Pristina, Kosovo

As Kosovo is near to Skopje we decided to go to Pristina and spend a couple of days there. Legally Kosovo is still a part of Serbia although 95% of the population are Kosovar Albanians. When we crossed from Macedonia we got a United Nations stamp in our passport as they are controlling the border. With this stamp we would not have been able to go into Serbia as they don't recognize this as being legitimate. As we were returning back through the United Nations border it was not a problem.

A lot of money is being pumped into Kosovo and the highway is currently under construction. It is lined with enormous modern glass office buildings and businesses all the way from the Macedonian border to Pristina.

We booked a room in a guest house owned by a retired electronics professor. He was very chatty and told us where to go and warned us against the parks at night. He had had the police knock on his door and bring a Japanese girl to his guest house as she had had her bag snatched and had no money. The police paid for her room and felt happy to have her in a safe place. There were guests coming in and out all the time it was so popular. He has broken larger rooms into two smaller rooms to keep up with the demand. His brother, who lives in America, has a house down the road and the professor lets rooms out there even though it is being renovated.

We spoke to a couple of people who now live in other countries but come back to visit their families. We could also see signs on businesses where the money to start, or support them had come from overseas.

Across from the guest house is the monument to WW2 liberation soldiers as well as graves of recent KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) soldiers. The monument looks impressive in the photo but is actually covered with graffiti and the locals teens hang out there smoking and drinking all day.

We took a taxi ride with a couple from Finland out to a monastery that has survived all the bombings. It is in one of the remaining Serbian enclaves and is guarded by KFOR (Kosovo Forces) and razor wire.

Near the main walking street is the huge UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) headquarters and it is full of white 4 wheel drives. Some people refer to Pristina as Unmikistan!

The city has been quiet for the last 4 years so let's hope it lasts. A date has not been set for the withdrawal of UNMIK so that the people can get on with developing the country their way.

The city has been divided up in to areas for electricity supply: area A, they pay their bills so get 8 hours electricity and one hour off, area B, sometimes pay so get longer cuts and area C hardly ever pay so they get the most cuts! The power station was bombed in the attacks and is still not fully functioning.

Fortunately, the professor in area A, had a generator and a storage tank for water and we weren't affected (the water supply is affected when there is no pressure).

There is a statue here of Mother Teresa too, as she was ethnically Albanian.

Skopje, Macedonia

We crossed into Macedonia by bus and when we arrived at the border we had to take all our luggage off the bus to be checked by customs. They checked some of the locals but gave up by the time they got to us and told us to put our bags away! On the windows of the customs' booths were stickers showing an outreached hand with money in it and a red line. Maybe someone had paid a bribe to get us through without an inspection!

Macedonia is famous for Alexander the Great, Mother Teresa and Lake Ohrid. We had passed through Macedonia when it was a part of Yugoslavia but had never stopped at Skopje before.

I did remember the huge earthquake of 1963 when a lot of the city was flattened.

Macedonia has been trying to join the European Union since 2005. 64% of the people are Macedonians of Slav ethnicity, 25% are Albanian, 3% Turks, 2.7% Roma and 1.8% Serbians. Bulgarians think that Macedonians are Bulgarian, some Serbs think it is Serbian, while the Greeks think that they are anything but Macedonians as they feel they own this name but it is well documented that the Ancient Greeks hated the ancient Macedonians. In a recent EU vote, France and Greece both vetoed Macedonia's application to join them.

Skopje was another city travelers told us not to bother to go to as it does not have much to offer but we headed there anyway. We checked out our usual web site for hostels but found they were more of a shambles than the one we stayed at in Sofia so we opted for a budget hotel this time.

The hotel was on a hill 30 minutes walk from the city centre and they accommodated us in a block across the street from the main hotel but we could use the hotel pool and free wifi if we wanted to.

There was a statue of Mother Teresa in town as she was born in Skopje but was of Albanian ethnicity. Ironically she went to save the homeless children in India when there are hordes of begging homeless children in Skopje. Fortunately for us it was a hot day and they were cooling off in the river that runs through the city centre so we didn't get pestered by them. We did hear from an Australian girl that a lady grabbed her camera and when she realized it wasn't a wallet, threw it back at her.

There is a modern walking street lined with noisy cafes pumping out popular tunes in English and in the evenings they are full of people drinking coffee (Turkish style), and eating desserts.

