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Romania Final 2015

Our time in Romania is finished. We visited north east Romania to see painted monasteries and then went south to Bucharest before taking the train to Bulgaria. Our last two visits in Romania were an amazing way to cap an spectacular journey through the country. Just like before, we found beautiful scenery, incredibly friendly & helpful people, wonderful sights, delicious food, and everything was a good value. We’ve been away from Romania for a little over a week and we already talk about our eventual return.

I had mentioned researching things to do in Romania was a bit difficult; there wasn’t a whole lot of information. Jacquelyn found a place in NE Romania near Ukraine with a bunch of painted monasteries. The pictures online were OK and the area was REALLY far away from everything in Romania so I felt we were taking a bit of a leap to visit. I am very, very, very, happy we decided to go. Just like everything else in Romania, it turned out to be absolutely amazing and all the information online did the area no justice. We’ve never seen anything quite like the 500 year old painted monasteries. The monastery paintings are stories from the bible and the important people in the church so the average folks, who were illiterate, could understand all the important things of their religion. Interior murals are quite different than the exterior murals; they are gruesome depicting people being burned, boiled, stabbed, ripped apart by animals and so on. I asked our guide why so many paintings where of people being killed and dying horrible deaths and he told us that they are the important saints and the paintings are of how the saints died. That was pretty cool considering I remember we learned a lot about the saints in church school but I don’t really remember learning a lot about how they died

We spent nearly nine hours touring around to the different monasteries and it seems like we could have spent a couple more days staring at the walls. The It was amazing to see how well the murals held up after 500yrs of exposure to sun, snow, rain, heat and cold. Each monastery was a little bit different and had its own character. Much like everywhere else in Romania, there were only a handful of other tourists and we were really able to enjoy the monasteries free from interruption.

Our time in Bucharest was pretty good. We aren’t really city people so we don’t really know what to do with ourselves in a big city. Probably the most odd thing we saw was the Parliamentary Palace which is the second largest administration building in the world after the Pentagon. The construction started towards the end of the communist period and the architecture of the building really shows it. The building really is huge, just massively huge. I uploaded a photo and it doesn’t do it justice. If possible, try to zoom in to see the window air conditioners – they are normal size but look super tiny. Otherwise, the city is a lot like other European capitols with similar architecture, city squares, pedestrian areas, and plenty of restaurants and bars.

Romania is quite the place. Some of the locals said we were “brave” and other travelers mentioned we were “daring” for traveling to Romania. We have no idea why as traveling around was super easy and everything went nearly perfect. Many countries we’ve visited have great features but few countries have amazing attractions, great people, beautiful scenery, great food, great values, and, most importantly, relatively easy access to the things we want to visit. Of everywhere we’ve visited, I can only think of three other countries with similar characteristics. The experiences and photos I shared barely scratch the surface of our awesome experience in Romania, they were just the highlights. Our day to day travels had many other great experiences. We were sad to go and we miss Romania a lot.

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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PS – for those who want to see high def documentaries about the mountains and wilderness of Romania just go on to youtube and look for “Wild Carpathia”. It’s an excellent series.

Transylvania Part Two 2015

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The people of Romania and their food are awesome. The tourist places and the scenery are beautiful enough but the combination of the food and the insanely friendly people helped make Romania one of, if not the best, places we’ve traveled. It’s like Romania is one of the best kept secrets for travelers. The combination of what exists in Romania, the people, the food, the scenery, the chill attitude, the ease of access, the tourist places, and the great value, doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the world!

In our travels we are commonly greeted with indifference as we are just another tourist. Very rarely are people genuinely interested in us, what we are doing, where we are going in their country, or spend the time to tell us about themselves and their country. We don’t really mind, people have their lives and they are busy, no big deal. Sometimes, like in Australia and Japan, we find a ton of awesome people willing to talk to us and share their lives and culture with us. This makes a destination go from good to amazing and makes our time in the country unforgettable. We’ve had a lot of great experiences with a lot of people but there’s a few that stand out for different reasons.

I had mentioned we spent a lot of time trespassing because tourist places would be closed when they were supposed to be open or we simply found a place where we wanted to visit and couldn’t find anyone to let us in. If we were caught no one would care and sometimes we’d just get asked to leave. If we found out there was an admission fee we’d offer to pay. We’re not total criminals after all :). In one instance we set off a burglar alarm. In the US that’s sign to make a quick getaway but people are so chill in Romania we figured we’d wait to find out who would show up to turn off the alarm and see what happens. After about five minutes of the alarm ringing a five foot flat, 80 year old, woman, who walked with a limp responded to the alarm. We quickly figured out she didn’t speak English so I used the translate app to tell her we were sorry for setting off the alarm and we are tourists from America. She then grabbed our arms and brought us to her home next door, picked up the phone, and called someone. After handing the phone to Jacquelyn, we figured out she had called her granddaughter who spoke impeccable English. The granddaughter said her grandmother asked her to take us on a tour and that she’d be there in a few minutes. The granddaughter spent about two hours with us touring around and then brought us back to her grandmother who had cooked us supper during the tour! When everything was said and done we had taken around four hours of these people’s lives and we offered to give them money for the food and the tour. In typical Romanian fashion, it was a simple “no” with the explanation that they love their home area and they were so happy we were able to tour and share in their culture. I’ve trespassed a lot of places and I’ve been banned from a lot of places for trespassing, like my hometown mall, this is the best outcome I’ve ever had while trespassing!

