Hora, in blog format

This post comes obviously very late, given the fact that I’ve been back home in Vancouver for over three months, but I thought this would be a pretty fun post to sort of wrap up my time spent in Europe.

The premise of this post is this: since I’ve been back many people have asked me questions like: “What was the best food you ate?”, “What’s the coolest castle you saw?” or “Where are the best looking women in Europe?”. In this post, I’m going to answer these questions as well as a few others. Enjoy!

• Most impressive stained glass window
• Alphonse Mucha Window, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague
• Honourable mention: the windows inside the Jesuit Church in Sibiu, Romania

• Most impressive cathedral/church/mosque
• Church of St. Johann Nepumuk, Munich – I came across this so randomly, but I’m so glad I found it.
• Honourable mention: The Dom in Cologne, Germany

• Most impressive castle
• Neuschwanstein in southern Bavaria, Germany.

Coolest caslte ever.

• Honourable mention: Heidelberg Castle

• Best food
• This one is very tough. I enjoyed a lot of amazing food all over Europe, so I’m going to give two honourable mentions.
• Meal you CANNOT miss out on if you’re on the European continent: Mustafa’s Kebap, Berlin
• Honourable mentions: Shawn’s cousin Luigi’s mother’s cooking in Mola di Bari (wow that’s complicated), street food in Istanbul.

• Best looking women
• Puglia, Italy – specifically Mola di Bari and Bisceglie.
• Honourable mention: Prague. I heard Krakow is also impressive in this regard, sadly I didn’t have the time to check it out for myself. Of course, good looking women are everywhere, these are just the places with the highest concentration.

• Most impressive monument
• Pretty much every monument in Rome is tied for top spot here.
• Honourable mention: This one would also be in Rome.

• Most beautiful natural landscape
• Transylvania, Romania. This region of Romania would flourish if it was a tad more civilized. Some nice roads and highways would really boost the tourism trade.
• Honourable mention: Bavaria, Germany

Neuhof a.d. Zenn

• Most exotic city:
• Istanbul, Turkey

Sultanahmet

• Honourable mention: Ioannina, Greece. A random city to have visited, but totally worth it.
• City I’d love to live in
• Berlin, Germany
• Honourable mention: Rome, Italy (Prague would be first on this list if it wasn’t for the Czech language factor… I’d rather re-learn German or learn Italian instead).
• Craziest adventure
• Backpacking Germany on my own, with no plans, no booked hostels, no idea where I was headed to next.
• Honourable mention: Trying to rent a car in Greece
• Scariest moment
• Getting my passport checked on a Greek bus, a country which according to some people I was visiting illegally. Damn you study visa.
• Honourable mention: Getting my whole train compartment checked (they even slid out all the seats) by Hungarian border police.

This post is long overdue. At the moment I’ve been back in Vancouver for over a month, in fact I’ve even started school. However, I need to finish blogging about my adventures in Europe and there’s no better time than now.

After leaving Greece and hanging out in Italy for two days, I flew from Rome to Timisoara in Romania. The trip to Timisoara was a bit long (since I left from Bisceglie on my way to Fiumincino airport in Rome), but I had some delicious home-made panzerotti to keep me company. Upon arrival in Timisoara I was greeted by Christine and Nelu (family friends), whom I spent a few days with. They showed me around the city and even their country cottage, and we had a good time; they’re great people. Timisoara itself was surprisingly beautiful – compared to many cities in Europe it’s very green, and compared to the many eastern European cities it’s very clean. The city’s architecture is reminiscent of a more affluent past under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but being well-maintained makes the city one of the most beautiful I’ve explored on my travels.

The clocks on Timisoara's Catholic cathedral froze at different moments in their history

After a few awesome days in Timisoara, I took a train across to the other side of Transylvania to Sibiu, where I still have a lot of family. The train was definitely the worst I’d taken in Europe: first class was worse than second class in other countries, I had to hop across train tracks to get to my platform, the train is easily a meter above the platform so you have to climb way up into it, and the scariest part about the whole ride was the fact that there was no lighting on the train. This made me clutch all my belongings and my heart beat faster while the train passed through pitch-black tunnels.

