A heatwave in Lithuania

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 tribute to my green shoes

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.

Just ask Cinderella.

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.