Trip to Africa

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

Back in the Netherlands

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.

Results of ISC #3 (Finally)

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.

Trip to Albania, Macedonia and Greece

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

International Song Contest #3

It's almost time for the Eurovision Song Contest again, which will be held at the end of May in the Azerbaijani capital Baku. To warm you up for this, I created a new edition of my own International Song Contest, which I'm happy to present you with in this blog post.


This edition is more international than ever: we have songs from 5 different continents now! Quite a few of the participants in this contest are former winners of a talent show on tv and we even have a former Eurovision-winner participating in the contest, so the music in this edition should be of a higher level than it has ever been before.

Please vote for your favourites via the form below. Voting will be in Eurovision style again, so I will be able to create a nice scoreboard afterwards. As usual, you may vote for your own country, as long as you vote honestly. :

Enjoy listening to the songs, I hope you will find one or two songs that make it to your mp3-player/iPod/whatever-you-use-to-listen-to-music. :)

Recap video:

List of participants + Links to YouTube:

1. Hungary	The Moog	When I See You
2. Canada	Lights	Toes
3. South Africa	Lianie May & Jay	Lank Lewe Die Liefde
4. Romania	Keo feat. Ralflo	Give Me Your Love
5. Belarus	Lyapis Trubetskoy	Kapital
6. Poland	Enej	Radio Hello
7. Denmark	Bryan Rice ft. Julie	Curtain Call
8. Spain	Calle París	Polvo De Estrellas
9. Azerbaijan	Nikki Jamal	Crush On You
10. Australia	Short Stack	Planets
11. Uganda	Blu 3	Fly
12. Moldova	Cătălin Josan	Don't Wanna Miss You
13. Czech Republic	Imodium	Břehy
14. Switzerland	77 Bombay Street	Long Way
15. Norway	Donkeyboy	Sometimes
16. Philippines	Christian Bautista	She Could Be
17. Estonia	Ursula	Tiffer
18. Germany	Die Toten Hosen	Kein Alkohol Ist Auch Keine Lösung
19. Sweden	Sanna Nielsen	Empty Room
20. Tunisia	Myrath	Merciless Times
21. Lithuania	Žalvarinis	Alaus Alaus
22. France	TAL	Le Sens De La Vie

Sorry, the voting section has been closed.

Trip to Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova

My trip from Czech Republic to Bulgaria was a comfortable one. First I took the Student Agency bus from Prague to Vienna and there I took the plane to Sofia. On the bus you get free coffee, tea and hot chocolate and the cuisine from Austrian Airlines is one of the best in the world. Exactly on time I arrived in Sofia, where I was going to take a bus to the city center. During my first moments in Bulgaria I already encountered something that is typical for this country. In front of the final shop on my way towards the bus station there was a sign "public transportation tickets" with an arrow pointing towards the store. When I got in there however, a young, uninterested guy told me that the tickets were "finished" and that I should buy them from the driver. So I waited for the bus and asked the driver. Of course this man could not speak English (very handy if you are a bus driver on an airport shuttle bus), but when we, me and two Austrian tourists, asked him for tickets towards the city center, he managed to say: "Tickets? No tickets!". He didn't seem to understand our followup questions and after a few moments he helplessly pointed towards the seats, indicating that we could just sit down. Later we found out that it was actually quite normal that the driver didn't have tickets, as the locals that got on this bus didn't seem to be so surprised by the fact that they didn't have to pay for this bus ride.

A weekend in Sofia

In Sofia I had arranged a Couchsurfing host: a Belgian guy named Simon, who was living in Sofia for a few months to do an internship. The first night I had to stay in a hostel however, as Simon had already made other plans for this Friday night. The hostel with its very friendly and helpful staff was great, unlike the fact that I had to share my bedroom with 17 others.. When I went to bed, the room was still surprisingly quiet. Until the moment that a bald man with a beard walked in, lay down on his bed, started his laptop and started watching golf (?!) until 1 in the morning without headphones. Luckily after 15 minutes I came up with the idea of putting in my own headphones, which significantly reduced the amount of noise around me and allowed me to have a decent sleep.

The next day I met up with Simon and together we took a city tour through Sofia for three hours. The tour was great: we saw all highlights, learned everything about the history of each building (our guide was an enthousiastic history student) and found out how Bulgaria saved its jews during World War II (a very nice story, ask me about it!). In the evening we went to an international dinner party for exchange students in Sofia, together with two Italian friends of Simon. That night I learned 3 things:

1) Italian men are real animali. The only things they want to talk about are girls (or as they like to call it: pussy) and football. Moreover, when they get drunk they can't stop singing Italian songs. Not even inside a taxi. Which is quite embarrassing.

