.
I have done some research before posting this list, but if you miss a song that should have been in this list, please let me know. I'm always up for new music.
Hi all,
Sorry for not writing so much here any more. When I'm not travelling, there is not so much to write about. :)
I have written a guest post for a friend's blog though, with some recommendations for unusual travel destinations. If you want to read it and get inspired, you can find it via this link.
People often come up to me and say: "Laurens! You are such an attractive guy! How can it be that an amazing man like you is still single?" A couple of weeks ago, when asked such a question, I would have given a vague and unclear answer such as "I'm just a happy single", "it must be the fact that I am travelling so much" or, in case I'm in a funny mood, "girls must be intimidated by my magnificient looks". Today I read a couple of articles about online dating that made clear why I am still single. Apparently I am doing it all wrong.
The first article basically describes the link between how successful guys are in picking up women and their profile pictures. It basically states that if a man wants women to be interested in him, he should either take off his shirt or pose with a cute animal. Showing off with your travel photos is NOT a good idea at all. In fact, guys with profile pictures like this have the lowest success rate of all. According to the evidence, it's even better to have a profile picture that shows yourself drinking alcohol. If one girl reads this and can explain to me why my travel photos keep you from liking my pictures, please comment on this blog post and explain it to me.
The second article shows that I buy the wrong gadgets. My camera, a Nikon Coolpix, takes the least sexy pictures of all good cameras (only phone cameras score worse) and also statistical evidence indicates that my phone is keeping me away from sexual intercourse. I have an Android phone, which, according to the data, allows its users to have had on average 6 sex partners at the age of 30. iPhone users on the other hand will have had approximately 10 (men) or even 12.3 sex partners at that age. I will keep that in mind next time I see a girl walking with an iPhone in her hand.
The third article, assuming that the conclusions they reach about female beauty there are also true for male beauty, shows that I am probably looking too normal. I need either tattoos and piercings or big bicepses plus a sixpack to be more successful with girls. I am trying hard to go for option number 2 but so far the results are not really visible (I admit: I'm not trying THAT hard) and I will certainly never go for option number 1, so my chances of being successful with girls in the near future appear to be slim.
Unless of course I buy that new iPhone.
Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this blog post was written with the purpose of entertaining the reader and does not reflect my thoughts or opinions in any way. All conclusions in the articles are based on statistical evidence and therefore seem to describe reality. However, there are many exceptions on these rules. Being successful in love has nothing to do with the superficial traits that are mentioned in these articles.
Oh, and you were right... In reality no-one ever asks me the question I used to start this blog post. I just thought this would be a nice way to attract your attention.
As a true travelling-addict, it was obvious that I wouldn't go straight back home after the summer school in Kaunas had come to an end. As mentioned in my last post, I went on to visit Sweden for a few days.
It was very convenient that there was a direct flight from Kaunas to Stockholm. On my last day in Kauans I met up again with my friend Rima and she told me that her friend Milda was also going to Stockholm the next day to visit her boyfriend. We assumed that she would be on the same plane, so I asked Rima if she could show a photo of her friend so I could go talk to her at the airport. She showed me a clear picture from their trip to Hungary earlier that week and gave me her full name as well so I had an opportunity to check her out on Facebook. Then the idea to pull some crazy prank on this innocent girl came to my mind. With the help of my most creative friend Tommy I made up a story to surprise and confuse her. The conversation went like this:
L: "Hi! You are Milda (...), right?" M: "Yes..?" (clearly confused that a stranger walked up to her and knew her name) L: "Great! Let me introduce myself first. My name is Marcel Hoogervorst from Elle Fashion Magazine and I would like to ask you a couple of questions, is that ok?" M: "Yes...?!?" L: "Ok. So my sources told me that you recently signed a contract to be a model for the Swedish magazine Skessuhorn. What made you decide to do this? M: "Ehm... As far as I know, I didn't sign any contract...?" L: "You were in Budapest earlier this week, right?" M: "Yeah...?" (thinking: how on earth does he know this?!?) L: "Yes, and on Monday you signed the contract there."M: "No, I didn't, I think you really have the wrong person." L: "You are Milda (...), right?" M: "Yes, I am." L: "Interesting. My sources gave me your name and even your photo, and usually they are right about such things."
After this, she didn't know what to say any more and I felt she had suffered enough already, so I confessed to her my real identity. To my surprise she didn't hate me: she even invited me to sit down next to her and we kept on talking until we arrived in Sweden. This was really a great way to avoid boredom at airports and on airplanes. I am seriously considering to do such pranks more often.
When we arrived in Stockholm I said goodbye to Milda and her boyfriend and suddenly I was alone again; for the first time in one month. I walked to my hostel, that was on a boat actually, through the old town and was amazed by the beauty of Stockholm. This city is certainly one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited. The old town is just amazing, as well as the views over the water from Kastellholmen and in Djurgården I felt just like walking through the countryside at times.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that this trip was planned only two weeks in advance, I didn't manage to find anyone to meet up with in Stockholm, but in such a beautiful city you don't need a person to hang out with to have a good time.