An old stone bridge spans the river from the walking street and square to the historic Ottoman quarter. When you look down over this part of the city you can see lots and lots of mosque minarets used by the mostly Albanians who live here but the majority of Macedonians and Albanians belong to the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Not many women were wearing head scarves here.

On the hill are the remains of a fort so we sat there awhile in the cooling breeze overlooking the city. There were some birds that looked like brown and black crows or maybe even ravens and they were having a great time playing in the thermals above the fort tower.

We wanted to see the opening of the Beijing Olympics on TV but because we had to stay later in Sofia for John's dental treatment we missed it and were so disappointed. However, we have seen some highlights since. Spectacular!

Sofia, Bulgaria

We caught a bus to Sophia and thank goodness it was air conditioned as it started out in 35 degree temperatures. Most travelers we have met told us not to spend too much time here as there is not much to see in the city.

We caught a tram from the bus station to the book market near our hostel. The double room had been booked so we chose a 4 bed dormitory but the receptionist had over booked so we were moved to a twin room for the same price. The hostel was a shambles, sheets hung over the showers as there was no where else to dry them, breakfast of burek (filo pastry with goats' cheese) sat about until the next breakfast time, people were on mattresses on the floor and some even had to sleep 2 to a bed. One of the guests had a kitten so we couldn't open the common room doors to let a breeze through for fear of it running off!

The hostel location was good but with that comes noise- behind us was an outdoor cafe/bar that made a noise until 12pm. On the book market street the trams rattled by all night and the rubbish collectors emptied the metal skips from 1am onwards. Guests checked out to catch flights at 4am then the next group went out at 5am and then 6am!

Sofia doesn't have a central square or street. The trams run through a main street and there are 3 small squares scattered about. One square has the parliament building and the guards change there every hour but not much else happens there. Behind all this is the Sofitel Hotel which is built very close to an ancient Roman church and road that has been restored with money from the Sofitel.

Another square has the Aleksander Nevski Church which was built between 1892 and 1912 in honour of the Russian liberators (including 200,000 who died fighting the Ottomans).

The other square has the Sveta Sofia Church and not much else.

We did manage to find another great place to eat. The food in Bulgaria is great if you can find a place that doesn't just serve pasta and pizza, or burek.


John went to the dentist recommended by the Plovdiv dentist. The clinic was brand new and very modern. They were able to x-ray his teeth and email us the x-ray. He had to have 2 visits to complete the 2 root canals he needed and although it cost a lot it was cheaper than it would have been in New Zealand. There was a lady in the waiting room who had flown in from Greece and was going to have all her teeth pulled out that day and have implants because it was cheaper than in Greece.

Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Stayed in a new hostel just off the walking street. It only had 10 beds and was run by two students who were more interested in playing computer games rather than doing any work. We were kept wake by drunk Koreans who downed several beers and a huge 5 litre flagon of wine. Unfortunately someone had vomited in the toilets and poor Tara, being first out of bed, had the job to hose the bathroom down before she could use it! John later found the culprit and gave her a wee talking to!!

Our first task was to find another dentist to continue the dental work on John's teeth. Tara had an address in her guide book so we hunted it out. The student owners had no idea how to find us a dentist!

We found the dentist across town and walked in through the glass doors from the street straight into the surgery where the dentist was working on someones teeth! We talked to another dentist to make sure that the dentist would use rubber gloves and had the gear autoclaved.

The young dentist who worked on John spoke fluent German and only a little English but we managed to work out what was happening. Once she had drilled out the temporary filling the first dentist had put in she realized that John needed 2 root canals and didn't have the equipment to help him. Part way through the treatment her water pump stopped working as did her airline. She shrugged her shoulders and said "Bulgaria" in resignation. The equipment was from the Soviet days and pretty old and rusty. However, she gave us a contact in Sofia and suggested we look him up to do the root canals. By now John had no pain so he was happy to do that.

We headed off to visit the old town, it used to be called Philippopolis by the Romans in the 3rd century AD but it had been settled thousands of years earlier by the Thracians.

Saw the ruins of the Theatre of Ancient Philippopolis and workers were busy setting up for a concert there. While we were there we met a small group of Koreans dressed in traditional costume. They were on a youth exchange programme for their government in South Korea. I asked this young lady if she was hot and she said "Yes, but I have no choice, I must show the Bulgarian people our beautiful dress."

She also wanted to go to New Zealand one day soon.

Part way up the hill of the old town are Revival-era (1900s) houses of local poets, writers or other important people. The wooden shuttered houses were beautifully painted and restored inside.



