Berlin part 2

These are photos from last August when I visited Josh in Berlin.   If you follow this thing you know about my love affair with Berlin and that I attended a huge anti-nuclear energy protest with Josh that weekend.  You also know that I suck at taking caring of things and doing things in a timely fashion.  So you won't be surprised when you notice that the pictures have deteriorated to the point where you can barely decipher them.  It's like...the real life hipster app.  Anyone interested in replicating the effects should wait 10 months to develop their disposable camera, in hopes of saving 20 bucks by developing in the states versus in Paris, and then let the camera go through the security xrays at the airport, essentially destroying the film you were so excited to develop.  So without further ado, here are the 10 pictures that semi-survived.

Here they have taped the police off 

This was a group of clowns that followed the police around.  They played ring-around-the-rosy, encircling the police, and other little games that were quite hilarious to watch, and made the police look like fools.  It was uncomfortable to watch the police squirm and feel helpless.  They couldn't do much with so many people watching, but were clearly annoyed and emasculated...which is generally how cops make everyone else feel, so that was an interesting dynamic to watch.
The kids were probably around 14-20 and apparently they show up at a lot of events like this for this sole purpose.  I believe they are squatters, if I remember correctly, so they don't really have much to lose.  Cool kids.  So silly, yet so political.  I really like that in Berlin police are for the most part kept in their place.  What with their history people are not that into any measures that infringe on their privacy, including cameras and any other big brother nonsense.  I'm into it.  Fuck the new California driver's license.

From inside the main train station

Outside the station

So Epic

For the win :)

I just talked to Josh and he informed me that we won!  Germany will soon become the first country in the world that gets rid of nuclear energy.  Awesome.

Croatia

This is a long overdue post.  I have been rather caught up in Orange County life and I half forgot that I keep this thing.  While I was in the Balkans, I wrote in my journal during the long bus rides to pass the time and to make it easier for me to remember my travels.  However, I think the fact that I had already formulated the thoughts and wrote them down made it less of a neccessity for me to post them.  But that's neither here nor there.  Here goes...

Croatie:
We are surrounded by Gladiators.  If this were the the Hunger Games we would not survive.
...seriously though..the Dalmation Islands people are the largest human species I've encountered thus far..

Day 1:  Zagreb.  I flew in on EasyJet from Paris and arrived around 12 in the afternoon.  I was unbelievably tired because I had stayed up the night before moving out of my little french studio.  Sad, and quite the task, which I of course left to the wee hours of the morning.  Anyway.  I was pretty useless when I arrived so I made a day of church hopping.  I love sitting in empty, quiet churches.  It feels great.  So, I kind of half dozed my way through the day looking holy.  I met up with Justine (American friend in Paris) at 8 that night at our hostel, after indulging in a long nap.  We went out for drinks with an Aussie and 2 brits.  Good times.

Day 2:  Off to Split we go.  We stayed here for 2 nights in a section of the house this family rented out.  It was a really, really nice house.  And they served us fresh strawberries with sugar when we arrived.  Win.  We went to the beach for a bit and then got delicious rum/pineapple drinks at a resto on the water.  Such a privileged life.  I felt a bit like I was in the Rum Diary.  I do love that book.

We went to dinner at this really cool mexican restaurant we found in the Lonely Planet.  The ambiance was great and the food was delicious.  The drinks were above and beyond, so pretty.  I should have taken photos.  Unfortunately, Justine hasn't been able to post her pictures yet so you don't get to see any of the cool ones for now.  I took a limited number, and my touch has no flash.  Boo.  Here is one of the paintings on the wall.

Later we went out on this awesome, tiny, winding street that had tons of bars and played amazing house music.  I was thrilled.  Plus tard, we ventured to some crazy dragon club where my ears were bleeding both due to the awful music choice and the volume.  We didn't last there very long.  Everyone was extremely welcoming though, loved it.

Day 3:  The Dalmation Islands are right off the coast of Croatia and are party central during the summer.  We were there during off season so they were just ghost islands, but one day I will go back in the summer and thrive.  We took a ferry out to Brac and then realized the beach we wanted to get to was on the other side of the island.  Shit.  But, we got really lucky and found the only 3 other Americans on the island who had just rented a car and were down to take us with them to the other side, to the #1 beach in Europe, Bol:

Helllooo paradise.  There were only 2 other humans on it the day we went because it was WINDY AS FUCK.  However, being tourists, we braved the cold and tanned/went for a plunge.  Awesome.  The water was so cold I got a brain freeze.  Definitely need to go back in summer, I can only imagine.

This was the car btw

I think the reason I like traveling so much is that I get to see the world as a kid again.  Everything is new, different and exciting.  Fascinating, really.  And it is even more interesting because I can see how similar it all is as well.
Everything is so cheap here.  And fresh.  And just great in general.  Must go back.

The ferry on the way back to Split

Day 4:  Ok so the days are going to get a little confused now because this is where my entries stopped for Croatia.  This day we took a bus to Makar.  It looks like it would be fucking crazy fun during summer, but it was just extremely windy this day.

It was gorgeous, but we opted (after a hot minute of battling the wind in our bikinis) to head on to Dubrovnik instead of spending the day at the beach.

View from the bus

Dubrovnik is awesome.

It's a medieval, walled city.  Very small and very cool.  We went through the curvy, uphill streets to the only hostel in town.  Fresh Sheets.  Along the way there were many people asking us if we needed a room to stay in.  That sounds like a good business.  At the hostel we met our friends for the night.  We ate at this restaurant called Taj Mahal that was deeelicious, of course.  There were 12 of us staying at the hostel and we all went out together.  It was really cool, I had never had that happen before.  After we went to a bar where I sipped on a few ricards.  Yum yum yum.