Creepy Romanian train rides aside, Sibiu was awesome. I spent the first few days just outside the city in Talmaciu with my cousin Fane, which was fun but a little shocking. I never experienced any form of serious cultural shock in the first five months of being in Europe, but I definitely experienced some here. The first shock I experienced was when I had to flush the toilet by filling up a big bucket full of water then dumping it in the toilet. Second was the fact that if I wanted hot water, I had to turn on a furnace and wait about half an hour. Other reasons were the way people in Talmaciu treated pets, the unpaved streets and the fact that not much had changed in the town since I was a child.

Sporting a shepherd's uniform, with my cousin, in Talmaciu

While I was there, my aunt and uncle were busy with work but mostly with the wedding preparations for my oldest cousin, George, so I only stayed with them for a few nights. After Talmaciu I stayed in Sibiu a couple nights before leaving for Danes to visit my godmother. I met up with Shawn in Cluj after he flew in from Venice, after which we headed to Sibiu for the remainder of our stay in Romania.

The majority of the time I was in Romania I spent with family, catching up and hanging out. It was a nice change to just chill and not really do anything but chat with my family. I did however do a few more exciting things while in Romania. One was that I met up with my 1st grade teacher, who organized a little meet-up with a few old classmates! It was crazy seeing everyone again, most of them I wouldn’t have recognized on the street, and it was interesting seeing how their lives were all taking shape. Shawn and I also went drinking with them, once at a karaoke bar which was fun. The nightlife in Sibiu is just as great as other cities in Europe: the beer is cheap and you can stay out until dawn. My uncle, Dorin, is also super cool and was totally fine with us getting home to the apartment just as he would be waking up to go to work.

Shawn and I givin'er at karaoke at Oldies in Sibiu

As a city, Sibiu is gorgeous. In the last few years the mayor of the city has put in a lot of effort to clean up and modernize the city and it’s really showing. It’s charmingly small, dotted by cozy cafes where citizens spend their day, and the mostly intact medieval structures of the city create a unique atmosphere.

Even though I was born in Transylvania, I never realized how mixed a heritage it boasts. This area of Romania has had very diverse populations in the past, being home to not just Romanians but also many Germans and Hungarians, and even some Serbians in certain areas. This diversity is still evident in the culture of the cities – many different languages are spoken, different religions are practiced and the traditional food enjoyed in the area is very eclectic. The area is so diverse, in fact, that most big Transylvanian cities have Romanian, German and Hungarian names, including my birth place of Sibiu, a.k.a. Hermannstadt in German, a.k.a. Nagyszeben in Hungarian.

Besides hanging out in Sibiu, Shawn and I had a great time at my cousin’s wedding in Talmaciu, where we witnessed my grandpa and his brother down ‘tuica’ (strong Romanian liquor) like it was water, and where we learned some fun-when-intoxicated-otherwise-repetitive traditional Romanian folk dances. We also spent a day in Sebesul de Jos, the tiny village where my mother was born and raised, where life is very, very far away from what we are used to in Vancouver. My uncle took us for a tractor ride around the village to show us their crops and orchards, and also taught us a bit about country life in Romania.

My uncle, his tractor and I, and all his kids minus one

After a great three weeks in Romania, we began to feel somewhat homesick and we started on our journey back towards Prague, the start and end location of our amazing overseas adventure. We took a ridiculously long train ride from Sibiu to Medias (where Shawn almost kicked a gypsy in the face, that’s how annoying they were), to Budapest during which we were a little worried about our visas. We got across the border OK, although the train was stopped for three unscheduled hours in No-man’s-land between Romania and Hungary. We barely caught our Student Agency bus to Prague on time because of this, but our streak of never missing a bus, train or plane is still alive. Being back in Prague was an experience, there were so many memories and we got very nostalgic walking its streets. We only had two more days to buy a few more souvenirs and live in the city we both love so much before our long flight back home to Vancouver.