Romanian people love to talk. People off the street would ask us how we like Romania, where we are from, how things are going, whether or not we like Romania and so on. There was never a shortage of people who wanted to talk to us. We had a very long train ride across Romania and we ended up in a cabin with six other people. The people were curious who we were but no one spoke English. They all looked at us and said, “Duetsch?”, “English?”, and saidsome other countries. I replied, “USA, America”. They all went, “ohhhh!!!”. Not many Americans make it to Romania for tourism, only around 200k/yr, and the part of Romania we were going to had very few tourist in general so an American going to that area was pretty uncommon. The train ride was really hot so I went out of our cabin and stood next to an open window in the hallway for the last five hours of the ride. The different folks in the cabin would come up to me and just stand with me, say a few words of Romanian here and there, offer me drinks and snacks, and then go back to the cabin. We were going through the Carpathian mountains so it was insanely beautiful – it seemed they all knew the word ‘beautiful’ so I probably said that word no less than 100 times to the different people who kept me company. One person tried to organize a taxi to our hotel for us, one person offered me whiskey shots, one person helped us carry all of our baggage off the train at our destination, and another person walked us down the street until we saw our hotel just to make sure we ended up safely to our destination. It was such an unexpected and awesome experience!

There are some problems in Romania: Romania has some tough demographic trends. To start, Romania’s average income is in the $500-$600/mo range in the bigger cities and in the villages/rural areas it’s much lower. This means a lot of people live well below the US minimum wage; a lot of people are very poor. Many people leave Romania for greener pastures, one person told us Romania’s greatest export is their youth which made sense why there were not a lot of youth around. When driving through rural towns we’d see people in their 50s+ and school age children but nothing in between. Once we’d go to bigger cities with universities we’d find more people around our age. Romania’s population is shrinking: they lost 12% of their population through emigration in the last 10 years, of the 19million people left only five million work so a rather small minority of people are supporting the retirees, the individuals unable to work, and themselves. Almost all the people we met around our age wanted to leave Romania and since Romania is part of the EU they can easily move to a more prosperous place.

On top of the unfavorable demographic trends, everyone we met seemed to despise their government. One particular Airbnb host stands out: she was in her 50s and lived through communism. After communism she became a successful entrepreneur employing multiple people and winning business awards. Her house was very big and she alluded to having many vehicles in the past and doing very well financially with her business. Through a series of events that I do not entirely understand due the language barrier, the government ended up shutting down her business and confiscated her assets like her cars. She was also accused of bribery/kickbacks and was investigated but was cleared of any wrongdoing. This happened over three years ago and when she told the story tears still came to her eyes. She said, “I lived eight years as a worker in communism and 25 years in capitalism. We are going the wrong direction.” She’s actively looking to leave Romania for good. Her story was crazy to hear and something unimaginable for us.

We met quite a few people starting their new careers in tourism. We heard time and time again how people have a hard time getting paid from their work or it takes forever to get paid so people are turning to tourism, like owning and running a hotel or becoming tour guides, because tourists pay when they arrive or when they leave – no lag. We met an engineer who became a tourist guide in Alba Iulia for the huge citadel in the city. In any Western European country Alba Iulia Citadel would be listed as a “must do” destination and be a jewel of tourism but in Romania it’s kind of sort of visited by some people because a lot of people, like us, have a hard time finding places to visit. We didn’t know about Alba Iulia prior to a few days before our visit but once we did learn about it we wanted to visit and we wanted to hire a guide for a more enriching experience. There weren’t many guide options and the only one listed on TripAdvisor never responded to phone calls or emails. We still decided to visit, pulled up to the citadel and saw a sign for guide service. We called the number, stated we wanted a tour starting immediately and he said he was available. It’s not like he ran a company with many guides, he was the company! We ended up having a great tour and learned a lot about Romania, it was awesome! The lack of tourism has really benefited us in lots of way in Romania, places aren’t busy, guides are available, and things aren’t that expensive yet. That said, hopefully many more people come to Romania for tourism and hopefully people’s lives will improve as tourists spend money.

