East-Eurotrip

I came to Montenegro after all, and I'm glad I did. I came to a small resort city on the south of Montenegro called Budva. I called before to the local hostel (the only hostel in whole of Montenegro, that's why I chose to come here - if there is an hostel, it must be a good place to stay), but they had no vacancies, so I decided to just come and find a place when I arrive.

On the bus station I met a girl who offered room at their house, and I took it and slept there for two nights. I was lucky to go with her, because it turned out that she (Maja, read as Maia in english) was very friendly, and we ended up having long conversations about lots of things. She lives with her mother in a somewhat small flat, but very homy and cozy, and rent two rooms in the summer to get some extra money.

About Budva - the two main attractions here are the beach, and a nice but somewhat small old city. The old city here was rebuilt after an earthquake some 200 or so years ago, and looks very new and clean for an old city... almost too good to be real. The beaches are nice, filled with locals and tourists (a lot of russians come here). One swedish old guy told me some days ago, that the montenegrian girls are considered the most beautiful in the world. They are indeed very beautiful, but for some odd reason, the only women you see bathing topless here are old ugly women, who should wear as many clothes as possible...

Today I went to a nearby city called Svet Stefan. It had some more nice beaches, a nice old city used for hotels on an island connected to the mainland. I didn't go though to the old city there, because they charge 7 euros to enter, and Maja told me it's not worth the money.
I also rented a motor boat today in Budva and sailed alone for an hour. It's really great, maybe I'll do it some more in Israel.

Trivia fact - did you know Montenegro got it's independence only in June this year (2006) ? Before it was united with Serbia, but now it's independent and already part of the EU.

That's it, tomorrow I'm going back to Israel. See you all in a couple of days (well, at least the Israelis who are reading this)

Dubrovnik is really a beautiful city, have a very unique old city center, with roads arranged in a criss-cross organized fashion (since the 12th century!), a wide main road, with many small alleys going up and down from both sides of it. There are also many tourists and tourist-traps here...


The old city in surrounded by thick walls, still standing (and also used in the last 1992 war), and you can walk around the city on them (takes around an hour), and get a wonderful view of the old and new city, the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. Also there are a few islands nearby, and I visited one of them called Lokrum, went again to a nudist beach there, this one much smaller, just a strand of beach dedicated to FKK (the german name for nudists), and also walked around the island (with clothes...), there is a nice forest all around it, and a small botanical gardens which don't look too impresive. You also get an excellent view of the old city from the island, which is just 1km away from the mainland.
It seems I can't move my flight, which means I'll have to go to Montenegro afterall. Maybe I'll go there before thursday, to have a day or two to look around. Haven't decided yet.

Was in Split for one day. It's a nice but not too exciting city, with a small old city filled with either coffee shops, churches, or architectual monuments used to squeeze money out of innocent tourists.

I'm getting sick of travelling in buses too much - 8 hours from Rovinj to Zadar, 6 hours return trip from Zadar to Plitvice Park, 5 hours from Zadar to Split, 5 hours from Split to Dubrovnik...

I'm thinking about just staying the rest of my trip in Dubrovnik, just relaxing here, and if possible even fly back from here. More on Dubrovnik will come - it's suppose to be a really beautiful and lively town, with many beaches, beautiful girls, coffee shops and old city. Perfect place to unwind.



Statue of first bishop of Split, beheaded by roman emperor. Everybody is kissing his toe for good luck. Look how shiny it is...

Well, arrived to Zadar as a base-station for exploring two of the most beautiful national parks in Croatia - Pakelnica and Plitvice.

First a bit about Zadar itself - the city is nice but not anything too special. It took part in many wars, including recently in 1995. Evidence can be seen in the old city part, which has buildings from all times, starting with the romans and ending with newly built, the newer houses replacing older destroyed ones. Getting to Zadar from Rovinj was 8 hours on bus, which is quite terrible. Obviously, I slept most of the way... My plan was to have two days alone, just travelling in the parks. As you will soon see, I didn't succeed.

On my first day I went to Paklenica park. It's a park in the mountains near the Adriatic Sea, 40 mins. north from Zadar. You walk through a gorge with high mountains on both sides, and a river in the middle. Well, at least in the winter there is a river, now there is just a small stream.
On the way there you see a lot of people climbing the cliffs on both sides of the track, and there are even 700m cliffs that people climb (but I didn't see anyone when I was there).