Leaving Mola was a bit a sad (gonna miss the cool people there) but Shawn and I were also quite excited to see Greece! Greece was always part of Shawn’s travel plans and not really part of mine, but given the opportunity I thought I might as well. We took a night ferry from Bari to Corfu, and we arrived exhausted at the famed Pink Palace in the morning. The Palace lived up to its reputation immediately, offering us a free ouzo shot upon arrival. We ended up spending five nights there, and (mostly) had a good time.

The reason I say mostly is because for whatever reason, maybe it wasn’t the right time of year or maybe the recession is keeping travelers home, the hostel was fairly dead. The private club was rarely even close to full, but the many events the hostel hosted enabled us to meet fun people. The ‘Booze Cruise’ was as alcohol-filled as the name implies and a lot of fun. On the cruise we went cliff jumping, passed through a bat-cave and got to chill on a secluded, private beach. We randomly met five guys from Vancouver on the cruise, and together with other newly met people (some from Ireland, others from New Zealand) we had a good time that night.

Me, above a beach on the island of Corfu, Greece

While in Corfu we also lounged about on a few beaches and explored a bit of the island on the scooters we rented. They were actually really fun to ride, mine went up to 60km/h. I did wipe out at one point when taking a turn too sharply, resulting in several pretty gross scrapes and a 10 Euro fine for scratching the scooter, but luckily it wasn’t that bad.

Since neither Shawn nor I are real beach bums, we decided that we’d spent enough time in Corfu and were ready to set for a new adventure. Shawn had the brilliant idea of renting a car and road-tripping mainland Greece for five days (before our ferry back to Italy). We knew this wasn’t going to be an easy adventure to plan out due to the fact that neither of us drives standard, but we started looking up a few places anyhow. We googled around a bit and called a few places on Corfu, but we couldn’t find a place that could rent us an automatic for under 300 Euros and that would allow us to drive off the island. This was a minor setback however, and we agreed that we would just take the ferry to the mainland and try our luck in the port. When we got there we initially found only one place that had an automatic car available, but the hefty sum of 550 Euros was too much for our budget. The other places we tried were either closed (opening hours in Greece are totally random) or had no automatic cars. We were ready to give up on the small port town and take a bus to somewhere else when I found another car rental company we didn’t see earlier. The guy said he had a car! 250 Euros for 5 days, full insurance, everything, car was automatic, but he had to go somewhere and he told me to come back in an hour. We were cautiously happy about this and rightly so – after returning an hour later it turns out the automatic car they had was in fact 550 for the time we requested and he wouldn’t budge on the price even though he promised cheaper. Angry, we went back to the first place we found to ask if they had cheaper cars in other cities. The guy there suggested we try going to Ioannina (about 90km east), saying a big city like that would surely have what we were looking for, so we got on a bus and headed there.

The people of Greece are very friendly people. After our arrival in Ioannina, a middle-aged man at the bus station decided to help us find a car. He made a few phone calls, and asked a few people about a car rental, but found no automatic for us. He did however say that there were a lot of companies in this certain area of town and he called a cab over for us and told the driver where to take us. When we got there, we quickly found the perfect car! Automatic, 260 Euros with full insurance and available immediately. We shopped around a bit to see if we could find a better price, but we ended up returning to the initial place. Bad news. The car’s battery was dead, and for some reason this is a big deal in Greece and it couldn’t be fixed. We told them we could wait till the next day, they said they’d do what they can, then told us where to find cheap accommodation for the night. Before I talk a bit about the city, I’d like to finish the story.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel and headed over to Europcar. Great news! The battery was actually not impossible to replace (obviously) and the car was ready for us. There was one more little thing they forgot to mention, however, and that was that we have to be 21 in order to rent the car… 20 and 10 months wasn’t close enough and our hopes of a Greek road trip were shattered. The young couple working at the store did help us plan our bus trip to Athens though, and even gave us a free ride to the bus station.

