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