Day 5:  We got up and did the tour of the walls which was a little expensive, but totally worth it.  You get to climb around the city on the walls.  I'm not explaining this well.

Through the arrow slits

Ohayy - on our way down to the rocks

Rock beach

Our fans

wassup

life

 These after beach drinks turned into resto hopping.  Next stop was a place on the harbor where we had some white wine and olives.  Then we went wine tasting.  3 reds and 3 whites:

Cover of the menu :)

We were proper fucked by this time so we thought dinner would be a great option.  We wound up eating some weird fried little fishies that were apparently the local delicacy.  Should have taken photos.  You ate the whole thing, gross.  I think we also had pasta and something else?  We were later joined by a local alcoholic who clearly wanted our wine.  We kept trying to offer him food, but his eyes were on the bottle.  When we first arrived at the restaurant we had to decide if we wanted a pitcher or a bottle.  Turns out the only option was pitcher or LITER bottle, and the waitress recommended the latter.  Who were we to argue?  Anyways, shit got fun real fast.  Justine was discussing Croatian/European politics with the cook.  It was all hilarious.  We planned on leaving the bottle unfinished, but then this alcy showed up.  Obviously we didn't want to encourage his destructive behavior so, we took one for the team and finished it.  Yes I see the irony.

Holy Shit.

Found this picture on my touch the next morning.

Looks like Justine upside down on the hostel stairs?  We will never know.

Day 6:  Struggle.  Must get to Mostar.  I believe the bus left at 8am.  We had to take a bus to get to the bus.  Basically we had to wake up way too early.  Justine was nauseous.  I was spinning.  Definitely not top form.  Everything was difficult.  We saw the main bus station from our bus and Justine goes 'Hey, isn't this our stop?'  I said 'I don't think so' because I expected it to actually stop in the station.  This did not occur.  It took us 2 stops to muster up the thoughts and energy to ask the bus driver what to do.  He dropped us off and we got the next bus back to the station.  Literally got to the bus at 8am.  I was running ahead and luckily it all worked out.  So dumb.

Mostar

Life was better after the 5 hour nap on the bus.  Mostar (Bosnia) had a lot of potential, but it was raining and we were dressed for sunshine.  It was the frontline in the war.  We stopped to change money and made another stupid decision:  assumed the exchange rate would be the same as in Croatia.  Wound up taking out 200 dollars instead of 100.  So dumb.  Justine's card wasn't working though so it wasn't as dumb for 2 people.  We stopped for some cappucinnos (we had at least 3 a day on this trip..they were 1.50), toured the city, got lunch, and headed to Sarajevo.

My entry i wrote on the bus from Mostar to Sarajevo is below.

Bosnia

Bosnia:

How can every house and building in an entire country be either completely or partially destroyed?  I've never seen such damage.  The destruction is juxtaposed by all the brand new buildings, which have been built since the end of the war, to replace buildings that must have been irreparable.  Shock and awe.

If you don't know anything about the history of the area, here are 2 books I have read which take me as close as I'll ever get to the terror, devastation and sadism that characterized the war.  I felt sick after reading both of them.  I read Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995 by Joe Sacco in a Narratives of War class at UCSB.  I read the other one last night.  It only takes a half hour or so to read, but it is impossible to forget.  I can't find where I wrote down the name of the second book but it was mostly images. If you want to feel sick here are some images.

If I am ever to find myself in similar circumstances, I would choose death over life after torture any day.  It fascinates me that others would not.  And it fascinates me in an awful way that people are capable of torture.

But, enough of that, Sarajevo is a wonderful city.  The people are incredibly friendly and the old town feels and looks like Medieval Times.  

In Croatia I forgot to mention the lack of homelessness.  I literally saw 2 people begging and many people were giving them money.  We met a hilarious actor our night out who explained to us that this is because everyone is on the same level here.  Communism.  So, yes everyone is poorer, but not one is impoverished.  Which sounds a lot less stressful, but it really limits your possibilites.  For example they have to save for years to travel anywhere. 

We spent a funny/relaxing night at our couchsurfers place that night in Sarajevo.  Did I mention it was Snowing!!  And we were dressed for the beach.  He cooked up some pasta and we drank some beer while watching comedians on youtube.  Our host was originally from Italy, but is now a lawyer that works on war crimes in Sarajevo.  2 days after we met him he won a huge case against some high up Croatian commanders.  I was back in Croatia when the news came out and they were Not happy about the news.  My couchsurfer there believes that since it was war and people were doing bad things on both sides, they should not be punished.  I don't really agree...
It's interesting the Croatian perspective on the war...there are no memorials and people don't really talk about it.  It's like it never happened.  Not so in Bosnia and Serbia.

Anyways, our host loves the city.  And we could see why, it was So Cool.  I could see myself being very happy here.  His friend is Bosnian and works as a translator.  He was in Sarajevo for the first two years of the war and then moved to Germany.  I'm not sure when he came back but the war officially ended in 1996.  It was such a complicated war with all the different nationalities, religions and ethnicities.  Fucking humans.

The mayor of Sarajevo made a plea to the UN during the war begging the UN to bomb the people of Sarajevo because they could hold out no longer.  Can you imagine?

Here are some photos I took from the bus on the way to Sarajevo:

Ajouter une légende

Day 7:  We were Not dressed for this!  Which is why we stayed in that night with our host.  The next day we wandered around the adorable old town.  I bought a delightful sweater, and we stopped for tea every 20 minutes to let our toes thaw.  Summer shoes.  

Our favorite tea shop

Photos from the bus to Belgrade:

Serbia

Serbia:  Known to the Lonely Planet as the ' bad boy' of the Balkans.  But they get kind of a bad rap, they were slaughtered too, they were just better at it.

I'm going to finish this later it is way too beautiful out to be on my computer