I also took a side-path to a cave, which the sign said takes 40 mins. to reach. However, the sign didn't say it's 40 mins. of a really steep trail, and by the time I got to the cave I was exhausted. Sitting there I started talking with a dutch woman also travelling alone, and she was a really funny person, so we continued travelling the rest of the day in the park together. The cave itself was nice, nothing comapred to the caves I saw in Slovenia, but it was pretty cold inside, and I was sweating, so by the evening of that day I started to have a little cold.


On the second day I went to Plitvice. This is a park of lakes, with beautiful green-blue water. The lakes are in more than 10 levels, each level falling to the next one in a series of waterfalls.
I went to the park with two scotish guys who slept with me in the room in the hostel, which seemed geeky but nice enough the previous day when I went with them out to have a beer in the city. Only in the park I realized that they are both not so fun and somewhat annoying, but I had no way of ditching them, because we both had to return to sleep in the same room at night, and it would just made everything look akward.
Also, my cold was getting worse, and it started raining in the afternoon. I didn't have anything long because in the morning in Zadar it was sunny and hot, but apparently when going inland the weather changed.

Another adventure happend to me on that day. I slipped down some wet stairs in the park, and hurt a little my arm. I thought it was nothing, but then a few hours later it still hurt, so I decided I better check it. I thought it would be difficult getting to a hospital me being foreigner and all, and expensive - which means using my travel insurance. I was still contemplating if going is worse all that hassle, when I read in the travel guide that for local people and EU citizens, including Great Britain, medical treatment is free in Croatia! I asked the woman next to me in the bus, and apparently the hospital was 5 mins. from the main bus station in Zadar. So, when I got there, I went to the hospital. They were real nice, X-rayed my arm (not to worry - it's just fine) and sent me back - without costing me nothing!
I also changed my mind a bit about Croatian people. I thought until then from my experiences here they are all proud and national, and not so nice to foreigners (in contrary to Sloveinans who are always so nice). The people in the hospital were however really nice, so they might still have hope... :)

Yesterday the three of us (I, Marco & Roberto) drove around inland Istria. We saw a few nice mall villages, and also an old church with 500 years old frescos in the village of Beram. One of the frescos is supposed to be well known - Dance Macabre. To enter this church, we had to go to the nearby village, and ask an old lady living there to come with us and open the church for us. She doesn't speak any english, but luckily she speaks italian, so Marco could explain it to her. Anyway, I guess this is what she does all day long. It was like a computer game - find old lady, get key, go to church...
After the church we continued through some other old villages, and got to Perac, the biggest resort city in Istria. It's less nice then Rovinj where we sleep, but has a lot more tourists there. We saw the famous Basilica of Euphrasius, which wasn't that impressive. Just a big old church.

Dance macabre:














Today me and Marco took a boat boat trip around the area of Rovinj. We went to a small island called St. Giovanni, with clear amazing water around it. Then we went to the Lim Fjord and had lunch, and then sailed on and returned in the afternoon to Rovinj. Was all in all nice. Tonight we're going to a barok concert in the city, and tomorrow morning I'm off to Zadar, which will be my next base for the national parks of Plitvice and Paklenica. Roberto and Marco are going back to Rome tomorrow. Some people have to work...


If you ever get to Rome, and want people to think you're local, just use any of the
following roman sleng phrases:
Vaffanculo - fuck off
E daie va - come on
Testa di cazzo - dickhead

I arrived to Rovinj (in Croatia now, if you haven't followed) with Roberto and Marco.
It is a really quaint old city near the Adriatic sea, with a lovely old center, excellent sea (although the beaches here don't have sand - only rocks or concrete, or in the best case gravel).
The sea itself is very blue and clean, but somewhat cold (maybe because it's september now...)
We found a very nice apartment 5 minutes walk from the city center, for just 50 euros per night (together, not p.p). Pretty cheap. We wondered around the city, and I plan to stay here until wednesday morning, when Marco and Roberto return to Italy, and I continue south in Croatia.
On the border we got stopped and asked if we have any drugs. Apparently three guys going in a car seem suspicious here. Of course we didn't have any, and were let to enter Croatia.

Today I went to camp Valalta - voted first among naturist (hmmm, a shic word for nudist) camps around the world. It's really odd at first, everybody's naked around you, walking, riding on bike, bathing in the sun. Old people, young people, beautiful people, ugly people. Everyone.
But after a little while it became really great - it's just total freedom, nobody is embarrased in their bodies, everyone just walking as god (or nature, depend who you ask) made them. You really should try it, it's really awsome feeling walking around naked in the middle of the beach, and swimming and sunbathing, and nobody looks at you or care! Total freedom! If you don't know, it's totally not about sex and such stuff, it's just about feeling free about your body. and don't worry, I'm not appearing in the pictures (at least not in mine...).


