Serbia - September 2006

Bumbling around Belgrade

The Guinness

I took the chance of not taking the customary ‘emergency can’ of Guinness with me. This was partly because I already made a phone call to the Three Carrots, the only Irish bar in Belgrade, who assured me they sold the black stuff. Also the Bush-Bin Laden tiff was presenting me with some additional logistical challenges. Security clampdowns following recently uncovered terrorist plots meant that carry-on luggage could contain any liquids.

The Three Carrots - I never did find out why it was called that.

After a bit of a search the following day I found the Three Carrots and Mikhail, the young barman, poured me a wonderful pint of Guinness. He impressed me from the outset with his general knowledge, especially geography, even knowing where the Faroe Islands were!

Mikhail letting my Guinness settle.

A Welsh flag adorned that wall next to the Cork flag, both left by past visitors. He soon grasped what I was up to and after pouring me another pint set to his task of picking my next destination which turned out to be Zagreb, Croatia. As somebody commented on later – ‘what a load of Balkans’.

Cheers! - enjoying my second Guinness at the Three Carrotts

Getting There and around

I flew Lufthansa from Birmingham via Munich. On the way out my Birmingham flight was delayed meaning I missed my connection so ended up flying back to Frankfurt and then onto Belgrade. I got talking to a girl who was on the same contrived Birmingham-Belgrade route as me. It turns out was an Oxford graduate who now had a business designing and selling Christian fridge magnets. No I’m not joking, she even had a website.

Late summer tulips in Belgrade

Arriving in Belgrade airport at midnight put paid to my plan of getting the cheap bus into town and meant I had to resort to being ripped off by the taxi drivers. I took the normal precautions of trying to establish that his meter was working before I got in but hadn’t bargained for the ingenuity of this one. True he had a meter but it looked like it had been assembled using instructions from a 1980s edition of Practical Electronics magazine. It may have been a 30 Euro rip off but he was an interesting character. He knew Cardiff as being the venue where Serbia had beaten Wales recently at football – which he referred to on more than one occasion. He had a sister living in London and had once driven over to visit her in the late-1980s. Determined to make the most of his holiday, he used to drive hundreds of miles each weekend to explore different cities. One weekend he decided to visit Belfast but nobody had told him about the ‘Troubles’ and he couldn’t believe what he ended up driving though up the Falls Road, being searched many times. The ironic thing was however that he then ended up doing four years military service in Serbia in the 1990s at the height of their conflicts. He had the look of a rugged worn out soldier, old before his time but tough underneath. I didn’t argue about the fare.

The classic buildings of Belgrade

Team Makeup

My Belgrade marketing campaign hadn’t been a great success and failed to attract any travelling companions.

Accommodation

I stayed the first night an old hotel. My room had the standard antiquated plumbing with an industrial style valve to flush the toilet. The floor had been carpeted by the thriftiest carpet-fitter in town who had used an off-cut measuring 4 inches wide and half a mile long. Breakfast was a tasty omelette. When I returned to Belgrade after going to Montenegro I moved on to another hotel, the Hotel Astorija which was better. 

View from my hotel Europa window in Podgorica

Sightseeing highlights

It seems that whatever period of history one looks at Belgrade is on the border between any hostilities and therefore always gets it in the neck. It’s been occupied more times than a toilet at King’s Cross Station. The Huns and the Goths have had their turns - and there was me thinking that the later were just teenage girls dressed in black with lots of make-up.

View from my Hotel Astorija window towards Belgrade station 

Belgrade - I liked it; admittedly there were a fair number of communist style concrete buildings but there was plenty of classic European architecture around too

My bearings weren’t proving that easy to find. This was somewhere where Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide had not yet ventured so I was using the Bradt Guide to Belgrade, well written but not strong in the cartography department. . Things weren’t helped by the fact that the street signs were once again only in Cyrillic and my guide book only had Roman script. I spent three hours getting a general flavour of the place, seeing the impressive statues and buildings. The ‘bloke on the horse’ in Trg Slobode (Freedom Square), which became my orientation point during my visit, turned out to be, Prince Michael Obrenovic III who liberated Serbia for the Turks in the 1800s. I say orientation point, but there were times during my visit when I swear they moved to statue to other locations just to confuse visitors like me.

