Glasgow Loves its Traffic Cones!

We have decided that the symbol of Glasgow must be a pylon, or fluorescent orange “traffic cone”. They are all over the roads here, and as is to be expected when surplus bright objects are readily available in the streets, come Sunday morning they are also hanging in trees, on poles, and to our great delight, on the heads of various important looking statues about the city. When I was searching for the Gallery of Modern Art, no one knew what it was, but when I said “You know, the statue of the guy on the horse that always has the traffic cone on his head”, everyone could point me in his direction.

Shocking, but we still have no flatmates! We still have the whole 3 bedroom, two bathroom place to ourselves! Though we have shared it with more than a dozen hospitality club guests already, we are still savouring the sweetness of this precious and fleeting position as sole occupiers of this mouldy, old tenement flat. But it must be something special as I can hear commentary floating up through my window as the hourly double-decker bus tour of the city passes below us. Our huge, drafty windows are also a prime parade-viewing spot and we appear to be on the usual route. Mike has been awoken to the noises of the annual 5000 strong “Motorcycle Action Group Easter Egg Run”, and I was roused from sleep by the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which had more police guarding it than participants. One block up from us is a lawn bowling green that we have yet to try out, and a great skate park. It has been exhilarating to watch the spring flowers blooming in the nearby park, beginning with snow drops, then purple and white crocuses, fields of nodding daffodils, the occasional tulip and bluebell, and cherry trees all a-white with delicate blossoms. But only recently have we been discouraged to note that Alberta’s sunny temperatures are creeping up, at 20 Celsius some days, while Glasgow is still clinging to the same 9 degree cloud as when we arrived in January.

