"How was it?"

from 30 September 2015

"Well, how was the trip?" - I think it's still too recent for me to really understand what I learned from my experiences this summer. But it will always be difficult to describe a period of two months, in which I visited 13 countries, 9 of which I've never been to before, in just a couple of words. "Great", "exciting" or "interesting" doesn't really seem to describe it for me. It wasn't that special after all, I find myself thinking sometimes. I didn't really meet super interesting people I will stay in contact with, I didn't fall in love with anyone like I usually do.

Maybe it's because I didn't make any fancy SLR photos? Maybe it's because I didn't get so many likes on facebook? Maybe it's because I didn't get drunk and therefore don't have any stories to tell for everybody's amusement?

Bucharest, April 2015

When I try to free myself from all the external and internal expectations one might have of a journey like I had - that everything is shiny, that drinks are always ice cold, that people are happy all the time - I come to the conclusion that I simply had a good time. It wasn't "crazy" or "rad" or any other extreme experience - all in all it was just nice, in a good way. What else would I want if not have a nice time?

Highlights

"So which one was your favourite place?" - again I don't really know. There was places that disappointed me (like Mostar), places I couldn't get warm with (like the Baltics), and people that made my stay less enjoyable (like in Tallinn), but in general I'm glad that I went to all the places I visited (except Ulcinj maybe, but I didn't really stay long anyway). 

Mt Plješivica

If I follow my feeling though, the undisputed highlight of my trip was the hike to Mt Plješivica. Not only was it a big challenge that I overcame, it was also a lot of fun (mostly in retrospect haha), and last but not least, there was fancy pictures:

Augustow

Another highlight was my short but beautiful stay in Augustow, because I felt very much in the moment there. The canal festival, the atmosphere, the food, the weather, the waterskiing - everything was just perfect.

Poland

In general I enjoyed Poland very much. I had never been there before and actually spent more days there than in any other country. I had really nice hosts in Gdynia and Szcezcin, enjoyed the sea, liked the countryside, loved the food, was surprised by Warsaw, had a great time in the Jewish Museum, and felt really fancy in Krakow. Poland is definitely a country with lots of more places to explore, and I want to return soon.

Gdynia

Gdansk

sunset in Sczecin, where it was too hot for sightseeing

street art in Warsaw

POLIN Museum in Warsaw

Krakow

on some hill around Krakow

Bosnia and Hercegowina

I was stunned by the great atmosphere in Sarajevo, and loved how the little houses seemed to have grown uphill from the once small settlement in the valley. Of course the experience was made complete by Vjetko's perfect introduction to the local cuisine. In general, BiH would be a country I would like to visit again, not only because of the Drill & Chill Festival hopefully happening there next year again, but also because there is just so much more to see in this country.

Bulgaria

I loved both Sofia and Plovdiv, for reasons so many that I don't actually know where to start. Bulgaria is such a forgotten and neglected country, in spite of being a member of EU since 2007. I like the idea that most people whom I talked to don't spend their weekends in Sofia, even though the city is among the greenest I've ever seen, but drive to the countryside, where many families have second houses.

More than about anything or anyone else, I learned about myself on this trip once again.
I spent a lot of time alone, walking, and I liked it. I really liked it :)

More numbers

I received great feedback from lots of people about my latest statistics, so I decided you're ready for a small project I had running during the trip. Just the night before I boarded the plane to Tallinn (or even the same day? I'm not sure), I cut my hair to a "length" of 9mm. The plan was to take a picture of myself every day and see how fast it grows back. And there you go :)

Also, I never actually updated the route I took. Originally the plan was to travel along the Adriatic coast and just leave the ocean in order to visit Kosovo and Lake Ohrid in Macedonia, only to return to the sea in Thessaloniki. I'm so glad that I didn't follow this route in the end, altough it probably would've been nice as well. But, I would have missed the two countries I liked the most in the Balkans: Bosnia and Hercegowina, and Bulgaria. So luckily I think I made the right decision :)

Below you can see the route I ended up taking, including the detours I made thanks to language barriers, oscitancy, and bad luck :D

Tallinn to Istanbul on Roadtrippers

About 5000 kilometers I covered by hitchhiking only - from Tallinn to Istanbul (kind of ;)).
More than another 1000 kilometers I travelled either by bus, train, or paid carsharing.