Prince Michael Obrenovic III - I'm sure he kept moving around

After seeing the city centre, visiting statues and sculptures I headed up to the hill and Kalemegan fortress that towers over the city and offers great views down over the Rivers Danube and Sava. In the 18th century the castle marked what was thought to be the edge of western civilisation.

View from the castle over the Danube

The light was fading when I returned to the city centre and as I rounded a corner and there dead in front of me were the bombed buildings resulting from the NATO campaign of the late 1990s. It was an incredible stark reminder of the county’s troubled past. It bought home to me the history of the place more than any statue or monument could ever do.

The bombed buildings in Belgrade centre

Quirky moments

The currency in Montenegro is the Euro; somewhat strange considering that they are not even in the EU. I’d been saving up small change from my recent business trips to Brussels etc, so that when I needed to make purchases here in Montenegro, I could hand over a few coins rather than run the risk of handing over a large denomination note and not get the correct change. This plan came to a crashing halt however when the trustworthy looking lady in the bus station ticket booth asked me to open my hand and show her my change. I thought she was just going to take a few coins but she then swept it all off away, counted it twice and gave me a ticket and a ten Euros note in return! That set her up in change for the day and left me feeling guilty for not trusting people.

A novel way of making a ladder longer!

In Montenegro I visited the old capital of Cetinje. On my return by coach from there I sat by the window I was able to fully appreciated the excellent views down into the valleys and out towards the coast. We only stopped once, to put out a fire. The coach coming in the other direction had found the incline a little too much for it and its engine complained by bursting into flames. As calmly as you can imagine, our driver stopped the bus, got the fire extinguisher from the luggage compartment and discharged it into the engine of the other coach, got back on board and drove us away as if it was an everyday occurrence – perhaps it was.

Looks like someone had had some wood delivered

Lasting Memories

As I waited for the bus back to the airport I contemplated my time in Serbia and Montenegro. It had been frenetic, perhaps a little too frenetic. The people I’d met had all been very friendly and welcoming.

Out of the City

Montenegro and Serbia had announced their split just as it was picked out as my next destination in Lichtenstein and since then the split had taken place. I wanted to honour this new found country by paying it a visit.

Suspension bridge in Podgorica

The thing that attracted me to the Belgrade-Podgorica option was not only its value for money, just £14 for seven hours travel, but also the fact that the guide books describe it as ‘a truly spectacular rail journey through deep ravines and high bridges’. It turned out to be a journey I’ll not remember so much for the sights, which I found somewhat disappointing. Although a fantastic piece of railway engineering, all I could often see was a rock face, tunnel walls or trees. Instead the people in my new compartment were fantastic. They were evidently strangers at the start of the journey but soon were talking incessantly to each other, making me feel most welcome and sharing all their food. They seemed quite offended if I dared to refuse one of their offers. ‘What, you don’t like our Serbian cheese crackers”? They were also very tactile people – I hadn’t had my knee touched so much for a long time.

Liechtenstein - June 2006

Vacuuming up Vaduz

The Guinness

In the capital Vaduz we checked out the Old Castle bar, having been told at the youth hostel we were staying, it may serve Guinness, but it was a Murphy’s outlet – easy mistake. With no pub serving Guinness in sight I was pleased to find some cans on sale in the small co-op supermarket. We therefore had afternoon tea on a bench outside and a picture of me drinking a can of Guinness was snapped looking rather pensive, concerned that there may be a public drinking ban in Vaduz.

Having a can of Guinness in central Vaduz

When we walked back to the hostel my son Gareth suddenly said “Look Dad, a Guinness sign”. Sure enough, there in the middle of Schaan, no more than a village to be honest, was Central Bar with a Guinness sign outside. I popped in to check it wasn’t a mirage but no, it was true, they had draught Guinness on tap.

Well spotted son

After tea of wraps and toasties I took my time to explain to the barmaid Veronika the purpose of our visit and the task I was asking her to perform. Fortunately her grasp of English was good so she has a slightly less shocked and suspicious look on her face compared to the other photos I have of people carrying out the same task.