The food in Romania is delicious. Pretty much everyone has a vegetable garden and makes their own alcohols and sweets. The food is a lot like what had back in the US: lots of meat, soups, breads, and spices we are familiar with. But the combination of fresh ingredients, cooking from scratch, subtle yet dynamic flavors, and great care help make Romanian food stand out. Romanians are really good at making sweets like pies and cakes. There is one dessert, called papanasi, that really stands out. It’s a super soft cheese baked into a donut looking thing served with a sweet cream and berries. Everyone has their own version of the recipe but in all cases it is absolutely delicious!

We stayed at a very small hotel in the middle of nowhere for a couple of days where the hosts lived in the same building. In the morning our host asked us what we wanted for dinner. I had no idea so I just stared at him. After an awkward pause and my blank expression, he asked if we wanted a traditional Romanian dinner and grew a huge smile after I said “sure”. His wife was the cook and the food turned out absolutely delicious! It was here we learned the typical Romanian meal is a soup, bread, a main dish, and a dessert. People make food and drinks from all sorts of things growing off the land. When we stayed in the mountains we had a host who made jams and alcohols from the mountain berries he picked every year. We also found people who would pick elderflowers growing in the mountains and make a slightly fermented drink like 7Up but way better. It seems as though people could take almost anything and make great food!

Alcohol is a very good value in Romania. Romania makes some amazing wine and pretty good beer. We saw lots of fruit trees and vineyards while driving around but the most surprising thing we saw were HUGE hops farms in the countryside. I think that is what helps keep prices low for alcohol. We don’t drink a lot of wine so we don’t really know good wine but the good news was wine was cheap enough to buy a handful of different types, try them, and then dump them out if we didn’t like the wine. I’m really not sure how anyone makes money on a $2 bottle of wine but that’s not my problem to solve :). Beer was equally cheap. We could buy 2/3rds gallon bottles of beer for about a buck fifty. That’s Franzia cheap

I can’t really think of any bad experiences we’ve had in Romania. I think the worst thing that happened was the occasional rain but that’s not Romania’s fault. We really forward to the day we get to come back. We’re not done yet, we still have a couple more stops in the country and we’re not excited to leave. Romania is too awesome :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Transylvania Part One 2015

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Our time in Transylvania has been amazing. Even though we’ve been here for two weeks it seems like we just scratched the surface. This area has made a very lasting impression on us and the combination of what we found in Transylvania doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the world. The beautiful scenery, outdoor activities, awesome people, good food, chill demeanor, historical sights, ease of access to the things we want to do, and great values make Transylvania the most under-rated place we’ve ever visited. There is a lot I want to share so I’m going to break this up into two posts. #1 The easy stuff: scenery, tourism industry, and driving in Transylvania. #2 The amazing experiences we’ve had with the people of Transylvania and the delicious food they make. I’m still working on #2 so that’ll come sometime later.

First things first: it wasn’t easy figuring out what to see in Transylvania. Normally, if someone wants to tour a European country the first thing they should do is find Rick Steve’s materials on the country. We were surprised to find Rick Steve’s doesn’t have a guide for Romania and even recommended people skip Romania. The next thing we turned to was TripAdvisor only to find there wasn’t a lot listed. The places that were listed didn’t have a whole lot of reviews and the descriptions of the places were pretty poor. Sites like the Lonely Planet and Wikitravel didn’t help much either. We’ve never encountered a dearth of information like this so we made our own itinerary and figured we’d see at least one cool thing during our two week drive through Transylvania. We ended up being completely surprised by how many things there were to do, how much fun the sites were and, best of all, we pretty much had the tourist places to ourselves because there isn’t a huge tourism scene. We knew Romania had mountains but we had no idea it had so many mountains and with the largest continuous forest in Central Europe. Transylvania has some very stunning scenery. It was really easy to find outdoor activities to do and it didn’t take a whole lot of work to see jaw-dropping beauty. I put some photos up and they really speak for themselves – Romania is very beautiful.

Romania has a rich history of being conquered, subjugated, and passed around by outside forces going back thousands of years. Romania, as we know it today, didn’t exist until after World War One. Because of this, there are a lot of fortifications all over the place dating back to Roman times and even some villages have churches with very large fortifications. A lot of the sites we visited were at some stage of refurbishment, it seemed like everything was under construction. We learned that a lot of EU money and tourist money is being used to make the tourist sites better, which is good, because a lot of historical sites are pretty dumpy and only some are in great condition. There was a huge positive benefit of the dumpiness: we could pretty much wander around anywhere, open doors, peek in everything, and thoroughly explore everywhere, and there were very few “fun police” running around ruining our time. This is pretty different than most tourist sites we’ve visited around the world. We also spent a lot of time trespassing because sites would be closed when they were supposed to be open or we were just interested in visiting. Unlike other places in the world, no one ran us off and no one seemed to get mad! People were generally happy to see us when we were trespassing. After setting off an alarm in one building, we were welcomed with open arms and later given dinner – but that’s a story for part two .

