Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas! We have arrived in Calgary after a long flight, but the jet lag was much worse going to England than coming from. We are staying at Laurie and Eric's house till Tuesday, at which point we go to Edmonton, then back here for their wedding, then back to Edmonton for New Year's, then back to Calgary just before we leave to fly back to London January 12. That clocks us in at 1200 kilometers of travelling just between the two cities. How far is that by European standards, just a little less than Berlin to Belgrade, I think. I think it is programmed into our DNA to always be on the move. Alberta welcomed us with fluffy snowflakes and icy roads, but it is only -10 degrees Celsius, so it could be much worse. We are bouncing with excitement to see everyone and for Christmas, the wedding, New Year's, setting up another new life in Scotland. We might be too busy to update till we get back to the UK, so Happy New Year's to everyone too!

London’s Burning

Or at least one of its four airport’s fuel depots is, neither of which is the one we flew into this morning, or the one we fly out of on Thursday which brings us home. London seems to have the same seasonless weather as we left it four months ago: grey and slightly chilly.

Berlin never disappoints us, and this visit was no exception! We crashed at Morten’s place for a few days as we always do when we come bouncing into Berlin, but we won’t be able to do this for future visits as he is moving to Vienna, L (great to have another friendly face in that ancient capital of culture though). But luckily we found another connection, Daniel, who is a third cousin of Carli-Ann’s who we met at the German family reunion last May, one of the few other attendees under 60 years old. Two days with him and his crazy flatmates illuminated a whole other layer of our favourite city to us, and that included crawling down a dank cellar hole in the sidewalk to find an underground punk drum and bass club. It’s great when your list of thrilling places can still be topped even at the end of a trip.

We really enjoyed being in Germany around Christmas with all the warm candles glowing in every house, surveying the famous Christmas markets (the Germans can’t seem to do anything without a ferris wheel), sampling Heiko and Torsten’s personal recommendation: Gluwein, with nativity scene llamas snorting over our shoulders. Or perhaps those were the carollers. Too bad about the Tibetan duck that ruined Morten’s weekend; we knew we should have stayed away from avian products. Mike is happily playing with his world’s smallest steamboat puttering around in the sink (an 1890 Berlin invention – a tiny candle powered tin toy).

Jim and Jean, our London family, are taking good care of us in our in-between stage before we head off to Alberta’s arctic, although Jim said we might have to call the miners in to liberate some of our Irish gear from his garden shed. We’ll be back in Britain January 12, and are thinking of settling in Scotland, perhaps Glasgow, till autumn, but our minds can easily be swayed in the next few weeks. But we are stoked to have a place again soon that we can host all of the people from whom we have received such fabulous hospitality in our last year and a half flitting around Europe and beyond!

Anyone who wants to get a hold of us in Edmonton, we will be at Mike’s parents next week!

Santa Claus is Turkish!

I know, it was just as much of a surprise to us as it probably is to you! And it seems to have some rival origin legends, but Baba Noel (St. Nicholas) apparently was a bishop on the sunny south coast of Turkey who dropped dowry money down poor young girl's chimneys. We didn't expect to see much of anything Christmasy in Turkey, and apart from that info board of Santa in a bathing suit, we haven't really. But that one was a shocker. We are glad that we postponed our arrival in Turkey to miss Ramadan, because although as foreigners we would have been permitted to eat during daylight hours, it probably wouldn't have made us any friends. And it has been really interesting to notice how many women wear headscarves in different towns, a very visual reflection of how conservative or secular a community is. Although each day we have seen a few women in head to toe coverings, it is pretty rare, at least in the west where we have travelled.

We have now come full circle back to Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient. From here it is just a a few hops between our favourite cities in Europe to visit friends, and then we will come screeching back into the Alberta snow, culture-shocked and jet-lagged. It will be great.

After climbing Mount Olimpos on the south coast, we skipped around the coast a bit with some Australians to Kas, then back to Antalaya where the hospitality club did not disappoint us. We stayed with Ugur and his family in their gorgeous flat, saw his photos of his mates moose hunting up in Alaska where he had worked for the summer, went out to experience traditional Turkish folk music in the ancient harbour setting still reminiscent of Roman times, and breakfast included a back massage from his father. This is living. And don't fear, the weather did improve for us and we were basking in 26 degrees Celcius again, probably for the last time in a long while. From there it was a long hitch up from the Mediterranean coast to the Aegean coast and Izmir, with a Bulgarian truck driver who spent the six hours complaining about Turkish drivers cutting his bulky semi off like cats whisking between his legs, and the lack of controls in the Turkish restaurant industry. I won't mention what else he associated with cats. Or at least that is what we thought he was communicating to us; it was all in Turkish and we only had Berna's little dictionary to flip through incessantly and tediously. But he was so proud of us everytime we found the meaning of the word he had repeated ten times. Wish we had retained a few more of them for future conversations.

In Izmir (hometown of Homer – of the Odyssey, not Simpsons), Berna and her kind mother were waiting for us, and we arrived just in time for Tonguc's experimental electronica gig. Izmir was a really cool town establshed by Alexander the Great, and it was awesome exploring it by taking the ferry across the bay, relaxing in the afternoon with tiny cups of Turkish tea, a nargile, and a backgammon board, poking around in the bazaars where the hollering salesmen flaunt their wares on their person: modelled bathrobes or socks hanging off their ears (the tag line also rhymed in Turkish:"Come and get it, it's synthetic!"). And we saw the bicycle couriers chasing each other briefly with a knife because someone jumped the queue. Another cool HC host, Belve, took us on a great tour of Izmir’s university student life, and we met up with a bunch of his friends at an old bar for a night of travel story swapping. We do alot of that lately. Berna took us out to the ancient city of Ephesus, the best preserved classical city on the Mediterranean, and the home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the temple of Artemis. I hope that it doesn’t actually exist anymore and it is not just that we walked past it without noticing it. Then we wound our way up the mountain to find the legendary home of the Virgin Mary. It was interesting to see that both Christians and Muslims consider it to be a holy place.

Bergama was our next stop, the ancient city of Pergamum. It is now a small farming town, and the winding cobblestone roads that we hiked up to reach the Hellenistic era Acropolis Atlar to Zeus were crammed with mini-buses squeezing past horse and donkey drawn carriages. Another night in Canakkale near Gallipoli, and that brought us to İstanbul, where we attended our first hospitality club meeting. As you can imagine, it was just an excuse for thirty some people from different countries who were all in İstanbul at that moment to get together at a bar. Along with the Turkish were a Mexican, Lithuanian, Iranian, Spanish, and probably a few others that we didn’t have time to meet. We weren’t sure where to stay in İstanbul, but after the meeting we had our choice of places, and are now crashed at Tulay’s, who has given us her whole gorgeous flat for the week for just the two of us! And we haven’t had a moment of boredom since. Between all of us visitors and the HC guides, we have been whipped around the opulent palace and harem of the sultans: Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar (which has changed alot since my mom was here in the 1970’s, I think, it now looks alot more like West Edmonton Mall than any sort of dodgy market), floated up the Bosphorus on a ferry, hopped between Asia and Europe, visited the Blue Mosque, and tomorrow we’ll see the Aya Sophia and try out a hamam: Turkish bath. Or at least Carli-Ann will.

So now as these last four months of travelling are coming to completion soon, we have reached two conclusions:

1) The world is mostly made up of good people.

2) North America greatly underutilizes pumpkins.

And our only real complaint is the air pollution which leaves our snotty tissues black. Not bad, really, for all that we have seen and learned. But we are looking forward to some fresh Rocky Mountain air!

My vision of Turkey never included snow!

OK, I know that everyone in Turkey will tell us to expect it arriving in Turkey the second half of November, and that everyone in Canada will tell us to stop whining as this is only the third snowfall we have seen in over 15 months that we have been away from Canada (make that 19 months if you are counting from when the snow melted our last spring in Canada). But we were still so surprised when we looked out our pension window in Konya, 1085 meters above sea level on the Anatolian Steppe in the middle of Turkey, and saw fat snow flakes falling on the bustling bazaar below us. The other two times we saw snow was on Christmas Day in Ireland, and on the south coast of Spain when we were trying to take a beach holiday in February.

Apart from the snow surprise, Turkey has well exceeded our expectation in every way. We are very happy with how clean everywhere has been, no tummy upsets or scams yet, everyone is so friendly (and not just the carpet salesmen). And we never imagined that we would find a country that is better for hitchhiking than Ireland, but Turkey is it! We are not exaggerating when we say that we have never had to wait more than 5 minutes for any of our eight lifts so far; that is all the way from the western border to the middle, and most of the way from the north to the south coast. And they ALL come with lunch and tea included. What a great service. We are very thankful that Berna gave us a Turkish/English dictionary, as there have been more language barriers here than in any other country so far, and that she translated some key phrases for us. Now when we think we are being asked about our travels, we pull out a notebook that says in Turkish about how we came here to visit a friend in Ankara, that we were working on Ireland, about the places we have visited on this trip, etc. Very handy.

