Merry Christmas from Zagreb

I'm on my way back to Tirana via Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Pristina. I thought I'd make a little video for Christmas. So wherever you are this year, have a Merry Christmas!

Movie Monday: Ljubljana Organ Grinders

http://youtu.be/jLZRj0UzyVU

Ljubljana's streets are decked out in lights, ribons, wreaths, and street musicians for the holidays. Go to the old town to hear jazz, rock, traditional, classical, and yes - even the music of the organ grinder or street organ.

Photo Friday (it's Friday somewhere right?)

I'm 

Christmas in Ljubljana: so I'm up in Ljubljana Slovenia where The city celebrates Christmas by building nativities from straw, drinking hot wine, and hanging space-themed lights. The firs picture is of the Slovene tree my parents picked up this year.

Movie Monday: The Sea Organ in Zadar

Last week my mother and I took an amazing trip down the eastern Adriatic coast. From Ljubljana, Slovenia to Vlore, Albania - the official end of the Adriatic Sea.

One of the highlights of the trip was the Sea Organ - a pipe organ played by the waves - in Zadar, Croatia. Here's how it sounded:

Movie Monday: bottling wine at Bled castle

Ok this one is a couple of weeks old: for my birthday this year, my parents brought me up to Slovenia to visit them. Their gift has led me to nickname this year as "the year of the endless birthday." On our first weekend we went out to Bled, walked around the lake and up to the castle where we paid to learn how to bottle souvenir wine. I made dad do the bottling while I took the video.  Happy Birthday to me!

And a pic of dad with the funny man himself!

A trip to northern Albania in pictures

There is so much I have to say about last week's trip to the mountains of Northern Albania, but I find that words aren't enough to express the peace of village stargazing after an day of hiking and walking in the spectacular scenery. I'll post pictures and say that even that won't be sufficient to express the warm hospitality of the farming families I stayed with and the richness of that experience.

Around Lake Ohrid - day six

I began my walk from the gradishte camp to the Ljubanishta camp early since I wanted to avoid traffic on the main road. I was largely successful and had the road to myself for the first two hours. The walk was beautiful and largely un-eventful until I reached the village of Trpeca. 

Trpeca is a small town situated on a rather steep hillside with steps for streets that all terminate at a narrow pebble beach. The town boasts a 1.5 km nature trail and a cave church and sits above lake Ohrid's deepest point. I walked down the steps to the beach, and sat on a narrow cement ledge watching the activity if the morning routine unfold - a fisherman preparing his boat, a woman swimming in the clear water, a man washing down the patio of one of the beachfront coffee shops. Peaceful and beautiful, I added the sleepy little town to my mental list of places to revisit if I can before picking up my pack and heading back up the steps to the highway.

The information boards for the Galicica National Park showed an "easy" hiking trail linking Trpeca with Ljubanishta camp, and always anxious to stay off the highway, I figured I'd see if I could find it. Finding it wasn't a problem (it was clearly marked from the main road), staying on it was. 

The trail led through grassy meadows, golden from the heat of August. Golden is the way they looked, but they felt itchty and prickly an tiny spiky burs stuck to me socks and tormented my ankles, the path, though waymarked, disappeared in the meadow and it wasn't long before I'd lost track of the markings and found myself making my way "in the general direction of" the road, tired if the thorns and itchy grass.

Once back on the highway I spent more time fighting with cars for two feet of the narrow road than I would have liked, but the spectacular views of the mountains that separate Lake Ohrid from Lake Prespa to the south made the road worth the hassle.

At the top of a long pass, another National park sign indicating the hiking trail appeared and I decided to give it another go. The straight path cut through the tight, dark forest of small oak trees. It was wide and markings appeared frequently enough until I stopped noticing them, and then stopped seeing them. I must have missed the turn that took the path down the steep hillside to the campground, because the one I was on narrowed and then re-joined the highway. 

As I made my way down the now busy mountain pass I pressed up against the guard-rail to allow cars to pass. I tried reminding myself that I was nearly to the camp but that didn't do much for my quickly sinking morale. Of course, the fact that I had not yet had a cup of coffee didn't help either.

When I finally made it to the camping area I was in definitely feeling pretty grumpy. I went into the reception office to make my inquiry: person, a small tent, one night, how much?