2) Even though most girls in Bulgaria dress very sexy, some girls still seem to think that it's a good idea to wear their grandmother's old tablecloth to a party. As you can imagine, this doesn't look good. But no matter how bad it looked, the amount of jokes that the animali made about the girl that was involved in this fashion crime and the amount of money they offered me to "fuck" her were way out of line.

3) I have officially reached a new level with my skills of speaking the Lithuanian language: I can now impress Lithuanian people (ok, I admit, I mostly try this out on girls) with my knowledge of their language by mixing not only random but also appropriate Lithuanian words/sentences into the conversation. Of course the animali thought I should take one of these girls home tonight and they told me that Simon could then stay at their place. I thanked them for the offer, but told them that it was not necessary as I was not interested in these girls. And really, right after I said this, one of the guys started making inappropriate comments about one of them...

Below you can see a picture of Simon, the two animali and me.

On Sunday morning I hopped on the train to Bucharest. I got off the train at border town Ruse, as I was told it's cheaper to do the last part by bus. At the train station a man walked up to me and after finding out that I wanted to go to Bucharest, he told me that there were no more buses today, but he was going to Bucharest today with his family (which was nowhere to be seen) and he would take me there for the "same price, same price". I didn't trust this man and his stories, so I went to the bus station in Ruse, thankfully close to the train station, only to find out that there was in deed just one bus per day from Ruse to Bucharest, which left at 6 in the morning. I really don't understand why the website autogari.ro had told me that there were 3 buses per day on that route. (Later someone told me that such things are normal in Romania.)
Anyway, I went back to the train station, walked past the man who kept on yelling "same price, same price!" up to the counter for international train tickets. The ticket to Bucharest was cheaper than I expected and the train was still there, so in the end I managed to get to Bucharest fairly easily.

Good times in Bucharest

At the train station in Bucharest I met my Romanian colleague Alexandra: she is working for the same client as I am, only she is part of the French team, which ironically exists of only Romanians. I was going to stay with her for the coming days. On our first whole day together she showed me the city, together with her friend Dana. After we felt that we had walked enough, we went for a very strong local beer in a nice pub in the center of the city. The beer was called "Stejar", which means "oak" in Romanian. And the beer was really as strong as an oak. After two of them, Ale said she was feeling a bit dizzy and after three of them I became a fanatic fan of FC Braşov, which was playing a game on tv. I was really puzzled when they came back to 2-2 from being 0-2 behind, but still lost the game with 2-3. And they didn't lose against one of the big teams from Bucharest, no, they lost against the minnows of Concordia Chiajna for crying out loud! Despite the fact that my new favourite team had lost so dramatically, I still had a good time that night with Ale and Dana.

On Tuesday I was going to work at Accenture in Bucharest. You may wonder: why would one work during his holiday? Well, first of all out of curiosity: I was really curious how my colleagues in other country were doing their job. Besides that, this day didn't count as a holiday, so I could be travelling in this region one day longer. After work we went out with three girls of the French team and two of our global process experts, of who I got to know a whole different side that evening.

Transsylvania

I was now heading for Transsylvania: the region that is famous for being the home of count Dracula. My first stop here was the town of Sinaia: a peaceful place in the mountains and home to one of the most beautiful castles I have ever seen: Peleş castle.




At the train station I took a picture of the city map (a trick I learnt on one of my previous travels), so I was able to choose a nice route through the whole town and included stops at a nice park and the old monastery. In the park I had a memorable moment: I changed my winter jacket for my summer jacket and never changed back. After a couple of hours I got on the train to Braşov.

In Braşov I had to change my plans many times due to the fact that public transportation in Romania is not functioning the way it should be. This translates into minibuses that are full and leaving half of the people behind with no alternative way of getting to their destination for the next hour(s) and a huge crowd waiting for the only train from Braşov to Sighişoara that runs between 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. I took this picture of the crowd that was waiting at the train station, just to give you an indication:




As you can imagine, it was not going to be easy to find a seat on the train. I accepted the challenge though, used brute force to be among the first to get in the train and secured two seats for me and my friend Orsi, who I met up with the night before and was now taking the same train to go home for her Easter holiday.There were many gypsies on this train, which was a new experience for me. They were loud, sounded like they were drunk (on the middle of the day) and the ones that were late for the train were trying to talk innocent people out of their seats. Also the villages in the area around Braşov were interesting for me as a foreigner. In these villages it's normal to see people driving around in carriages that are pulled by horses and the houses are in a poor condition. All of this combined with the lack of job prospects on the countryside helped me understand why so many people from this region give anything to move to the big city or even abroad.
Oh, and Bran castle (which is really not Dracula's castle) and Sighişoara were pretty nice. If you want to see pictures, you can find them on Facebook. They are starting around the photo of me with the players bus of my beloved FC Braşov. :)

