Croatia - the real Little Italy

Saturday morning we said goodbye to Sarajevo and took a bus 3 hours south through some cool mountains and rivers to Mostar, a town in southern Bosnia. Mostar is most famous for its old stone arch bridge which was built in the 1300s. Sadly the bridge was destroyed in 1993. But a few years ago the restored/replaced it with a new version, and a nice downtown area of shops and cafes have sprouted out along it and the river front.

After a few hours exploring town, we hoped on another (hot!) bus and headed to Split, Croatia.

Croatia is tough to write about. It is just amazingly beautiful and hard to capture in words. Green hills, craggy mountains, amazing beaches, beautiful blue coastlines. It is gorgeous.

Split was founded around 200AD by the Roman Emperor Diocletian who built it to be his retirement palace. (Italy is only a few hours west of Croatia by boat across the Adriatic Sea). While the "palace" still stands, it would best be described as a small complex, complete with city walls. Amazingly, not only is the palace still largely intact, there are over 3,000 people who still live in apartments and houses in the various alleyways and rooms of the palace! The whole area feels like a clean, largely undiscovered Venice.

We spent a pleasant night and day just walking around the Old Town, hanging out on the Promenade, admiring the nearly 2,000 year old columns, walls, archways, and art (including some Egyptian Sphinx sculptures that Diocletian imported for decoration). We also watched the Euro Cup final in a huge crowd outside and were ecstatic when Spain - who we've been cheering for throughout the tournament - pulled out a 1-0 victory.

We also spent a relaxing day and a half playing in the sea. We stayed at a nice hotel just outside town so we had a sweet pool and beach access right outside the door. Really pretty, though the rocky (not sand) beaches took a little getting used to. Still though, it was great.

Next stop - the island of Hvar. We are taking a big catamaran out to this increasingly popular Croatian island for 3 days of fun and sun.

Note: Uploading pictures so far has proven difficult. But, finally, I got a couple photos uploaded for the previous posts.

Bridge in Mostar

Cheesy B&W picture of tower in Split

Street corner, Split

Sarajevo - Minarets and Cappaccinos

Sarajevo is gorgeous. It has a unique feel to it due to the cool mix of cultures that formed it. The city was founded by the Ottomans in the 1500s but was always an east-west crossroads. There is a cool old turkish quarter with tons of old shops and kebab stands. There are a number of old (and new) mosques whose minarets populate the skyline. But there are also a number of churches and synagogues and a massive cathedral in the town center. And the city is in a beautiful setting. There are cool hills and mountains rising up above the town which sits in a valley with a nice river running through town.

Sarajevo is also extremely energetic at night. The central downtown area is all pedestrian-only and walkable. During the two Euro Cup games there had to be 3,000 people in all the bars and cafes that had set up outdoor tables chairs and tvs for watching the games.

We also ate really good food. Two favorites of mine were the doner kebabs from street vendors and the local dish of czevapi which was like a very onion-y hamburger in a grilled pita. Excellent.

The city seems very safe and pleasant too. Something I read here quoted a resident as saying, While we have war criminals hidden throughout the city, you will never feel unsafe wandering the streets. So there's that.

During the day, the biggest past-time in Sarajevo must be cafe sitting. Bosnians are big fans of the "Cafe-Bar" which serves alcohol, coffee, and sometimes ice cream. Everywhere you look around town, people are sitting. Sometimes sitting and smoking. Sometimes sitting and sipping. Sometimes having some ice cream. No one is eating though, and most cafes don't serve real food.
Coffee drinking seems to be a bigger part of Bosnian life even than elsewhere in Europe. There are even three different Bosnian words for coffee - one for the 1st coffee of the day, one for daytime coffee taken with friends or colleagues, and one for coffee served at the end of a meal or gathering intended as a polite way to tell guests that it's time to leave.

Still though, the rocky last century's worth of history are barely beneath the surface. Tour maps highlight the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated (starting WWI), the Holiday Inn where journalists hid out during the 1992-95 siege of the city, and the Sarajevo roses (when particularly deadly mortar attacks hit town, the sidewalk holes were repaved with red cement) which are all over town, including right in front of our hotel. And finally, this may just be in my head, but people here, especially the older people, seem to look like they are somewhat weary and distant below the surface. There also seem to be more than the average number of beggars missing limbs and many people seem to be shopping but nobody seems to be buying anything. While this NYT article gives a darker perspective we generally experienced the city as very happy, lively, and energetic.

I would definitely recommend Sarajevo. It was culturally unique, felt authentic (almost no Western tourists), really energetic, and very scenic.

View of downtown and mountains from our hotel

Old mosque

China's stock exchange

It's been a rough year since I last wrote about the Shanghai Stock Exchange. After peaking just over 6,000 in September, the SSE is down about 56% to around 2,700 today.