Yet even given the fact we couldn’t rent a car, we were happy we went to Ioannina. Being a city we had never heard of we had no expectations, but it turned out to be awesome! The city sits on Lake Pamvotis and is surrounded by large, arid hills. Being a university town it is full of young people, and packed with cool restaurants, bars and cafes. It’s clean and well-maintained and feels quite rich in comparison to the rest of the Greece I saw. Ioannina also has a rich history, worth reading about. In the end I was a bit disappointed we didn’t have a lot of time to explore it, but hopefully I’ll get the chance to come back one day.

So like mentioned before, after Ioannina we jumped on a bus to Athens. We pulled into Athens late at night, and got ripped off by the taxi driver who took us to our hotel. He was being an asshole about bargaining, and we gave up cause we just wanted to get to our hotel already after the long ride south. The next morning we left the hotel and checked into a cheaper hostel, and explored the city. Athens is a cool city, certain things reminded me of Istanbul, others of Rome and others were unique. What was similar to Istanbul were the street vendors (one who gave Shawn and I both a free nectarine each!), the bazaars selling all kinds of random junk and souvenirs, and the stray cats. The crowded streets and crazy drivers were reminiscent of both Istanbul and Rome, but the style of life and the old monuments were definitely evocative of the latter. Though there are less old monuments than in Rome, the Acropolis is absolutely stunning. It can be seen from many parts of the city, and the whole area surrounding the giant rock it’s built on is quite green (for Europe). The city is also littered in Orthodox churches or miniature churches on the side of the road where people place candles and probably pray.

Athens

We saw a great chunk of the core city that first day, and while exploring we noticed that Tiesto was playing in Athens the very next night, our last. The next day we decided to buy tickets for the show (a newly-met from New Zealand gave us some money to buy him one as well), which in Vancouver would generally be a small errand. In Athens, this was a multiple-hour, decently-stressful escapade. The box office we initially went to inquire about tickets only sold tickets for shows in Thessaloniki so they sent us to a different place which had just run out of tickets. From there we were sent elsewhere again, and again, and again. We trekked from one side of the city to the other until finally someone told us to go to the arena where he was playing. We took a half-hour metro ride out to the arena, only to find out he wasn’t playing there – they sent us to another arena. Guess what? Not playing there either. Finally, we found some young hipster who happened to know that the show was actually at some old airport hangar, obviously far away from where we were. In the end the whole trek was worth it because we got tickets, and the show was amazing. I like Tiesto a lot more than I did previously, his live show was sick, he even had fireworks shoot out from the stage.

Tiesto

After Tiesto the three of us (Shawn, Michael and I) passed out for a few hours after which we hastily caught a taxi to the bus terminal. Michael caught his bus with three minutes to spare, Shawn and I had to wait a couple hours. The bus took us all the way to Corfu, where I was planning on taking a ferry to Dubrovnik in Croatia en route to Sarajevo. It turns out no ferries go from Greece to Croatia, only from Bari in Italy. However I already knew that the next ferry to Dubrovnik from Bari was not for a few days, so due to bad timing I decided to stay in Bisceglie with Shawn’s family for two days (which were amazing) then catch a plane to Romania.

This post was published from Timisoara, Romania.

After an amazing three weeks exploring Germany (mostly) on my own, I returned to Prague for one night (I stayed at the kolej again, roome 223A). I didn’t spend much time there, but in the few hours I was there I did enjoy one more Kofola and a smazeny syr. (Speaking of smazeny syr – the trusty Tesco smaz stand is gone! The whole area is under renovation! Prague wasted no time getting rid of my favourite midnight snack place after I left…) During the next morning’s flight to Rome I talked with an Italian studying in Prague who got me very excited about my coming eleven days in Italy. I met up with Shawn in Rome, and checked into our hostel.