Well done for understanding my challenge Veronika

Getting There and around

We took a Ryanair flight to Freidrichshafen, Germany and then train and bus to Liechtenstein. It wasn’t difficult to find the train station at Freidrichshafen airport, spitting distance from the departure hall (with a following wind). The station was no more than a platform with a ticket machine. The German railway company Die Bahn runs an excellent website, not just for Germany but for much of Europe. Before leaving home I was able to type in the name of the bus stop in Liechtenstein that we wanted and instantly get details of a journey lasting less than two hours involving three trains and a bus, going from Germany, through Austria and Switzerland and into Liechtenstein.

The only problem was that I betted on there being a friendly multi-lingual ticket desk attendant at Freidrichschafen airport station rather than a dumb machine. Added to this a violent hailstorm appeared out of nowhere and there was no cover over the platform. It was like being part of a bizarre game show – “you have just three minutes before your train arrives to figure out how to buy tickets in a foreign language from a ticket machine and to make it more difficult for you and to amuse the audience we will pelt you with ice cubes”.

Good stuff this public transport and hard to miss it by the bright colours too

Team Makeup

The family were joining me on this trip as was a new recruit, Penny, another of life’s great optimists.

Margaret & Penny - it will warm up soon, it's only June

Accommodation

We stayed at the Youth Hostel which was between the towns of Vaduz and Schaan, themselves only 2 km apart. It overlooked fields down to the River Rhine and beyond the snow topped mountains of Switzerland.

Our Youth Hostel accommodation

Sightseeing highlights

Vaduz has a number of museums and galleries on offer and we chose the modern Museum of Fine Arts to visit. It’s only a couple of rooms. One room was full of pieces from the Prince of Liechtenstein’s private collection. He specialises in 19th century Viennese Biedermeier art – paintings so real they could almost be photographs. That’s actually the thought process behind them – wealthy people of the time used to hire artists to take with them on vacation or battles to capture important moments. One can see the drive behind inventing the camera – it must have saved lots of time. Battles must have been held up for days as the different sides posed for the latest painting. The battle scenes such as the one of the Austrian Prince defeating of Napoleon were interesting in that there was no blood in sight – a sort of sterilised form of photography.

The modern looking museum

We took a bus to Malbun, Liechtenstein’s ski resort. We purchased ‘targeskarte’ – day tickets for the bus. As the bus climbed steeply into the mountains two things happened, snow gradually began to appear in the surrounding countryside and the other passengers disembarked. By the time we got the terminus at Malbun, 1600 meters elevation, we were the only passengers remaining on the bus. The town was deserted, all skiers had evidently gone home and the walkers not yet arrived. It was a late spring throughout Europe and evidently unusual for Malbun to be still deep in snow. On the outskirts of town we saw groups of animals emerging from burrows and leaping though the snow. They turned out to be Alpine Marmots, a beaver-like animal that hibernates in winter and emerges normally in spring to play in flower filled Alpine meadows. Today they looked just a little confused. I poked my head down a drainage pipe I had seen one of them retreat into. Its defence mechanism was to let out a very loud whistle like shriek – not unlike the one I let out a fraction of a second later as I jumped backwards.

High up in the mountains

In Vaduz one afternoon I slipped off to visit the Stamp Museum dedicated to philately (as opposed to heavy-footed people). It was obvious it wasn’t the height of the tourist season in Liechtenstein – wherever we went we appeared to be the only people present – perfect for travellers who like to think of themselves experiencing something unique.

The giant stamps in the Stamp Museum

Quirky moments

We passed some workman had just finished digging a neat hole and were tidying up by vacuuming up any loose dirt.

I paid about £1 at the tourist office to have my passport stamped with a Liechtenstein stamp – that should confuse American immigration control next time I go there.

My Liechtenstein passport stamp - more a tourist gimmick than an obligation

Lasting Memories

Liechtenstein may be the fourth smallest country in Europe but Vaduz is probably the smallest capital – it’s even smaller than Torshavn in the Faroe Islands. Blink and you miss it. You’d be hard pushed to have a good game of hide-and-seek here. The shops are smart but the cafes paradoxily were unbearably smoke-filled.

Rush hour in Vaduz

Some claim that Vaduz is the most boring in Europe and not a place generally associated with people wanting to satisfy their ‘wanderlust. That may be, but for people like myself, who like the outdoor life, it was very appealing.

