Of Myths and Muezzins

We sleep on the very edge of the continent. Across the grey Bosphorous, through air thick with rain and a thousand muezzin calls, lies Asia. Asia, where the Silk Road awaits us. But wait! I haven't yet bored you at length on  the subject of Greece. So, dear reader, here goes.. In Athens, it was easy to see the effects of their economic problems. We were staying in the worst area we've ever stayed anywhere. It was like a dystopian film set, filthy streets of graffiti, over-flowing bins and lurking hoods. Riot buses full of armoured police roamed the area, rounding up groups of men to check their documents. Desperate looking folk from Pakistan, Nigeria, China smoked and waited, illegal immigrants who had entered Europe via Turkey and were now stuck, on the edge of an imagined European utopia. Watching Greece disintegrate before them. But it wasn't all sorrow and grime. There are plenty of areas of that  vast city that thrive with markets and bohemian trendiness. Perhaps it was this mix of poverty and pretension that made us feel so at home, made us think of dear old Hackney. Though it didn't feel quite so much like east London when  we were sat, in the dawning sun, before the mighty Parthenon. As it is off-season, there were no crowds at all on the Acropolis. We sat in peace, listening to the waking city and watching the ancient stone turn golden. It was quite unforgettable. From Athens, we took the midnight train to Thessaloniki. 'I bet they'll be seats instead of beds and mobile phones going off and a small child screaming' said Nic with her characteristic optimism. Unfortunately, the only thing that she hadn't prophesied correctly was the fact that they would leave the lights on all night and would wait until you were just dropping off before making an ear-splitting announcements.  So, despite a fog of exhaustion and the grey drizzle that rolled off the sea, we had a great day in Thessaloniki. Luckily for us, the people there seem to spend much of the day drinking coffee and looking out at the Ottoman buildings, the jumbled tower blocks, the grey white sea. Like most of the towns we've passed through since Bosnia, Thessaloniki was under the shadow of both the Byzantine (formerly the eastern Roman) Empire and the Ottoman empire. But here the Ottoman period is described as the TURKISH OCCUPATION (how could the 'heart of western culture' have ever been 'eastern'?) . The very idea of where west ends and east begins seems to me now a nonsensical construct. The idea that the  Persian hordes were fought off by Greeks and Spartans thereby 'preserving' Western culture is questionable, there are many old mosques, many shisha pipes being smoked far to the west of Greece. Anyway, I digress rather spectacularly and rather tediously. If you are still reading this and you're not my Mum, may I congratulate you on your dedication.  Where was I? Oh yes, Istanbul! Constantinople! (apologies if you now gave that song in your head for the rest of the day) Byzantium! It'll just have to wait for next time, there are fish sandwiches to eat and Blue Mosques to gaze at dreamily...

Into the Land of Zog

Gjirocastra, Albania

Within five minutes of entering Albania we were passed by a horse and cart and home suddenly seemed far far away. Wooly hatted shepherds pushed their flocks toward the mountains and the Ottoman towns that crumbled to dust on the hilltops. A now receded communist tide had too left it's detritus, concrete bunkers erected by a paranoid Hoxha (the longtime dictator) are everywhere you look. Unfortunately for a nation trying to forget, these bunkers are virtually indestructible. They sit overgrown in fields and gardens.

We entered Tirana, Albania's capital in a surprisingly deep darkness. Barely any of the streetlights seemed to work, only a sickly yellow light shone on the potholed road, the roadside butchers as they hacked at  hanging carcasses, the 'UK London Niteclub' blaring out sub-Eurovision house. 'This is more like it!' we cried.

The previous few days had been spent in Dubrovink, Croatia and Kotor, Montenegro. Both were truly beautiful old walled towns but in this, the entirely off season, they were dead. Struck mute by holiday-home blight, there was not a local (or tourist) in sight. Still, the journeying was  incredible, the blue blue sea burning our eyes through the bus windows.



Berat, Albania

Albania proved to be our favourite of the Balkan states. I'd imagined bleak concrete landscapes and boiled cabbage but how wrong I was. Berat was a wonderful, whitewashed Ottoman houses sunned themselves in the cold winter light, their windows gazing to the somewhat heavenly mountains across the valley. In the old fortified town, washing still hung, people still lived. Gjirokastra, near the Greek border, was equally beautiful. Its fort had been occupied by Romans, Byzantines, King Zog, Nazis and Communists but for an hour or so we were its only residents. As with all old relics in Albania, there was only an old man with a half-burned cigarette and a cheap jacket staffing it. Once you've given him a couple of fairly insignificant coins you are then free to roam the ruins as you please or, as we prefer to do, to run around like overexcited children (see picture of me in plane).