Since we didn’t find a lot of information about what to visit, we’d always ask people for recommendations on what to see during our visit. Almost always people would bring up a salt mine near Turda. We had read about it and planned on visiting it, but it was surprising so many people thought a salt mine was cool. It had its own aura with the locals, the salt mine would come up in conversation and people would pause and say something like, “Oh yes, it’s a very good place. You must go.” So the day arrives and we visit; I never thought a salt mine would be cool but it was awesome! The salt mine had been turned into a mini amusement park complete with a Ferris wheel, mini-golf, pool tables, bowling, row boats, and tons of areas to sit around and chill. Salt crystals were growing everywhere on everything, even the air was salty. Every so often I’d lick my lips and taste salt! It was a really cool visit!

The cost is right for tourism. Most tourist attractions were generally$2-$3 per person to visit, some were free, and the very few ‘expensive’ places, like Bran Castle, were only $7-$10. It was amazing we could go to so many places and see such cool stuff for so little money. In more expensive countries we generally have to choose what we want to do and make some type of judgement call on what we want to see. Not in Romania, we could visit everything! Food, lodging, rental cars, etc., were all pretty reasonable too. We could go out and have a very good three course meal with drinks and desert for $15-$20. That’s a very good deal!

The biggest downside for a tourist had to be getting around. Driving in Romania is insane. The bigger cities are filled with seemingly suicidal drivers and the countryside is filled with dirt roads in bad condition. In the first five minutes with our rental car, I discovered our horn was disconnected. After the first day of driving I told Jacquelyn that we should be prepared to pay for damages for our rental car because there’s no way the car was coming back unscathed. The crap mountain roads, extremely narrow streets, and everyone trying to drive over us was terrifying! That said, I’m thankful for two things which came in very helpful in Transylvania: 1) spending endless hours driving on the gravel back roads of the Black Hills during high school really taught me how to make decent time on crap roads, 2) driving in Albany, NY and Chicago for a year taught me how to deal with super bad and super crazy drivers. We ended up being completely fine and even returned the rental car in one rather muddy piece. These two experiences helped make sure we stayed on the road, didn’t hit anything, and nothing hit us!

So the scenery, the tourist sites, and the trip through Romania was awesome. Even if we hadn’t spoken to a single person in the country, Romania would still be near the top of our list of favorite countries we’ve visited. The unique and extremely awesome part of our trip occurred from all the interactions we’ve had with others and I’ll write about that later!

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Vienna, Bratislava, & Budapest 2015

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I’m grouping a few places together for the simple reason they are so similar. We visited Vienna [Austria], Budapest [Hungary], and Bratislava [Slovakia] over the course of the last month before and after our tour of the Balkans. The Habsburg’s and the Astro-Hungarian Empire left quite the mark on central Europe. The Habsburg’s were the dominate monarch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in central Europe for some time until World War One. For the most part, the cities have similar features in similar architecture. There are differences:

* Vienna is different because they have HUGE palaces. While it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Austrians took the lead so the grand and insanely opulent palaces were in Vienna. We visited the Imperial Treasury filled with jewelry, crows, art, and other very valuable items and it was awesome!
* Budapest was the seat of the Hungarian royalty but didn’t see a lot of activity or construction until the late 1800s to the early 1900s. So Budapest is kind of “new”. The Ottomans had conquered Budapest at one point and the Turkish bath culture stayed long after the Ottomans left. Hungary has had poor luck being an independent nation: as the Hungarians explain it, they wanted help from Austria to kick the Ottomans out and the Austrians graciously obliged. Unfortunately for the Hungarians, the Austrians chose to stay after they kicked the Ottomans out. After much turmoil, the Hungarian royalty tried to get equal footing with the Austrian royalty and that is why it took until the late 1800s for Budapest to be built up.
* Bratislava is tiny, super small, but still has all the marks of an important city. While Bratislava is in present day Slovakia, it was a VERY important city in the Hungarian Empire and many coronations for Hungarian royalty happened in the city. The castle in the city was super hard to conquer and even successfully stood against the Mongols and Napoleon.

I made a remark to a tour guide in Bratislava that Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava are so similar. She replied, “Oh, but they are so different!” Well, sure, different, I guess. I can tell the cities and their culture’s apart as easily as I can guess which country an Asian person is from. So… I have no idea.