On Monday morning I got on the train from Stockholm to Jönköping. Jönköping is a city full of students, located next to the second biggest lake in Sweden. In this city I would meet my friend Dyiva. We met eachother in a hostel last year and stayed in touch because we both share the same passion: travelling. It was great to see her again. Dyiva told me that I came to Jönköping at the right time: that Monday was the first day of the introduction week at the university and since her best friend was a Fadder (= some kind of mentor) of a group of new students, I was invited to join the activities on the days that I was there. I joined a group of students at the engineering school. On my first day in Jönköping I participated in some games to get to know the other students in the group, enjoyed a barbeque and some drinking games in the park and we had a party afterwards. Also, I talked with a guy from Lithuania using the Lithuanian that I had learnt during the past month, which was great, and in Dutch with a Dutch guy, which felt really weird, since I hadn't spoken my native language for almost a month now.
The next day I attended the Overall Ceremony. On the first day, all Fadders were already wearing an old, dirty overall in a color that represented their studies. The second day, the new students would get their own overalls and had to play some games in their new outfits to get them just as dirty as the overalls from the older students. Attending these two days of the introduction week really took me back to my own introduction week in Tilburg. We didn't have dirty overalls, but the activities were very similar. For sure being among all these students was much more interesting than just walking around the city and taking some pictures of the local churches.
Below you can find some photos from my second day in Jönköping, which was already my last day in Sweden.
This next week will be the final week of my summer course in Lithuanian language and culture. In the past few weeks I have at least learnt to read and write simple Lithuanian phrases; speaking is still a bit hard due to the huge amount of cases in this language. I really don't understand who came up with a language system as complex as the Lithuanian one. This language requires some simplification, if you ask me: it's unnecessarily difficult to speak proper Lithuanian. Unfortunately the Lithuanian mentality is too traditional to ever make the necessary adjustments in the language to make it easier for foreigners to learn it.
So now that the summer course is almost over, it's also time to talk about what I will do after the course ends. As some of you may know, it was my goal for 2012 to visit at least 10 new countries in this year. So far I am at 9 new countries and that's why I am not going straight back home after the course ends. My original plan was to go to Belarus, as this country should be very interesting for me to see. Unfortunately you do need visa to go to Belarus and you need to apply for this visa at the Belarussian embassy. The nearest embassy is in Vilnius, but due to the fact that it's only open on week days and I have classes every day during the week, it was not possible for me to go there. I got no response to my query if it was possible to leave the forms and the money in the mailbox of the embassy on a Saturday, so I had to think of some other place to go.
That's when I found a cheap flight ticket from Kaunas to Stockholm. I have never been to Sweden before, wanted to go there already some time to visit a friend in Jönköping and since the flight ticket from Lithuania back to Amsterdam was quite expensive this was the ideal opportunity to go to Sweden. Accomodation there is really expensive though: the cheapest available hostel in Stockholm charges around 30 euros per night just for a bed in a shared room. At the moment I'm still looking for some other accomodation option, but it's difficult as I am not the only tourist that wants to visit Stockholm in August. So we will see how it goes.
I am really looking forward to visiting Sweden though, as it will be my first trip ever to the real Scandinavia. Moreover, it feels great to know that I achieved my goal to visit those 10 new countries in 2012 in just 9 months.
PS. For those of you who are able to read in German (or know how to use Google Translate), I still have a link to an amazing blog post by the most adventurous traveller that I know. Stefan, whom I met in a hostel in Istanbul, is making a travel over land from Germany to India and at the moment he is in Central Asia, where apparently he got bored from travelling just to the standard tourist destinations. Click here to read the story about his trip to Lake Aidarkul in Uzbekistan and to be amazed by his courage, desire for adventure and writing skills.
One week ago I arrived in Kaunas to attend a summer course in Lithuanian Language and Culture and I must say it's horrible in Kaunas at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm only talking about the weather now. They say that in Lithuania they have only two hot days per year. Well, so far I have experienced seven of them. There is a massive heatwave going on here, with temperatures rising to 32 degrees outside, not to mention the temperatures inside the dorm I am staying in. And since we are in Lithuania, normally a cold country, there is no airconditioning in my dormitory.
So how am I doing here? Next to learning the Lithuanian language, I am keeping myself busy with meeting Lithuanian friends, having a good time my fellow students and visiting touristic places. This weekend I was in Trakai and Vilnius. Last year I was exactly at the same places, but at that time it was raining. This year, in the sun, Trakai is even more beautiful:
I heard a surprisingly large amount of Dutch tourists there as well and in the plane to Kaunas I was also sitting next to a Dutch family that was going on holiday to Lithuanian coast. It seems that this wonderful country is becoming more and more of a tourist destination, which brings joy to my Lithuania-loving heart.
As mentioned above, I'm also meeting up with Lithuanian friends. This is not as easy as it sounds like though. I have found out that Lithuanians don't really like to plan anything. Where in Holland it's sometimes common to plan a meetup between friends one month in advance, here it's very rare that a meetup is planned more than two days in advance. When you ask a Lithuanian to meet you somwhere in the next week, the answer will most likely be: "I don't know what I'll be doing yet around that time. Just ask me later, ok?" I wonder where this reluctance to plan anything is coming from. Is it a remainder from the Soviet times, where people didn't need to plan anything because the government would plan everything for them? Or is there some other reason for this, well-hidden in the heart of Lithuanian culture? I must say that I don't know yet. I guess first I will need to meet more Lithuanians and question them about their behaviour.