Plovdiv is a popular place for foreigners to come to learn the language, folk songs, and dances of Bulgaria. We had met Kirsti (English but working in Berlin)and Peter (English and studying at Oxford) at Veliko Tarnovo and they were spending a month studying the language in Plovdiv. We contacted them and along with Tara and Jana we met at a local restaurant for some typical Bulgarian fare.


John ordered a chicken kebab that come propped up on a frame attached to his wooden plate. The waiter unloaded the kebab and chatted to us about wanting to go to New Zealand. The food at the outdoor place was really tasty so we ate there at night and were nearly the last to leave at 1 am!

We have arranged to catch up with Tara and Jana in Brighton and do some walking with them and if Kirsti is still in Berlin we may catch up with her again too. Of course we will want to know if Jana's love potions that she bought from the herbalist are working!

Tour to Plovdiv, Bulgaria

George from the guest house offered to take us, Tara (from Brighton) and Jana (from Czech Rep but living in Brighton) on a tour to Plovdiv. John had his tooth x-rayed and we bought some goats' cheese pastries, and peaches and nectarines from the market for lunch.

We stopped at a small village beside a river called Bozhentsy. All the old houses had huge slabs of rock on the rooves and in the winter they turn a green colour from the moss that covers them. The area is preserved as a historical area and some of the families visit in the summer while others live there all year. A few shops sold wooden items while others sold glazed dishes and pottery with traditional patterns.

We strolled around the village and helped ourselves to any ripe plums and apples that were hanging over the path. We also manged to have a great feast of blackberries. We needn't have got the pastries after all.

George likes to ride mountain bikes and he often takes guests on bike trips through the hills in the area so he knows that place well.

After driving through the narrow lanes and valleys we headed for Etara, an outdoor museum, where some old buildings were relocated and the government paid local crafts people to continue to keep their crafts alive by working at the complex.


There was a herbalist who sold Jana some dried herbs from which she could make tea and they were guaranteed to make people love her!


There were lots of water wheels to power a carpet washer, a saw mill, grind wheat, pound woollen fibre to make cloth and to supply water for the village needs.

We watched the bagpipe maker construct his Bulgarian bagpipes from goat skins he had tanned and were drying in the sun. Near him was the knife maker with his glistening blades fitted into deer antlers and goat horns. Across the road was a leather maker with a display of belts and handbags.

From the village we climbed to Shipka Pass (about 1326m above sea level) where we visited the Freedom Monument from the battle in 1880 where the Bulgarians and the Russians defeated the Turks. We walked along the top of the rocky ridge where George said the Bulgarians and the Russians ran out of ammunition and rocks to throw so they threw the dead bodies onto the Turks below them. 200,000 people were killed and many bones from that time are buried beneath the monument.

In the distance on another ridge top was an enormous building that looked like a spaceship on a wide base. We headed across there and it was the Creators of Bulgarian State Monument which means it was the headquarters for the Communist party, built in 1981 to commemorate Bulgaria's 1300th birthday. When it was used for party meetings there was not enough electricity to power the village below as well as the building with its huge red star on top so the village had no power for as long as the meetings lasted. The members were helicoptered in from all over the country.

Now the building is a ruin. The Gypsies took all the metal they could from the roof, and ceilings and sold it. People who hated the communists have vandalised the beautiful mosaic work inside the main hall. It would have been a magnificent place with its red carpet and huge tiered meeting hall. Now the rain drives in and more people take bits from the mosaics.

One of these 3 leaders had his face chipped off.

We drove along through the plains and through the Valley of Roses. There were several conical shaped mounds that George said were Thracian tombs. We visited the tomb of King Seuthes 111, discovered in 2004, but it had closed early so we could only look through the glass front and read the information on the walls. The mask, from the 5th century, is a replica of one found at the foot of the tomb.The Thracians moved here in the 4th millenium BC.

The next stop was the Shipka Monastery where we visited a Russian Orthodox Church built by the Russians to thank the Bulgarians for their support in the war against the Turks. The gold coloured domes glistened in the setting sun and looked spectacular against a conifer background.

The Cyrillic alphabet was invented by a Bulgarian monk and luckily I did a class in Russian before we left NZ because we have had to read this alphabet in many East European countries.

We rolled into Plovdiv after a great tour with George, and Tara, Jana and the two of us shared a 4 bed dormitory in a guest house near the main walking street.

Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

We caught a pretty rickety train from Romania to Bulgaria. We passed a large area where there were 'nodding donkeys' pumping oil from the wells and barges carrying coal along the river.

It was pretty hot the whole trip and the train stopped at the border for ages and at one point we sat for an hour with no engine and it was stifling.

Bulgaria is famous for monasteries and yoghurt. Now it is a part of the EU it has attracted a lot of middle-aged Brits who are buying up Black Sea properties and mountain villas and making real estate too expensive for the locals. Recently we heard that Bulgaria had had its EU funds stopped because of corruption and there are now many projects on hold as these funds were for them. The farmers are unhappy as they now have no subsidies.

We arrived at Veliko Tarnovo and were met by George from the guest house we had booked into. That was a treat as it was a long uphill walk to the guest house otherwise.

The guest house had a fantastic view of the town below. 1 in 6 residents of the town is a student but once they are on holiday I'm sure they are replaced by the same number of tourists.

We met Tara from Brighton, England and got up at 6.30 to do a 4 hour walk to the Dryanovo Monastery. We took a long time getting out of the city as there were many trails left by the locals walking their dogs and the shepherds grazing their animals.

The monastery was being renovated and the nuns lived nearby in a run down 3 storey building. It was possible to rent a simple room there if anyone wanted to. We had a lot of difficulty returning from the walk and tried hitching but were lucky enough to flag down a bus.

We visited the Tsarevets Fortress overlooking the city. It had a sound and light show but only happened if there were enough tourists in town to pay for the electricity for it.

We found a wonderful restaurant in town with 80 types of salads and diet pizzas made with rye flour. It has been difficult to find some fresh tasty food in the last few countries we have visited so it was a delight. Not only were the local dishes tasty but they were also cheap. The markets were full of summer fruits as well so we ate peaches, nectarines and watermelon everyday.

John has had toothache since Hungary but no amount of nagging on my part got him to see a dentist there so we had to visit a local dentist in the town as he was in pain. The dentist did not use gloves and the equipment was old and dirty. I don't think she had updated her practice since learning under the communist system and didn't know how to preventing cross- infection to her patients. She didn't speak English so we had to take Maria from the guest house to translate for us.

She didn't have an x-ray machine so we had to go to a lab in the city the next day and then we decided that we would not go back but find another dentist in the next town we would go to. The pain had subsided so at least John was able to sleep and eat properly.

In the town there were many of these wall murals on the end walls of some of the buildings. There were also many Soviet style statues in small squares scattered around the town.

We saw these red and white cords tied onto several trees about the city and discovered that they are worn on your wrist and on March the first you tie them to a tree with blossom when you see a stork. It is for good luck and good health.

We also saw many of these A4 sized posters tacked to trees, nailed to front doors and pasted to walls. They give information about loved ones who have died and some people post them on the anniversary each year. These were along the post office walls.


These eggs are painted for Easter.

Bucharest, Romania

Most people we met told us not to bother to go to Bucharest as they had found it an uninteresting city. It has a population of 1.1 million people. However, we enjoyed our short stay there and were not bothered by the beggars or Gypsies like we were warned we would be. It is a city that has no real centre that jumps out at you and says 'Come visit, come stay, come look around, come shop'.

In the 1980s, the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu wanted to stop foreign debt and look good in front of the rest of the world so he exported Romania's food while his own people had to ration food and endure power cuts to save money. he had one sixth of Bucharest bulldozed to build his House of the People, now the Palace of Parliament. It is the world's second largest building with the Pentagon being larger but it would have been the largest if the 10% planned had been built.



We couldn't go to Bucharest without visiting the famous Central Committee of the Communist party building and checking out the balcony from which Ceausescu made his last speech in 1989. Onlookers shouted 'Down with Ceausescu' and he made his escape by helicopter from the roof. Many people were shot and killed and we could see the bullet holes in the buildings.

We visited the Ethnic museum and learnt about the old traditions of the people. They never put crosses in their cemeteries and so when someone died they made 3 crosses, one for the house, one for the church and one for the village and they were place on a tree in the village.



In the historic part of the city (1600s) there are still some old buildings standing but others have been covered by new buildings. There is even a section of old cellars that they have dug up and built walkways over but they are sadly filling with rubbish.


A modern glass building has been built inside the old shell of this building. There were a few tall modern buildings but not many. Near our hostel was a huge pillared building that the dictator had planned to be the radio and communications building but it was never completed. Today contractors are gutting it and turning it into a mall. It will look fabulous when it is finished.