Before I start about Rome, allow me to rant a bit about the hostel, ‘M&J Hostel’ near the train station. First of all, some of the staff – particularly one person – were terrible. Not friendly in the slightest, not helpful and only pushed their own affiliated events and locations on us. The showers were the worst I’ve seen at a hostel and the rooms had no air conditioning. However the absolute worst part about the place was the bed bugs. I had never encountered these before, and even though everyone in our room had seen several even during the day time, we paid no attention, we thought we’d man up and deal with the idea of some bugs. About fifty bed bug bites later, my opinion is completely changed. They are absolutely awful. Thousands of times worse than mosquitoes.

Rome

However, even though the hostel was an unpleasant experience, Rome itself was so amazing that the overall impression of the city is still high. The immense city is so full of history and has a southern, mediterranean kind of charm that makes it very beautiful. There are numerous monuments from all time periods in the city, many of which we visited. We walked through the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and many other amazing places. Every street in Rome was gorgeous, whether it was a narrow one with tall buildings on either side or a wide boulevard. What set the streets in Rome apart from those belonging to other cities are first of all the architecture of the buildings and the colours, but also the amount of vegetation. Even the smaller streets were decorated by small trees, bushes, flowers or other plants.

Some of the highlights of the trip were seeing the Pope during a Wednesday mass, eating a delicious full course meal at a tiny private owned restaurant, and drinking beers with two British guys who work for Ericsson. Another more personal kind of crowning moment was the first time I had an ‘entire’ coffee. In North America we would call what I had an espresso, while in Italy it’s just ‘coffee’. It was actually very good, and I had quite a number of them during my stay in Italy. Maybe when I get back home I’ll be more open to trying American coffee, but I might have to still look for good espressos for a while.

After Rome we caught a train heading south east to Bari. Shawn has family in the area, and we stayed with a cousin of his and her family for a week in a smaller town outside of Bari called Mola di Bari, or just Mola for short. The week spent there was sensational. We were kept (very) full with the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten, including many dishes I had never tried before. One such dish was ‘braciole’, or ‘horse meat” for you anglophones. Shawn really hyped it up for me since he tried it while I was still in Germany, and it really was all I expected. Another thing I really loved, surprisingly, were the olives in Mola. Back home in Vancouver I’m not a big fan, but the Mola olives were more than very delicious.

Storm in Mola Harbour

Besides consuming tasty food, we spent a lot of time hanging out with Luigi (Shawn’s cousin’s son – I don’t really know what relation that is…) and his friends. Luigi spoke the best English out of everyone in Mola but we were able to get along quite well with everyone. Being a fluent Romanian speaker I could understand the majority of the Italians’ discourses if performed slowly, but actually talking back to them in Italian was difficult. Most sentences included some English, some Italian and some miming, but by the end of my stay in Mola I started to get more and more accustomed to the language. I’d like to return to Italy for a longer stay in the future to immerse myself in Italian and really learn the language.

Luigi and his friends hung out mostly in the late evening, after dinner, in a few popular spots in town. The main square, the castle and a few bars (including Bux, we had a lot of beers there over the week in Mola), and especially their cars. Even though the city was small and the streets were cramped, we would drive around it aimlessly in either Luigi, Donato or Leo’s car, just for fun. Our new Italian friends called such a drive a ‘giro’. All in all we had a great time in Mola, met a lot of great people (who will hopefully consider visiting Vancouver at some point) and again, ate a lot of good food.

Mola Crew, from the left: Vito, Tiziana, Luigi, Me, Leo and Donato

This post was published from a hotel in Athens. Keep an eye out for my Greek adventures, they’ll be up here soon!

This is the final part of my travels through Germany, you may also be interested in Part 1 and Part 2.

My next stop was Heidelberg, a small medieval university town. By the time I got there I was getting sick, and since the hostel was clean and really chill (plus free internet!) I decided to stay two nights. The city itself was cool, the old town was small and picturesque, and they had a nice path on the opposite hill from where you could see the city well. You also get a nice view from the castle above the city, a castle who exists mostly as ruins today. It’s a lot more like a real castle however, with towers, walls, moat and the works. Inside the still standing buildings of the castle was an ENORMOUS wine barrel, probably about eight or nine meters in diameter, and also a small pharmacy museum. That was actually a lot more interesting that it sounds – it shows the whole history of the practice, from the ancient Roman age to now, and I learned a lot of interesting things.