Ok, so it's way too warm here to sit inside and write a blog. Now I will go and prepare myself for a trip to a lake near Kaunas, where I will hopefully be able to cool down a little bit. See you! :)
A little more than one year ago I needed new shoes. As a real man I would never be able to pick out a fashionable pair of shoes by myself, so I invited a female colleague to come with me to help pick the right pair of shoes. She was flattered to become my personal fashion advisor and one evening after work we went to the shopping mall together to find me those ideal shoes. We had visited some cheaper stores already with no success when we entered a store with the more expensive brands. Without a doubt my fashion advisor chose a pair of green Skechers. These would be the perfect shoes for me, she said. I liked the shoes and tried them on, but wasn't sure about the bright colors. Moreover, I was not used to buying shoes that cost more than 40 euros at that time, so I said I'd think about it and went home without buying any shoes. In the days that followed I couldn't stop thinking about these shoes though, so a few days later I went back to the store and bought the green shoes.
That proved to be a very good decision. For the first time in my life my friends complimented me on my shoes, pretty girls on the street didn't look away any more after checking me out from top to toe and also the shoes were also really comfortable. In the months after that me and my shoes were inseparable. Together we travelled all over the world. We had walked around in no less than 15 different countries until they let me down for the first time on a rainy day in Macedonia: their laces broke. At that time I realised that my shoes were getting old and that maybe it was time for them to retire.
I decided to give them one last honor by taking them with me on my trip to Africa. In Tanzania my good old green shoes were functioning as working shoes. As it was a bit muddy there sometimes, the shoes were dirty by the end of the second week and I would probably never be able to wear them again under normal circumstances. I was considering throwing them away to have a less heavy backpack for the rest of my journey.
At the last day of the workcamp I was ready to take one last picture of them to say goodbye, but I hesitated. How could I throw away these shoes that had been so loyal to me on all my travels? I thought about all the memories we had shared together. A tear was rolling down my cheek while I was standing there with my camera in my hand. "No, I won't leave these shoes behind," I said to myself. I will take this picture, post it on my blog and then I will write a tribute to my green shoes to thank them for what they've done for me. Because a pair of shoes can actually change your life.
Yesterday I came back from my trip to Tanzania and Kenya. Obviously I have had a lot of new experiences during my travel. Since I think that many of you will be interested to hear detailed stories, this will be quite a big blog post. For those of you that are too lazy to read the whole post, I have posted a short list of the things I have done during my trip at the end of this post so you can still know what I did without having to read the whole story.
Karibu Tanzania
My first contact with a Tanzanian was a pleasant one. After watching a game from Euro 2012 at Cairo International Airport, where I had to transfer in order to get to Tanzania, I was waiting in line for the security check that was required in order to be allowed to enter the waiting room for the flight to Dar es Salaam. The guy in front of me, a dark-skinned young man, turned around and asked me how I was doing. A nice conversation followed and even though we got seperated after the security check, he later came sitting next to me again in the waiting room to continue the conversation.
I found this to be typical for Tanzanian cukture. It's not for nothing that the first word that I learned in Swahili was "karibu", which means "welcome". Everywhere I went people came up to me, looking for a talk with a "mzungu", the Swahili word for a white person. Sometimes this did pose a problem though. It was difficult to tell which people were genuinely interested in you and which people were just trying to sell you something. In other countries it's easy to send away those annoying salesmen on the streets with a simple "no, thank you", but how do you send away a friendly guy who has just been talking to you for 5 minutes when he starts showing you his Masai paintings?
The volunteer work I was going to do in Tanzania, building a goat shed to make money for vulnerable individuals in the regions such as widows, orphans and the HIV-infected, didn't start on the first day. We would first spend a few days at the ranch of Uvikiuta (the Tanzanian volunteering organisation that I was with) in a quiet suburb of Dar es Salaam. This area looked just like a 5 stars beach resort, the only exceptions being that there was no beach nearby and that the accomodation was not worth 5 stars (toilets were outside and the shower, which was in the same room as the toilet, was just a bucket of cold water). We shared the ranch with some velvet monkeys. These monkeys were not shy at all: some of them even joined us for lunch and to show that the friendship was mutual I went to visit them to take a few pictures while they were sitting on the grass. This didn't end well though: after taking some nice pictures I got overconfident and came too close to the monkeys, which resulted in me being attacked by two angry monkeys. The other volunteers that were there said this looked very funny (can you imagine: me running away, being chased by two screaming monkeys), but unfortunately none of them took a picture of the attack. This is a picture of just before the assault took place though, you can just see the monkey thinking "ok, that's enough, now I'm coming after you!":
Moving to the Kilimanjaro-region
Monday was a day with just preperation trainings and a short trip to the city. We went to bed early, because on Tuesday we had to get up at 3:30 am in order to catch a bus to the campsite in the area around Mount Kilimanjaro: the highest mountain in Africa. The bus station was about 1 hour away from where we were staying and the place is totally insane. I had never before seen so many buses at one place in my life. The buses were parked everywhere without a logical order and moreover there were no signs to guide you to the right bus: a lost foreigner would have to rely solely on the many people that were shouting the names of Tanzanian cities in an attempt to get people to go with their bus. It's a good thing that there were people from the volunteer organisation who could show us foreigners the way. To give you a numerical indication of how busy the bus station was: at 6 am in the morning it took us about 30 minutes just to get from the place where our bus was parked to the main road. I couldn't imagine having to travel like this every day or even week.