Mike’s still happily well-employed with a temp agency that gave him a blissful two month long stint at IKEA. He brought home Swedish sweets and ciders nearly everyday, and soaked up the pampered Scandinavian working conditions that included an IKEA staff radio station open to requests, and all the lingon berry juice you can drink in an 8 hour shift. A few odd placements have crept in as well, such as city council canteens, and an elderly day care cafeteria, but we are both excitedly curious to see what British experiences will be chalked out for us as he begins working at the horse races next week. I predict he will return to Canada sporting a monocle.
Carli-Ann began her week on, week off job as a Personal Care Assistant for a couple in Dumfries. It was a great first week packed with memorable “cultural” experiences. Vivien regaled me with tales of her adventures on the Paralympic swim team in Atlanta '96 and doing the London Marathon. Dick is a biker who could empathize with the mind twist of driving and thinking in opposites, who whipped us up with my bike and his scooter to Dumfries’ elaborate mountain bike trails my second day out. Her little cottage has a name as the first line of the address, they have a (wild) hedgehog living in the back garden who leapt at the chance to plow into the food bowls of their two Miniature Schnauzers resulting in me having to deflea them before bed. And I survived the 3.5 hour drive to and around (and around and around) Britain’s 5th largest city of Leeds, mostly thanks to the GPS TomTom system programmed in John Cleese’s voice. The only times I screwed up was when he kept telling me to “Bear right, beaver left” round the roundabouts, which are available for your driving convenience in mini, regular, double, and the famed quintuple “Magic Roundabout” of Swindon. Thankfully, my driving instructor had focused especially on these exciting little whirlwinds of British culture, as well as killing my habit of turning on a red light. Our zip down to Yorkshire was for Vivien’s orienteering competition, the first day of which left me totally mystified as to the method in the madness of 4000 Brits in sweat bands, cleated shoes and crumpled maps grunting and dashing madly about a 12th century Knights Templar estate crowned by a Tudor-Jacobean mansion, gaping at clusters of orange and white dangling cloth boxes being peed on by the dozens of dogs loping after their masters. After Vivien illuminated the mechanics of the sport, my appreciation increased considerably the following day.
I am happy to report that the Joys have also kept me as part of their family for a few more months as their nanny on my off weeks. Paul (5) and Neil (2) are teaching me all about Scotland, their neighbourhood of Ascot Avenue, and the peculiarities of Glaswegian and British vocabulary: when colouring a picture of them I asked what colour were his pants and to my surprise was promptly shown…pants being underwear on this side of the Atlantic. I have recently provided no less than 36 “ARTS AND CRAFTS TIME!” ideas…I’m glad Paul is creative because the sources of my inspirations have just about been depleted! Neil (2) takes me trainspotting weekly, and to my delight, I was invited to share their “elevensies” which I thought was just a Tolkien creation for “The Hobbit”…and that very same evening I walked past Pippin himself near our house! The hobbit actor, Billy Boyd is a Glaswegian, but it was very peculiar to partake in elevensies and to walk past a hobbit on the same day.Between the job in Dumfries, being a nanny, working occasionally in the dementia unit, and with seniors in supported accommodation in a few different facilities, the prints on the pads of my fingers have nearly cracked open from all the anti-bacterial hand washing procedures. But we have added 744 kilometres to my bike odometer since mid-February, and several pounds of muscle to our thighs from carrying our precious bicycles up and down from our fourth floor flat twice daily.
Carli-Ann turned 27 Nessie-hunting and we’ve added conclusive photos to our Scotland folder! My birthday trip to Loch Ness was wet and grey, as it truly should be. The dark, whipping waters of the deep loch nearly convinced you that out of the corner of your eye something might be surfacing. We were taken on a short boat tour of the loch by a researcher who has been investigating the potential for giant creatures to survive on the bottom of Loch Ness since the 1970’s. The current trend is to chock it up to sturgeon, which can live for a couple hundred years and have been caught at 8m long. Mike’s birthday was a pretty low-key affair involving sloppy “courgette cake”, and samplings of the best ales in the land, particularly the Wyre Piddle Brewery’s “Piddle in the Hole Traditional Cask Ale”. From the label:“Piddle in the Hole” is traditionally brewed cask ale which has, until now, only been available in pubs in the surrounding villages, the names of which are featured in this rhyme…Upton Snodsbury,Peopleton and Crowle,Wyre Piddle,North Piddle,And Piddle in the Hole.”Another weekend when all the Historic Scotland sites were free, we bustled about the ancient capital of Stirling for the day, saving a total of $71CAD in entrance fees. The castle is a magnificent fortress, and I was intrigued to view the years-long process of weaving a copy of the 1500’s tapestry “The Hunt of the Unicorn”. At the Bannockburn Visitor’s Centre, Mike was trying on the chain mail of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace’s time, and then was found floundering at the back of the museum after everyone else had cleared out at closing time, struggling to escape from his 30 pound metal costume. A couple weekends ago we also journeyed along the banks of the lovely silver Loch Lomond and the snow-capped Highlands to the Isle of Mull and the Isle of Iona, where a 6th century monastery is still a functioning spiritual community. We had to race the three bus loads of old folks to the graveyard where Macbeth and 48 other Scottish kings are buried. They beat us back to the ferry though, filled it up completely, and forced us to wait for the next one. Vicious. The Highland cattle grazing lazily on the wind-swept heather bogs consumed many megabytes of memory on our camera, and we have decided that they must be the inspiration for the hip hair styles of the indie Glaswegian lads. Which reminds me that Corb Lund played in Glasgow in March and we caught the show at “King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut”. We never imagined there were so many Canadians in Glasgow, but they nearly filled the bar!
Our Glasgow lads introduced us to another Glasgow institution, The SUB-Crawl. www.subcrawl.co.uk Glasgow’s 110 year old subway is a dingy orange 15 station circular route of stale air (which still beats Edmonton’s half line), known as the Clockwork Orange. With ease, one can surface from any subway station and stumble directly into a pub, so we joined 25 of Glasgow’s finest young folk for James’ birthday and made a day of it. ‘Twas a long day indeed. Mike put the photos online - click here. We can even justify in including it in our broad category of “cultural experiences” due to the education we received as we entered the blue Rangers pubs and the green Celtic pubs. Depending on which neighbourhood we surfaced in, there was no mistaking where the loyalties of many pubs and patrons resolutely stood. Here’s a website worth a laugh about Glaswegian characters: http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk/, check out the people section.
All this workin and playin has nearly worn us out so we figured we were just about due for a vacation. Luckily our wanderlust coincides with Carli-Ann’s Grandma Betty’s scheduled tour of Italy, so we are off to Rome on Tuesday to meet up with her! We also threw in a few days in Sorrento for good measure. And since Carli-Ann can’t seem to be able to take a day off work without a plane ticket booking to keep her to it, we just got tickets to spend a week in Stockholm, Sweden for our summer solstice anniversary in June. We thought we would head even further north. Carli-Ann is still scheming about how we could pop over to Iceland before we leave Europe, but that might be pushing it a little.
And we are also very excited because we recently had our applications for working holiday-maker visas for New Zealand approved for next year, a process which was done simply over the internet. The only extra bit was that we had to go to a private hospital to get pricey chest x-rays to prove that we don’t have tuberculosis due to our choice of travel destinations, but Mike is thrilled to have gotten to keep the x-rays, which I am sure will be framed once we settle back in to Canada. Now we just have to figure out how precisely to arrive at this little paradise that is inconveniently located on the exact opposite side of the globe from Scotland. We have quite a few possibilities, including elaborate European and Asian and South Pacific and Round-the-World ticket options which Carli-Ann keeps dreaming up to try to squeeze every last corner of the earth into our realm of experience, but it will come down to how much more of Europe we want to see before we leave, and how much of our savings we will throw at the EU before sailing off! Our dear French friend and original hospitality club host in Dublin, Caroline and her boyfriend Ben will be arriving in New Zealand around the same time, so we will have some company down there!
And we have been looking even further into the future as well with some excitement. Mike has finally decided what he wants to take at university, so he’ll be applying to the engineering department at UBC for September 2007, which will put the brakes onto our global gallivant significantly. He’s thinking of going into something with energy conservation, so hopefully our future will unfold in this new direction with as much vigour as the last few years have doled out to us. So, Vancouver it will be, keeping our fingers crossed!
But first to Rome.