We enjoyed being toured around by Berna and Tonguc in Ankara for a few days, and then we headed for Turkey’s top destination: the strange stone formations, cave dwellings and underground cities of Cappadocia. And we were not disappointed. The underground city was well over 2000 years old, was dug and tunneled through over 4 square kms, and 8 levels deep! And our hostel room was in a cave – what more could we ask for. Two days were passed in Konya, famous for its whirling dervishes (the yearly spectacle that will begin the day that we leave Turkey – well, there’s always next year, Mike has got his sights set east already). Hopefully we’ll post some of the great photos of Mike playing backgammon in a teahouse with an old Turkish professor practicing his english. And yesterday we arrived at Mount Olimpos, which we immediately climbed to see the natural flames burning eternally on its slopes, and we have spent the rest of our time picking oranges from the trees and stones from the Mediterranean beach, poking through the ancient city ruins covered in vines, and shivering in our bungalow, grateful that we didn’t brave the unheated treehouses. We have a couple days in Antalya, and then we will book it to Izmir to meet Berna again at her mom’s place and do some daytrips from there.

Our dreams are beginning to be about coming home for Christmas!

Welcome to Asia!

We made it to Ankara! This was our final goal when we packed up 3 months ago in Ireland.

On Saturday we got a lift to the Bulgarian/Turkish border from Georgi's dad. Although we could now see Turkish soil, there were many formalities to complete before we could step onto it. Through several police checkpoints and showing our passports to multiple guards, we left Bulgaria. We were directed in between borders to a small cashier’s office which resembled a newspaper outlet, where we needed to buy our visas to enter Turkey. We were expecting this and so had been prepared with 45 US dollars each. We gave the man our passports and the money, and as he made a tsk tsk sound he showed us the visa. It said “45USD”, but over this “60USD” had been stamped. Our remaining money, which I dumped from my wallet onto the desk was only 38 new Turkish lira (38 000 000 old Turkish lira!) which was not quite enough. He did not look impressed. We shrugged and showed him my empty wallet and a couple of guilty smiles. He handed back our passports and waved us through. This was great, although we didn’t have a cent left now – aside from 50 stotinki, which is worth 20 cents and that is in Bulgarian currency anyway.

We passed through the remaining Turkish officials and were spat into this big new country, greeted by their red crescent moon flag. There was not the bank machine we were hoping to see, or much else, only long lines of parked semi trucks and a nice wide highway leading 650 km to our destination. As we started walking, a Turkish man walked past and said cheerfully “good morning, and welcome!”, a good sign for our journey.

We performed our usual ritual – found some cardboard and made a sign (ANKARA) – and started hitchhiking. No more than 10 minutes later a semi truck had stopped about 100m past us and was trying to back up to us along the shoulder. Ekrem, the Kurdish driver, helped us get settled in his spacious, comfortable truck. He started driving, and made us cappucino in his dashboard coffee maker. We were able to communicate surprisingly well with his decent German and few words of English, and were taught some of the essentials of Turkish too. He was only going as far as İstanbul which meant we still had to travel the remaining 400km to Ankara. We had a good couple hours with Ekrem and he was very kind to us, sharing his fruit and stopping for bathroom breaks. When we came up to the edge of İstanbul (about 20km from the centre of this massive city of 12 million) he pulled into a rest area and honked at the truck beside us. "Ankara" he said as he pointed to the other truck.

Five minutes later we were loaded into the truck of Sherif, another Kurdish driver, for the remaining leg of our journey. Although Sherif had only a few words of German (even less than we did) and spoke no English, we managed to communicate for the ten hour journey! As we passed through İstanbul, the traffic on the highway became more and more congested. Cars swerved, horns blared and fists shook. It all peaked when we reached the toll booths before the Bosphorous bridge linking Europe with Asia. Inumerable cars, trucks, buses and whatever else had wheels and a horn all jockeyed for position in the “queue” to get through the tolls. Men walked through the jumble selling stacks of bread, Turkish flags, and whatever else they thought people might buy. The booth we finally pulled up to happened to have no attendant, so we couldn’t pay the toll. Sherif cursed, then drove through and pulled towards the shoulder so he could walk back to buy the ticket. A policeman was there fiercely motioning that stopping was forbidden, and Sherif was trying to motion that he didn’t pay yet and so needed to return on foot to purchase a ticket. He stopped and immediately the policeman was at the door yelling at him. After explaining didn’t work, Sherif resorted to yelling and cursing at the policeman. He got out and we watched nervously in the side mirror as they yelled at each other and made raging Turkish Yosemite Sam motions with their arms. After 10 or 15 minutes it all seemed to be settled, he paid the toll and we continued.

We crossed the immense suspension bridge, and on the other side a roadsign said “Welcome to Asia”. Everything looked pretty similar to the European side. We drove for a couple more hours, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and learning Kurdish. Then, Sherif took us to a truck stop for dinner and chay (Turkish tea served in tulip-shaped glasses, straight, sweet, or very sweet). Our first meal in Turkey! Trying to pay for our own food was impossible, as I got waved away when I took out my wallet. The remaining 200km were a bit tedious as we drove through fog, but Sherif was full of spirited conversations about Kurdish history, during which he would slow to about 50km/h. Just after midnight, after about as much hospitality as we could handle for one day, he drove us as far as he could into the suburbs of Ankara and phoned Carli-Ann’s friend Berna to come and collect us. He waited there with us until she arrived; reassured by her presence that we would be well taken care of after he left us, and concerned that he hadn't yet shown us enough hospitality.

So, we are well settled in Ankara at Berna's, Carli-Ann's Turkish classmate from the University of Alberta, and she has already toured us through one of the many massive bazaars selling dried eggplants, intestines, leeches for healing purposes, live ducks at a pet store, and skinned, baked goat heads (and probably many other nice things, but only the gross ones stuck in our memory). Her friend told us our fortunes read from our Turkish coffee grounds, and we included a photo of Carli-Ann's cup of the eagle, which means a protective person will come into our lives in the next few days. Carli-Ann was thrilled to flutter through the stalls hawking thousands of glass and metal beads, and so much exotic jewellery. Now she has to carry it in her backpack for the next month.

Our next stop will be Cappadocia, which is rumoured to be stunning, Troy, and we for sure want to visit Mount Olympus where flames burn constantly from natural gases emerging from the earth, and backpackers can camp out in tree houses! And I think we will discover many other amazing places in the next month. After all, we have had only wonderful experiences thus far, and our coffee grounds say that natural phenomenon will greatly enhance our travel experience... and that our former pet hedgehog is going to have babies. Lisa, what is going on with him there in Nanaimo?

Photos of Turkey...click here!

Hoscakalin!

Hardly Keeping Up with Balkan Hospitality!

Death by hospitality! We are hardly surviving being treated to the local specialities and nightlife and kindness day after day after day! Do we really hear ourselves complaining about this? What kind of great life do we have? But we are exhausted! Our near two weeks in Bulgaria are coming to a conclusion, as tomorrow we will be crossing the border into Turkey! We are pretty stoked to be hanging off the edge of Europe! We will be shooting straight for Ankara to visit Berna, and then we will have four weeks to explore Turkey (and especially Istanbul) before we begin our long journey back to Canada via Berlin and London over a period of a week.

Since our last entry, we stayed with two HC hosts in Sofia, the capital with the highest altitude in Europe, and we survived the roaming urban packs of wild dogs! Ruth and her friends took us to a great Halloween party, so we did get to celebrate one of our most favourite holidays, even if the only costumes present were a newspaper pirate hat and a pair of ski googles. It was the spirit of the event that matters. And her demon cat tormented us the rest of the night. Then Dimitirius (an expert in dead languages) and his mom and Baba took over caring for us, showing us around the city with an informative, quirky post-communist commentary, and took Mike hiking up the gorgeous mountains that surround Sofia. They could barely keep up with the bare-chested 80 year old mountaineers that leap up and down the mountain range daily, accompanied only by their whittled walking sticks. The path they climbed led all the way to Mount Olympus in Greece, but they settled for a view of Sofia from 1500 meters.

We took a day off from the hospitality club to wind our way hitch hiking through the red, orange and gold forests of the Rila Mountain range to explore the Rila Orthodox Christian Monastery, a stunning ancient holy place nestled in the quiet forest where the sun set over the rocky horizon by 14:30. Having a hard time tracking down where the monastory reception was, we were directed to the "man with the long beard in the church" who then pointed us to "the man with the longer beard in room 74", an eventually solveable riddle after we tracked down which spiral staircase did not have a "no passing" sign, and how to proceed, as the doorbell chiming a monastic tune went unanswered. Eventually, with the assistance of a couple of Aussie backpackers, we found the man with the longer beard, dressed all in black robes and headpeice, scaring away the evil spirits by banging on a peice of wood with a metal rod in preparation for the afternoon church service. Once the praying and candle lighting and icon kissing was complete, he showed us to our bare but sufficient sleeping quarters. And after the busload of Japanese tourists left, it was just us and the Aussies and an elusive gaggle of monks and nuns, so the rest of the evening was pretty quiet. And the sturdy gates shut us in at 20:00. So that was really it for the night.