The camp took place in a small village near Mwika on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Due to the fact that this village was at an altitude of 1700 meters above sea-level and the fact that it was winter in Tanzania, the temperature here was very nice with around 20-25 degrees by day. We were staying in a house in the middle of the green jungle. There was another volunteer project going on in this village and we would stay together with the volunteers from this other project throughout our entire stay. In total we were staying in the house with 18 people: 10 Tanzanians, 3 South Koreans and 1 volunteer from France, Scotland, Hong Kong and Germany plus of course me from the Netherlands. Half of the volunteers was working on the other project (painting the walls of a school) and the other half was working with me on the goat shed. We were going to build the shed from the ground up: on the first day we would have to cut down all plants and trees on an area of 4 by 2.5 meters in the tropical forest to make room for the shed and in order to make poles marking the corners of the shed we needed to cut down some more trees at another location before we could actually start with the construction of the actual shed.
In the afternoons and weekends we were busy as well. One day we visited a woman named Mama Lucy who showed us how to turn coffee beans that came straight from the coffee plant into actual coffee in just one hour. Even though I don't like coffee, I tried half a cup and I must say that the taste was very good. Furthermore, we visited the waterfalls close to Marangu, did a mini-safari in a park close to the border with Kenya where we saw elephants in the wild, went to Moshi (the nearest big city) for internet and other things and visited the local market in Mwika:
Doing things the African way
On Saturday I had two typical African experiences in a row. After having visited the waterfalls near Marangu, we took a "dalla dalla" (= a Tanzanian minibus) to Moshi and then another one to get back home. We already knew that these buses are usually overcrowded, but the amount of people in the bus on the way back was just surrealistic. The door couldn't even close any more and no less than four people were hanging out of this open door when the bus was driving:
The trip from Moshi to Mwika lasts about 45 minutes without interruptions. In a dalla dalla however you need to be prepared for a long trip. The minibus drives slow (although at some times dangerously fast as well) and stops all the time to let more people get on the bus. And if there are empty seats (or standing places) in a bigger village, the driver will just wait until the bus is full. In total the trip back to Mwika lasted more than 2 hours. The place we were staying in was about 30 minutes away from Mwika on foot. There is one alternative though for lazy people that don't feel like walking: you can also go up the mountain by "piki piki" (= some kind of cross-motorbike). That evening we tried out the piki piki. The ride was not quite comfortable nor safe. There were no helmets or anything, two passengers plus one driver on a small bike and the driver was driving way too fast on the paved road. I didn't want to think about what would happen if the motorbike would crash. Thankfully we quickly reached the unpaved road and the driver had to slow down. The speed was still too high for the bumpy roads though: at times I was lifted as much as 20 centimeters off my seat. But at least I can cross "riding on the back of a piki piki" off my to do list.
The children
Even though we had a full program every day, we still had some free time left around the house. The first few days I was lazy most of the time, still recovering from the lack of sleep earlier that week, but the second week was more active. The local children had discovered us and came buy every day to ask for lollipops, admire our electronical devices and play football with us. It was really adorable how some of the children learnt my name so quickly and were even asking for me when I was doing something else inside the house. One of my favourite kids was a boy that I'd like to call "Little Georgie". At some point I was taking pictures of the children and saw him looking at me with my camera with great interest, so I showed him how the camera worked. He then asked if he could borrow my camera and started taking pictures of everything: his friends, me, the other volunteers, the house... And the kid has talent for sure! Some of the pictures that I put on Facebook were actually taken by this little fellow.
Then for the more serious part of my travel. As mentioned in my previous blog post, the project was also about meeting vulnerable individuals in the region. In the second week we were visiting an HIV-positive widow and mother of three children. Due to a nasty-looking infection on her hand this lady was unable to go to the market and sell products, so she had to rely just on gifts from friends and family and the food she could get from her own land. When one of us asked about her plans for the future, the young woman started to cry and said that she just didn't know what to do. I knew situations like this existed, but it was very confronting to actually meet this woman that was slowly dying with her young children that were going to be orphans in a few years from now.
Moving to Nairobi
The end of the workcamp was already approaching now. On Thursday we finished the shed; on Friday we just had an evaluation of the two weeks and time to pack our bags and play with the children for the last time. Then on Saturday it was time to leave. The majority of the group left for Dar es Salaam early in the morning, but since my flight home would leave from Nairobi I could not join them. Instead, I was heading for Arusha that day: a big city in Northern Tanzania from where I would catch the bus to Nairobi. I didn't have to make this travel alone. I was joined by Liz from South Korea and two local volunteers. The four of us had a lovely day in Arusha. We walked around the city, drank fresh juices in local bars and talked a lot. Since there is not that much to see inside the city and the city is known for the huge amount of people that bother tourists on the street trying to sell them something, it was very nice to be there with some Tanzanians. So once again thanks a lot to Baraka and Brenda for joining us and making our day in Arusha so great!
