Jansepar.com

Our trip to Bugaria had started off kind of on the wrong food, but it was def­i­nitely a inter­est­ing series of events. When Tighe and I woke up to head to the train, we thought we knew where the bus sta­tion was, but we were dead wrong. We fig­ured it would take about 30 min­utes to get to the sta­tion, giv­ing us about 15 min­utes to buy the ticket and hop aboard, but after walk­ing 25 min­utes, there was no train sta­tion in sight. We decided to catch a cab, although we didn’t find one for a good 10 min­utes, and when he took us there, it was at least a 10 minute drive. When we arrived, we saw that our train hadn’t left yet, so we bought tick­ets and jumped aboard, only for the train to leave 30 sec­onds after. Now, after that stroke of luck, we arrived at our seats and were next to a cou­ple of old Ser­bian or Bul­gar­ian ladies who were adamant in talk­ing to us, although we couldn’t under­stand one word they spoke. After ten or so min­utes of attempted con­ver­sa­tion, explain­ing we were from North Amer­ica and such, this lady opens up a car­ton of cig­a­rettes and hands them to Tighe and myself. We had no idea what was going on, but at the time we fig­ured she was just giv­ing them to us since we were being nice, but we were wrong. We put them in our bag, and when we got to the bor­der, we noticed the bor­der guard ask­ing the ladies what they had to claim, one say­ing “cig­a­rette?”. They shook their heads and opened their bags to prove they had noth­ing to claim. After that whole ordeal, the lady asked for her cig­a­rettes back. That’s right, we had just unknow­ingly smug­gled cig­a­rettes for an elderly women from Ser­bia to Bul­garia, some­thing that if caught, could have got us for­eign­ers in a lot of trouble.

Sofia

We only spent a few nights in Sofia, and it wasn’t the most event­ful of places. One of the most inter­est­ing things about Bul­garia is that every­thing was in Cyril­lic, it was hard to find a place that used the alpha­bet, although I wouldn’t expect it since Sofia isn’t a very big tourist des­ti­na­tion. We stayed in the Mos­tel Hos­tel, which is the most pop­u­lar hos­tel located in the city, and a big des­ti­na­tion for back­pack­ers trav­el­ing through Europe. Although the city itself wasn’t to excit­ing, I met a lot of inter­est­ing peo­ple. I met a guy from Poland who worked as a Soft­ware Engi­neer at Google, work­ing on YouTube. I Also met a cou­ple from the Nether­lands who were on a bike trip, 18 months, across the world and were wait­ing for their visas for Iran (hope that worked out for them, although going through there at this time would def­i­nitely be a bad idea). Another inter­est­ing thing we found out while stay­ing in Bugaria was from a trav­eler from the USA who was study­ing in Copen­haggen; he told us that when he came from Greece to Bugaria, the Greeks fined him 600 EUROS because after your stu­dent visa expires, you are sup­pose to leave the Schen­gen area. We weren’t aware of this rule, although we heard it from a cou­ple peo­ple, but after much delib­er­a­tion this changed our plans from going to Greece, to instead head­ing to Croatia.