In the seven-hilled town of Plovdiv over-looking a 2000 year old Roman amphitheatre, we stayed in the cozy nest of Milen and Mariyana, and were thrilled to be introduced to their favourite Emir Kusturica movie "Black Cat White Cat", of which they personally subtitled into English, just so that they could share the sheer joy of this film with their unBalkanized guests. The zealous soundtrack has been bouncing around in our skulls ever since, giving some humour to our more bored moments waiting for a hitch hiking lift. It was great to share ideas with them about travelling and the future (and North American style nachos - after 15 months without our favourite snack!), and they in turn took us again into the mountains to search out fortresses, and discover the mystery of all the red and white yarn tassles tied on tree branches all over Bulgaria. Every spring time, tradition dictates that you give your friends red and white bracelets - the most popular Bulgarians have nearly a whole sleeve of them - and they are worn until you see the first migrating stork arriving, at which point the bracelets are tied onto the nearest tree of the siting. While we have missed the stork season, we have spied their massive nests sagging over the tops of telephone poles and church steeples, more than a meter in diameter.

Our most quizzical hitch hiking lift to date brought us to Stara Zagora: two small white vans with Netherlands license plates and very unDutch, but very friendly, drivers took us on board for part of their monthly journey from Holland to Iraq. They were travelling for business. We didn't ask what type. Dutch wasn't their first language. But they were really sweet to us! I am sure that Bulgaria sees alot of odd traffic passing through, being the cross roads of Europe to Asia and the Middle East.

In Stara Zagora, Nickolay and Ivo and their buddies treated us to a tour of their city's historical sites that they had never visited before, let alone had many foreign tourists. But we were impressed with the pebble mosaic terrace of the 2000 year old excavated Roman home, and the remains of a 6000 year old Neolithic dwelling. Did anyone else know that Bulgarians were the creators of yoghurt? We were refreshed to meet the rare species of "Balkan vegetarian", to hear tales of the recent Rainbow Gathering in Bulgaria, and to be introduced to drinking as an art form (as opposed to competitive sport): where else does a group of mid-20's guys prepare three different types of fresh salads late in the evening as a necessary accompaniment to their liquor of choice: rakia (plum brandy).

A paint delivery truck raced donkey carts, and wagons drawn by horses sporting smart red pompom hats, up the narrow mountain pass to deliver us to the medieval capital of Veliko Turnovo and its friendly hostel. It was nice to chill out in this town for a bit and do our own thing, especially exploring the castle fort and its church's surreal interior decoration. Then the next day, an enthusiastic Turkish semi-truck driver scooped us from our perch under an overpass, describing to us using a small handful of Italian, French, German and English words, fanciful tales of his home country and its cuisine, and his disgust with the Bulgarian "highway" that he and hundreds of other semi trucks drove weekly from Bucharest to Istanbul. By the end of the story, the road before our headlights had degraded into a cobblestone single lane road winding past old ladies on bicycles squeaking between cottages. That 24 hour drive takes alot of patience. But we learned how he manages it: by stopping frequently to buy almonds from the roadside stands, preparing instant coffee with his kettle, its plug wrangled into the cigarette lighter, and today by treating his new friends to a fresh fish and salad lunch at one of the dozens of highway Turkish restaurants catering to him and his colleagues. And this evening he made a special pit stop to have the pleasure of acquainting us to his national drink, Raki (which is more like Greek Ouzo than Bulgarian or Serbian Rakia), which degressed into a long evening of food and drink and Turkish jokes, which delayed us from arriving at our next host's house by a whole day. But we made it!

Now in Svilengrad, only a few kilometers away from both the Turkish and Greek borders, Georgi and his family and friends are giving us a great Bulgarian send-off. And living so close to the biggest border-crossing in Europe, they are well prepared to help us out with all the tips that we need for journeying onto the next continent. We'll up date when we arrive, probably not until after the initial culture shock has finished sweeping over us!

Nearly in Asia!

Hey ho, we just arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria after a six hour train ride that only passed 150 kilometers. Good thing we didn't have anywhere to be this afternoon! We are still doing great, managing to avoid the bird flu (perhaps thanks to the extensive decontamination measures they are taking at the borders, including spraying the steps up to the bus) and enjoying the journey.

Our news last left you in Belgrade, where we were staying with our gracious host, Svetlana. As well as seeing the city sites, we were learning how to promenade. We thought it was just walking up and down the street in your fanciest clothes so everyone can check you out, but really it is more about going for a stroll instead of standing in one place to kill time, especially nice when searching out paper cones of peanuts, roasted chestnuts or popcorn. (Daniel, I found a better word than pancakeke, and it is "kikiriki" for peanuts.) In Belgrade we met so many students, and other HC hosts like Jelena and Miro, who took us out to the best cafe bars, and to parties where at the end of a great night we had to explain that we had only just met our host a few minutes before the party had begun, making us pretty much complete strangers to everyone there, but the great thing about Serbia is that no one cares! They all think it was great that we came to the party anyway! The only real souvenir we are taking with us is the 1992-1993 collection of dinar bills, including the five hundred billion dinar bill, evidence of difficult times when inflation was out of control. Belgrade is a great town, and we figure pretty soon it will be "discovered" by the rest of the backpackers traipsing about Europe, but for now we could feel like we were someone unique coming from Canada.

Our next destination was the smaller town of Kragujevac south of Belgrade where Milena and her parents included us in their family for the weekend, teaching us all about Serbian cooking and Saint's day traditions: their annual saint's day was that week and her mom was in a frenzy of cake baking for the celebration, and their priest came and blessed the house with incense and holy water. Milena shared all her friends with us, took us to see the countryside and famous mosaic Orthodox churches, and we passed the weekend in great conversations about politics, history, medical school, and travelling. They even liked the chili we made for them! Then we zagged over to Nis for a whirlwind of a night of Serbian meat platter delicacies (it is no good to pretend that we are still eating vegetarian when we are travelling; I am not sure it is possible in this part of the world), cakes and dart-throwing with Dica and his friends, who taught us everything we ever need to learn about Serbian culture, and especially about Serbian hospitality.

Our next stop was Prishtina in Kosov(a)(o). It was a long and confusing bus ride between the Serbian and Albanian regions, but wonderfully friendly people helped us on all sides, and we are really glad that we explored this region a bit. Shpetim and his siblings showed us around Prishtina, including Bill Clinton Blvd and Mother Theresa Street, another HC host, Enis took us on a scamper out to see a monastery in a Serbian village. And Mike got his favourite souvenir from the trip so far, a filling in his tooth, and it only cost 15 euros, so he is pretty happy with that!

We were attempting to get from Prishtina to Sofia in Bulgaria in one day, but although the distances aren't too far, it takes a very long time, and we got stuck in Nis for a night. But to our good fortune (which we really seem to have alot of), Dica dropped everything and came and collected us at the train station! Again, he provided for all our needs in true Serbian fashion, and he was having a party at his house that night, so one moment we are wondering how we are going to kill eight hours in a train station, and the next we are surrounded by cool kids, several of whom are DJ's spinning up beats to fill the flat that we are crashed at. We couldn't find ourselves in better situations if we tried to plan them.

And today we have left the ex-Yugoslavia countries after spending 45 days in them (missing only Macedonia, maybe next year) and learning so, so, so much, and we are in Bulgaria. We figure we will probably spend two weeks here, and nearly four exploring the land of the Turks, and then a few days in our favourite European city of Berlin, then London and then it will be December 15 and we will be flying back to Canada! Wow, when we say it that way, it sounds like no time at all!

Happy Halloween! We are sorry to say that we see no sign of it at all here...maybe someone can send us photos of the festivities at home? But we did have that pumpkin war in Novi Sad, maybe that counts as celebrating.

Ziveli from Belgrade!

We are in the chaotic metropolis of the capital of the former Yugoslavia, a buzz of students and cafés, giant cement block architecture and swaggering policemen, every Ramones album ever made together for sale on one MP3 CD from a briefcase in an shady alley, Serbian pop music chanting into the streets, as well as political protest alternative music, post-party early morning battles of wit with transit police, Orthodox temples that stood unfinished through the 45 years of socialism, and the feeling of the whole region converging on this 2 million strong city, and we love it.