Glasgow callin

Heya folks, Glasgow calling! Just a wee check-in: We are adjusting back to the swing of working as much as we can and trying to save a little money. Carli-Ann's work has been great, if not a little hectic cycling all over the city, but I've met lots of great Scottish folk. I am now working at a few places which I may have mentioned before: with a social care recruitment agency that sends me out to a care home for seniors with dementia, and also to work with seniors in supported living accomodation where I get their groceries or clean their house or do their ironing or sit and chat and have tea and cakes (alot of tea and caking) which I really enjoy. For the month of March I am also nannying for a lovely family while the mother recuperates from surgery: 2 year old and a 5 year old, both boys who are teaching me how to say words "properly". I did a few shifts in a daycare with a temp agency, but I don't know if I will continue with them or not, I'll keep them as backup for now. And on April 10, I will be starting to work with the woman in Dumfries who I first contacted from Canada, pending my reference check. I will be working as her Personal Care Assistant like I did in Ireland, which I really enjoyed. That will be working 7days on straight and 7 off, so it will be a bit intense, but then that leaves us with alot of time on days off to explore Scotland and Britain. And we can only work until the middle of August anyways, so that only is for 4.5 months. We will still live in our flat in Glasgow, but I will commute to Dumfries weekly (about 2 hours on the bus or train). The only scary thing is that the first week that I am on, I will have to drive her in her van to and around Leeds, on the left side of the road, through a thousand "roundabouts" (traffic circles) and steering from the right side of the car! But she has agreed to get me a few professional driving lessons before I start, so hopefully I will feel a bit more prepared by April. Cycling alot is getting me used to the left side of the road again.

Mike is getting alot of catering work with a different temp agency, and is getting to know the city very well via the cycle paths. He has been working in Scottish Power, for an Indian wedding, at IKEA, and on the university and college campuses around town. He says that working in a new place every few days is stimulating for the brain, like brushing your teeth with your left hand!

We went out to Dumfries near the English border last weekend for the job interview and to stay with a Couchsurfing host in a nearby village. His mom was the village post mistress, and he rode a unicycle: I love the quirkiness of our hosts and guests! We have already hosted about 6 people from Hospitality Club and Couch Surfing, and have quite a number lined up in the coming months. He took us to the village pub for a pint, and the place went dead quiet when we walked in and everyone stared at us, just like in the movies! Then he drove us to Carlisle to go bowling, and the next day we went to a castle that was hosting the Scottish Final Sled Dog Racing on its grounds. No snow or sleds, but other than that, same idea as what you would see in Canada: dogs pulling tricyclish rigs, or mountain bikes, or scooters. We are heading up to Loch Ness for some monster-scouting for Carli-Ann's birthday this weekend, and are right stoked to go to Italy for a week at the end of April to see Carli-Ann's Grandma Betty who will be there on a tour!