All joking aside, the biggest difference we felt was in our pocketbook. Bratislava and Budapest were relatively inexpensive. Food, lodging, and entertainment was all pretty cheap. Vienna, being in Austria and being part of “western Europe” for some time, was substantially more expensive in all regards. Besides money, there was another major difference I could tell: Vienna was packed full of tour groups and was loud, Bratislava was nearly empty, Budapest was super easy to get around and it wasn’t overrun by tourists. I actually wondered if Bratislava was “closed” but found out that it was open but not many people make the journey to Bratislava. It is a lot of fun to wander around the old streets and buildings in peace and quiet!

There is a hangover from communism. There are a lot of buildings around built in the communist block style but there’s also the mentality that lingers. Capitalism brought a very uneven change in people’s everyday life – some people’s lives changed for the very good and a lot of people’s lives changed for the worse. Employment was mandated under communism and there were generous benefits, like three weeks of vacation for everyone. The public infrastructure and housing are now very expensive and out of reach for many, many people. One person explained it as “back when we had communism, it used to cost the equivalent of one loaf of bread to go from my home village to Budapest by train. Now it costs 36”. The housing prices in Budapest are expensive for the locals, and from what I gathered, are similar to what the real estate prices would be in a mid-sized US city where a “good” wage for Budapest starts around $10,000 per year – well below the US minimum wage! Out in the countryside, the wages drop off and the unemployment rates skyrocket to 40%+. Slovakia suffers much the same problems. Even though it’s been over a generation since communism ended these countries are still trying to make capitalism work.

Fun fact, completely unrelated to our travel and it was something we learned outside of our travel: the Habsburg’s were one of the most, if not the most, inbred monarchy ever. Emperor Fernand I was pretty messed up from the inbreeding and one of the only recorded things of him vocalizing was “I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings!”

Overall, we thought the cities were fun to visit. It was nice to get our fill on Habsburg history :).

Enjoy the photos :).

Chris W.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina 2015

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I’ve had a hard time writing about Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a place unlike anywhere we’ve visited and it is a place nearly impossible to describe, much like Japan, but for very different reasons. So what I wrote is really long because I couldn’t figure out how to make it shorter; our time in Bosnia left quite the impression on us. If you don’t want to read everything here are the cliff notes: it was fun, we would go back, and Bosnia is a uniquely weird place.

So I’ll start with the easiest part: We really didn’t know Bosnia had that much cool stuff to see. We were originally planning our trip through Croatia and we needed a way to get back to Zagreb, Croatia, to return our rental car so we thought we’d drive through Bosnia. As we were researching we kept finding more and more stuff to do. During our drive we were floored: Bosnia is beautiful, like gorgeous. We had no idea it was so mountainous and green. From what I’ve gathered, there really isn’t trekking or hiking culture / tourism in Bosnia which is really too bad because there were so many gorgeous places we visited where one could purposely get lost for weeks on end out in nature. It would be really neat to come back some day and spend time in the mountains disconnected from humanity. There is an Islamic influence throughout a large part of the country so Sarajevo feels like a mini-Istanbul (let me emphasize mini!) where there was the call to prayer and we were able to get the foods that we really enjoyed in Istanbul and other Muslim-majority countries we visited. There are really neat castles, settlements, and other important structures like the Mostar Bridge, littered throughout the country so even driving from one major city to another was broken up by short stopovers at cool sights. So much of the country was beautiful and fun to visit.

The price is right for tourism. Food, lodging, and other tourist activities are cheap in Bosnia, almost similar to what we paid in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam but Bosnia is far easier to reach than South East Asia. The yearly wage for the average Bosnian is less than half of the US minimum wage and there is over 40% unemployment. The low wages make tourist money go really far. A very filling meal for two could be bought for $8-$10, drinks included, and admission to tourist places is generally a buck or two. While there is a tourism industry in Bosnia it’s pretty well relegated to the major cities. It was a bit harder to get along in the countryside as we met fewer people who spoke English and quick serve restaurants were far and few inbetween.

We used Airbnb exclusively and we found amazing hosts on accident. This was the next-level type hosting we found in Japan. Our hosts were genuinely concerned for our wellbeing and wanted us to be happy in every way possible. In particular, two hosts stood out – they were around our age and they spent a non-trivial amount of time with us showing their city and sharing their stories of growing up, what the current life is like, and what they think the future holds for the country. These were amazing experiences we were not expecting; this type of experience has happened so infrequently during our travel that it will forever stand out. Our hosts were even concerned for our belongings. In Sarajevo, our host told us “I’m not saying your car stereo is going to get stolen but it might” so we paid for secure parking smile emoticon.

The next easiest thing would be the history. Bosnia has been an area conquered and reconquered since antiquity. Fast forward to the Middle Ages and later where the area was predominantly Christian (Catholic and Orthodox) until the Ottomans rolled through and brought a lot of Muslims making Muslims the largest minority group with no majority group. Skip ahead through the two world wars and now Bosnia is part of Yugoslavia under Tito. The big cultural differences and any tensions are suppressed by the state so people live in peace because, well, they have to.