It has been a while since we got a chance to update, but that is usually a good sign as that means we have been too busy exploring (or being taken exploring by our hosts more accurately) to find an internet café to reflect on it all. We left the crystal clear Adriatic waters of the Croatian island of Korcula 18 days ago, sad to turn our backs on its sun and forests and terraced sandy scrub mountain steppes of olive groves, pomegranate trees, lime and grapefruit and almond and fig and kiwi trees, and tangled vineyards. But we had other countries to explore, and it was a surprisingly easy hitch to Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) with an old Sarajevo taxi driver in a black beret, with whom we spoke no common languages, but he still had us laughing at his stories. BiH is famous for its hospitality, and we were prepared (and not disappointed) for the immediate offers of tiny strong cups of Turkish coffee in a home or an outdoor umbrella’d cafe which often capped off a lift we received from a Bosnian. What we weren’t prepared for was the scenery through the countryside, which felt most potent on the drive to Mostar, but this could have been because it was our first day in this heart-shaped country. The landscape began very rocky and sand-colored, and the autumn changing tree-covered mountains grew larger as we drove further into the center. As in so much of Europe, the countryside is littered with houses and tiny villages every few kilometers, but we were shocked by the state of some of the villages: normal brick or cement block houses stood with a woman tending a garden in front, or children playing in the yard, and next door was a house being constructed, and next door to that was a house that had had a bomb dropped through its roof or a shell explosion at its side ten years ago, with huge gaping holes in the walls where the wind blew through (often more hole than wall), or chunks of cement hanging precariously off rebar, or the shingles of a collapsed roof sliding to the ground. But we were determined that while we were here to learn as much as we could about recent events, what we wanted more was to learn what Bosnia Herzegovina is, as well as the whole former Yugoslavia, framed by their culture and history and traditions, and not only in the context of the war.

Mostar was one of the most beautiful, and most haunting towns we have visited; a city now split into Catholic and Muslim sections. The heart of the town, towered over by Muslim mosque minarets sparkling with Ramadan lights, and the chanted calls to prayer pouring into the streets five times daily, and Catholic church steeples and their great bells chiming out mass times and the hour, is medieval cobblestone lanes lined with Turkish cafés and tiny shops, meandering to the beautiful arched stone bridge over the green river that was only recently rebuilt after being bombed in the war. We stayed there in the first (and so far last) private accommodation in the home of an old Muslim professor who recommended the best walks around the town and good places for local food. While we were out for a stroll gazing at the religious places and the great holes bombed into many buildings that sometimes sported signs that read “Dangerous Ruin. Do Not Enter”, we were surprised at one occurrence that has been repeated at least six times all over the former Yugoslavia: a very old man stopped his bicycle next to us and asked us where we were from, said that he had worked in Canada for some time, and wondered what we were doing in his country. The response “Just visiting Bosnia, we are tourists,” is always met with surprise and delight, and followed by questions about our family and our travels and enthusiastic handshakes and wishes of good luck. It is so nice to be welcomed by total strangers in the street!

The hike out onto the highway to hitch to Sarajevo was a little nerve-wracking, squished between chaotic traffic on one side, and the ditch with three dead cats and the tangled brush fields that we weren’t sure if they contained landmines or not. We visited the Mine Action Centre in Sarajevo later and received a map of the mine locations (that they know of), and so much of the country was covered in red dots and yellow flashes – it was really heartbreaking to realize that we couldn’t read the map names of some towns due to the concentration of dots – we stuck to asphalt the whole time in Bosnia. But within a couple of minutes an extremely friendly journalist and radio station reporter pulled over, excited to see our Canadian flag patches and eager to welcome us to his country. He took us to Sarajevo and told us all about his family and work and his opinion of his country as we drove through the steep mountain valleys “Bosnia is beautiful …and crazy.” he told us painfully in memory of the recent conflict.

We stayed in Sarajevo for six days with an HC host, Zoran, who introduced us to his city and many friends. We spent a lot of time at his abandoned warehouse turned art gallery and artist squat where we hung out every evening eating pite (pastry pie filled with cheese or potato or pumpkin or spinach, and washed down with yogurt) and played table tennis and watched underground art develop and learned about the capital city and its history. His girlfriend, Elma, took us for a great traditional meal and gave us a fabulous tour of the old town and the important architectural elements: within a few blocks of each other are a cathedral, an Orthodox church, a synagogue, and a mosque; Sarajevo is known to be a microcosm of Europe and the place where the east met the west. We learned a lot about the nearly four year “siege of Sarajevo” when the city was under attack in the 1990’s, and a secret tunnel that had to be dug under the airport runway to bring food and electricity and communication with the outside world. The frequent shell marks in the pavement known as “Sarajevo roses” that now collect rain water as puddles and we had to maneuver our borrowed bicycles around, and the semi-repaired holes in the sides of so many buildings, even in the residential suburbs, were a shocking reminder of this time when park trees were cut down for firewood and when these were depleted, other materials were burned to cook on, the best being shoes, and snipers were in the hills of the city, and everyone who could escaped to other countries. This is the first European country we have visited where everyone knows where Edmonton is, as everyone knows someone who went to Canada as a refugee. Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics just before Calgary held them, and we got a city map that showed the Olympic event locations, overlaid with the siege frontlines from less than ten years later. We had heard that Sarajevo was a really cool, cultural place, and we really enjoyed our days there, walking in the parks, cycling, museums, discoveries of Bosnian sweet shops, coffee pit stops that now frame our days and all the great people we met. We are sure that tourism is going to really expand in the coming years as the city is being rebuilt.

The weather is becoming colder as we journey further from the sea, and the day that we hitched to Novi Travnik to visit our next HC host, Sandra, chilled us to the bone. As always, we were taken out in a flourish of hospitality to sample the regional wine and beer, and for the local cevapi experience (grilled minced meat and grease in a spongey “bun” with yogurt), and for night time views of the churning river, traditional Bosnian houses and illuminated mosques and churches, always accompanied by lots of story sharing from all parties. Sandra and her friend were translators for EUFOR (European Union Forces) that have since taken over from the UN, so it was interesting to hear about working with the Dutch soldiers, and to realize that most other foreigners in Bosnia are here on some sort of assignment with EUFOR or NGO’s. We had a great sleep in her flat, only startled once by her sheep-sized cat, and were set on our way on the lengthy journey (by European standards) to our next destination of Tuzla.

Igor and Jasmina, university student HC hosts, were very excited to welcome us to their pretty town, and take us out to see the historical places and our first Bosnian live band that played their own tunes and covers of 1980’s Yugo-rock. It was cool to see a younger crowd’s enthusiasm for their town and the future. Next we visited a village close to Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian Republic, one of two entities that Bosnia and Herzegovina is now divided into, the other being the Federation. It was a bit of a shock as we crossed into the new territory and watched all the signs morph into the Cyrillic alphabet, the names of our destinations only occasionally recognizable by the shape of the word (a bit) if we squinted. But Mike is always good at picking up languages and bits like this, so he is nearly fluent now in reading Cyrillic, even if he can’t translate what he can read from Serbo-Croatian into English.

We visited Tamara and her family for three days here, and it was like a little enclave of Canada far from home, as she had lived in Winnipeg for seven years (she even had maple syrup!) and now works with NGO’s here in Bosnia. It was nice to take a couple of days off to relax, and we filled our first day with autumn walks through the village, watching the fields being harvested by horse-drawn ploughs. We were photographing three of the biggest pigs we had ever seen, when a very old farmer leaning on his gate waved us over. We thought we were in trouble for photographing his livestock, but instead he led us into his shed, lit a small fire, and demonstrated for us his blacksmith skills! He showed us how he makes chain links with all the traditional tools, then illustrated how if there is no money to buy matches, he can pound a nail till it turns red-hot and light his cigarette off this. We were well impressed. Then he took us on a tour of his farm, showing us his wood pile for the winter, new calves, chicks, and more squealing piglets. Then three guys from the village pulled up, two on a horse-drawn cart and one in his new car, and we learned how to shoe a horse! It was awesome to see this guy at work, and again no language skills were needed; then he motioned that the show was over, and we continued down the road to buy vegetables at the shop on the highway. I wonder what he was thinking, “Oh, a couple of foreign-looking kids are walking down the road, I will teach them how to shoe a horse.” But whatever his train of thoughts, we were grateful for the experience.

Tamara and her parents gave us a lot of context to our experience in BiH, we enjoyed exploring Banja Luka, and watched a couple of excellent films about the conflict: “No Man’s Land”, and “Warriors”. She even recorded sound bites of us for her radio station, Bosnia Express, so now occasionally Bosnian radio will cut out to our voices, and this brief experience gave us much more respect for the work that Karyn is doing. Then we set out for a new (to us) country of Serbia Montenegro.