Exam­ple of the Cyril­lic spelling used through­out the city

So, Tighe and I spent a lot of time walk­ing around the city and see­ing what it had to offer. One of the coolest things we saw was the Alexan­der Nevsky Cathe­dral, which is the biggest Ortho­dox cathe­dral in the world. We also ran into a mar­ket that sold all kinds of inter­est­ing stuff, most inter­est­ing being items from World War Two. Since Bugaria was part of the Axis, there was a lot of Nazi mem­o­ra­bilia such as pocket watches, cur­rency, guns, and other things you can’t find even in the mar­kets of Berlin. I wasn’t too impressed with the food in the coun­try, although we didn’t go to very many nice din­ners, but the city didn’t have nearly as many food joints as most cities I’ve been to in Europe, and since food is kind of a min­i­mum require­ment in any city for me, I wasn’t too impressed. At night, Tighe and I went in search of bars, and while the drinks were cheap, not very many peo­ple spoke Eng­lish, so it was hard to com­mu­ni­cate with any locals, although the sec­ond night in Bugaria was a lot of fun. We met a guy from the USA who had been in Bul­garia for a week or so, and knew the best place to go. This guy was really inter­est­ing though, he told us that when he was 13, he met an exchange stu­dent from Uzbek­istan, and because of him decided to learn Russ­ian and go to the place him­self. Appar­ently bring­ing about 1000 USD for the entire year in that coun­try was enough to make him one of the rich­est and most famous guy around; appar­ently peo­ple would say hi to him and he hadn’t seen that per­son in his whole life. Granted, he could be full of lies, but I’ve never heard of Uzbek­istan before, it sounds ran­dom and small enough to be true. This guy brought us to the Uni­ver­sity grounds, which we got to by taxi, and it was one of the flashiest areas I had ever seen, it was almost like Vegas. The clubs were packed with stu­dents, most of whom spoke some Eng­lish, so we didn’t have to stay in the cor­ner by our­selves. While I was talk­ing to a Bul­gar­ian girl, a fight erupted at the table near us, with glass shat­ter­ing directly beside my foot. I grabbed the girl and stepped back, and let the bounc­ers of the club han­dle things, and after­words a friend of hers told me that there was an Amer­i­can who was walk­ing around the bar chal­leng­ing peo­ple to fights, and so he got one. He also told me that he’s sure this Amer­i­can would wind up in home town papers as a miss­ing per­son, and would never return… So for all of you who are idiots when you’ve had a few, I wouldn’t rec­om­mend Bul­garia. Also, I made sure I told these peo­ple I was Cana­dian, I def­i­nitely didn’t want to seem affil­i­ated with that guy.

Alexan­der Nevsky Cathedral

Over­all, I’m not sure if I would exactly rec­om­mend Sofia as a main des­ti­na­tion, but its worth check­ing out if you stay for a day or two. Any­more then that and I don’t know what I’d do. But the hos­tel we stayed in was great, it had free break­fast AND din­ner, not many offer that. From here we were headed to Croa­tia, and after a quick stop in Bel­grade (where we stayed in the same great hos­tel, The Black Catz), we were off to our first des­ti­na­tion, Split.

Split, Supetar, and Dubrovnik

The visa issue crushed me. I was extremely keen on going to Greece to end off this part of the trip, but instead, I felt like I had to set­tle on Croa­tia. Now, in hind­sight, even if I could go back in time and actu­ally have the option to go into Greece instead, I still would have cho­sen Croa­tia, hands down. I fig­ure if I went to Croa­tia at a later date, I may have never found one of my favorite hos­tels, the Shangri-La, where we did noth­ing but chill out in there com­mon room, go to the beach, drink and bar­be­cue. Also, if I went to Greece first, I would have never wound up in Athens and hap­pen to be there the same day DJ Tiesto was per­form­ing (but I’ll save that story for when I write up about my adven­tures in Greece).

Split, Croa­tia

So after Bul­garia, we took a quick stopover in Bel­grade and took shel­ter with hos­tel man at the Black Catz Hos­tel, and then headed off to Split. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Tighe and I had no clue where to go, what to do, or where to sleep. We were greeted at the port by an old man who offered us a place to stay at an extremely rea­son­able price, so we jumped on that and camped out for the night. Unfor­tu­nately, the night could have been bet­ter had it had inter­net, or air con­di­tion­ing, or Tighe com­plain­ing he felt sick but sound­ing more like home­sick, but a lot of the time it seems like every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son. The next day we checked out and headed to one of the more pop­u­lar hos­tels in Split, but unfor­tu­nately (although that view later changed for for­tu­nately) they didn’t have any rooms, but we weren’t exactly look­ing to stay on main­land Croa­tia any­ways, we were more inter­ested in the islands. We booked a room at the Shangri-la hos­tel on the island of Brac rec­om­mended by the hos­tel we were at, checked out the sights in Split and headed off to Supetar on Brac.

Near the port of Supetar

After hop­ing off the ferry, we were imme­di­ately greeted by a cou­ple of girls, Dora the co-owner and Croa­t­ian native, and Holly from Boston who just came for the walk. I can’t pin­point what it was, but these two gave me high hopes for this hos­tel, and those hopes were not only met, by exceeded. We arrived to be greeted by three South Africans whom where trav­el­ing the world, an Aus­tralian named David who took the sum­mer off to work and live in the Shangri-la, and the other co-owner Vinko. The weather was regret­tably bad for the first two days, and that fact com­bined with the hos­tel only being a week old, and there weren’t any oth­ers in the hos­tel for our stay, but that didn’t make the stay any less amazing.

