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Home again...
I arrived back in Brisbane at 8.30am this morning and am taking advantage of my jet-lagged brain to write one last time of my overseas adventures. I warn you now - it's a long one but I'm only mentioning the interesting bits, and if you stick with it to the end you can find out how I was stupid enough to get scammed by dodgy Romanians.
I think in the last blog I mentioned our Croatian exploration which was probably one of my favourite spots of the whole trip. The country is just so beautiful (possibly made even better by the sun - yes I'm an Aussie through and through and love my vitamin D), and the people are really lovely. They have endured so much with the recent war where much of the country was under fire, but they have just picked themselves up and gotten on with their lives. The bombing of Dubrovnik apparently had no military advantage but was simply a way to screw up the tourism industry as the town is one of the gems of the Adriatic coast. They've rebuilt most of the damaged areas and you can hardly spot where the old and the new meet.
This was quite different to Bosnia, where we got to see a little more of the ravages of war. We started off with a day trip to Mostar, a cute little town in the south of Bosnia. On the train into Mostar the outer city is quite deralict and many of the destroyed buildings are left abandoned. And even in the city centre there a heaps of abandoned building that may contain land mines.
At the train station we were instantly mobbed by a little beggar boy in a leather bomber jacket. Once we walked into the centre of the old town, and where the bridge is, which is the main tourist attraction is - it becomes a totally different place. Architectually its like a peek into the past and what the town used to be like - beautiful cobbled streets following back and cross a magnetic blue river, and the bridge which people jump off. But the streets are lined with tourist shop after tourist shop and it's quite obvious that this part of town is just a facade for visitors rather than how people are actually living.
Some of the tourist shops were pretty crazy with lots of authentic war items for sale. You could buy a nazi matchbox and nazi paraphanelia, or a pen made out of a rifle casing or a packet of Sudam Hussein playing cards.
While we were there a herd of Asian tourists paid a local to jump of the infamous 23m bridge so we got to see what all the fuss is about. Personally I didn't think it was that impressive - I would of done it if the water wasn't so cold (she says...).
When we got back to the train station we met a little boy and his mother. The boy started kung-fu fighting and using one of the few English words he knew - "Bruce Lee", then that led to a hip-hop dance off with Jash. But then he pulls out a piece of paper from his pants and takes the boys into a corner to show it to them. Turns out he has porn stashed in his jocks! He was like 6 years old!
From Mostar we headed to Sarajevo and spent the day taking in the town. It started to snow but despite the weather in central town squares a circle of elderly men were enthralled by an intense game of chess. It was on a giant board and the men were all crowded around in a circle, and the players were dissing each other and having a great time. Who knew chess could be so exciting!
That evening Jash and I left our travelling crew and caught an overnight train to Belegrade where we had 8 hours before another overnight train to Bucharest. By the time we arrived in Bucharest we were both a little worse for wear and I blame this for why I let us get scammed by a dodgy cabby and his mate. Basically, we got in at 5.50am so not our best hour to start with. While we were sorting ourselves out a guy comes up asking if we are staying at the hostel which I had booked into. We wove him away but then me, being such a bright spark, went back and talked to him. He said he worked for the hostel and it was his job to pick up people from the station and take them to the hostel.. duh... So we went with him to a car with a driver and halfway through the driver asks us if we have money as this is a cab and we have to pay (alarm bells!). I asked how much and he said he didn't know - it was on a meter but probably a couple of hundred lei. I'd already checked out the hostel website and they said it would only cost between 6 and 10 RON which I told him but he said this was nothing. So I got out the guide book which had the general conversion rates but he said this is what the new currency - the RON is worth, but the money I had was lei and wasn't worth as much. In 2007 Romania did actually change currency value from the old Lei to the new Romanian Lei which is abbreviated as RON. But their money still just says Lei on it and this is where he was trying to trick us. By this stage I was pretty much aware we were being scammed but they had all our bags in the trunk and I was happier to hand over the equivalent of $100 AUS than to loose my bags so I just went with it. In the end, they did drop us at a hostel, just not the one we had booked into. Ah well... its not an overseas adventure without being scammed by dodgy cab driver.
The rest of our time in Romania wasn't that much better. I really didn't like Bucharest - unpleasent people, not particulary pretty, and really big and noisy, and our quick visit to Brasov didn't give us enough time to really see what it was about. But the train ride through the countryside was spectacular and I can definatly see how someones imagnination could run away with them and create a creature like Dracular.
I flew home from Bucharest which probably wasn't such a bad thing. Because I didn't really like it I was able to jump on the plane and look forward to getting back into Brisbane, rather than having to be dragged kicking and screaming.
I start back at work on Wednesday so have one more day of holiday bliss before it's back to the real world for me. But I've already got my next trip planned - Africa for 4 weeks next year... just need to convince work to let me go.
I'll try and upload a few more pics tomorrow. It's now 1.30am and I'm going to try and convince my brain it's nightime and I should be sleeping.
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