Our first Serbian stop was in Novi Sad, a really pretty town where we met Marco, his family, and dozens of his biology student friends, and went out to his cottage for the weekend. The excursion was first presented to us as “bird-ringing at mine cottage”, which to us sounded like a hunting expedition on dangerous territory, but we teased out the meaning to be bird-tagging at his cottage. So there we were on the banks of a misty river, helping a string of Serbian biologists set up light nets that trapped swooping kingfishers, song thrushes, robins, and blue tits (along with all their jokes) so they could be examined, tagged, and placed into our eager hands to be re-released. The rest of the weekend was consumed by sitting around the picnic table in the crisp air, cracking open walnuts found in the grass, eating berries and sweet apples from the trees, fish caught by Marco’s grandpa in the river, learning the production process of (and sampling) “rakija”, Serbian brandy that…I can still feel warming my esophagus a week later, and being taught to identify owls by their hoots. The last day out on the riverbank a new tradition was instigated that involves finding a tangled field of pumpkins, forming opposing teams, and hurling them at each other, and hoping no one else’s aim has been perfected yet. It makes for some good photos.

And that (and a very kind hitchhiking lift) brings us to the big city of Belgrade, our host, Svetlana, and her protestor student friends who have toured us all over the best parts of the town. And it is true, that Serbs really know how to party (we are exhausted); the only potential rivals that we had the good fortune to be acquainted with were the Irish. Tomorrow we are off to Kragujevac, then Nis, and after that we will see which direction the road winds. But our final destination is still Ankara!

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone at home! We are sad that we have missed this holiday two years in a row now, but Christmas is coming soon!

Ziveli! (cheers in Serbian, except with a totally different alphabet)

On to Bosnia and Herzegovina Soon!

Hi from the lovely Croatian coast! Just briefly, we love this part of the world. Our luck hitchhiking has been amazing, and we have met so many great people! In Zagreb, we stayed with Julija who was an awesome girl working for a logo company who introduced us to so many Croatian specialties and history, Danica and Mia, dedicated university students who gave us a taste of Zagreb student culture (and super cheap student cafeteria food, like a 4 course meal for $1, yay!), Riba (it was worth it to visit Croatia just for his laugh)... how can we summarize this guy...: Mensa member, will be a father in 5 days, president of the Croatian curling club (?), Croatian Playboy Assistant Editor, hitchhiked on all continents except South America following the Croatian sports teams, can sing our national anthem thanks to his favourite band "No Means No", everyone knows him by Riba which means "fish", geography teacher, our friend recognized him from his feature on a Croatian TV interior design makeover show...I think there was more but it is all confused in my head). Crazy four days in Zagreb, but so fun. Thanks so much!

After we fianlly pulled ourselves away from the hospitality in Zagreb, we visited a National Park where the war first started. Most things have been rebuilt since, but if you look closely you can see the shell marks in the campground asphalt, and there are some houses that have dozens of bullet holes in them. That was the first time we have seen anything like that, and I don't think it will be the last. But that wasn't the highlight of the park...most of our attention was drawn to the dozen crystal clear lakes that all overflow into each other in the most amazing cascading waterfalls...it was gorgeous, and the park is well-designed (still a bit reminiscent of the communist era) with wooden paths that go over and around the lakes and up the high cliffs for the view.

We spent a couple of days relaxing at the seaside, and one night in Dubrovnik touring the magnificent fortified city walls and marble streets that have been almost completely restored after the intense destruction it suffered during the war. We stayed with a friend of Riba's, Igor, an IT manager at a "collection" of hotels. We took a photo of the Excelsior beach front hotel "where our backpacks stayed" for an afternoon in the luggage room. Now we are on the island of Korcula, in a tiny old walled town where they claim Marco Polo was born. We will be heading for Bosnia and Herzegovina in a couple of days, first to Mostar and then Sarajevo, where we have HC invitations.

We have been having a great time hitchhiking, every person we meet is very excited that we came all the way from Canada, and always is so hospitable, from coffee, or some sort of local specialty (we have a year's supply of Croatian soup stock in our packs...) or taking care of our ferry passages or giving us 2 day lifts (thanks Doreen and Hannah!). It has been very cheap camping when we don't have someone to stay with, and there are not too many tourists now that the season is ending, so we have beaches all to ourselves.

We had planned to just travel for a short time now and then work in Britain before Christmas when we go home to Canada, but we have been having so much fun and so many surprise invitations (like sailing) that we are going waaay slower than we expected. So we don't know if we will find work before Christmas, but we are just playing it by ear and seeing how it goes. We will let you all know!

Italy, Slovenia, Croatia whirlwind tours

Hi from Croatia! We have met alot of new people since we touched base last; this is a very generous part of the world to be travelling! After Pisa we spent a couple of surreal days in Venice, mostly floating up and down the canals (in vaporettis - boat buses - the cheaper alternative to gondolas) and eating pasta, then took a train into Slovenia. We were pretty excited to finally get to the part of the world that we had been dreaming of travelling (but of course so grateful for the marvellous detours).

In Ljubljana, we stayed with the Bancic family. We met them through the hospitality club, and had hosted Vesna and Domen in Cork, so it was great to see where they were from! We ended up staying with them for five days; they were so generous, and I think as excited to show us their country as we were to learn about it! They toured us all over the western part of Slovenia from the seaside resorts to the tallest mountain peak, took us to many castles, caves (we hiked 2.5 kms into the cavernous depths, past underground waterfalls and over subterranean bridges), and even taught us how to make apple strudel! We had our first experience cooking for a monk, and they shared so much of their history with us.

After Llubljana, we hitchhiked to another Slovenian town: Ptuj (pronounces Patooey, yes, that was one of the reasons we chose this place off the map) and our hitchhiking lift, Dejan, invited us to come and share his living room with his parakeet for the night, and to party with his awesome band, Zen. So, we got a private concert in their studio and the local wine tasting experience...watch this space for upcoming world tours, these guys are great. We hitched then to the Croatian border, were taken out for coffee and Slovenian cola with our next lift, but he got a flat tire while taking us from the border that foreigners could not pass through to the other one, so we had to walk out of the EU into our next adventure.

In the Croatian town of Varazdin, we stayed with a hospitality club host, Shime, who basically gave us the use of a whole apartment and took us out for modern Croatian food (Carli-Ann ordered Witch's Risotto, and should not have been surprised when the silver platter cover was lifted to reveal rice, all matter of seafood, and all of it thick and black with cuttlefish ink!). We are now in Zagreb (the capital city) and are enjoying the company and space of not one, but three hospitality club hosts! We are looking forward to the coming weeks in Croatia and Bosnia (and beyond), and we have invitations set up in most of the places we want to explore, so we think that we are in for quite an experience!

Buon Giorno!

So, we are a little surprised, but delighted of course to unexpectedly find ourselves in Italy! And we are racking our brains for any shreds of advice that Lisa and Tom, Auntie Norma, Matt and Amy gave us about Italy a few weeks ago. At the time we had stored it away as information we would not need to access for another year as we had not planned to come here for a while.

We had a great time in London with the Sibbald family, and then flew to Graz in Austria to visit with some Austrian friends: Tina, Anna, Sevi and Didi, who (3 of them) had been doing their social work placement in Ireland. We actually met them when they picked us up hitchhiking on our way to climbing Croagh Patrick, and this has turned out to be the luckiest hitchhiking lift we have ever got! We thought maybe we would only stay in Graz for a day or two and then head to Slovenia, but they offered to show us a bit more of their country. In what has developed into almost three weeks of visiting, we have hiked up to waterfalls in the Austrian Alps, toured little traditional Austrian hometowns, swam in alpine lakes, visited Anna's family, wound our way up to mountain vineyards to sample the regional food and drink delicacies, drove down to Slovenia for a night to go to a punk gig called "No Border Jam" with bands from Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany in an old military bakery turned gig venue by squatters, and then were sent to stay with their friends and brothers and girlfriends in picturesque Salzburg and cultural Vienna!

We met them back in Graz on the 2nd of September to kick off an even bigger adventure, we all drove down 800 kms to Italy, stopping in Siena for a surreal early morning coffee on the square where we were bombarded by a medieval parade, and to Piombino on the west coast, to a port where we went sailing for a week in the Mediterranean, around the island of Elba. Our vessel, 'Noah' was an old 1949 wooden fishing boat that was converted into a sailing ship in the 1980's as part of an adventure program for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn to sail and have intensive support for 9 month journeys. She had 3 rust red sails at 22m tall, and was 23 m long, and the owner was keeping everything on her authentic, so there was no automatic eases for her crew. We had to crank up the anchor manually, test water depths with a rope marked at meter intervals, pump out any collected sea water, swab the decks, and haul the sails up by hand, but it was great. It was the closest thing to a pirate ship that we had ever seen! We slept on deck under the stars on clear nights, went swimming in the clear aquamarine water almost everyday, had lots of time to relax in the sun on the deck, watch sunsets, play guitar, cook austrian and italian and canadian meals communally, and get to know the other 9 Austrian crew members and their dog, fabulous people who taught us alot about sailing and Austria and marine life. We took a little boat to shore for Italian wine once in a while, grateful that it had recently been refurbished with a motor so we didn't have to row, braved through a few violent electric storms, saw little glow in the dark sea creatures for the first time in my life, and were thrilled that they could also be seen swimming in our sea water toilet bowl! And of course we were all sea sick a few times, but that part will be soon forgotten.