This is the rather demented look one acquires when faced with Albania's many joys

Albania is touristic diamond waiting to be mined (albeit a not very classy, possibly a bit dodgy diamond). There have, however, been lows (largely in regards to temperature). Albania is usually seriously hot and is not well equipped for the minus temperatures we've been experiencing. On a number of occasions we found ourselves in bed behatted and bescarved as the streets outside iced up. In Gjirokastra, half the town lost all power (including heat) and water. 

It is rather nice to be back in civilisation. And not just any civilisation, for we are in Athens, home of civilisation! That is, if you ignore all the other civilisation that came before it a little to the east. Anyway, I've already taken up way too much of your time and I'm off to find myself a hunky Greek waiter and dance off into the sunset. Toodle-pip!

The East comes to us

And it snowed on Sarajevo. It snowed on the beautiful old Ottoman mosques and bazaars, on the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot and the surrounding hills where Serb forces held the city siege back in the 90s. And it snowed on Finn and Nic as they fell madly in love with the city.

Sarajevo

I felt like our trip had found its natural beginning, a place where the East and the West lived side by side, where we drank steaming Turkish coffee and smoked shishas in a cosy Arabic hideaway and ate Viennese cakes in corner cafes (see Nic´s far more entertaining food blog here) . It wasn´t all picturesque however. The snow rather aptly turned to sleet as we toured the still half derelict building that houses a museum on the siege of Sarajevo and walked the streets where hundreds of civilians were gunned down on their way to the shops. It was a sobering, fascinating, beautiful city.

We bussed to Mostar past shelled-out buildings filling with snow, rebuilt mosques and snowy mountains. Mostar was the sight of key battles during the 1990s conflict and the home to the Old Bridge, an Ottoman construction that linked the Muslim and Christian sides of town. It was rather symbolically destroyed in the war but equally symbolically rebuilt in 2004. It is truly a thing of beauty, and we sat and admired it at length, seemingly the only tourists in town.

Mostar

The front line in Mostar and a very typical sight in BiH

As the time cam to leave BiH we took one last breath of its distinctive air (a mix of snow, woodsmoke, grilled meat and stale tobacco) and headed seaward. 

Leaving the cold and poverty behind we took a bus out of the mountains and into Croatia. Ablaze with glorious sunshine, we followed the Mediterranean coast south to Dubrovnik, the sea almost tackily turquoise.  I know this is getting rather predictable now but, as you may have guessed, Dubrovnik is also beautiful. Though it is currently pissing it down outside. Can't have it all I suppose...

Dubrovnik (before it started pissing it down)

  

To Sarajevo!

How does one begin a blog? No idea. More importantly, how does one begin to explain how, four days after leaving the UK, we somehow found ourselves in a hilltop fortress in Bosnia watching woodsmoke rise to the snowy mountains above? Below us buildings still lay empty, shell blasted and bullet ridden from the 1993 war, the Muslim call to prayer was echoing around the valley. But, back to the beginning...

After leaving London, we skated across the flatlands of northern Europe in trains as quiet as the night, stopping only for sleep and sausages amongst the twinkling towers of Frankfurt. Southward we went, through a Lidl riddled Germany and watched as the church spires ballooned into onion domes and the chocolate box houses sprouted wooden balconies. The landscape soon crumpled into mountains and forced our train upwards into the clouds and valleys clogged with pines and snow. ´It´s literally Narnia!´ exclaimed Nic, though I rather think it may have been Austria.

Once Slovenia too had slipped by our windows we finally arrived in Zagreb, Croatia. It was a lovely city where we rattled around in trams and stuffed our faces with hot burek. It didn´t yet feel like we had left the familiarity of western Europe.

We then we jumped on a bus to Bosnia and Herzegovina (as you do), careered around a few mountain valleys and found ourselves in Jajce, a town that tumbled down a hillside towards a raging waterfall. It was here that we found ourselves in our fortress, questioning the feasibility of our current location. A further bus took us here to Sarajevo! We have only just arrived and the snow is falling rather beautiful outside so we had best go and enjoy it.

All in all, its all been a fine old start to the trip full of the inexplicable joy I feel when watching the world rush by my window. And to think, we were in the UK but five days ago...