Now comes the harder parts to explain. After the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 90s there was a multiyear war and a lot of people died. The war was fought largely on religious and ethnic lines between the three major groups (Croat [Catholic], Bosniak [Muslim], Serb [Orthodox]) so multicultural cities, like Sarajevo and Mostar, were absolutely ravaged by the war. Neighbor turned against neighbor just because they prayed to a different god and/or had different lineage. The war seemed to make everyone go insane; on one extreme is the ethnic cleansing which occurred all over the country and another extreme is how one of the leading literary minds in the country before the war ordered the razing of the Sarajevo library destroying many very old and irreplaceable works of art. These were people living in peace under Tito and they all went insane, murderous, rampages once the oppressive and controlling government was gone. While the war is over, the scars of war are everywhere. From bombed out buildings all over Mostar to Sarajevo roses, the marks of war are impossible to miss. We thought we saw a lot of destruction and dilapidation when we were in Vietnam but we were unprepared for how much damage remains in Bosnia after nearly 20 years.

The outcome of the war brought a very weird government setup to appease the three different groups. Bosnia has: three prime ministers, three parliaments, three fairly autonomous regions, and separations like this all the way down to telecom providers and utilities. The US helped broker the peace and the creation of the unique government so the people living in Bosnia can give partial thanks to the US for their Frankenstein of a government. I asked a question to multiple people, “how do separate governments based on ethnic/religions lines promote unity between the three groups?” and no one really seemed to know but everyone was happy there wasn’t war. When discussing the government people would generally say things like, “it’s complicated”, “there is a lot of government”, and “it is not easy to get things done”, simply because they have different governments for different groups living in the same region.

The hardest thing to explain, which leaves it’s imprint everywhere in the country, is just how different the groups are and how that makes Bosnia uniquely different than anywhere else we’ve visited. We have been to many countries with different ethnic groups and the US is very diverse. Bosnia is different. Very different. Yes, technically, it’s one country but it’s still very separate in a lot of ways. The example that maybe easily describes the WTFness of Bosnia is how the country goes about supporting their country’s soccer team. There is a Bosnian soccer team and much like anywhere else a lot of the citizens cheer for their national team, and, much like anywhere else, soccer riots can happen due to the zealousness of the supporters. What’s really unique about Bosnia is how a soccer riot can start during a Brazilian / Croatian soccer match in the little city of Mostar. What do the Brazilians have to do with the soccer riots? Not much, to my knowledge there are few to no Brazilians in Mostar, the game wasn’t held in Mostar so Brazilians weren’t the ones starting the riots. The riot happened between two of three major ethnic/religious groups where one group was cheering zealously for the Brazilians to beat the Croation team and the other group was supporting zealously supporting their ancestral home team so naturally (I guess?) a soccer riot breaks out.

American culture like music, movies, brands and such are pervasive all over the world and Bosnia is no different. It’s always been neat to drive around in another country and hear a similar top 10 to the United States. We can be far away and still have a flavor of home. The odd exception to this is when we were driving around Bosnia, in the midst of war ruins, listening to the Beach Boys sing about good times and Kokomo. It was hard to wrap my head around it and it was a big WTF moment for me.

We drove through two of the three semi-autonomous regions of the country and it was super easy to discern the differences. Remember: I grew up in South Dakota. We thought Minnesotans, North Dakotans, Wyomingians, and Nebraskans were all very different. If the differences I felt in South Dakota were on a color spectrum it’d be comparing light blue to slightly lighter blue and trying to exaggerate the differences. The differences we felt in Bosnia between the regions were like comparing blue to red, very different, no exaggeration needed. It was like we went to different countries far apart but really we drove a half hour. It was pretty cool experience and something we haven’t really experienced anywhere else.

So that’s Bosnia based on our experiences. It was a truly remarkable place. We had such a good time, we’d love to go back and explore more of the country.

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Montenegro 2015

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Montenegro was spectacular! We only had a few days in the country so we didn’t see much. The parts we did see were amazing! The scenery is unlike anything we’ve seen before and we thoroughly enjoyed our time.

Montenegro is a new-ish nation after gaining full independence in 2006 from Serbia. Prior to about a month ago, if someone asked me to locate Montenegro on the map I’m pretty sure I would have looked very hard at Africa. While we were planning our trip through the Balkans I happened to see a recommendation for a day trip into Montenegro from Croatia because “it is close and worth it”. After reading this advice and learning where Montenegro was located, we decided to stop for a few days in Kotor, Montenegro.