After the great, salty week on board, the crew gave us a lift to Pisa, and it has taken us a couple of days to lose our sealegs, but we have nearly stabilized our vision again now. Pisa is a small place, and the leaning tower is the first peice of architecture to make me laugh out loud; it is a nice introduction to Italy. But as tempted as we are to explore the peninsula further, we will be pushing back on to course in the direction of Slovenia, with a short necessary stop to see Venice. So, we will stay in touch! Ciao!

We're goin' sailing!

Hi everybody!

We are just finishing up our time in Austria after spending 8 marvellous days here. Tomorrow, with three Austrian friends we are driving to Folonica, Italy and getting on a large, wooden sailing ship with 7 other Austrians for a week long trip. They just happened to need two more people before they could rent the boat, so it was a great oppourtunity for us! Hopefully we'll learn a couple things from the skipper!

Then it's on to Slovenia and the rest of our Balkan & Turkey trip. We'll post more later!

By the way...here is a photo from our going-away party at the Pub we worked at in Ireland with the South County staff!

London and Beyond!

We are now sad to report that we have left our lovely little emerald isle and are moving on to the next phases of our European experience; London, Austria, the Balkans and Turkey.

We had a great year in Ireland, and our pub, the South County, sent us off with a memorable party that involved betting on our coworker's dogs at the races, being serenaded over more than one pint of stout/cider, receiving an autographed framed mini hurling jersey complete with ball/stick (slitter/hurley) so we will never forget Ireland's odd but great national sport, Mike being pulled up to dance to Neil Diamond with the ladies in the cafe (he is such a good sport...and there were so many of them that resistance was futile). If you are brave enough to view the photos, here they are. Thanks to everyone at the South County for the teaching us all about the craic, and to Michael and Niamh and Caro and all our flatmates and hospitality club friends for a wonderful year.

And to make our last weeks in Ireland even better, Lisa and Tom visited for the last two of them! We had fun showing them around our city (10 months of scoping out Cork's sights, and 500 and some bars, peaked in our pride of bringing them to the very best), and while they patiently waited for us to finish up work, they visited some of the villages around Cork. We all trucked out to one of Ireland's oldest fairs, Puck Fair, which involved catching a wild goat in the Kerry hills, crowning it as the king and a 12 year old girl from the village as the queen (?!), and displaying it on a caged platform for the duration of the fair (the girl was allowed to roam freer than the goat). Lots of trading and selling by the locals and visitors, and drinking and music in the streets (think 'Snatch'), and turning around blind corners to find a whole village lane packed in with cows and bulls (and their mess) being traded by the tweed suited farmers, poking them testingly with their canes. Kilkenny and Dublin were fun too, Tom enjoyed being exposed to a whole new series of Gaelic sports, chasing donkeys, and drinking Murphy's stout, and Lisa was thrilled to explore castles and abbey ruins and being given impromptu bodhran (irish drum) lessons. It was easier to see them off to Canada knowing that it was only a few short months till we will see them again in Alberta for Christmas.

And we thought we wouldn't see anyone from Canada for two year...here we are in London visiting not only with Grandma Betty Germain's hospitable cousin Jim and his family, but also with Auntie Norma and Matt and Amy who we nearly coincidentally bumped into in the Portobello Market! We are off to spend an afternoon at Picadilly Square with them again today, and then off to the continent for a spell before we settle down again to work in England. We'll let you know when something else exciting crosses our path!

Yay!

Yay! Lisa and Tom are coming to visit us here in Cork in 3 days! They have been racing about the continent as well these last few weeks and are making us their last stop, and we plan on showing them some of the irish craic (fun, fun, fun). We'll be going to Puck Fair in Kerry, which is Ireland's oldest festival, the arts festival in Kilkenny, and Dublin, which is always a gong show! We've been busy the last few weeks seeing as much of Ireland as we can before we leave in 18 days (went by sooo fast!), working to save as much money as we can for our 2 or 3 month trip through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzogovenia, Serbia/Montenegro, Bulgaria and Turkey at the end of August, hosting guests from the hospitality club, and trying to imagine what our next year working in Britain will be like. In the last few months we had a lovely visit with Gren and Beryl from Cheshire who we stayed with before we came to Ireland, so it was nice to show someone around our new, temporary home, and check out some of the 2005 European Capital of Culture events with them, and explore the Blarney Castle and its famous stone. We cycled around the Ring of Kerry and its blue-green mountains, and took a little nausea-inducing boat out 12 wind-lashing kms into the ocean to Skellig Michael, the 1400 year old monastic ruins perched on the tiny craggy island. It is famous for its beehive shaped huts made of stone and no mortar which have stood the test of time, as well as being a home for thousands of sea birds, including puffins who were guarding their nests, hopping about picking flowers, preening each others feathers, and not really minding us photographing them from only a foot away! Another childhood dream accomplishment to scratch off CarliAnn's list! We hitchhiked around another of the peninsulas, Beara, last week, camped in the gardens of the friendly irish folk who picked us up, and saw dolphins and seals lounging in the bays. One doesn't have to travel far to see some amazing things in this country. Let's see, what else...we visited the medieval city of Kilkenny for the comedy festival, and watched the international comedians get whupped by the irish comedians in a football (soccer) match...Not bad for just a few months of chilling out on a little island off a little island off the continental coast! We moved from our place that we were sharing with our German flatmates a few weeks ago, and are now in really pretty student accomodation in the shadow of the city's cathedral, living with 2 french guys, 2 irish guys and an italian. We will only be here for another 10 days or so until we finish work, then off with Lisa and Tom, a few days with family in London, and then we are off to the land of kebabs! We will have new mobile phone numbers after we leave Ireland but we will be checking our email lots more as we start picking up some momentum. We'll be in Alberta for a month at Christmas too, so save us some snow! We already have a few hospitality club invitations in the Balkans, as well as friends to visit, so I think that we are set. Hope you are all getting the sunshine that we are missing here, and we'll start updating more often now that we have a few adventures coming our way!

FYI

FYI: We will be moving out of our house on July 14 and couch-surfing/garden-camping for our last month in Cork, just so that things don't get boring. So, email and our cellphones will be our only points of communication with the world outside our city after that until we settle in again in England in the autumn. Wish us luck and rainlessness!

Lookn Ahead as Our Irish Experience Draws to a Close (a.k.a.Work Permits Expire)

We have got our plans working a couple of months ahead as our time in Ireland is nearly over (sniff, sniff). Just thought we would let everyone know that we will be finishing up here in Cork around August 11 or so.

We are pretty stoked for Tom and Lisa's visit to Europe and to see us, and then we've got a trip planned for south-east Europe and Turkey, hopefully. We will be working in Britain after, but we haven't pinpointed any places exactly yet. Hopefully not too far from where Matt will be studying in the winter semester in East Sussex.

The other big news is that Carli-Ann's mom is getting married sometime near Christmas (CONGRATULATIONS again!), so we hope to be coming home to Alberta for a visit in December!

Can't wait to see everyone at home in 6 months!

Traipsing About on the Continent

Hey all, we are still plugging away here in Ireland, working every moment that we are not travelling... Looking forward to some visitors in the summer, and enjoying being hosts for the hospitality club, as we had been guests so many times earlier this year.

We did manage to fit another week of travelling in to our working weeks, at the beginning of May, one of the most memorable trips to date! We flew to Amsterdam for a couple of days, and enjoyed the cosmopolitan-ess of the city, basking in the sun, visiting all the major sites, admiring the canals, flowers, and of course all of the great bike paths! We can't wait to come back to bike around this cyclist's paradise, all flat, big bike lanes, even traffic lights for bikes! Then we met Mike's Grandma and Grandpa Germain in a little town, and joined them on their tour for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Holland, a big portion of which was performed by the Canadian forces, which they were both a part of, as was Carli-Ann's Grandpa Gord, we learned while we were there. We attended a ceremony with hundreds of veterans at the Holton Canadian military cemetary, heard Adrienne Clarkson speak, saw more mounties than we had ever seen in our lives in Canada, and were sprayed by thousands of poppies scattered by a military helicopter over the cemetary and those gathered to honour the occasion. It was a really interesting experience for us to be a part of this, especially as this could be the last big celebration of this kind, and it was wonderful to see grandparents...sort of felt like we were back in Canada for a couple of days!