Com­mon room where much Entourage and Man vs Wild was watch, where Hookah was smoked, and where Kings Cup was played.

We didn’t spend much time relax­ing on a beach, but I found sit­ting in a com­mon room with strangers watch­ing Entourage and Man vs Wild while smok­ing hookah just as relax­ing, if not more so. That’s essen­tially what our first two days con­sisted of, and while that might sound bor­ing to you, watch­ing TV and doing noth­ing is dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent from every­thing I’ve been doing in the last 4 months, so this was a wel­com­ing change of scenery. In the evening, the bad weather didn’t stop the South African boys from cook­ing some fine Croa­t­ian ham­burg­ers and steak. We ate until we could eat no longer, and then the begin­ning of our night started with a game called Kings Cup, which was the start­ing point for check­ing out the var­i­ous (two) bars on Brac. They were pretty cool, although I was expect­ing more tourists; every­one there was Croa­t­ian, so there was a slight com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­rier. Although I’m sure Tighe wouldn’t exactly call it slight, as an alter­ca­tion with him and a large Croa­t­ian man almost con­cluded the night. Another enter­tain­ing thing I found out on the first night out in Brac was that there was more drama in our hos­tel between the girls and the South Africans then in high school. I won’t go into the details, but it was amus­ing find­ing out each piece of the puz­zle as the night went on.

South African boys cook­ing a mean set of meat

Dora and David

When the sun finally emerged from hid­ing, we set our sights on a beach that Tighe and I saw in many post­cards in Split, the beach that essen­tially was the rea­son we came to Brac in the first place. Its name is Bol beach, and is sit­u­ated on the oppo­site side of the island. We could have taken the bus, but that would have been dull, so Tighe and I set our sights on rent­ing a scooter. A piece of advice; if you’ve never used a scooter before, keep your legs on the floor, accel­er­ate, then lift them up after you’ve gained some speed. Both Tighe and I had never rid­den scoot­ers before, but one of the require­ments of being able to rent one was that you had rid­den one before, and it was quite obvi­ous we both hadn’t. The man who was man­ag­ing the scoot­ers was not impressed. But, we picked it up and we headed 33 kilo­me­ters across the island through one of the most impres­sive scenic routes I have ever seen, and even­tu­ally reached our des­ti­na­tion of Bol beach. We arrived, tanned, swam, and did the typ­i­cal beach thing, just relaxed. Now, the beach wasn’t your typ­i­cal sandy beach, it was actu­ally cov­ered in tiny smooth rocks, which is what most beaches in Croa­tia and Greece are like. I per­son­ally pre­fer sand, but it was still great nonethe­less. And for all of you out there won­der­ing, yes, there were many top­less women both young and (unfor­tu­nately) old, it is Europe after all. After a day in the sun, we trav­eled back, checked out some cool spots on the island and returned our scooters.

Bol beach in the far distance

At Bol beach

On our last day, we didn’t do too much. Peo­ple were still recov­er­ing from hang­overs, oth­ers were just plain tired, and some of us had long days dri­ving and swim­ming. On the last night David, Vinko and I went to watch X-Men : Wolver­ine, which was a MAR­VELous (pun intended, haha, yeah I know I’m lame) movie. We headed off to the ferry via Split the next morn­ing, and from split we caught our twenty-five hour ferry from Split to Bari. Although it wasn’t too bad, we played big two with a girl from Van­cou­ver and two girls from Aus­tralia for a cou­ple hours. Then, there was a seven-hour stopover in Dubrovnik where we got to check out the sights, it’s a really nice city I would highly rec­om­mend it. After­wards, after hours of wor­ry­ing about our visas for what ended up being no worry at all, we hoped back onto the ferry and found the per­fect couches to sleep on for our overnight to Bari.

Crys­tal blue waters of Croatia

Croa­tia was incred­i­ble. I got to do exactly what I wanted to do, relax and have fun. Tighe and I were get­ting sick of see­ing city after city, and Croa­tia was a per­fect change of scenery. A beau­ti­ful island com­bined with one of the most fun, chilled out hos­tels I’ve ever stayed in made Croa­tia a coun­try that I def­i­nitely plan on vis­it­ing again. But that essen­tially con­cludes the Balkan adven­tures; Tighe stayed with my fam­ily and I in Mola di Bari, and he was headed back to New York. Good times man, see you on the east coast sometime.