Pecs, Hungary

We had our first encounter with Soviet-era infrastructure on the train ride from Budapest to Pecs. Unsurprisingly running late (due to unforeseen broken ticket machines on the Metro) we arrived at the train station hot and sweaty and barely in time to catch the final train of the day to Pecs. We hopped on the train and were immediately faced with brutally hot and cramped conditions on a train that was far older than me. Needless to say we were eager to disembark 4 hours later in Pecs.

While I had never heard of Pecs until stumbling across it a few weeks ago in a guidebook, it turned out to be a fantastic stop on our journey towards the Adriatic coast. Recently named as Europe's Cultural Capital for 2010, Pecs oozed charm. It also showcased the multicultural legacy of southwestern Hungary. Our hotel was next to a beautiful and massive old synagogue, the main square was dominated by the 'Mosque Church' whose steeple features a cross atop a crescent moon, and rising above the city is the massive Basilica of St Peter.

In addition to wandering around, sampling gelato and coffee at various cafes, touring some of the old churches and museums, and hiking up and around the turrets of the old city walls, we were also lucky to experience Pecs' Gastronomy Festival! We had a great night full of sampling Hungarian wines (deservedly not famous), amazing food (lots of fried stuff in red sauces and some amazing grilled sugared donuts, like round Hungarian churros), and live music and dance. It was another great night.

Main Square, Pecs

Train to Bosnia

After four days in Hungary, we hopped on another train, this time for a long, winding trip to Sarajevo. We traveled briefly south through Hungarian countryside to the Croatian border, spent a few hours traveling through Croatia's interior rolling hills and cornfields to the Bosnian border, and then rolled through Bosnia to Sarajevo. While there is only one 2-car train per day that makes the trip from Hungary to Bosnia, we had a relatively new, though still AC-less, empty cabin to ourselves. Much like US airlines, we have a 9 hour ride with no food service. So we packed a lunch/dinner of clifbars, and salami, mustard, and cheese sandwiches from the grocery store and set out on our way.

I am excited and lucky to report that Bosnia is the 50th country that I have visited in my 20s (I just turned 29). More than once in the past few years, I've though I would only probably make it to 10 or so more countries in my life. But the more I travel, the more I keep finding places I am eager to see! And I have continued to be lucky enough to find time and opportunities to experience them. Like a number of places I have visited in the last 9 years, Bosnia was not really on my travel radar screen until just a few weeks ago. And yet somehow, here I am. So we will see - I once again am at a stage where I suspect that I will not visit too many more new countries. But I am really lucky and surprised to have made it to 50 so far! And, more immediately, I am excited and a bit nervously anticipating this next country, which is supposedly fascinating, lively, and recovering well from the wars that have ravaged it for most of the past century.

Budapest, Hungary - Summer Adventures begin!

Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria. Give up? The countries that border Hungary.

We arrived for our summer tour through the Balkans in Budapest on Saturday afternoon. After a quick trip to the ATM for some Hungarian Forint (Hungary is EU but not Euro, though equally expensive it turns out) we quickly settled into life in strikingly beautiful central Budapest. We were fortunate enough to land here on Midsummers Eve and found festivals celebrating the longest day of the year. After a quick nap, we ventured out and found some numerous awesome sidewalk cafes full of Euro Cup fans, fantastic goulash, and not enough air-conditioning. For Midsummer, Budapest was holding a MuseumFest and kept all its museums open until 2am. So after some drinks, festive soccer, and a great dinner at a restaurant called Mensa we found ourselves venturing through the Hungarian National Gallery at 1 in the morning, contemplating our good fortune on our first day of summer.

As the frequent comparisons suggest, Budapest reminds me a lot of Prague. The Danube winds through the middle of town, dividing the two halves of Buda and Pest which merged in 1000 to found the current capital. Buda is dominated by Castle Hill, which rises quickly up from the riverbanks. It has beautiful old churches, winding streets, and views of town. We stayed in Pest which had more hotels, restaurants, cafes, and pedestrian shopping streets.

In addition to just wandering and running around town (a summer of health has begun to try to remove some of the excesses of business school), some of my highlights of Budapest were nightly viewings of Euro Cup games with avid fans, great Hungarian food - sausages, salami, goulash, mustard, sauerkraut, pork, and paprika everything, and a trip to the baths. Budapest has a huge bathing tradition, and we spent one evening in the huge public baths in the city's main park, rotating between pools to cool down and warm up, and all the while playing in the bubbling jets.

For a while in the early 20th century, Budapest was called Paris of the East. While I expected to see more signs of the country's occupied past (the new republic is less then 20 years old and for a number of years received less attention and investment than its central European peers), Budapest today was a booming, clean, expensive, culturally and visually impressive metropolis. It was an awesome place to begin our summer adventures.

Hungarian Parliament

View across the Danube