The next day, we hitchhiked across Holland, and then on to another family event in East Germany. Carli-Ann's Grandpa Engelman's family was having a reunion, and even though we only knew two great aunts from Canada (and that was nearly all who spoke English!), we were very brave and showed up in the little town. We were surrounded and embraced by 200 elderly family and village members who were orginally from Egerland, a region that is now in the Czech Republic, but has (or had, perhaps) its own dialect, which we were treated to in song and speeches and history lessons. After a night of sauerkraut and cake and elixirs and hospitality, it was cool to realize that there is a whole side of the family that we had never met, even if not many of their younger members joined in the party. But we got a few email addresses of people to visit when we return, and chugging past the windmills and golden canola fields and blossoming fruit trees on the slow train back to the nearest town, we definitely felt like we got the real East German experience!

To top off our trip, we spent 18 hours on a lay over in London, where another newly acquainted family member, Jim, who used to be a bobby, then a cabby, took us on a taster-tour of the city, and we met even more family! We are looking forward to possibly setting up in London perhaps next winter to work for a while, and it will be much easier with someone to look out for us in the metropolis!

We'll update again when something exciting happens, and with our pace so far this year, I am sure it will be soon! See yous!

Northern Ireland

Hey all, happy spring! We actually saw lambs being born here, and the trees are all a'blossom. But we hear the temperatures have been warmer in Edmonton lately!

We have been doing good, travelling whenever we get a day off of work. We hitch-hiked up and through Northern Ireland for a week, and it was a great trip. The scenery, especially along the Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Coast was amazing, plus the people were so friendly (to us, at least, as impartial foreigners!) and tourism is not so prevalent here as in the Republic, so we were still a bit of a novelty. Belfast and Derry were such interesting cities, and the historical conflicts are still so recent, that everyone has something to tell you about it, and hitch-hiking is the best way to hear a huge range of views on all subjects. All the roadblocks and everything have been taken down in the last few years, but the political murals from both sides are a...colorful way to learn about the conflict. And the only violence we encountered on the whole trip was when an old IRA man in an 18th century bar, where the seeds of the Irish Independence movement were sown, smacked me on the head for calling the area "Northern Ireland", instead of "Ireland", but it was just with a roll of posters and a good dose of humour. Interesting place...

We are looking forward to the premier of the "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie, and going to the Netherlands next week to meet the Germain grandparents on their tour for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Holland, and then to Germany for an Engelman family reunion (mostly all family we have never met before!). Then we have a day in London with more newly acquainted family members, and then back to the grind in Cork.

Photos of our trip to Northern Ireland and of the traditional Irish music sessions at our pub are now posted too!

Take care!

Happy St. Paddy’s Day! now that we have recovered....

The blog has been a quiet space the last couple of months, because we have been working alot to save up money for travelling, and like in any country, that doesn’t make for such exciting news to write home about. But we have been saving up some interesting bits of our experiences, now that we have some time to update (and new roommates with laptops we can use!)

We went to Spain for 9 days in February, and had a great time. Kathryn is teaching English in Murcia, near the south-east coast, and it was really good to see someone from home. I don’t think we stopped talking, except to sleep, for the whole 3 days we were visiting her. We flew in to Alicante for a couple of days, and were intensely excited to see the blue ocean and sandy beaches and palm trees, even if it was a little too cool to appreciate them properly. But refreshing to see some sunshine and blue, open skies, after four months shuffling about under Ireland’s low hanging grey sky and chilling, damp winds. It was a little scary to practice our Spanish again, especially since the accent here is very different than in Latin America, but everyone was very friendly and helpful, and by the end of our trip we were rattling off in very enthusiastic Spanish, however broken it might have been. We enjoyed sampling the tapas and sangria and mediterranean cuisine, and the clubs stay open till the morning, so there was never a lack of places to go.

Hearing that Granada was one of the most beautiful places on earth, we hopped on a bus for the 4 hour or so bus ride for a few days visit. It began snowing as we climbed into the Sierra Nevada (which means ‘Snowfall Mountain Range, so we should not have been surprised), but it did look strange to us, seeing a white covering on sand coloured cave dwellings and olive groves. Then the bus stopped as it got dark, and we waited in a traffic jam for several hours, as our fellow passengers, all university students returning to studies in Granada after a long weekend, got more and more excited and the bus driver rambled off things in a quick Spanish that we could not understand. After about four hours, we asked the girl beside us what was going on, and were immediately taken under the wing of everyone as the poor Canadians who did not know what was happening, but were still remaining ‘tranquilo’, a high compliment to receive from Spaniards, I think, who are known for being quite relaxed. The highway that crossed the remaining 50 kms between us and Granada was snowed in and had been closed, a freak occurence in this part of the world, and the Red Cross was going to come and rescue us and take us somewhere to sleep for the night, as they could not get it cleared until the morning at the earliest. (Perhaps they had to import snowplows from Switzerland, hence the hold-up?) No one was allowed to take their luggage with them from below the bus, as the emergency vehicles could not accomodate all the stranded passengers and their suitcases, which did not impress the students, and the poor bus driver had to spend the night in the bus to guard the luggage! So, many hours after we were supposed to arrive in Granada, we were driven, four at a time, in fire trucks and ambulances and rescue vehicles through a fairly typical Canadian snow fall, to a nearby hotel in the village of Guadix, that was swamped with 1000 other tired, hungry, stranded travellors. We spent the night sleeping on the floor of the hotel ballroom, sleeping under a tablecloth, but were thankful that the hotel bar had sandwhiches and coffee enough for everyone. We bought a big jug of sangria to share with our new friends, who were absolutely doting on us, and when one guy pulled out his laptop and put on ‘El Senor de Los Anillos: The Lord of the Rings’, we thought, this just might be better than if we had made it to Granada that night, being just the two of us, foreigners walking around alone in a strange city. After all, had we not come to Spain to meet new people and have some Don Quixote style adventures? The next morning, a reporter came from the local newspaper, and on page 8, the story the following day read:

‘Mike and Carli-Ann Engelman, Canadians, were spoiled by their companions, who made every possible effort to keep them informed the whole time. Some were singing ‘Oh Canada’, and everything (that part wasn’t true, but captures the spirit of the atmosphere anyway). The two Canadians were travelling to Spain, looking for the nation of sun and beaches. Carli-Ann showed a Spanish guide book which pictured marvellous settings of sun on the beach.’

The article continued on, detailing our make shift movie theatre, how the students were missing important exams, and more forlorn stories of the complications of 1000 individuals being stranded. So that was our 15 minutes of fame, and we made it to Granada the next afternoon, and after surveying the pretty town with the stunning Alhambra palace/fortress and Islamic architecture and winding streets up the steep mountain face, we decided it was definitely worth the effort. We even saw an invigorating, intimate flamenco performace in a modernised cave up the mountain the following day, after touring through the Alhambra’s gardens of fountains and pools and its harem (abandoned for many centuries, obviously). We came back to visit Kathryn, and her large circle of international friends, for a few more days, and toured Murcia’s nicely non-touristy sights, and came back home, without the hoped for tan, but with a few stories to share.

We arrived home to find we had two new roommates, and the Swedish girl and the baby had moved out, which she had been planning to do since we moved in in November, but never had gotten up the momentum until now. Heiko and Torsten are electrical engineering students from Germany, near Frankfurt, here for 5 months, and are as enthusiastic about seeing Ireland as we are. They brought a car, so we can do some better day trips now than we were able to on the bus before, and we have had alot of fun so far, especially checking out the colourful St. Patrick’s Day parade and the traditional music sessions in so many of the pubs. We both had to work at our pub on St. Patrick’s Day, but what better place could we be, in an old world pub, adorned with sprigs of shamrocks, serving green beer (I thought that was a tacky North American tradition! But who knows where it originated really), listening to the yarns of all the old Irish men with a mischevious gleam in their eye. There were three seperate tables singing ballads at the end of the night as we were trying to shoe them out the door!

Last weekend, to celebrate my birthday, we decided to go out to Galway on the west coast and climb Croagh Patrick, a mountain that is now a holy pilgrimage for thousands of Irish Catholics. The story goes that around 500AD, St. Patrick climbed this mountain (767m), which is no Mt. Logan, but was a good 4 hour hike, especially slipping back down the gravelly slope, and offered us gorgeous views of the the bay opening into the Atlantic, 365 emerald islands below and the mists trailing in and over us to the purple-heathered peat bogs across the mountain pass. He fasted for 40 days and nights, and then from this mountain top did his famous snake banishing act for all of Ireland. At special times of the year, the pilgrims climb the mountain to the chapel at the top (which we were not impressed to find was closed for the season when we finally crested the ridge, dusty and sweaty), and do things like walk around certain piles of stones seven times saying three Hail Mary’s, two Our Fathers, etc. We did notice however, that all 12 or so of the fellow pilgrims that we encountered on the trail were all wearing proper footwear, contrary to the tradition of doing the hike in barefeet. I guess they were not quite sinful enough to warrant such extreme self-punishment, and I would not be brave enough to challenge the torture that the mountain slope’s chunky, serrated gravel could dish out!