Tighe, Vinko and I at the Shangri-la

Now, the title of my last entry was the Balkan Adven­ture Part 1, although it didn’t have much to do with the Balkan area at all. But I like to con­sider my Balkan adven­ture the point where from where we left Prague and ended with Croa­tia, so for­give the inac­cu­racy of my title. After we were all fin­ished up in Berlin and Budapest, we took a night train last­ing 14 hours, which is the longest time en route to a des­ti­na­tion I have ever spent. But luck­ily, Sara­jevo was worth the time it took to make it there.

Sara­jevo

Sara­jevo has been a city under the con­stant desire of many empires in recent his­tory. It was most recently desired by the Ser­bians, but due to the alliance of the Croa­t­ians and Bosni­ans, the result of the Bosn­ian War led Sara­jevo to become the cap­i­tal of the newly built Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina. Today, Bosnia is a coun­try that is filled with 45% Mus­lims, 38% Ser­bian ortho­dox, and 7% Croa­t­ian Catholics, and from what I can see, this mul­ti­cul­tural city coex­ists very well together. I haven’t seen such a diverse city since I left Vancouver!

Old town Sarajevo

When we arrived in the city, we were greeted by next to noth­ing, arriv­ing with no hos­tel booked, and no Bosn­ian cur­rency, with no ATM in sight. We ran into a cou­ple back­pack­ers who looked just as con­fused as we were, so we talked to them and decided to head to where they were head­ing. They were a cou­ple of French Cana­di­ans who were tak­ing time off and back­pack­ing East­ern Europe, just as we were. Almost imme­di­ately after we crossed the street, we were greeted by a tall, lanky, Kramer-looking fel­low who offered us beds at his hos­tel for only 10 EURO a night. I’ll admit, the full body jean jacket and the des­per­ate need for den­tal work almost made us reject his offer, but his upbeat friendly atti­tude changed our opin­ion, and we decided to give it a shot. He even showed the other back­pack­ers straight to their hos­tel, and so his exten­sion of help gave us con­fi­dence that we wouldn’t wake up in a cel­lar. But, when we arrived, that con­fi­dence was taken away, mostly due to the fact that every sin­gle closet in the hos­tel was full of some­one elses cloth­ing, which gave us a sink­ing feel­ing in the pit of our stom­ach, but we made a com­mit­ment so we were going to stick to it. One of my biggest dis­ap­point­ments about the hos­tel was that it was only us two, mean­ing again, there wasn’t much oppor­tu­nity to meet other trav­el­ers, but luck­ily the city had so much to do and see, that detail became a minor one.

Our room, 10 EURO each per night with our own per­sonal room, own beds, and a TV

Sara­jevo was one of the most inter­est­ing cities I’ve ever been to, with the old town look­ing extremely old, but still man­ag­ing to not fall apart, and with churches and mosques all over the place, it was a sight to see. The new town area was as mod­ern as any, with a Rob­son type street going through the cen­ter of the city, a large shop­ping cen­ter, and extremely large slices of pizza for under a dol­lar, I was very impressed. Although pizza def­i­nitely wasn’t the high­light food of this trip; that honor goes to Burek, one of the main culi­nary dishes of the Balkan region. Since this city was so sur­pris­ingly cheap, and inter­est­ing, Tighe and I took it upon our­selves to find some sou­venirs, and most of the items for sale were extremely sim­i­lar to the ones in the Grand Bazaars of Istan­bul. Upon our wan­der­ings, we hap­pened to run into the bridge where Franz Fer­di­nand was assas­si­nated, which essen­tially was the loca­tion that marked the start of World War 1. One of the coolest things around the city were the Sara­jevo Roses, which are mark­ings of the loca­tion where the city was flanked, and that peo­ple lost their lives. The holes in the ground were painted with red to remind every­one of the suf­fer­ing that occurred dur­ing the Bosn­ian War.