By the way, they didn't want me to enter at first, because I came as a single man. Apparently they are afraid of perverts or something like that. But after I told them I came all the way from Israel just to come to their camp, they gave up and let me enter. I'm so persuading! Most people there were either families, or couples. I didn't really see any other singles (men or women) besides me, except one or two oldies.
Notice the following sign on the reception. What is special?















Yesterday night Marco made dinner - tomato&tuna pasta. Today I said I'll make something. I'm off to the supermarket to buy ingredients, I still have no idea what I will make. Tomorrow and the following day we'll probably go sightseeing in other cities in Istria - Pula, Porec and maybe also the Lim Canal.

Piran, the last city in my voyages in Slovenia.
Piran, an old city with a beautiful sea, crowded with turists, but still charming and beautiful. I was in Piran one day, and just walked around and saw all it has to offer.
After I finished being melodramatic, I've met an Israeli girl called Tami in my hotel, who travelled through Slovenia with two Italian guys she met, called Marco and Roberto (or as she described them, Shimshon and Yovav...)

I joined them and another 3 girls for a jazz show in the night in a nearby city called Portoroz. Tami continued the next morning to Venice, and I joined the two Italians who also planned to continue to Croatia. Even more convinient, they have a car!




I also made a great discovery - I found a slovenian version of BAMBA!!! It tastes less good than the Israeli version, but that was expected...
Boaz, specially for you:

I was two days in postojna, a small village with nice people. People come here for two main reasons (I mean if they don't live here) - seeing the castle, and seeing the caves.

The castle here (called Predjamski Grad) is build in the fucking middle of the cliff! It's amazing! There is also a story about it in the 15th century, when this guy called Erazam used it to escape from the German Emperor at that time. The germans sieged the castle, but he used tunnels in the cliff itself to get in and out of the castle to get food, and he would throw all sorts of yummy food on them to tease them. He was eventually betraid by a servant, who marked with chalk the location of the toilet, and when Erazam went there he signaled the germans who fired on the castle and killed Erazam.








Why there are tunnels in the rocks you ask? well, all this area is Karst area, actually the first one explored, and the named karst comes from the name of this area (Kras). There are a quite a few karst caves here, but the two largest ones are the Postojna Cave, which is somesort of a disneyworld, because they installed electric train there to travel around the cave, so it's nice but doesn't look authentic.

The second one, called Skocjan cave, is amazing! It's much more authentic, you walk there and it's a huje cave the river carved in the rock, and then after some time you get to a huje 100 meters high gorje with a river flowing on the bottom! It's really unbelievable.
It's not allowed to take pictures in the caves, and I tried a few in the Postojna Cave, but the lighting is not good, and I didn't want to use flash, so there are a few pictures on the kodakgallery site, but they're not so good. I put here a picture I found on the internet of the Skocjan cave.







I met here this cool guy called Zonz. He's like the slovenian twin of Yaniv Liviathan (for those of you who know him. I think nobody who knows him actually reads this blog...). He works at the reception of the hostel I was sleeping in. He offered to take me to some place nearby to learn how to ride horses (I didn't do it in Bled - the lady in charge there of the stables had to go to the dentist). Here also I didn't get a chance to do it, because on just that day they had a show of the children training there, and so all the instructors were busy. Instead, we went around the small village there, visited an artist friend of him with a very cool studio apartment she makes herself, then went to his mother house. I also joint him and his friends for beers one night, it's a group of the slovenian version of 371, computer people with same type of odd arguments...
Also, you remember I told you about the good beer I had in Ljubljana, called Union? apparently, Union in a gay beer. well, not really, it's considered ZFONBONI Ljubljana beer, where all the real men drink Lasko. Hmmm, I still think Union tastes better, but then we always knew I'm a KUSIT.

It seems Slovenia and Israel have a lot in common, but it's interesting to observe the little differences... Food here is much cheaper (half price), they seem to really like eating pizza & ice-cream, drinking coffee (not really good one, so far), maybe also a bit local food, and that's about it...

Took a day trip to Ptuj (in the east side of Slovenia). I got there around 23:00, it's raining, and I have no idea where my hostel is. Eventually found it, and it was really nice and cozy (specially after the rain).
Next day I went around town. It's an old city, with nice little old center dating hundreds of years ago. I also went to a relatively small castle there, and they had there camp for kids where they dress and act as in medieval times.
The castle itself was pretty nice also, with several exhibitions. There were several funny midget statues, and a show of costumes they use on a traditional festival they have there each year, dressing up in sheep skins with long red tongues. It's somewhat like in the movie "the village".