Maybe it's because I was grumpy, maybe it was the long walk or the caffeine deficiency, but when one man asked the other 350 (about 7 Euros) in Macedonian, and then the other said something back to him before quoting me 10 euros really rubbed me the wrong way. Up to this point, most of the people in Macedonia had been very honest with me, and paying one or two euro extra for being a foreigner doesn't usually bother me except for when the discussion happens in front of me. So even more grumpy, and without a clear plan, I walked away from what looked like a nice camping area and toward Saint Naum.

The Saint Naum monastery complex sits right on the border between Macedonia and Albania and is a huge tourist sight for the region. As I approached the monastery on the main road, traffic leading to the monastery came to a standstill as people paid for and searched for parking. The complex itself was teeming with tourists from all over the world. I found a not-yet busy cafe and spent my remaining dinars on lunch and a cup of coffee and came up with a plan, I would ask about camping at the site near the monastery, and if that wasn't possible, I'd walk on to  Pogradec. Today instead of tomorrow.

I found the camp and inquired: no luck - it's a military camp for Macedonian border officials and their families. So I set out to see the monastery, pack and all, before walking on to Pogradec.

The monastery was too beautiful to describe in a paragraph.  Though the most beautiful part for me was the natural beauty of the grounds - the emerald springs of the black drim and the quiet, tree-sheltered paths that led to other tiny chapels and churches were more impressive to me than the elaborately painted interior of the more famous main monastery church.

After thoroughly exploring the monastery grounds (and sheltering from an afternoon thunderstorm), I made my way back to the main highway, accross the border, and into the outskirts of Pogradec where I found a pretty little private campground "Arbi camping" where I socialized with the owner's kids, sampled the homemade wine and Raki, and enjoyed a goodnight's rest.

 

Around Lake Ohrid - day five

Today's walk was relatively short - a mere four and a half kilometers along the lake's eastern shore. On the main highway, it should't have taken me more than an hour, but I've been avoiding highways as much as possible, and the path I ended up taking added an hour to the trip.

The scenic detour began When I reached the charming little beach town of Peshtani. At the end of the beachside sidewalk I saw a sign for "turist's street" and had to investigate since "turist" sometimes means hiker in Slavic languages.

The sidewalk turned to a small road which ended at a small set of staid to a beautiful resort beach. On the far side of the beach, past the hotel, the stacks of white lounge chairs, and the bungalows I found a narrow footpath.

The footpath was overgrown with brush and wound up and down around the base of some beautiful and impressive cliffs. I followed the trail through the trees and brush and past a dozen tiny pebble beaches, expecting it to end at any moment but finding that it just kept going. 

After nearly forty minutes of wading through brush and scrambling up and down tiny steep sections of trail, I suddenly came upon a small rubbish dump, and then a pier and cafe.

An old man approached me. He reminded me somehow of a retired Popeye with swollen cheeks and a small, weathered forehead.

"Rikhos" he said. "My name. Rikhos." He patted his chest as he delivered his introduction.

"Elizabeth" I replied. "Coffee?" Seeing no obvious way out of the bay this cafe was in, I figured some coffee was in order while I fished for information.

Macedonian music with a bouncy folk feel played on the radio. Rikhos conversed with me in a mixture of English, Macedonian, and Russian as I sipped my Turkish coffee. He understood that I was heading to gradishte and that I took the trail because I thought cars drove too fast the on the highway (he gave me a hearty handshake of agreement for that observation) and he made me understand that it was possible to get to gradishte if I wasn't afraid to get my feet wet. When i finished my coffee, rikhos led me down to the end of the pebble beach and then into the water, around some trees and a steep rock outcropping and then up onto some rocks where he showed me the short trail to the highway. I discovered later that if I had been able to swim around those rocks without getting my pack pack wet, I could have followed the beach to the camp. As it was I followed the highway to  the camp instead.

After registering and scouring the camping hill for a flat spit to set up my tent, I went back up the beach in search of a cave church. I love the cave churches around Ohrid. Usually quite tiny and elaborately painted, their intimacy and simplicity speak calm to my soul. This cave church sits on what is now a club beach, it's door mere steps from the umbrella topped wicker tables that furnish this particular beach club.

After visiting the cave church, I went to take a look at the Bay of the bones museum. Of all the places I've visited since moving to this part of the world, this is the best equipped for visitors.

The bay of bones is really more of a visitors' center than a museum. The recreation of a Bronze Age village built on a pier was really quite impressive. There are artifacts excavated from the bottom of the lake on display in the museum, and there are shaded picnic tables among the reconstructed ruins of a Roman fortress on the hill above the bay.