Just one of the many Sara­jevo Roses scat­tered across the city

Burek

Con­sid­er­ing how small the city is, I didn’t have a very high expec­ta­tion of the nightlife, but Sara­jevo con­tin­ued to sur­prise me. We had been told that the City Pub was the most lively of all the pubs in Sara­jevo, and since we found it dur­ing the day, it was our first des­ti­na­tion of the night. We were served by a man who wasn’t too impressed that we only spoke Eng­lish, but served us a “Sara­jevsko” beer any­ways. Since we were there quite early (around 9ish), we fig­ured the pub might be more lively later on. The next pub we found was an Irish pub that wasn’t too lively, but we chilled on a cou­ple of beers and went to our next des­ti­na­tion, “The Club”. Appar­ently this is the best night­club in town, but not on Fri­days, only on Sat­ur­days, so we talked had a cou­ple of beers with some Croa­t­ian guys inside, and headed to a loca­tion rec­om­mended by them after­words. He gave us no direc­tions, he only pointed to a giant sign, and said the place was right below there, so we decided to give it a shot. When we arrived, we saw hun­dreds of peo­ple in a lineup, and of course, we got in there with them. When we got in, we real­ized it was a rave, full of teenage kids and over­priced beer. It was a cool venue, but raves aren’t exactly my scene these days, and Tighe def­i­nitely didn’t digg (pun intended for all you comp sci out there) it, so we decided to try our luck at our first loca­tion, The Pub. Upon enter­ing loaded with sev­eral beers, and the the peo­ple loaded up with the same deli­cious bev­er­age, the sec­ond expe­ri­ence here was much more enter­tain­ing then the first. I met two Bosn­ian girls, and Tighe met two girls from the Nether­lands. Tighe left to go to another club with those girls, and the ones I was with asked me to go with them to a club as well, a club which both Tighe and I hap­pened to reunite. It was a great night in Sara­jevo, and because of it we decided to take it easy the next night, so I never got to find out if “The Club” was really the place to be on Sat­ur­day nights, maybe I’ll find out someday.

Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t bring my cam­era out at night, but this is a pic­ture of the city at night, credit Wikipedia.

So, the next day, we fig­ured we would do some­thing that didn’t involve drink­ing or eat­ing. One of the things that makes Sara­jevo so beau­ti­ful is the moun­tains sur­round­ing it, and so we fig­ured we would take an epic hike through the hills. Con­sid­er­ing Tighes exten­sive his­tory knowl­edge, we should have real­ized from the get-go that the idea wasn’t the smartest one. The walk was amaz­ing, we walked by kids play­ing soc­cer, a women herd­ing goats, and we man­aged to get high enough for an amaz­ing view. But then, we decided to go even higher.

Epic view from the moun­tains of Sarajevo

So, another small his­tory les­son for you all; when Sara­jevo was under siege, the city was sur­rounded by land­mines so that none of the inhab­i­tants could escape, and those land­mines to this day are being con­stantly sought out by the gov­ern­ment. When we walked towards the top of the hill, we first saw some sus­pi­cious blue tape, but being the fear­less trav­el­ers that we are, we decided to trek onwards. As we got far­ther up, we saw a cir­cu­lar patch of dirt that was sur­rounded by yel­low cau­tion tape that said MINE. We both fig­ured it was the buried entrance to a mine­shaft. As we con­tin­ued on, we saw a big red sign that had a skull and cross­bones on it, and it said MINE as well. We both dis­cussed whether or not to con­tinue, but also won­dered why there would be such an intense sign for a mine shaft. Tighe was about to walk over to this sign in the dis­tance and get me to take a pic­ture of him beside it. As he walked a few steps, it clicked in both our heads as we simul­ta­ne­ously yelled, “LANDMINE!”, and pro­ceeded to run as fast as we could out of there. The funny thing is, our biggest con­cern going for­ward was cougars, but that would have been the least of our wor­ries if we con­tin­ued on.

We should have seen this and instantly ran back. We didn’t.

But this did the trick

Over­all Sara­jevo was an amaz­ing city. It was the most mul­ti­cul­tural city I’ve ever been to, it had gor­geous land­scapes, plenty beau­ti­ful women, a fun nightlife, amaz­ing land­marks; there is sim­ply some­thing for every­one in Sarajevo.

Bel­grade

On our way to Ser­bia, we had one of the most ran­dom encoun­ters of our trip. We took a daily 5am bus from Sara­jevo to Bel­grade on a Tues­day morn­ing, set­tled into our seats, and waited for our 8 hour bus ride to begin. But, as I’m sit­ting there, I see some­one I rec­og­nized walk­ing up the stairs, I couldn’t remem­ber his name at first, but he was a friend from the Kolej (our dorms) from Prague. He gave me a look, I gave him a look back, and we both real­ized it was who we were both think­ing of. What are the chances of meet­ing some­one who you knew from Prague in a ran­dom city like Sara­jevo? His name was Nick, and Adam from the dorms was with him as well, so we spent most of the time catch­ing up with these guys, and they headed with us to the hos­tel we booked, “The Black Catz”.