After our Tanzanian friends had left, I went out for some food with Liz. After failing to find a pizza place that should have been nearby, we decided to eat something in a restaurant opposite to the guesthouse that we were staying in. However, just when our food was served, we found out that the owner was trying to rip us off by charging more than twice the price that we agreed initially for our food. We obviously didn't accept this and left the restaurant immediately when he only offered us a small discount on his increased price. A few minutes later we bought better food on the street for a lower price. We then sat down in a local bar to have a beer and enjoy our food. We were having a pleasant conversation when suddenly the owner of the restaurant showed up with some konyagi, a Tanzanian drink that is a bit similar to vodka, in his hand. He was clearly a bit tipsy already and wanted to talk about what happened earlier that evening. We were able to send the conversation in a different direction soon and in fact we even went to a nightclub together after Liz and I had finished our beers and food. It still felt a bit uncomfortable to hang out with this guy though, so we didn't stay long at this nightclub and left the restaurant owner alone again.
The next morning we got on the bus to Nairobi. The bus ride was a memorable one: I was driving through the desert-like landscape of Africa, saw some shepherds with their flocks, was sitting next to two Masai people and crossed a land border in Africa. Crossing this border was more easy than expected. The bus just drops you off at one side of the border, you go inside some office to get your exit stamp, walk through a gate past a sign that says "You are now entering Kenya", get in line to buy a Kenyan visa, talk to a local and find out that you can in fact stand in the shorter line as well, fill in a form, convince the lady behind the counter that you really only need a transit visa instead of the more expensive regular one, wait for a few minutes, get your visa and walk back to the bus while shaking off a man that tries to convince you that you need to pay an extra fee of 50 US$ to enter Kenya through this border, receive a present from the random Tanzanian guy that you talked to at the visa office and you're done! This may sound complicated, but I really felt more comfortable than I expected at this border crossing and all of this took less than 30 minutes.
Life in Nairobi
When we arrived in Nairobi after a 6 our bus-ride we were both hungry and needed to go to the bathroom, so Liz proposed that we would go to a restaurant quickly and would change money later. We ordered some food and went to the bathroom and Liz asked me to go change money after that. The only problem was that it was a Sunday and all exchange offices that I was pointed to by people on the street were closed. In the end I found a Zimbabwean guy who took me by the hand and walked to a few offices, but all of them were closed as well, after which he pointed me to a man that was from the black market. If I would have been asked to draw a picture of a "shady guy", I would have drawn a picture that looked exactly like this guy: a hat, a long beige jacket and quick moving eyes. I had no other option than to follow him, but when he entered a building and wanted to go with me into a dark building I had enough and said to him that I would go to an ATM and just change my dollars at some other time. When I went outside, I met the Zimbabwean man again, who then showed me to an exchange office that was open on Sunday, so in the end it all turned out fine, but I now know better than to expect to change money on a Sunday again.
After the food, I said goodbye to Liz and went to my hostel. In the evening we went to watch the final of Euro 2012 with a group of men from Australia, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya somewhere in a tent. It was really interesting to watch the game in an African environment. In the Netherlands when watching a game in a bar you just hear a disappointed "uhh" or "ahh" after a missed chance, but in Africa that's a bit different. The people there really go wild after any exciting moment, making sounds that I can really not reproduce on this blog using the standard alphabet. But the game was good and it was a very successful evening.
In Nairobi I also met up with friends again. I had a really great time with Caroline (and later also her friend Concepta) on my first full day and with Gladys on the second day. On the second day I also went to a National Park. Safaris in Tanzania were too expensive, but the ones in Kenya would be kind of affordable. The lady behind the counter wanted to help me a bit too much though. She said I could choose between a safari walk for 20 US$ and a real safari including car for 90 US$. She said that I would see the same animals in both safaris, with exception of the giraffes and elephants. As an economist, I was obviously tempted to choose the cheaper safari walk. This was a bad decision though. It turned out that the safari walk was outside the National Park and also it was more like a zoo. I didn't have the time to do the real safari after my visit to this zoo because I would meet a friend in the afternoon, so in the end I felt bad about not having done a real safari. But still, I saw all animals in the safari walk and took some nice pictures of them. And I hope to go back to Africa when I'm old and (hopefully) rich, so I can do a real safari then. Final words
After all, my trip to Africa has been full of new experiences for me. I did so many things I would have never been able to do in the Netherlands, met so many wonderful people and actually meant something for the local community in that small village on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Moreover, I feel I have acted as an ambassador of my country (as most people in Africa had never met a Dutch person before) and left a good impression of me and my country on basically all people I have met. Travelling outside of Europe is a great way to broaden your horizons and actually learn something from cultures that are very different to your own. I certainly hope to travel a lot more outside of Europe in the future. Maybe next year I will go to Asia or something. But for now, all the travelling that I've done in the past few months has been enough. After my summerschool in Lithuania and maybe a short trip back to Prague I will be done for this year. It will be difficult to fill up this blog the coming months without travelling stories, but I'm sure I'll find a way.