Entering Moldova 
 
On Saturday at noon I got on the bus to Chișinău: the capital city of Moldova. I was prepared for a long and boring bus ride, but it actually was quite interesting as during the whole bus ride they would show Russian tv shows and movies. Things went pretty smoothly at the border, so the bus arrived one hour early in Chișinău. Unfortunately some guy in the bus gave me wrong directions, so I ended up at Gara de Sud instead of the central bus station, which is a difference of roughly 10 kilometres. I forgot to take a picture, but at that time Gara de Sud was a sad, dark and most of all rainy place and I was not pleased that I ended up there. In the beginning the only living beings I could see at the bus station were a Romanian-Moldovan couple that didn't care much about this lost foreigner, but a few moments later I found another lost soul that was sitting at the back of the bus: a Moldovan student who thought she would meet her father at this station, but it turned out that he was waiting for her at a different place. The battery of her phone was dead, so she was very glad that I allowed her to use my phone to call her dad and in return for that she asked her dad to take me to the city center. The city center was too crowded because of Easter celebrations, so in the end he even dropped me off at my hostel, for which I was really thankful.

The city of Chișinău was quite boring, as everybody was celebrating Easter inside and at home. I met up with my friend Nicoleta in the morning. Sadly we couldn't have lunch anywhere as all places except for McDonald's were closed and also she had to leave quite early for her granny's birthday, leaving me with a whole free afternoon in an empty city. I decided to get on the bus to Cricova, as it was not too far from the city and I heard it was the home to a big complex with wine cellars. At first I couldn't find them and I was already past the end station and on my way back to Chișinău when I saw a sign that could indicate that the wine cellars were near. I got off the bus and walked in the direction that the sign was telling me to. In the end I found one entrance to the cellars, but as expected it was closed. The nature in this area was pretty beautiful though, so I kept on walking to take some pictures. In the end I may have even seen ghosts there. At one moment I walked past a man that was walking really slow and saw a car driving towards us at the other side of the lake. I then got off the path to take some pictures and when I got back to the path both the man and the car weren't there any more. Were they products of my imagination, was there a logical explanation such as an exit that I couldn't see or was there really something mysterious going on? I guess we'll never know...

On my final day in Moldova I met up with Nicoleta again. This time we visited the botanical gardens and ate at Andy's Pizza, the most famous pizza chain in Moldova, before I had to leave for the airport in the early afternoon. This day concluded my travel through the southern Balkan, which had been a real eye-opener for me. I saw a lot on this travel, met several interesting people and also learnt more about the region than I expected. A special thanks goes out to everybody who made this travel possible!

I would like to finish this long post with the song that followed me throughout my whole travel through Romania. Every time I saw a music video on tv or heard a song on the radio, it had to be this song. So if you would like to hear what is currently on top of the Romanian charts, click here to watch the video. For your information: the title means something like "Get out!" in Romanian.

Talking about music from other countries: I'm already working on creating a new edition of my online song contest. Stay tuned for more information. :)

An update

It's been over two weeks since I last wrote a blog post here. I meant to write something sooner and in fact I had inspiration for a blog post, but never finished it. So here's another update on my life here in Prague.

The past few weeks I have been watching quite a lot of ice hockey. It all started off when two colleagues and me decided we would go visit a hockey game from HC Sparta Praha. That first game was a really exciting one and the three of us shared very positive stories on the workfloor. The next week more people wanted to join, so that time we went with a group of 5 people. This process went on and on and in the end we went to see the games with large groups of Accenture-employees - every time new people - and I became a real HC Sparta Praha-fan. I even bought a shirt of my favourite player! These days it's getting more and more exciting as we are in the playoffs already. I can't wait for the final: it would be great to see Sparta become league champion and to celebrate that achievement with the other Spartans.

Also, I went to the concert of Sunrise Avenue last weekend. And what a great concert it was! Usually I tend to go to concerts of less well-known bands, so I didn't know what to expect. I was amazed by the great performance. I already knew that lead singer Samu has an amazing voice, but it turned out that the guys in the band could also sing pretty well. Especially the guy on the keyboard was very good. It was just a pity that he didn't play the song "Piano man", like I once heard a keyboard player play at a concert in Tilburg. It would have really added something extra to their concert. But in the end I can't complain, it was great to finally see those guys perform.

So next weekend I will be going back to the Netherlands for a few days and after that my travel season will start again. More about that will follow in my next post.