Nick from Prague, and Tighe on the left

When we arrived in Bel­grade, we had no idea where to go, so the first thing we did was take out some Ser­bian cur­rency, find a map in a hotel, and look for where we needed to go. Tak­ing a taxi was sim­ply not an option for us trav­el­ers. After an hour or so of search­ing, we couldn’t find the hos­tel, although we knew we were in the right area. For­tu­nately for us, a friendly Serb noticed we were lost, asked us where we were going and knew exactly where it was, so he tooks us there. So far, our impres­sion of Ser­bians was pretty good. When we got there, the build­ing was under com­plete recon­struc­tion; we had to climb over debris, cover our mouths from poten­tial espes­tus, and finally, had to walk four flights of stairs due to the ele­va­tor not being oper­a­tional. When we arrived, we were greeted by a man whom we call “Hos­tel Man”, since we never actu­ally man­aged to catch his real name. The Three Black Catz hos­tel was a smaller hos­tel, but that’s not a bad thing. I think they’re bet­ter due to the fact that its a lot more per­sonal, and a lot eas­ier to talk to trav­ellers (as opposed to say, a hos­tel that has hun­dreds of beds). A quote from the mind of Kevin Tighe: “Hos­tel man didn’t seem to give a shit about life except for liv­ing it. The guy was at least 6–3 and com­bined with a stern look and a thick Ser­bian accent, he was quite intim­i­dat­ing. His unique sar­casm had us ques­tion­ing his opin­ion of us all night long,  but never the less he took us out to sev­eral bars and was more than happy to share his home­made plum brandy”. The bars he took us to were inter­est­ing, although there wasn’t many for­eign­ers too be found, and con­sid­er­ing it was a week­day and it was rain­ing, there wasn’t much Ser­bians to be found in gen­eral. Some­one recently told me that Bel­grade is famous for its par­ties on the beach, so if you go to Bel­grade, I’d def­i­nitely check that out.

Com­mon room in the Three Black Catz. Nick, Adam, and Tighe

Bel­grade was def­i­nitely an inter­est­ing city, although the archi­tec­tural choice of gray was very rem­i­nis­cent of SFU for me. Dur­ing the day, we walked around and tried to do as much touristy activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble, despite it not being a very pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion (for those who don’t speak Ser­bian any­ways); we watched a Red Bull Motor­cy­cle rally that took place in front of the Par­lia­ment build­ing, checked out the sights, and headed back due to the dis­ap­point­ing amount of rain. But first, we went search­ing for food; I had a mas­sive ham­burger that was almost too big for my shrunken trav­el­ers stom­ach, but I man­aged to fin­ish it off. Every­thing in the city was extremely cheap, rival­ing the prices of the Czech Repub­lic and other for­mer com­mu­nist coun­tries. The next day, we went and checked out the big his­tory museum in the main park, but unfor­tu­nately it was closed. Luck­ily, the fortress sur­round­ing the museum was very cool as well, which had var­i­ous tanks from pre­vi­ous wars scat­tered across its landscape.

Fortress in Belgrade

Over­all, Bel­grade was a pretty cool city, although I’d like to go there again and spend more then only two days there, and hope­fully with some sun as well. The hos­tel made it a really great expe­ri­ence, it was a lot of fun to sit­ting around a table with your friends, some trav­el­ers, and locals shar­ing sto­ries and drink­ing home­made plum brandy. We met an Ital­ian man from Bari who was there for a ten­nis tour­na­ment, a cou­ple girls from Lon­don, a bunch of local girls Ser­bians who worked for, or knew hos­tel man, and a lot of oth­ers that made the hos­tel a great des­ti­na­tion. If any­one is plan­ning on going to Bel­grade, look no fur­ther then The Black Catz.

Us at a Ser­bian bar, brought by the one and only Hos­tel Man

The plan was to go straight to Greece, and Bel­grade was only a des­ti­na­tion because we couldn’t make it there from Sara­jevo. But plans change, and instead, we headed to Sofia in Bulgaria.