We still have no flatmates, which is a wonderful thing as there are two other rooms to be filled and it has been six weeks now that we have had the place to ourselves! But we are quite convinced that as soon as we really settle in, that is when a stranger will appear in our kitchen and mess up our bathroom.

Wish us luck on our monster-hunting, and to all of you really thinking of visiting us in Scotland (Heiko, Daniel, Berna, Morten, Matt), you only have till August 18 to do it!

Slainte Mhath! (Cheers, or Good Health)

Just Carli-Ann here typing away because Mike is at his first shift tonight! Yay! A couple things have come through for him job wise, as we knew they would. He is catering at an Indian wedding tonight, that also includes bagpipes. And on Monday he starts a month long job in a cafe on the college campus. Again, the whole recruitment agency thing, but as long as the jobs with them keep rolling in, we are happy! And his agent said he might have to wear a bow tie to some of his shifts! Mike plans to create one out of cardboard if the situation presents itself.

We have mostly just been keeping our noses to the grind stone on the job search and being totally available for whatever shifts come up. Carli-Ann's had a good few shifts and enjoys the places she has been placed in. We currently have our second Hospitality Club guest, a tennis player from Belgium here for a tourament. And we have a few other people lined up for the next couple weeks, so that keeps it all interesting. Finnish, New Zealander, Scot, Japanese...

Couple other interesting bits: Mike discovered Freecycle, which is a website with branches all over the world where people post whatever they want to give away. Anything from furniture to books to electronics to pets. Mike posted that we were looking for a coffee maker, and we thought we would be lucky to get a coffee press. But he got an email the next day from an old lady, and he swung by her house to pick up this big, heavy espresso/cappuccino maker! She said she never uses it, and Mike is in his glory whipping us up fancy coffees with frothed milk toppings! The only sad part will be parting with it when we have to leave Scotland. We have worked it every way we can think of and have come to the conclusion that there is no taking an espresso machine on a cycling trip.

We are absolutely thrilled to have our bikes back from their London storage over the last 6+months. Cycling, or getting lost cycling, is by far the very best way to get to know a city, and we feel so much more liberated now being able to zip around town. There is a surprisingly good network of cycle paths that go from our place all over the country, and Google Earth has been indispensible in assisting us in finding job interview locations and other essential services in our new home city. Mike was GoogleEarth-studying where he starts on Monday and how to get there, and spied something that looked suspiciously like a stone circle on an overgrown hill beside a motorway right in the busy centre of Glasgow. We cycled over the other day, and sure enough it was an impressive ring of standing stones tucked away in between a whiskey distillery and apartment towers! And none of our Glaswegian friends had ever heard of it! Check it out on Google Earth at: 55°52'14.20"N, 4°14'38.11"W. The River Clyde is visible from our fourth story flat window, as we have finally figured out what the odd looking tower just beyond it is: possibly the world's largest windvane! 440 feet high, and sinking, so the rumour goes. And cycling back from work on Wednesday, Carli-Ann discovered a mountain bike park not far from us! We tried it out today, and were well impressed. It has 3 circuits through a wooded park, each sign-posted in colours for the skill level of the biker. The difficult route has lots of...sweet jumps, but the most challenging bit was deep mud, which shows no sign of drying up in this damp climate. Every other biker appeared to be fixing a flat, so we were grateful to have survived with air pressure intact, as we had forgotten our tools and were over 5kms from home. And within visable distance of the park was an active riding stables, lawn bowling green, and a vicious rugby game going on. And we thought mountain biking was rough and dirty!

Tomorrow night we are going to a gig here, and a funny story it is too. We were in a vegan cafe/bar for lunch the other day to celebrate our successful employment, and I looked at a gig poster on the wall and recognized a name. Closer examination revealed that it was a friend of Mike's from Edmonton who is playing a gig in that very bar in four days time! We were so surprised to find a friend's name on a poster in a little bar on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! So, we are pretty stoked to check it out! (A well-timed email got us on the guest list) www.shuylerjansen.com

And this is great too: http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

Congrats to Lisa and Tom on the new addition to their family: a big, white, fluffy polar bear of an akita puppy named Jasper!