As promised, I will end this blog post with a list of the amazing things I have done in Africa: - Rode in the back of a pick up truck with 6 others including luggage - Rode in a "dalla dalla" African style: overcrowded and way too fast - Eaten sugar straight from the sugar plant - Eaten fresh passion fruits and avocados (delicious!) - Eaten food cooked by a real African "mama" every day for two weeks - Rode on the back of a "piki piki" - Seen elephants in the wild - Bought booze for a drunk restaurant owner - Sat next to two Masai people (including big holes in their ears) on the bus to Nairobi - Walked among the wild animals on a walking safari - Had dinner with some strangers that I met on the bus on my way to the airport
Exactly one week ago my adventure in Prague ended and now I am back in Houten, my home town in the Netherlands. After more than 1.5 years in Czech Republic I felt it was time for a new challenge, so I quit my job there per 1 June and moved back to the Nethelands. Currently I'm staying at my parents' place, but as I will be abroad for a big part of this summer that won't be too much of a problem. Later in this post I will tell more about my plans for this summer; first I shall write about my final experiences in Czech Republic and the things in the Netherlands that I had to get used to again.
The final days in Czech Republic were quite hectic. After I got back from my trip to South-Eastern Europe I had only a few days left before my parents would come to Prague to pick me up and bring all my stuff back to the Netherlands. During those final days I had to meet up with many friends for the last time and visit the last places in Prague that I hadn't seen yet, such as Divoká Šárka and Petřin. And this time I went to the real Petřin, so not Petřiny, which is a completely different place. I'm certainly not going to miss the Czech language.
One more thing I'm not going to miss is the unfriendly attitude of Czech people in stores. For example when I was cancelling my bank account, the lady told me that it was not possible to transfer the money that I still had left on my bank account to another bank, so I had to take out all my money in cash.
Due to a technical error it took them quite some time before they could give me the money. To kill the time, I was chatting with the two Czech friends that were there with me. The lady behind the counter got annoyed by that and first asked my friends to step 2 meters back to stand behind a line and later she even sent them outside for no valid reason. The whole process made sure that I will never ever want to do business again with Raiffeisen Bank, even though I was a satisfied customer before I entered the branch that day.
A few days later the moment that I was going home had arrived: last Sunday we drove back to the Netherlands by car. We had dinner in a low-quality restaurant on the side of the highway, where we paid 15 euros for a poor meal in a sad environment. To compare: in Czech Republic you don't need to pay more than 5 euros to get a decent meal in a nice Czech atmosphere. Besides that, you can get a large beer for 1 euro, where in Holland you pay 3 euros for a small beer. But there is also a positive note: at least in Holland people serve you with a smile on their face and try to say a few words while scanning all products at the cash register.
I was also a bit worried how cute little Coupard (there he is again!) would fit in the Netherlands, as he had never been abroad before. With exception maybe from when he was made in China. I was glad to see that he made friends with my sister's little tiger already in his first week here. Just look at the picture:
As you can see they were watching scenes from "The Lion King", a movie that takes place in Africa, which makes it an ideal bridge to a next topic: my plans for this summer.
Those of you who have been following me and/or my blog a bit longer will know that every summer I do volunteer work abroad. So far I have been to Serbia, Estonia and Ukraine, but this time I wanted to take my volunteering experience to the next level and go to Africa, where I can really make a difference. Therefore next week, 16 June, I will go to Tanzania for two weeks to work on a project in Moshi, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. The project is focused on generating a sustainable improvement in the living conditions of vulnerable individuals in this region, such as orphans, single parents and grandmothers. The project will involve building an animal shed to generate income for the vulnerable individuals, visiting local families and organizing sports and games for local children. In the weekends, there will be a possibility to go for a safari at one of the many nearby national parks and after the camp I will travel onwards to Kenya through the area of the Masai warriors. On 4 July I will then fly back to Amsterdam from Nairobi.
All in all this trip to Africa (my first time on this continent) should be a wonderful and unforgettable experience.
Later this summer I also plan to go to Kaunas, Lithuania to study Lithuanian Language and Culture for one month at Vytautas Magnus University. I have never had an opportunity to study abroad, so this summer course is an ideal opportunity for me to experience what it's like to study abroad. From a reliable source I have understood that it involves lots of sightseeing together with new friends and also a considerable amount of nice parties.
PS. Yes mom, in September I will start looking for a new job.
After more than 1 month, the results of the International Song Contest #3 can finally be published. The contest was again a very exciting one and for the first time in the history of this contest the difference between the number 1 and 2 is 12 points or less. In other words: if you have voted, your individual vote mattered for the final outcome of this contest!
To see the full voting process in Eurovision-style, click here.
If the above link is not working, you can come back later to see the voting process, or click here to view a simple list of the results and to view the results without the excitement of the voting process. :)
I hope you have enjoyed this contest as much as I did.