Once we left Croatia it was clear we were in an area where road rules were more suggestions than anything else. We saw stoplights but we didn’t see any in use so crossing someone’s right of way in an intersection was sometimes a rather hairy experience. Besides driving, the feel is very similar to everything else we had experienced on the Dalmatian Coast and the food was similar too. The city was built in Roman times and then it was a very important Venetian city for trade. The Venetian Republic’s emblem, the lion with wings, can be found in multiple places around the city and in the city walls. The old town itself is tiny and pretty much has no straight streets. The old town had a super-chill feeling to it and there weren’t mobs of tourists like what we saw in Dubrovnik. On our last day, four cruise ships showed up and the town still didn’t feel like it was too crowded.

There are some large walls protecting the city and they go up the mountainside behind the city. I hiked up to the top and enjoyed a great view. In Kotor, the city walls are not refurbished so there’s quite a few areas with loose rocks, big steps, or steep drop-offs. There are multiple paths to the top and there’s really only one good path with the rest being labeled “high risk” in the pamphlet they give all tourists. It doesn’t matter though, tourists can go anywhere they choose and make any adventure they deem appropriate, high risk or low risk. This is pretty common in a lot of places we’ve visited and is pretty different than the US where many things are closed off due to safety concerns. I imagine if tourists die they simply think “no matter, there will be more”.

While hiking the walls in Kotor, I managed to meet a fellow American around my age and quickly learned he had lived in South Dakota and Albert Lea. Being in Montenegro and being someone who has lived in Minnesota and South Dakota, I’m pretty this made us family.

Our time in Kotor was too short! It was a stunningly beautiful place and a place we really enjoyed. Our time there was nearly perfect and I’m not sure how it could have been any better!

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Dalmatian Coast 2015

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We have left Croatia after spending a handful of days driving down the Dalmatian Coast. Pretty much all the cities we visited (Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik) had influences from Roman times, the Venetian Republic, or both. It was really cool to walk around the old towns in the tiny little passage ways filled with shops, buskers, and good smells. If I had to pick a comparison, I’d say that it was a lot like our time in Venice except these cities are: smaller, way better, and way more chill. The towns we visited were very touristy and were frequented by cruise ships. However, it wasn’t peak tourism season yet so there still weren’t a lot of people so we could easily find quite places to enjoy the views and the sights. I can only imagine what the places are like during peak tourism season, I could see it going from very awesome to very unenjoyable very quickly.

There is a lot to love about Croatia: Croatia in spring smells amazing; there’s a lot of different flowers blooming and flowering trees. The people are generally kind, polite, and helpful. The roads were great; it was super easy to get around in our rental car and the Croatian drivers were politely aggressive. Croatia is not a big country so all roads lead to somewhere awesome be it Roman ruins, waterfalls, mountains, beaches, or sea views. We used Airbnb exclusively for lodging in Croatia. The coolest part of the Airbnb experience was that every single host had some sort of homemade alcohol, baked food, or both, for us to try when we arrived. It was a neat experience and something we haven’t had anywhere else in the world.

We learned a lot about the Bosnian War during our travels. Both Jacquelyn and I were alive for the war but we didn’t really learn much. Prior to college I’m pretty sure I could not have picked Croatia off the map. It was really interesting to learn how the city of Dubrovnik sustained seven month long siege in the 90s and the very old walls built between 12th-17th centuries helped keep the local people safe. Around the country, there are still many signs of war littered about, from bunkers to derelict buildings.

We still had a lot of pizza and it was delicious. We also branched out and tried local Croatian food and were pleasantly surprised by the tastiness! That said, we probably had pizza for 80% of our meals just because it was so good. We haven’t had this good of pizza since we lived in New York so we tried to eat pizza whenever possible.

The only downside was that our time on the Dalmatian Coast was too short. Next time we’ll make sure to stay longer :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Plitvice Falls and Krka National Park, Croatia, 2015

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The waterfalls in Croatia are unlike any other waterfalls we’ve seen. Jacquelyn loves waterfalls and they may very well be her favorite geographical feature to visit. This means we’ve probably been to about a million waterfalls of all different shapes, sizes, and colors in our travels. The mountains in the area are made of very hard limestone so the waterfalls have very beautiful blue, green, and yellow hues due to all the suspended limestone solids. Fortunately for us, the Croatian people realized the immense beauty of these areas and built boardwalks around the waterfalls so people can get very close and enjoy the falls. In all of our travels around the world and around the US, I can’t think of a place that has similar attributes of beauty and ease of access; I would be surprised if Plitvice and Krka National Parks were similar to any parks or waterfalls anywhere else in the world.