Slainte Mhath!

Back to the Grind

More good news to report: Carli-Ann starts work on Monday morning! She is doing relief work at two or three agencies (they love recruitment agencies over here) mostly working as a nursery nurse (which we assume means a day care worker, but will confirm that when she shows up for the shift), in a senior citizen’s home with dementia patients, perhaps some nannying, and maybe some in a program for homeless youth. So it should prove to be a varied experience if it can all be balanced, and the beauty of relief work is that we can patch together as much or as little work as desired (a lot for the next couple months hopefully!) and the agency doesn’t mind that we only have a little over 6 months here. And we are very confident that a lot of work is going to come through in the next few days for Mike through similar recruitment veins, it is just the initial waiting game that proves to be tedious. Too bad he has never driven a 7.5 ton truck or he would have been gainfully employed already!

But we have wasted no time here: we got library cards and opened up bank accounts, and went to 9 interviews between the two of us. We still have no flatmates, so we have been enjoying the luxury of having a whole house to ourselves for this precious short time.

We also did the first leg (20km) of the stunning West Highland Way hill walk last weekend, a 152 km walk from Glasgow up into the highlands, much of it running along Scotland's famously beautiful lochs. We weren’t sure what we were getting our selves into when we first headed out, whether we would be isolated in the far reaches of boggy Neverland for 9 hours of tromping until we stumbled our way back to our new city, but I am not sure it you can really call it a hike if you can stop for cappuccino and Mexican food at a pub halfway through! No fear of getting stranded on this little island!

And Carli-Ann went with a herbal medicine student friend, Anais, to join the Royal Botanist Society on a mushroom foray on the seaside near Edinburgh . It was as odd as it sounded, us and a dozen or so 65 to 70 year old botanists in funny woolen hats and special mushrooming foraging equipment (one with her walker) poking about in the woodlands and oohing over each other’s fungal finds with long biological explanations that mostly went over my head. But it made for some great memories, and I did retain a bit of the knowledge so readily shared: who knew you could keep fire in a dried puffball mushroom in your pocket until you throw it onto your tinder box to light your hearth?

And thinking that we should take advantage of our few remaining unemployed days, we made the 9 hour journey on the bus down to London on Wednesday. Of course as soon as we boarded the bus, confident in the assumption that there is no way we will be offered work before Monday, we each got a call to begin working asap. But we could postpone them a little to accommodate our final trip. We visited Kathryn for our first and then our final night, thoroughly enjoying our excursion to the Polish Club in London for perogies (a rare and almost unheard of delicacy in London) and had the “opportunity” to listen to a regional Rotary Club meeting: we were the only restaurant table in the corner of their banquet hall. We figured Ken and Grandpa John would be proud of us. And we made the absurdly difficult journey once again to Matt’s castle at Herstmonceux. Our last visit three weeks ago involved us taking 4 buses and walking for 2.5 hours through the fields to reach our destination from London . We were determined to find a more convenient course this time, and some failed hitchhiking attempts, 4 trains, a bus that wouldn’t take our Scottish pounds sterling notes and a taxi ride finally brought us to Matt, and the conclusion that it is his turn to visit us next time. But the castle residents put on a good show for us as it was “Dress Up as Your Favourite Musician Night” at the pub, and we were entertained by Freddie Mercury, several Britney Spears and Avril Lavignes, Kid Rock, Elton John, and a plethora of others, us having the honour of a Matt as Johnny Cash at our table. The next day the three of us did another lengthy hill walking excursion through the rolling green hills and marshy sheep fields of southeast England, the footpaths eluding us far too often on our 25km trek, to arrive at the seaside and to dine on the best fish and chips ever at a 16^th century pub.

And today we accomplished the purpose of our visit to London: visiting Jim and Jean again, greasing up our hands by assembling our 6 month abandoned bicycles, proving our bravery by cycling (and taking a train a bit) through the centre of London to catch our three trains that would deliver us back to Glasgow . The connections were way too tight when dealing with gear and bikes and elevators and whatnot, but we survived, each of us in one tremblingly sore-muscled piece.