Part 1: Albania I started my trip to Albania, Macedonia and Greece on a Saturday morning at 5 o'clock. I had to catch a plane to Munchen at 7.15 and from there I would fly to Tirana International Airport, as Tirana was the starting point of my travel. It was a very satisfying flight from rainy Prague to even rainier Munchen to Tirana where it was 26 degrees and sunny.
It may be a European capital, but in fact Tirana is not a big city and it was not difficult to find my hostel. After I freshened up a bit, I had lunch in a small restaurant run by a woman with a daughter who is living in Utrecht. My motto when travelling is: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", so I wanted to try some local food here. The English translations 'internal of lamb' or 'head of lamb' didn't sound very appealing though, so in the end I just ordered the home made salad.
After lunch I went into the city to find a travel agency named Pollogu. The receptionist at the hostel already warned me that the agency was a bit hidden and hard to find. She didn't lie. I searchedthe whole area and asked at several other agencies, but none of them knew where I could find this agency and also I was unable to locate the X on the map by myself.
Anyway, I got back to the hostel to rest a little bit. While I was in the common area to check my e-mail, I met Noel: a British guy who was planning to visit a soccer game that afternoon. I already wanted to visit a soccer game abroad during my last travel, but couldn't because my beloved FC Brasov was playing an away game in the weekend that I was there, so without a doubt I decided to join him. The atmosphere around an Albanian soccer match is pretty much equal to zero thouh. There were around 300 people in the stadium for this match (including 50 policemen) and there was no singing, drums or anything. You could just hear what the players were saying. In the last 15 minutes of the game home team KF Tirana grabbed a deserved 1-0 victory, after having two offside goals disallowed and shooting against the crossbar in front of a pretty much open goal in the minutes before that. My first soccer game abroad was not the big success I hoped it would be, but it was a nice experience.
When the match had ended, Noel and I went to a nice park with an artificial lake and visited the famous Vlloku-area (famous for its nightlife, and I could see why, as even at 7:30 on a Saturday night there was already a great atmosphere). At 8 o'clock Noel went back to the hostel to cook something with the stuff he brought from home. I on the other hand felt a bit more adventurous and went for some Albanian food again. There was a slight problem at the restaurant that I picked though: the menu was only in Albanian and the waitress didn't speak any English. After a confusing minute some girl that spoke a little bit of English came to help. Her ability to speak English didn't eliminate my confusion though and suddenly, without me knowing it, I had ordered something. And even now I still don't know what it was exactly, but it looked like this:
The food tasted very foreign to me, but actually it was quite good.
The next morning I got up early (again) to look or a bus to Macedonia. And, it was a miracle, suddenly I saw a bus with the name "Pollogu" parked along the boulevard. So I asked a lady from a flower store where the office of Pollogu was. The lady understands my question, but starts talking back to me in Albanian while pointing in all kinds of directions with her arms. When she started imitating a fish with her hand I had enough of it, but the rescue was near in the form of two local students that were just walking by. Upon my request they translated the message and even offered to take me to the office, which was located on the second floor inside some colorless building. But in the end all was fine: I got on the bus to Struga, a village just past the border with Macedonia, close to my next destination: Ohrid. And since the bus didn't really take the fastest route, I got a free tour of sunny Albania as well. Life couldn't be better.
So what did I think about Albania? To me, the country felt like a mixture of Italian and Balkan culture. The traffic in Tirana is very chaotic and dangerous, but dealing with that is easy: when a local starts crossing the street, it's safe for you to do the same. If you don't, even the local old ladies will cross the street faster than you, like happened to me in the beginning of my day in Tirana. Just one question couldn't get out of my head though: are there that many tourists coming to Albania by car, or are there just lots and lots of stolen cars driving around in Tirana? I guess Albania is a country with two faces: the people inside the country are usually friendly, helpful and honest. It's just sad that the Albanian people outside their home country give their country a bad reputation by engaging so much in criminal activities.
Part 2: Macedonia
The point where I crossed the border to Macedonia was located somewhere in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain. Even though the passport control itself went smoothly (I didn't even get any stamps...), the location made the border crossing memorable for me. Just 20 minutes after crossing the border we arrived in Struga. From there I took a taxi to the center of Ohrid, together with an American tourist I met on the bus. I was planning to do a homestay in Ohrid: it's very common to rent a room from a local family in this area. Things went a little different though.
At the taxi stop we were stopped by a man who introduced himself as Jovan. He said we had to see his appartments because they were "very good". We had nothing to lose so we followed him and saw the two appartments, which were in deed very nice. He said: "Sit down ehh... we will talk about the price..." and pointed at two armchairs that seemed to be placed in the room not for the convenience of the guests but merely to make the bargaining process more comfortable. After some time the American woman reached an agreement to pay 50 euros for 4 nights and Jovan took me to the other appartment for some more talking about prices. I knew I had a strong bargaining position, as it was still low season. For Jovan it was either having me staying in his appartment and earn some money or having nobody stay there and earn nothing at all. In the end I paid 23 euros for 2 nights, which was a very good deal, as staying in the hostel would have cost me 12 euros per night. And now I had my own appartment right in the center of Ohrid, with a flatscreen tv on the wall! Just to show off, here is a picture of the place:
Looks nice doesn't it? It's funny by the way how you can negotiate about every price in this part of Europe. I'm also getting better and better at this and saved myself about 15 euros during the entire trip by not always accepting the price that was offered to me initially. In fact, it's not that hard: you just need to learn a few basic tricks and start seeing it as a game, in which both players can win in the end.
