DEFCON 2

When we learned that we should go by bus to Istanbul (8 hours from Salonika) we didn’t had a good feeling. Our last experience in a bus was in the Balkans, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

However, when we saw the bus waiting for us, it was a relief. Plenty of space, brand new, with AC, individual media stations, a guy passing every few minutes to give us water and snacks… And although it had no WC onboard, we were traveling with Barney Stinson. Or at least, his twin. Check it out yourselves here and here.

Then in Istanbul, the chaotic traffic that will travel with me for most of the trip around the Middle East started to show up. Lost in the bus station –itself a few kilometers outside of Istanbul-, Barney, two more Americans and I didn’t know exactly how to get to town. And everyone we asked for only repeated incessantly “Aksaray, Aksaray!” –another one to add to Alençon, Hollendretch and Doboj-. We later learned Aksaray was a neighborhood close to the city center.

In the end we took a taxi the five of us –the Americans and Barney thought we were going in two taxis…- to the city center and from there, we splitted up to our hostels. We would see again Barney the day after, just before he took a train to Sofia. Poor guy, skip Istanbul fro Sofia, such a dull city. He probably had a Bulgarian girl waiting for him.

As for Istanbul, I only can say it’s impressive. The Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace are the ones more famous, but for me the Blue Mosque is much better. The Basilica Cistern, an underground Ottoman cistern is also worth seeing. And the best of all, it was all free for being journalist.

Well, in the Harem of the Topkapi Palace I had a few problems. The guy behind the desk was rude, really rude. He didn’t want to understand me. I had to show him my Press Pass several times. I even showed him the Press Passport, where it’s explained in several languages (including Turkish) that I’m journalist. He refused to give me my ticket until a supervisor came and pushed him to do it. But as soon as he left, the guy started to swear in Turkish and he didn’t “give” me the ticket; he literally threw it to me instead with bad gestures and words.

The second day was a bit more relaxed. We bought presents for those back at home (basically, between David and I ended the existences of a little shop) and we sent home a parcel full of all the weight we didn’t want to carry around anymore. A sunset from the Galata Bridge allowed me to be for an hour between Asia and Europe (although it wasn’t between two Asian and European girls, as I would wish) and finally, being interviewed by students of journalism and political sciences ended the Istanbul tour.

It was time to say goodbye to Istanbul and David. He was flying home but I was staying and I had still a month ahead of travelling. The thrill was to come; the most exciting part was to come. It was calling at my door, and it was the day after. It was the time for a real taste on the Middle East.

It was time for Iraq.

Athens is a city where at every step you make, you trip over a stone full of History and stories. Or at least it is like that in the city centre. As we were going to stay there for three days, we decided to take it easy and relax. In other words, the first day we didn’t do anything but walking calmly around the city.

As for the second day, the plan was to take a ferry to Delos. The island of Delos is like a museum itself. Sleeping there is banned, so trips must be made in the day from Mikonos. And according to our guide, it was possible to do in a day from Athens. Well, not exactly… Schedules for the boats didn’t match each other and we end up in Mikonos without being able to go to Delos until the next day. We couldn’t allow ourselves that, so we just spent a few hours in Mikonos –itself a great place for holidays- and came back to Athens. So another day of not doing anything -but spending 8 hours in a couple of boats and staring at the sun.

With these precedents, the third day was supposed to be the good one. The Acropolis was waiting for us. Thanks to my Press card I didn’t have to pay for any entrance. But even if I had to pay for it, I think it would have worth it. The Acropolis is awesome, especially when you are close to it. Not so much the museum, that is worth skipping if you live or go to London. For starters, you can’t do any photos inside and then, there isn’t that much to photograph once there. Much of the originals are in the British Museum –which is free and allows photos. So the only thing worth seeing is the place itself, not the museum.