So, work begins again day after tomorrow, but its all interesting when its in a new country, so we are taking in as much as we can! We'll let you know what Mike will be spending his time at as soon as we know!

Home Sweet Home! 55°51'58.67"N, 4°17'18.97"W

We found a place to live!!

This evening we moved into our new place in Glasgow. It’s in the trendy west end neighborhood of Kelvingrove. We can walk to the city centre in about 20 minutes and to the nearest pub in…well, it’s just downstairs really. We are just doing some cleaning here now (actually, Carli-Ann is while I sit here and write a blog entry J) since the place has been empty for six months. There are two other rooms that have yet to be rented. We are in an old sandstone building on the 4^th floor, and after six months of hiking up four flights of stairs with our bikes on our shoulders, we figure our thigh muscles will be quite impressive. The building is between 100 and 150 years old like many of the tenements in Glasgow, our hall is painted a brilliant Barney purple, and the kitchen is an electric mint green, with black and white checkered lino. We’re on a busy main road with lots of food options around. Within a couple blocks are a few Chinese take-aways, a Thai restaurant, a Moroccan restaurant, a Korean restaurant and several Indian restaurants. No Scottish restaurants…

Last night was “Burns Night” a Scottish celebration in ode to Robert Burns, a famous Scottish poet. Burns Night is almost like Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland. We were staying with some friends, so we made up the traditional Burn’s Night supper – Haggis (minced lamb’s lungs, cow heart and liver, and oatmeal cooked in a sheep’s stomach: we thought we had bought the vegetarian version and were sorely disappointed to see what appeared inside), neeps (turnips) & tatties (potatoes), and whiskey of course. Unfortunately we didn’t have a bagpiper there who could “address the haggis”. Although our friend did bring out his bagpipes later and play us a tune! Would you believe that bagpipes are made of Gortex!

We also took a few days to whip over 50 odd miles to Edinburgh to see its romantic and haunted alleys and cobblestone streets, have our SWAP orientation, and go to a flamenco party with our Barcelonan HC host, Gerard, and his Irish, German and Yorkshire flat mates. When his party ended, the guys from a few windows down crawled across the window ledges to invite us to theirs, so off we crawled, an opportunity not to be missed.

We are thrilled being in Scotland, and tickled pink with all things Scottish. Our Glaswegian HC lads are pulling out all the stops to make sure that we won’t miss any important Scottish experiences in our six and a bit months here. We are so impressed the way that their hilarious banter flows like water, probably even smoother with us giggling at everything they say. They have had five other couchsurfers not including us since we arrived in their place, and I think they are single-handedly supporting the entire couchsurfing expereince in Glasgow (couchsurfing is virtually the same as Hospitality Club). We’ve been shown around all the best parts of this working class city that Kathryn had heard described at Seattle in the mid-90’s, and there are gigs literally every night. I hope we get a chance to save a little money in the coming months.

No jobs yet...we’ll let you all know as soon as we’ve found some! Oh, and you are all invited to come visit us!

Back in the UK!

We’re back in Europe, in Scotland, just in time for Robbie Burn’s Day!

After spending a wonderful, uncharacteristically warm, month back home in Canada, dashing between Calgary and Edmonton for no less than five sumptuous Christmas dinners, Carli-Ann’s mom’s lovely wedding, an inspiring journey to the Rockie Mountains for some New Year’s Eve skiing, and catching up with so many family and friends (lots has changed in the 18 months that we have been away, we met seven new babies!) we flew back to London on January 13, with only some minor turbulence over the mountains of the east coast of Greenland. Mike’s family, Jim and Jean, took as good of care of us as always while we were in London, as we spent a couple of relaxing days recovering from our jet-lag and drinking tea.

Once we were ready to hit the road again, we bussed it to Brighton, a popular English seaside city where many London families flock to during the summer. Our first sight as we got off the bus and stepped out into the dazzling gale force winds was the Pier, being circled by thousands of starlings. This is not an ordinary pier, but a monstrosity complete with a huge amusement arcade, schools of fish & chip shops, a Merry Go Round, a roller coaster, and a “Helter-Skelter” – an odd spiraling ride made famous by the Beatles song. We met up with our Hospitality Club hosts, Sophie and Josh, and received a nice tour of all the free and colourful parts their city. Sophie and Josh were not only Vegans, but also “Freegans”, which means they will eat almost anything – so long as it was a dumpster-diving treasure. We feasted on their day’s spoils, which included Marks&Spencer’s packaged “Millionaire Bars” – thick shortbread topped with rich caramel and chocolate. Their chicken regularly joined us in the kitchen to peck the floor clean of our crumbs.