We are here before the start of the very busy tourist season. We are fortunate we are early because we’ve been told it’s pretty much shoulder to shoulder during the busy season; the very small Plitviec National Park gets over a million tourists per year! We’ve been able to enjoy the parks in relative peace at a very leisurely pace. We’re back in the land of really good pizza, it’s like NY style, which is the best style of pizza. It’s hard to get good pizza around the world, especially after being in Asia, Indian Subcontient, and Oceania where they sell things that resemble pizza but they are generally terrible and cause diarrhea. Pizza is Jacquelyn’s favorite food group on the food pyramid so we’ve have pizza for every single meal over the last five days and will probably have pizza every meal until we leave .

We are on the Croatian coast for the next handful of days before we turn inland. The weather has been very good and it’s been fun to wander around in former Roman/Venitian buildings all the while having amazing views of the coast. There’s a lot to love about Croatia! We are glad we returned to Europe so we could visit this wonderfully beautiful place!

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Vienna 2015

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Vienna was alright. We didn’t visit for long, three nights, so we didn’t get a real indepth experience. Vienna was a very important city and Capitol of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire so there are a lot of beautiful buildings and palaces laying about. When we were in Prague we met a friend of a family member and she told us Vienna will be a lot like Prague but it’s a much bigger city. She was absolutely right: Vienna and Prague have a similar cultural feel but Vienna is much larger and much more expensive.

We the coolest thing we did was visit the Imperial Treasury. There were all sorts of amazing jewels, crowns, vestments, and other fancy items. It was amazing to see the incredibly detailed and beautiful work, the photos do almost no justice for how beautiful the actual items were.

I celebrated my 32nd birthday in Vienna so we decided to go to a restaruant that also made their own beer. Oh man, the Pils and Marzen were off-the-charts-amazingly-delicious. While we can get Pils and Marzens in the US, it’s not the same as the US beers are generally more carbonated and marzen are commonly available in bulk in the fall. This is the second time on our trip where I wished I could bring the beer home :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Prague 2015

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Prague turned out to be quite the delight! We flew to Prague from Dubai and we are back in Europe after six months in Asia / Indian Subcontient / Oceania. It was great to be back in the world of meat and potatoes, have amazingly delicious beer, and enjoy some very beautiful sights. The weather was fantastic, the tourism season is just starting so it wasn’t overly crowded. We had a great time and would love to go back.

The food was delicious, meals consisted of brats, sausage, meat and more meat. After a the first day in Prague we realized that our diet had changed to lean more towards vegetables, fruits and other vegetarian cuisines whiles traveling. Looking back, we didn’t purposefully cut meat out of our diet but we unconsciously gravitated towards vegetarianism after being in a lot of countries where the cold storage, handling of meat, and cooking of meat is questionable. So, naturally, we made up lost time and had brats, steaks, sausages, and goulash for nearly every meal :).

Interestingly enough, per capita, Czech people drink the most beer in the world. This leads to deliciously cheap beer with many different brands and varieties. Beer is cheaper than soda so it only makes sense for beer to be the refreshment of choice! I bought as many different beer types and brands as I could find. I couldn’t find a favorite which means more ‘testing’ is needed and I’ll have to go back to Prague!

The Old City of Prague is beautiful and compact. Bohemian kings ruled from Prague and later it was a very important city in the Austrio-Hungarian Empire so the old town is littered with historical sites, beautiful buildings, amazing churches and a lot of history. I don’t remember learning much about Eastern Europe in school so it was really cool to learn a lot about the history, the empires and why Prague is a lot like Munich, Vienna, and Budapest. Prague is a very musical city with lots of buskers and many musical performances in the many churches. We ended up catching a musical show one night and it was a wonderful experience! For Europe, the attractions were very reasonably priced and well worth the time.

The crowds really weren’t bad at all. Before 9AM and after 8PM it felt like we had the old city to ourselves. We were lucky to find lodging in the heart of the old city so it was fun to wander around before the crowds came out. We did have a pretty big surprise: groups of Chinese tourists. There weren’t a lot of Chinese that travel in Japan which gave us a nice respite and we didn’t think there would be many Chinese tour groups in Eastern Europe. In general, the Chinese tourists are hardest to be around as they rove around in packs and practices which are normal for a lot of people, like queuing, using trash cans, covering our mouths when sneezing or coughing, being quiet, using inside voices, eating food in an appropriate way, taking turns enjoying a tourist site, and letting people pass, are very foreign to a lot of Chinese tourists, especially when they are in big groups. It can be comically hilarious while being very frustrating.

We ended up meeting friend of family member and her daughter. They live in Prague, showed us around a bit and then we had a wonderful dinner with them. It was a great experience because they lived in Minnesota for a short period of time and were able to tell us all about the Czech Republic, Prague, and their history (communism to democracy and joining the EU). It was definitely the highlight of our time in Prague!

All-in-all, it was an awesome visit and we absolutely loved it. Prague wasn’t on our original list of places to visit but we are oh-so-very happy we visited!

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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