I used at least 74 different cars during the whole trip.

2 of them were single females (another 7 couples picked me up as well)
(At least) 1 of them didn't have a driver's license.
1 of them was a taxi driver who paid the fare himself.
1 of them was a public bus, that was paid for me by a poor Albanian guy.
 
1 of them had the nerves to touch my tighs.
3 or more of them asked for sex completely out of the blue.



According to my notes, I waited 1.116 minutes in total (for 67 rides).

That makes an average waiting time of only 16,5 minutes!!!

Statistics

One of the most frequently asked questions when I come back from my long summer travels is:  

"How can you even afford this?"

Let me be clear: Without my parents covering pretty much all of my living expenses here in Vienna, I probably wouldn't be able to travel at all. So thanks to my parents (and grandparents) :) But this way, and by working a little bit, I can save some money every month.

Apart from that, I just don't spend so much money. As you will see below, accommodation still makes up 26% of my spendings; one can only imagine how high that number would be if I hadn't couchsurfed more than half of the time. The other category that would be either on second or even first place is transportation; apart from two long distance busses and urban transportation, I hitchhiked all the way from Tallinn to Istanbul, so that saved me a LOT of money as well. Also, I don't go on shopping sprees when travelling and don't buy a lot of souvenirs (who will carry that shit?), I don't smoke, and, most recently, I don't drink (see the illustration below). I generally don't do expensive day-tours, don't visit many museums (actually it's usually one in each city: the Jewish one), and don't eat in expensive restaurants.

Now that sounds like a lot of "don't"s instead of "do"s, but that doesn't mean that I don't do anything. Most of my days consist of walking, walking, and more walking. And I like it! Most of the time ;)

First I just wanted to see how much money I had spent in each country. Obviously, this isn't really representative, because in some countries I only spent 3 days, while I travelled others for more than a week. Bulgaria is especially misleading: I got a tattoo there for 45€, so that's an impressive half of the total amount that I left there.

The next graphic is more interesting. I differentiated my spendings in six different categories: Readymades (which means everything consumed while sitting somewhere or things you can buy "to go"), Groceries (which is food and drinks), Transport (which includes both long distance and urban transport), Fees & Tours (which means entrance fees, money I paid for free walking tours, and other charges like for toilets), Souvenirs (to which I counted the tattoo as well ;)), and Accommodation.

Unfortunately I don't have any numbers to compare, but I'm sure that on this trip I ate out (="readymades") way more often than on any other trips before. Especially in the Balkans, eating in restaurants sometimes seemed even cheaper than making an effort and go to the supermarket and prepare my own meals. But apart from that I think I learned to enjoy spending money on another nice cup of coffee and dishes I have never heard of before.

The next graphic shows the amount of money I spent per day in each country - a far more representative image. While I spent the most in total numbers (almost 200 €) in Poland, my daily budget there was actually only about 14,50 €. The most expensive was Croatia, with around 26,80 € daily, followed by Bulgaria, which is again not really accurate, because as stated I got a tattoo for 45,- € there - without it, Bulgaria would range at 13,87 € daily. So the real second place goes to Estonia, with 23,44 € daily, closely followed by Lithuania, where I spent 23,19 € a day. Kosovo is the cheapest, with 5,50 € per day - but I have to admit that I only stayed one and a half days there, brought some food from Macedonia, and was invited for dinner :)

This graphic mainly shows you that I spent an average of 11,79 € for a night (I divided the total amount with 22, the number of nights I actually stayed in a hostel/pension). Also, I lived with around 7 € per day for food, with two thirds going into readymades.

To make things even more specific, I wanted to examine how much money I spent on groceries compared to readymades in each country. Croatia again turned out to be on the first place (5,77 € per day) - here the four days I spent with my two friends mostly cooking for ourselves clearly show. Germany comes on second place here (3,34 € daily), which kind of surprised me at first, but a second glance showed that I sponsored the ingredients for 16 delicious pizzas, completely homemade by my friend and host Gal in Berlin. Afterwards come Estonia (3,04 €), Latvia (2,91 €) and Montenegro (2,60 €), which also felt expensive. Turkey was the cheapest, with a glorious 10 Eurocents per day - but that is because I stayed with my friend Mirjam and she and her husband insisted on paying for everything.