Tuesday, January 17, we set out to discover Herstmonceux Castle , where Carli-Ann’s brother, Matthew, is studying for the semester in the magnificent full-on Hogwart Experience donated to his university (Queen’s in Kingston, Ontario ) by a grateful alumni. Although it was only 28 km away, it took us three buses and an hour and a half hike to find it. As we were let off the third bus in Herstmonceux village (the driver had never heard of the castle, and despite our expectations, it was not looming obviously on the hilltop as a castle should be), we followed a villager’s instructions and began to walk the alleged two miles to the castle. Spotting a moss-covered wooden arrow signpost reading “Public Footpath” pointing in our direction, we were delighted to have the chance to do some English hill-walking. This path led us through horse and sheep fields and golf courses, over streams spanned by a couple of fallen trees, and down muddy paths flanked by bramble bushes, startling up more than a few rabbits and grouse. A few times we had to choose a route from several options at unsignposted bridle path junctions, and on at least one occasion the directional signpost was laying unhelpfully on the ground. Although it was very wet, it was nice to see so much greenery and life after Alberta ’s (nearly snowless!) brown dead fields and leafless trees. After unknowingly circling around behind the castle and spying it through the forest, we managed to arrive by slipping under an electric fence, trespassing, and climbing over a couple more fences. Mike had the scenario staged in his head for when the farmer began yelling at us as we dashed through his yard: “I am Arthur, King of the Britons!” All just in time for Matthew to finish his last class of the day.

We had a great visit and stayed in a private room in the student dormitories just up the hill from the beautiful moated castle, and shared our meals in the student cafeteria with him. Matthew gave us a great historical fact laden tour of the castle: its pub, its ghosts, its secret panels and all, and the manicured walled gardens surrounding it, complete with goblin stone statues, 18 century chestnut trees, and a “Herst-Henge”. He seems to be really enjoying his time there, waking up every morning to the misty southern England rolling green hills, the program looks excellent, and he has already visited the Cliffs of Dover, the major sites in London, and is heading on up to Stonehenge in a few days. Our journey back to Brighton, then London, was much easier as we caught a lift on one of the shuttle buses that take the students to the library on the nearest campus, passing the famous ancient hillside chalk carvings of figures.

We returned to London to eat curry and cheese and onion pasties and stay a night with Carli-Ann’s friend, Kathryn, before catching a bus early the next morning to Glasgow . We were able to find a super deal online with Megabus – 50p for two tickets! (one Canadian dollar! They were actually free with just a booking charge to pay.) After nine hours on the bus (it was a very nice bus, we had our own table, well-utilized for our new laptop) we arrived for the first time in Scotland. Our host, Callum, brought us back to his crumbling flat where he lives with 3 other Scots – Ceir, Scotty and James. They are a hilarious bunch, but we can barely understand their accents and have to get them to spell out the important bits of conversation. They took us out for a traditional Scottish night “on the razamatazz” – to a teahouse for chai and live music, and then to the pub, followed by the Celtic Connections festival featuring several bands, including an Iraqi-Kurdish band with a synthesizer (don’t ask us how this fits in here!) which had all the Scots dancing. A house party complete with deep conversations with a bagpiper (he recited the Address to the Haggis for us, but I didn’t understand a word of it) finished off the night (or morning).

Tomorrow we will be heading over to Edinburgh for a few days for our work orientation, then probably back to Glasgow for the all-important Burn’s Day (although we did already sample vegetarian haggis), then down to a little town called Dumfries (tee hee) for a job interview…this might be the place where we settle, but nothing is sure yet.

Don’t forget to see where we are anytime by clicking the “Where are we now?” on the menu at the top! We learned last night how to say Cheers in Scottish Gaelic, but it has been forgotten already. But we still have eight months to immerse ourselves in all things Scottish, so I am sure we will have plenty of opportunities!

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!