In our last night in Athens, the rain appeared again in the form of an electric storm. Being in Athens, watching the Acropolis just a few kilometers from our hostel and with all that thunderstorms, lightings and show of power of nature outside, you couldn’t but feel like a terrified ancient Greek asking for forgiveness to Athena or Zeus.

But it was time to leave. Just before doing so, I met in the hostel two guys doing a sea Interrail, by boat. They were studying Adventure Media in England –got to get more info on that, but unfortunately I could only exchange e-mails with them because our train to Salonika was waiting for us.

The initial plan was to go directly from Athens to Istanbul (23 hours by train) but apparently there was a problem with the railways. The Greeks said it was a matter of the Turks, the Turks will say it was the Greeks. Bottom line, we had to catch a train to Salonika and then a bus to Istanbul. So we spent our last night in Greece in Salonika, doing nothing but walking and relaxing by the sea –there is actually nothing much to do there.

And the day after, Istanbul awaited us with Barney Stinson.

After the Balkanic odyssey we really needed something like Greece. Right from the beginning it looked good. When you board a train full of young people back from a rock concert, with plenty of beer and willing to continue the party, you know something good has to happen.

We had two seats –or that we thought- in a compartment with the two quietest guys in the train. A guy and a girl that at the beginning we thought were a couple (but not). We didn’t talk too much until we got into Greece, but then the party started. Soon after entering Greece, the train stopped for 20 minutes. No passport control or anything else; just a strike.

Greece is suffering one of the worst blows from the world financial crisis and the government chose to cut salaries everywhere, starting with the public workers. Not many liked it and strikes are frequent. That day was the turn for the railway guys; or maybe they just joined in solidarity, but they did it anyway.

The connection between the Greeks of our compartment and us started then, when they asked us if we minded if they smoke. “No problem, mate”; open the window, kill the lights, close that curtain and pass me that beer. Neither the ticket inspectors seemed to mind we were smoking in the train. “Welcome to Greece”, as Giannis said.

So we were sharing beers and confessions when the train stopped again. And this time for good. Just besides a bar by the railways, and the first ones to get off the train are the ticket inspectors and the conductors. Soon the crowds follow them and for an hour and a half David and I were enjoying retsinas –white wine with coke- and sasikis being invited by the Greek guys. It was like heroes’ welcome to the Olympus with wine and… well, not women.

But it was time to go back to reality and the train. In Salonika the rock crowd got off the train and we boarded the coach we were supposed to be in from the beginning –it was by mistake that we met the Greeks- and after a placid night sleeping we arrived in the Greek capital with plenty of sun and no sign of rain.

Athens was waiting for us.

Ulysses on his way home suffered the wrath of Poseidon at sea. We suffered it on land.

Right from the beginning, rain had been always a constant threat. In London it respected us. In Paris and until Prague it looked too grey. In Wien it threw all it had over us, wetting us in a matter of seconds –and giving me a cold. In Budapest it confined us to our rooms. And in the Balkans… Intermittentshowers had been a constant in Sarajevo but we surely weren’t prepared for what was about to come in the rest of the country, much poorly prepared and with a worse infrastructure to withstand the attack of Mother Nature. The disaster was on way to collision with us.

We boarded a train supposed to last for eight hours, from Sarajevo to Belgrade. The plan was to arrive just on time to have a quick view of the city and then catch another train to Sofia. And everything was working fine. The train went out of Sarajevo on time, without problems, good speed and it looked like rain was forgiving us for a while.

Well, not so fast. After three-four hours, we arrived to Doboj –town to add to the axis of evil of Alençon and Hollendretch. Suddenly the train stops. After the first few moments of not knowing what’s going on, I asked the ticket inspector. “No English”; great. Fortunately, there was a Canadian-Serbian girl around that translated it to me: the railway is flooded and the train cannot continue; we must get off the train and wait for a bus that will connect us to another train to bring us to Belgrade. Knowing what was going on, the ticket inspector used me as a speaker to communicate the news to the rest of foreigners aboard the train, so I went compartment by compartment telling the news.