Tomorrow I have a longer walk down to St Naum near the border with Albania for my last night of camping. 

Around Lake Ohrid - day four

The eastern shore of Lake Ohrid is home to the small, mountainous Galicica national park. I had originally planned to hike into the park from gradishte campground (about 4 kilometers from Eleshec) but then I learned that there is better access to hiking trails from the village of Elshani - a short 3km stroll up a steep country road from Camp Eleshec. So I did what my ultra flexible schedule demanded and changed my plans to spend today in the mountains and walk on to Gradishte tomorrow.

I started up the steep road to Elshani in the relative cool of an already warm morning. I walked quickly, racing the heat, and practically bouncing without the weight of my pack dragging me down.

The Elshani trail was easy to find from the top of the road, it was marked by a small picnic area with spring-water fountains at one end of the informal village square formed by the ending of the road.

I climbed the wide trail past the backyard orchards and terraced sheep pastures reaching another spring. There the trail branched into a dozen cow paths and just as I was about to guess (wrong) a local woman dressed in black and carrying a bundle of sticks under one arm set me right.

I hadn't intended to reach the top of anything. I set myself a time limit and just figured I'd see where the trail would take me.

The trail wound through dark woods with moss covered rocks and a canopy of leaves that glowed green in the morning sunshine  then passed through a small meadow filled with golden grass, always climbing, climbing, climbing.

Bated onwards by glimpses of Ohrid's expanse of blue I hiked on until,quite unexpectedly, I found myself very near the shale crowned top of something.  A few minutes later, When i reached it, I discovered it was the top of a ridge that hid more peaks.

The trail went on, but I stayed to enjoy the view for a few moments before starting back down the trail. 

Around Lake Ohrid - day three

I've acquired three stray dogs so far this trip. The first (who I called traveler) followed me through struga yesterday. Traveler was scrappy and ugly with wiry grey hair and abnormally long legs (for a dog). Then this morning a cheerful little white dog with geyish ears insisted on being pet while I waited for my phone to charge, eventually falling asleep by my feet. I called her sunshine and would have tried to keep her if she had followed me out of camp. Instead, it was a small, brown, shot-haired dog with an obnoxious pointy nose who followed me out of camp and all the way into Ohrid - even after I told him to "git" (rather forcefully). I called that dog scrappy because he seemed determined to be my walking companion, but in the suburbs of town, he seemed to think better of the idea and turned back.

Ohrid is the jewel of the lake that takes the same name. Ancient churches, a medieval cliff-top castle, and a beautiful lake (which is covered in a white haze today) make it the top tourist destination in Macedonia. Fortunately, the town has just enough charm to make up for the hordes of tourists who make their way to its cobbled streets every summer. 

My favorite character from the town is Captain Christophe, an old fisherman clad in a brigh yellow shirt, blue trousers, and a white captain's hat. He pilots a bright orange fishing boat from the Ohrid port to a tiny fishing village that sits beneath the town's cliffs and is only reachable by boat.

I'm still in Ohrid waiting until the mid day heat passes, (which might be wishful thinking on my part) but I'm going to post this now since I'm not sure whether tonight's camping spot - Campground Eleshec will have internet.

Around Lake Ohrid - day two

I woke up early hoping to get an early start for the long walk to Ohrid. I was ready to go by 6, but the camp staff didn't show up until 7, so it was nearly 7:15 when I finally got started. The very big bonus to this small inconvenience was that I got to watch the colors of the lake change with the sunrise - I toll loads of photos with my camera, but none with my phone :(

I followed a sleepy little country lane about 3km to the little town of Struga and then, after detouring through what tuned out to be a pleasant little holiday town in search of an ATM, I followed beach trails and paths along the shore. Eventually the shore paths rejoined a country lane that often appeared as if it were about to be swollowed up by the vegetation on both sides.

I walked and walked, often getting bemused and bewildered looks from locals. "Don't you know there's a bus?" I can read in their eyes as they pass me in cars, bicycles and mopeds.

"I know, but that's not the point" I answer silently.

I arrived at camp Andon Dukov just before noon. The manager, Kirill, was busy with some inspectors and invited me to hang out on the beach until they left, which I did. I took a short trip into Ohrid later in the afternoon - looked at a couple of old churches and ate a delicious meal before heading back to the camp to watch the sunset.