Out of the City

The bus service was excellent so making the most of it we went first to Sargans, just over the Swiss boarder. It’s famous for being the home of bovine-loving Heidi. None of us had any wish to go to the Heidi theme park so we chose instead to wander around the town. Up at the castle we bumped into the Liechtenstein football team on their way out of some sort of photo-shoot or civic reception.

An unusual table design in Sargens

After wandering through the ‘old town’ of Sargans we caught a bus, back through the length of Liechtenstein and into Austria to the town of Feldkirch. The Rossle Park café bar not only brewed its own tasty beer and served tasty food but had some very unusual urinals, comprised of a sheet of glass in front of a rock face.

Rossle Park café bar urinals

Food

In Lindau, on our way back to the airport we had time for coffee and cake outside a café in the warm sunshine on the shores of Lake Constance – an excellent end to a very pleasant few days in good company.

Russia - April 2006

Marching around Moscow

The Guinness

We found Silver's Pub after wandering around a bit. After establishing that draught Guinness as indeed being served we ordered a pint (£3.50) and a meal of steak and chips to go with it.

Me and Kevski enjoying the Guinness at Silver's Bar

Bertie Ahern the Irish Prime Minister had been here apparently though it wasn’t clear whether he also had to ask the barmaid to draw out of a hat the next place he had to visit. Explaining to the barmaid why I am asking her to pick out a straw at random is never easy and therefore I have another photograph of a rather bemused young lady to add to the collection. Her name was Nasty, a rather unglamorous-shorted version of Natasha.

Natasha picking out my next destination

Getting there and around

It is possible to go to Russia as an independent traveller but getting a visa sorted out can be a hassle so instead we went on an organised tour with Travelscope. The tour we opted for had two nights in Moscow, two in St Petersburg with a night on an overnight train between the two and then two nights in Prague at the end of week. Our tour guide pushed the optional tours making out that doing anything under ones own steam was nigh impossible. He should have learnt that saying something like that to me and Kevin just made us even more determined to try. He eventually gave up trying after three days and finding we were still alive.

We flew from Manchester to Moscow via Prague, the took an overnight train to St Petersburg, We flew home from St Petersburg stopping off in Prague for a couple of nights.

Team Makeup

Intrepid Kevin, or Kevski as he will now be known, kindly joined me again on another trip.

Accommodation

As the coach pulled up to the hotel I realised it was the very same hotel I had stayed in almost two decades earlier. It was the enormous Hotel Cosmos, built in an arc shape and towering to some 25 floors and containing well over a 3500 beds. Memories came flooding back as we entered but some things had changed. Flashing lights covered the hotel frontage and the massive lobby area was now full of tourist shops as opposed to the dour cavern it was previously.

Hotel Cosmos - don't forget your room number!

Food

I won’t remember this trip for the food that’s for sure. One thing I will remember however was the boxed breakfast on the sleeper train from Moscow to St Petersburg. This was accompanied by coffee made from the charming hot water boiler at the end of the carriage. The strawberry jam proved not to be but was instead caviar – real first-class treatment.

Sightseeing highlights

The Moscow underground stations are a tourist attractions in themselves, many of which are lavishly decorated with statues and chandeliers. They are also designed to double up as nuclear fall-out shelters. Perhaps the décor is meant to take your mind off the fact an A-bomb has just landed on your head. Navigating the underground was a little challenging with all stations in the Cyrillic alphabet and the station names not being visible from the train. It became a matter of counting the number of stops from when you got on and hoping for the best. A mistake here and there just meant you had another attractive station to admire.

The ornate Moscow Underground stations

The peaceful walled grounds of the Kremlin. The occasional swiftly-moving black government limousine was all that broke the peace. The Tsar Bell, the world’s largest that cracked before it was installed having been doused in cold water during a fire.

The Tsar Bell in the Kremlin

Red Square (or as Kevski pointed out is more of a grey rectangle actually) with St Basils and Lenin’s mausoleum.

St Basils on Red Square

The large open-air arts and crafts Vernisazh market in the suburbs of Moscow, catering mainly for locals it stretched for miles, stall after stall. This is where you came if you wanted to buy antiques, coins or even parts for a MIG fighter. I was expecting food stalls but there weren’t any. There was the sad sight of a man with his dancing bears, something that we saw again in St Petersburg. Some stalls sold the traditional ‘matryoshka’ nesting Russian doll sets with a modern spin. President Kennedy stood next to Castro next to Frank Lampard next to Bin Laden. In another set the Monica Lewinsky doll fitted inside the Bill Clinton doll.