Resigned to wait –and hungry- we got off the train and waited in the station. It’s strange how these experiences unite you with your fellow travelers. Up until then, David and I almost never had exchange words with other travelers –apart from Prague and mostly because David wasn’t too eager to that. But there in Doboj we befriended am English couple, two French girls, two Canadian-Serbian girls and several Bosnian and Serbian old fellas that didn’t have a clue of English.

Five hours later the bus appeared. We thought the wait was over, but it had just started. The cause of our delay –the floods- had flooded the road and the bus spent more than two and a half hours trying to cross what looked more like a river than a road, even though it was just about two kilometers long. Once we crossed it everything went quicker, including border formalities.

Still, it took us five hours to get to the train waiting for us. It was like a palace in an oasis in the middle of the desert, even though it was just an old train in a station in the middle of nowhere. But they had food onboard and we were moving. Three hours with little sleep but good food and funny waiters made the trip to Belgrade easy and a pleasure compared to what we had just had.

We finally arrived to Belgrade in the middle of the night. Our night train to Sofia, although a night train, had gone several hours ago and the next one wasn’t running until 7 in the morning. It was too late to find a hostel and too early to board the train, so we had to sleep in the train station in Belgrade, just the one that our guide discouraged to sleep in. David could get some sleep, I didn’t.

With too much sleep to recover and too little food eaten, we boarded the train to Sofia. Eight hours, this time without major problems. And just like that, after 32 hours of travelling, we arrived in Sofia. And what’s our prize for all that travelling? A dull city, a grey city, a boring city; probably the worst city we’ve visited so far. Fine, Bulgarian women are awesome and our couchsurfer Mila was a great host, but seriously, Sofia is a city worth to skip.

No wonder we took the first train out of the city to Athens.

The Balkans was one of the highlights of the trip. For starters, it was going to be the first place where we'll get our passport stamped. And apart from that, there was Sarajevo. And certainly, until that (Sarajevo) it lived to the expectations.

The journey from Budapest to Zagreb was straightforward and easy. It was the first long duration train (8 hours) of many to come on our schedule. Arriving into Zagreb, finding the hotel was relatively easy and a bit surprising –it was a hostel for Japanese people, run by Japanese people and with Japanese hosts; somewhat like the little Tokyo of the Balkans. It was at least, picturesque.

But the city itself didn't have that much. None of the beaches from Dubrovnik, none of the war tourism spots of the Krajina; not even any historic landmark –and the few interesting buildings were covered on scaffoldings. But plenty of beautiful women and cafes –plus watching Italy losing against NZ for a short time- helped. And we spotted a great place –Alcatraz café bar- where spend our last kunas; only if we had found it before…

But the big fish had been from the beginning Sarajevo. The day after we boarded a night train to a city that kept a few good memories from my past. It was, after Palestine, my first destination for work, back in 2006. But then I was travelling with a tight budget and now I had a few more bucks to spend in the city. So, accomplishing one of my lifetime dreams, I stayed in the Holiday Inn. And treated myself with pleasure.

Not only I was changed. Many things are different from my last visit in the city too. For instance, the old Government building, in ruins when I visit it back in 2006, had been restored and looked now impolitely clean and new from my room of the Holiday Inn. The Bascaricja, the old town, has recovered much of the life that never lost completely and was a vivid mosaic of people even in a weekday.

But too many more remained still in great need to improve. Transport was unreliable, many quarters of the city remained in a semi-abandoned state of ruin and main spots with a high potential for tourism continued to be poorly developed and not enough promoted, like the tunnel under the airport.

Sarajevo itself, however, left on me a good taste like the first time I was there. The feeling of the atmosphere is incredible and the lack of tourists is at the same time a pain in the arse –not enough services for tourism, even in a hotel like the Holiday Inn- and a bless –no one around ruining the pictures or the atmosphere. And you cannot beat the cevapcici of the Bascaricja.

Belgrade and Sofia… That's another story.