Hitchiking back to Galway that evening was nearly as much of an adventure, as we got a little panicky when we were dropped off in the pitch black, desolate, silent, chilly, Irish country-side, thankful that there are no dangerous wild animals still roaming the hills, at least. But it was only 20 minutes later that we got a lift, and he gave us his phone number in case we did not make it out of his town that night, which was a very reassuring gesture. We got lifts in a Jaguar, with North Dakotans, and with three great Austrian kids who are here studying social work. We went for a pint with them later, and now we have places to stay in Galway, Sligo, Dublin, and Austria! Nearly every Irish person that we got a lift from had climbed Croagh Patrick at least once at some point in their lives, so the variety of ages and physical statures reassured us when we were worried that it might be too strenous for us.

The following day, we took a ferry out to the Aran islands, which have some of the most ancient remains in Ireland. We rented bicycles and cycled around the largest island of Inishmoor, on its tiny lanes lined by stone walls, some of which are thousands of years old, sectioning off every bit of the flat island. The craggy limestone and bluestone create a spectacular moonscape, and for most of the afternoon, our only company was a few horses, cows and a couple of goats. We went into a pub for lunch during a rainstorm, and there we overheard our first conversation, between two elderly men in tweed, all in Gaelic. We have heard the Irish language on the radio and on TV (think Sponge Bob Square Pants dubbed in Gaelic), but never in person, so we were impressed; there are not many Gaeltacht communities left in Ireland. We walked around a magnificent Iron Age stone ring fort, bordered on one side by dramatic cliffs over the Atlantic, and surrounded by a defensive forest of sharp stone spikes, photos of which we had seen before, so it was great to see it with our own eyes. By the next day, our legs were pretty sore from the activity, and we were happy to be back home.

The only memorable weekend from January was when we went to Killarney National Park to do some hill walking, which is a very popular activity here, following paths that have been used for centuries, and creating a crazy, niche market for over-priced woolen socks. We walked along the shores of the famous lakes of Killarney, that enduced in us a bit of nastalgia for the Rockies, past a crashing waterfall, through a red deer sanctuary (sadly, we didn’t see any), through oak, holly and yew woodland that sparkled in dewy brilliance as we got our first dose of vitamin D in weeks, and through low mountain passes amidst the grazing sheep. There was a traditional Irish stone cottage as a resting point about halfway through the park, that was just like out of a movie. As we got closer to the next town, we glided through a woodlands of mossy trees, and the forest floor was rolling with large boulders that were covered in a carpet of moss and shamrocks so thick that it looked something out of a Dr. Suess illustration. We have never seen such a variety of landscapes between two towns, and our camera simply could not capture the magical feel of the warm sun filtering in through the dewy trees, the purple mountain horizon, and the streams trickling between rocky hills and the lush, green valley floor. Now we know where the legends originate from of people getting lost in the fairie country, where time passes by at a different speed, for it felt like we could have stayed there forever.

So, we have more plans of seeing other parts of Ireland in the coming months, and if anything exciting happens, we will blog it. We are planning on leaving Ireland mid-August perhaps to see a bit more of Europe, and then on to Britian for the following year, and are looking forward to having visits from several family members! Hope spring is blooming in your part of the world, and we are sending lots of love across the ocean, especially to all the new moms we know who are about to have babies!

Slainte!

(pronounced ‘sloncha’: Cheers, or health in Gaelic)

Holidaying in Spain!

OK, it has been over a month since we updated the blog as nothing particularly exciting was happening over here. Our jobs at the pub and as a personal assistant are going fine, and we are working alot. We took one weekend away to go to County Kerry to do a walk through the National Park, but apart from that, we have mostly been pouring pints and making cups of tea. But, it has all paid off because now we have landed on the Mediterranean Coast and are taking a 9 day vacation in Spain!

We flew into Alicante on the south east coast and we are now in Murcia visiting Kathryn who is here teaching English for the year. The weather is sunny, and we feel like we are finally starting to dry out a bit after 3 months in an Irish winter, although it is not quite nice enough to swim in the ocean. But it was so refreshing to sit out in 20°C sun in a plaza drinking cafe con leche for three siesta-ing hours, cathedrals and arabic architecture towering over the palm trees around us, with Kathryn and her international friends. The trees lining the boulevards are loaded with giant ripe oranges ready for the picking (by ignorant tourists - they taste like car fumes), and the pigeons flocking about the squares are all white doves! Spain is known for late nights and sangria (can be bought in the grocery store in juice cartons for pennies) and tapas, and we are enjoying all of it. I think we will go to Granada for a few days early this week, so we will update again if we have any Spanish adventures. I picked up a children´s book called `My First Quixote`so that we can practice the language more, but everyone here simplifies their speech so it is easy to understand. (Hey, if we could travel in Poland, we can travel anywhere!)

We are hoping that as spring blooms in Ireland we will take more time off to see the country and travel a bit, but we do appreciate that working at the pub keeps things lively and we have met alot of people, even if we haven`t picked up the accent yet. Hope that spring comes soon to Edmonton and everywhere else! ¡Adios!

Rainy January

The weather here can be very depressing, as we were well warned before we arrived. But some moments are bright and warm like a late spring day in Edmonton with rainbows...and then it can be storming again within minutes. The wind was gusting up to 100km/hr last week, crazy. But we can cycle all year long here, so we aren't complaining too much.

Not too much new here now that we are settling in to a place instead of trotting between cultures...for New Year's Morten visited us from Berlin and even though Mike had to work at the pub on New Year's Eve, we went to visit him and have a taste of the Irish craic (pronounced 'crack': an Irish word with no proper translation into English that is an atmosphere of laughter, good conversation, music...basically a really good time, but the Irish have a proper word for it! That just shows how much fun we have here!). The next day we went to Dublin to visit our friend Caroline for a couple of days and show Morten the capital. That is a great city to party in, but we are glad that we live in Cork. Cork is smaller, safer, quieter, friendlier. But Dublin is great to visit, especially now that we have friends there that we met through the hospitality club when we went through the first time. New Year's Day in Dublin there was as much barf on the sidewalk as there was dog poop, and that is alot. Bit of a hazard.

Then we took a bus to Galway, a student town on the west coast of the country. We rented a car and drove around Connemara, which is supposed to be the most beautiful part of the country, and it was stunning. For anyone who has seen 'The Quiet Man', that is where we were. We saw dolmens (2000BC burial tombs with one rock perched on top of others like a door frame) and early Christian monastic stone beehive dwellings (the farmer chased us off his land though because it was after dark and he was convinced that we were going to leave the gate open and let his sheep escape, as they did the day before). And the weather was so miserable, that we were the only ones crazy enough to be touring the countryside, so we had each of the ancient places all to ourselves! The Cliffs of Moher were amazing, we hope to get some photos online soon. But the wind was blowing so strongly that the little streams that were running down the cliff faces were being blown back and into the air 2 meters, and we thought that only in Ireland would we see waterfalls flowing up.

Now that we are back, our work schedules are settling into a regular routine, which will probably consume most of our time, but we are going to try to get out of the city as much as we can. Ireland is definitely a different culture than Canada, but in other ways it is so familiar (especially compared to traveling in Japan or Mexico) that we almost forget that we live in a new country. So that is when we know we have to get out of the city, even just for the day, to see the magical place that we are living in for a short year.

So, we might not update as often in the next bit if we do not have much to say, but think of us drying pint glasses behind the bar, a rugby/soccer/hurling game on the screen behind us, a group of old bearded men playing an accordion, a fiddle, a flute, and a guitar to our side, setting the atmosphere to the proper Irish tempo, and us struggling to understand the accents of our customers. Not much to picture to the Personal Assistant job, so we can leave the imagery at that, or us chasing rainbows on our bicycles, bouncing off the pot holes of the bad Irish roads. No gold yet, but we are still hopeful...take care!

False Alarm....we are not moving again...

OK, we have come to a cool arrangement with our landlord and we are not moving again, which is a releif because it is alot of work. We will update when everything is confirmed. Work at the pub is going good and it is good to be earning euros...hoping to go to Spain in the spring maybe and take advantage of some of the cheap intra-European flights...write more in a few days! See ya!

Moving Again

Hey kids, we are going to be moving again in a week or two because the girl we are renting the place from is leaving, so if you are sending anything in the mail, hold on till we get another place. And only phone us on Mike's mobile, too please.

We had a good New Year's, our friend from Berlin came out for a week so we gave him a whirlwind tour of Ireland: Dublin, Galway, Connemara and the Dingle Peninsula. We'll write more about it later, but we are doing good, nice to be settling in with our jobs...talk to you later!