Matryoshka of every design 

We ended up at the Novodevicy Monastery, a real oasis of peace amongst the busy Moscow streets. Another place to come for your picturesque photographs. It seemed to be full of numerous wedding parties and us. In one party we came across the new bride was Russian and the husband sounded like he came from Barking.

Quirky moments

I won the ‘first one to make a Russian smile’ competition hands down. Our plane was still passing over Germany when the lady from Moscow sitting next to me wrote out her address, thrust it into my hand and looked at me expectantly. She knew about three more words of English than I knew Russian i.e. five, which would have severely limited most people’s ability to hold a conversation, but Valentina was a determined individual and not one to put a language barrier in the way of a good chat. Perhaps it was the way I kept nodding as she jabbered away that made her think I knew what she was saying. Just as I was about to feign a DVT an angel appeared across the aisle. A young Polish girl, fluent in both Russian and English stepped in and started to act as an interpreter.

I had a phone call from a colleague when I was sightseeing in the Kremlin. She was unaware I was on holiday and seemed a bit stunned when I said I’m afraid I couldn’t talk at that moment as I was in the Kremlin.

Inside the Kremlin

We got a metro out to Gorky Park, paid a small admission fee and found not much there. Suddenly however a display of fountains accompanied by classical music started up as if someone had put a coin in a slot. It was all rather surreal given that so few people were around. We failed in our attempts to find a reasonable café anywhere so strolled back towards town. What turned out to be more interesting than Gorky Park was in fact the sculpture park. This was the home not only to modern sculptures but also to sculptures from the Soviet era – a sort of resting place for those statues no longer thought desirable. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Lenin and Pinocchio were so close together.

One of the relatively new additions to the Moscow skyline is on the River Moscow and is a giant quirky sculpture of Peter the Great standing 60 meters tall at the helm of a boat. It dominates the skyline for over a large area and is disliked by many locals and I can understand why. Small and quirky is OK but giant and quirky?

Peter the Great

Lasting Memories

I had last been in Moscow some 19 years previously. A group of eight friends from work had come on a similar organised tour of Russia and what at that time were the Soviet States of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. It was in the days of Micheal Gorbachov and perestroika when his idea of modernisation included a severe crackdown on alcohol consumption following a realisation that Russians were slowly pickling themselves in vodka. Things had changed over those 19 years. The most striking thing was the vast amount of traffic now on the Moscow streets. We circled the Kremlin for twenty minutes before discovering a subway that avoided us getting flattened.

We sat for a while in the sunshine outside the home of the Bolshei Ballet listening to a military brass band playing and watching the skateboarders perform. I’d heard many tales of Moscow before coming here including some which told how it was too dangerous for foreigners to venture outside without a personal guard. Everything we saw however appeared to indicate it was perfectly safe and the main hazard was being mowed down by someone with poor skateboarding skills of which there was a fairly high number.

Out of the Capital

The trip to St Petersburg was of course a holiday in itself highlight. It’s hard to know what to look at in the Hermitage, as the rooms themselves are stunning and packed full of famous works of art. Each room is differently designed too so there’s always something to look at.

At the Hermitage - looks like there are some perks associated with being a Russian general.

Albania - October 2005

Tripping Up in Tirana

The Guinness

According to the ‘Irish Bars in Europe’ website there were two bars that sold Guinness in Tirana and one was supposedly a bar in the Palace of Culture, next to the Opera House. The barmaid at Lux Bar had however never heard of Guinness but there was a Guinness mirror on the wall.

Lux Bar - a Guinness mirror but no Guinness to drink

We tried to find a place called Murphy’s Bar but after much searching and asking people we ended up in Bistro 7 which it turned out used to be an Irish bar in a previous life and didn’t serve Guinness any more. It still had a few thing Irish on the wall. The owner invited us to stay for a beer and served us olives and raw carrots and told us of his love for Liverpool football club.

An Irish verse on the wall of Bistro 7 but again no Guiness on sale - but a warm welcome.