Unfortunately it was rainy during the biggest part of my stay in Ohrid, but I could still enjoy the sheer beauty of this place even in this kind of weather and can only imagine how amazing this place looks in the sun. I just know that I will be back in Ohrid some time. It's an ideal destination for a young couple to go on holiday to, so I hope that one day I can show it to a girlfriend or maybe even my future wife. :)
On Tuesday I went to Skopje. From Ohrid, this is a bus ride of only 3 hours so I still had time to do some sightseeing in the afternoon. There are surprisingly many things to see in Skopje: the statue of Alexander the Great, the fortress, the Memorial House of Mother Teresa and the Turkish market that I accidentally stumbled upon.
The next morning the sun was shining and it was quite warm, which was a pleasant surprise. It was an ideal day to go hiking in a canyon with a lake, which is exactly what I did. A city bus took me to a small bus station just outside the city and after waiting more than 1 hour a minibus came and took me to a parking place near Lake Matka. From there I walked into the canyon and after passing a restaurant where I later enjoyed a Macedonian meal I walked around there for 1 hour without seeing one living person. It has been a long time since I was this much "one" with nature and it was nice to walk around in an area with stunning views like this:
The day after my visit to the lake I wanted to leave Skopje for Thessaloniki. Due to a conflict between Macedonia and Greece there is only one bus per day connecting these two countries. This bus left at 6 am, which was a bit too early for me, so I had to come up with another plan. My initial idea was to take a bus to border town Gevgelija, walk to the border, cross this border on foot and from there hitch-hike to Thessaloniki. The bus to Gevgelija didn't stop at the place I expected it to though and I didn't know the way to the border from where we stopped. To prevent a long walk with my backpack, I took a taxi to the border. The taxi driver smelled money from this lost tourist, so he told me stories that it was not possible to cross the border on foot (even though I had read online that it was) and that hitch-hiking was illegal in Greece, so the police would arrest me if they would see me doing it. Of course I took his words with a pinch of salt, but I had heard from a guy in the hostel that it could be difficult finding a ride at a highway border crossing, so in the end I agreed with the taxi driver that he would take me across the border to a nearby town in Greece, from where I could catch a local bus to Thessaloniki. And all of this for a very reasonable price, due to my improved negotiation skills in combination with a bit of slyness and pure luck.
Part 3: Greece
Before I came to Greece, I always had a romantic image of this country, with lots of sun, beautiful white houses built on a hill and a deep blue sea. In Northern Greece you can't find any of these things on a rainy day though. The countryside was quite ugly, just as Thessaloniki, which was a bit of a disappointment. Moreover, this city is expensive, lacks atmosphere and the people there are less friendly than what I was used to in the Balkans. The following picture, taken on the main square of Thessaloniki, says it all:
I didn't want to stay any longer in this city, so first thing in the morning I got on the train to Athens: my final destination. The train ride lasted 6 hours, but luckily I was sitting next to a young English-speaking student from Thessaloniki with who I talked a lot during my hours in the train. In Athens I stayed in a very special hostel. The owner was a small older man with a strange but friendly look on his face. He was wearing a black wig that was meant for someone who was roughly 20 years younger, but that didn't seem to matter to him. The hostel itself was totally in 70s-style. Unfortunately this was not just decoration: everything literally came from the 1970s, from the shower till the elevators. It was interesting for me to see this actually, as this would have been the kind of place that I would stay at if I were born 40 years earlier and had been making all my travels in this period.
The city center of Athens is very nice and cosy. There are 3 main squares and the area between those squares has lots of nice souvenir shops and good restaurants. In total I spent 2.5 days in Athens, during which my friend Vicky showed me the best places in the city and also managed to convince me that I should become a frozen yoghurt-man when I grow up. It was nice to finally meet up with a friend: I missed that at the other places I visited during my travel, where I was just depending on the people that I met in the hostel. Sunday was the most beautiful day of my whole trip in terms of weather conditions, so I'm glad that I picked exactly this day for a visit to one of the Greek islands. The island I went to was called Aegina, not the most special island in Greece (those were too far away), but certainly a nice place to get a feeling of what life is like on a greek island. The light blue sea, beaches, slower pace of life: it was all there.
On the last day I just went souvenir shopping and tried out my bargaining skills again. Sometimes I was successful (got a 10% discount on the souvenirs that I bought) and sometimes I was less successful ("I tell to you: 7 euro! So why you say to me: 6 euro?!?"). But then again, in the latter case you just walk away from the store and everything is fine again.
So after all I really enjoyed the trip. I visited some amazing places and know for sure that one day I will go back to Macedonia and probably to Greece as well to visit the islands. Next up will be an even more challenging trip: on 16 June I will leave for three weeks to Tanzania and participate in volunteer project at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro to help vulnerable children get a better future. Finally I found a volunteer project where I can really make a difference. Of course you will be able to read all about my experiences in Africa right here after my return