The following graphic shows quite a different picture, but again needs some explanation. Estonia comes on first place with 10,07 € per day; prices are just like in Germany or Austria. Bulgaria (9,67 €) again comes on second place, this time because I just LOVED the food and atmosphere there, so I didn't cook myself at all during my stays in Sofia and Plovdiv. It's followed by Lithuania (7,52 €), where I don't remember eating out a lot, but the Western prices show here again. Poland is on fourth place, with a daily spending of 7,02 €, which is  probably due to my aspirations to find the best Pierogi in all Poland ;) Expensive Montenegro comes last here, with 49 cents a day, because I spent my days in bed, not eating anything at all.

Last but not least: the thing about alcohol. 

I had been thinking about quitting for various reasons for quite some time already, and decided that this trip would be a good chance to try. Except from my first evening, on which my host almost forced me to buy one of the microbrewed local beers, which I didn't even finish, I didn't have a drop of alcohol during the whole trip. And it felt good. At no point I missed getting drunk and lost on the way back to the hostel, or losing my voice from all the shouting against the loud music. Surprisingly, after very few days, I also didn't feel like having beer with lunch or dinner anymore, like I used to. Obviously I was offered homemade Rakiya on various occasions, and sometimes people got upset when I refused, but it got easier every time.

What I did instead was writedown every single time I had the chance to drink, or would've had something to drink in earlier days (be it beer, wine or spirits). To make it easier, I recalculated everything as if it was just beers, and came to the conclusion that I saved my mind and body from 89 bottles - or more than 40 liters! - of beer. 

Talking about money: Just roughly calculated, this decision also saved me between 180 € and 220 € :)

Hitchhiking XIX (Edirne - Istanbul)

After a very short but very "productive" day in beautiful Edirne I followed my bad feeling about my Couchsurfing host and decided to take a bus to Istanbul. One reason was that the highway was quite far away and definitely not reachable by foot, but I guess I was just being lazy about this very last distance I had to cover. Plus: once in Istanbul, I would probably be totally lost in spite of my beloved offline map.

So I got a free (!) bus from the center of Edirne to the central bus station, which turned out not to be "central" at all, but just at the beginning of the highway! So in no time I changed plans again, passed the bus I was supposed to get, and walked towards the highway. YOLO.

A closer look to the map revealed that this was not the actual highway yet, but a road leading to the highway for around 3 kilometers. I started walking, occasionally turning around when cars were approaching. 

A truck stopped after no time, but was going back to Bulgaria. I still hopped in because he would drive until the junction anyway - sweet luxury. 

After I had passed the toll stations, I didn't even put my bags down, confident that someone would stop very soon. 10 minutes later a car with a Bulgarian license plate stopped, but Memo was originally from a village around Istanbul and had worked and lived in Vorarlberg for more than 30 years. He ended up inviting me to his home in said village, where I met his wife and daughter, and talked to his 22-years-old son on the phone while having coffee. 

Then his daughter brought me to a bus stop nearby, honking at the bus - which then actually stayed and waited for me! I then drove through the westernmost suburbs of Istanbul for more than an hour, until boarding the metro and finally arriving at my friend Mirjam's place.

And this is the end of the hitchhiking for this trip - can you believe it?

Edirne

As you know I had a difficult start with Edirne, because I spent the whole afternoon waiting for my Couchsurfing host. 

On the next day, I got up really early, because I didn't want to take the risk of the guy coming with me to see the city.

The internet said that Edirne's synagogue is in ruins and cannot be entered, but I went to see it anyway. You cannot imagine my joy when I discovered that it had been fully renovated in the year before!

Very happy about this great start of the day, I went on to see the various magnificent mosques of Edirne, which was the capital of the Byzantine Empire before Istanbul.

In one of the markets I got a basket with scented, fruit-shaped soap - supposedly a typical product of the Edirne region - as a present for my friends in Istanbul.

Because it was still really early, I decided to go to Karaagaç, which is still part of the city but is located about 4 km on the other side of one of the rivers that run around it. I crossed two old bridges on foot and then successfully hitchhiked the rest of the way. 

Karaagaç was a lovely place with lots of cafés, few cars, and an old train station that is now a university. I also visited the oldest mosque of Edirne, which also turned out to be the simplest.

Then I hitchhiked back into town, had a dessert called Peynir Tatlīsī, and took a free bus to the main bus station, which turned out to be just next to the highway..