We wandered past a small supermarket and my eyes happened to catch the liquor section and there on the shelves were three kinds of Guinness – bottles, draught and standard cans! Once again there was no need to use the emergency can of Guinness I had brought with me. We purchased some Guinness and had it back at the hotel and asked Endri, the hotel owner’s son to choose my next destination out of the hat.

Cheers - drinking Guinness in Tirana

Endri picking my next destination out of the hat.

Getting there and around

There didn’t seem to be any direct flights to Albania so we chose to fly to Bari, Italy with Ryanair for £38 return and then take the overnight ferry from Bari to Durres in Albania for £115 return. For some reason I booked cabins with portholes but then realised we were travelling by night so wouldn’t see much anyway.

From there we caught the train to Tirana for 25p. The train was an old Czech locomotive and the carriages Italian. It took a while to find a carriage with windows in it. Women came around selling bananas – a sort of Albanian trolley service I guess. The train travelled slowly, sounding its horn constantly to get the grazing animals off the track.

The Tirrana - Durres train

The train timetable at Tirran station

Team Makeup

Friend Kevin was brave enough to join me on this one. He proved an ideal travelling companion – the pace which he liked doing things and the type of things he liked to explore pretty much matched my own – apart from modern art!

Kevin - looking like I have just suggested we go to see some modern art.

Accommodation

We stayed at Hotel Endri in Tirana which is less of a hotel and more a couple of spare rooms in an apartment block rented out by the very pleasant owner called Petrit. The place is named after his son Endri. It was clean and spacious but not that easy to find. The owner had given us his mobile phone number and we were told to give him a call when close.

Hotel Endri - we found the sign but finding the hotel istfe was a challenge

Food

One night we ate shish kebabs, accompanied by goat’s cheese and pickled red peppers plus a beer for a mere £3.50.

By far the best meal we had was in Bella Napoli in Durres just before we caught the ferry back to Italy. Fresh fish was their speciality so we had a couple of excellently cooked fish freshly baked in the pizza oven.

Sightseeing highlights

At Skanderbeg Square we popped out head into the Theatre of Opera and Ballet and on hearing some folk music upstairs I just had to introduce Kevin to one of my rules of travel – go as far as you can until you are challenged! Well, we weren’t and we ended up in what appeared to be a televised prize-giving ceremony with folk dancing and music as entertainment.

Catching a bit of folk music at the Opera house

 

Skanderbeg Square - Et’hem Bey mosque and Skanderbeg himself

There aren’t a lot of ancient structures remaining in Tirana apart from the mosque and 19th-century Tanners’ Bridge.

Tanners Bridge

Much of the city is quite austere. The river goes through the city in a grey concrete culvert. To brighten up the place the Albanians have painted the apartment blocks in bright colours and it certainly adds a splash of colour.

The brightly painted apartments

The bomb shelters that  were built in their thousands

Out of the City

In Durres, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, we visited the second centaury amphitheatre. We were the only visitors and its a strange place, having houses built on half of it. I wondered how many hundreds of tourists there were at that precise moment in the Coliseum in Rome and here we were completely alone.

The Roman amphitheatre in Durres

Quirky moments

I happened to visit to the doctor a few weeks before going and in idle conversation I was asked if I travelled much. When I told her I was going to Albania soon she quickly produced a giant needle and gave me a couple of inoculations.

Previous visits to the Post Office’s Foreign Currency department had supplied me Danish Kroner for visiting the Faroe Islands and Bulgarian Lev but admitted defeat when I asked them for Albanian Lek. It turns out that you can’t get Lek outside Albania.

Speed of traffic didn’t appear controlled by any speed limits but by the state of the road. Huge potholes meant traffic had to slow down to negotiate them – a sort of inverse of speed bumps but with the same effect. Watch out for missing manhole covers along the roads and pavements as its easy to trip up.

The no horns sign seemed very ironic given the noise around

Lasting Memories

The number of private armoured guards outside various buildings.

A country that had been isolated for many years but keen to envelope the new century. There were modern office blocks and new buildings being constructed everywhere.

The streets were buzzing with young people at night but there was no drunkenness or rowdy behaviour and it felt a lot safer than wandering around the streets a UK city on a Saturday night.

We found the people friendly and very helpful. When we were trying to find the hotel we asked in a grocery shop. Instead of just telling us the way the owner left his shop and escorted us up the road to Hotel Endri.