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.