Heidelberg, as seen from the castle

Since I was sick I told myself I wasn’t going to drink on either night I was there, and go to bed early. On the first night, a US Air Force officer bought a keg for the whole hostel and we all had a few beers till late in the night. The second night, I went out with a Canadian girl at the hostel for one beer, and we ran into a bunch of Californians with whom we had more beers and a few shots. Drunk, I then ran into some Texans with whom I hit up McD’s for a late night meal. So overall not a good stay for my health, which is why the next night in Frankfurt I took it easy.

Frankfurt was the first city I’d seen in Europe with a real skyline. Compared to North American cities it’s not much, there are only a handful of skyscrapers, but it was still a sight I’d missed. The first day in Frankfurt I explored the waterfront of the Main a little but I was very tired, and a still sick, so I went to bed early (my hostel was in the heart of the red light district, by the way, it was actually kinda funny). The next day I did much of the same thing during the day (although I did randomly find a cartoon exhibition, featuring German cartoons similar to the Far Side). In the evening I met an amateur photographer from Toronto, Noah Markus, at the hostel and we went out shooting together. I learned quite a lot from him since he’s been into photography longer and he knows a ton about cameras and lenses. While out, we also ran into a group of drunk Germans, one of which was getting married the next day. Noah bought a shot of vodka and some stickers from them which meant he could pick out a ‘nice German song’ for them to sing; he picked ‘La Bamba‘, very, VERY German…

Frankfurt

After Frankfurt I left for Cologne where I spent a whole day. I locked my bag away at the train station (which was a bit of an adventure) then I explored the city. I hiked all the way to the top of the Dom to get a nice view of the city, then I attended a mass inside. That was the first Catholic mass I’d ever seen, and it was surprisingly very similar to the Orthodox masses I remember from when I was younger. The experience itself was awesome due to the enormous size of the cathedral, the pipe organ and the incense. An interesting thing I found after the mass was on the train bridge crossing the Rhine, right next to the Dom: couples would carve their names or initials on a lock, fasten it to the bridge, and throw the key into the river thus proclaiming their eternal love for one another. The bridge is covered in locks like these, and while I was there I saw a few couples actually performing the ritual. Romantic, but personally I’d keep a copy of the key.

The Dom in Cologne

That evening I got picked up by an old friend of my mom’s, Alina, and her three kids. Steffi is two years older than I am, Johanna one year younger and Andy two. I spent a few days with them, all of which were a lot of fun. They spoke very good Romanian and even English so we got along really well. They showed me around their town, Alpen, and around, saw the remains and archeological finds from an old Roman Legionary camp, watched a few movies, even went to the Netherlands for a few hours (they lived super close to the border). I didn’t want to leave Alpen anymore after my stay, but I had to start heading back towards Prague since my flight to Rome was only a few days away.

After Alpen I visited Gorlitz, the eastern most city in Germany where my friend Andreea (from Vancouver) has family. The city itself is small and cozy, with its beautiful medieval churches, houses and towers. It’s also split in half by the River Neisse, which is actually the line that defines the German-Polish border. It’s a little shocking seeing the difference from one side of the river to the other, but it was cool to be able to say I’ve been to Poland (even though I only spent under an hour there).

Even though Gorlitz is in Germany, the difference between former East Germany and West is definitely noticeable. The train stations and small cities I passed while traveling through the east of the country were evidently poorer and in worse maintenance then those in the West, and the people themselves also looked a lot more ‘eastern’. They were very nice however, the eastern Germans, and eastern Germany was equally as fun as the west.

After Gorlitz I headed south to Prague for one night, stayed at the old Kolej (room 223D), and got ready for the trip to Rome.

This post was published from Mola di Bari, in Southern Italy.