Jocelyn's Blog

Continuation of pictures from Greece. Enjoy!

Pictures from Bulgaria and Greece, sorry I haven't written anything recently, but I'll try to do that soon..
Love you all,
xooxoxox

Hi,
We've done so much in the last couple weeks that I don't really know where to start or what to write about, but I think I'll limit it to a few highlights from all three countries.

In Hungary, after seeing the crazy cowboys in Bugac (which you can read more about in Eric's blog, and can see a bit later in pictures), we headed to a little town called Abony where Peter's dad, Joe is from. If was a bit exciting going there because it was the first place we've visited that wasn't in our guide book, so it took a bit more effort to get there, and then figure things out. Luckily it was smallish so we were quite easily able to figure things out and find a place to stay. It ended up being really quite fun too. The woman who owned the motel we stayed at didn't speak a word of English, but we still managed to carry on almost a half hour conversation with her, full of arm waving and hand sigals and with the help of our guide book and a pen and paper. I guess in smaller places with little tourism, people are more genuinely interested in who you are and where you're from. She then decided to bring us up beer from her kitchen and managed to tell us the best place to go eat - a little diner/truckstop place, apparently voted second best in all of Hungary. Eric ate the best goulas soup of all the places we ordered it in Hungary here too, so it lived up to its reputation. We went and found Joe's old house, the 'Kostyan House', but unfortunately the gate was locked and it was a bit gloomy outside so we don't have the best pictures of it. Still, all in all, I was really impressed with the little town, its people, the market and little churches too.

We then headed a town called Eger, famous for its wine cellars. We spent a couple nights there, which I won't write much about, but I believe Eric's blog has more to say about it if you're interested. Next we headed to another town off the beaten track, where Eric's grandmother is from, and you can read about it from his point of view as well.

From there we thought it would be relatively easy to get to Romania, and we were very wrong! We spent a couple days travelling solidly, from dingy town to another, waiting in train stations and eating sandwiches and bananas along the way. We'd eventually managed to get through the border, to a small place in Romania. We found a bank machine, and we're waiting for our train to get to our destination, Sighet, in the Maramures part of the country. Unfortunately, we neglected to realize that we'd gone through a time change over the border, so ended up waiting until 9 at night for an appropriate train to the next town along the way. Because of this we had to stay in a random city not in our guidebook, arriving late at night (we later learned was known as the ugliest in Romania). We decided to trust one of the many taxi drivers to take us somewhere cheap (thankgod for the phrasebook!). The next day we ended up waiting until late afternoon for a bus, but eventually, at long last we were in the beautiful Romanian countryside.

When we arrived, we were lucky to find that a hostel had just recently opened up. It's run by a British guy who's married to a Romanian women. They spend their summers here and winters in Bristol, and are very very nice people. We quickly decided to spend much more time here than we'd originally planned. Now let me get to the exciting part! The landscape here is absolutely stunning, and even better are the people. A large number of people here dress traditionally, and if you explore into the smaller towns in the countryside, almost everyone does. Women wear kneelength pleated skirts, knit sweaters and headscarves tied under their chins. There are stooped old ladies wearing this everywhere you look, but even many of the younger women dress this way too. Many of the men wear hats, some look like from the fourties or fifties, but others have the traditional straw hat with colorful ribbons around it. Horsecarts are at typical way to get around, and the cars just dodge them as best as they can through town. Almost everyone will greet you on the street, or at least smile and nod. People are open and friendly, and spend lots of time gossiping and socializing. In the smaller towns, many have built little benches outside their house gates, where they'll sit and socialize with people passing by. Some of them even have little roofs built on them so they can continue the gossiping even in the rain. Apparently this happens even more on Sundays after church, while they're all dressed up in more colourful traditional clothing, but we'll see it for ourselves tomorrow!

Our first day here we stayed around the town, and vistited an outdoor village museum. Old 16-18th cen houses have been set up here, so we spent a couple hours wandering around. We even had an old guy give us a bit of a tour in French (mysteriously, French is quite common here).

The next day we took a bus to one of the small villages, and then wandered back half way by ourselves, walking through other villages on the way before hitching the rest of the way back. Hitching here is the most reliable way of getting anywhere, and you just pay the driver the bus fare. We've found out though, that many people won't accept money from us, because we're a bit a novelty. Everyone loves Canadians! It was a really cool day though, we saw a strange wooden contraption which had been built on the river where villagers washed their sweaters and blankets. They'd diverted water so it poured into a kind of barrel, bubbling up and spinning whatever was placed inside round and round. It was really cool. We also saw about six old sixteenth century wooden churches, and were invited into a local man's house. This was actually a bit creepy, because he was quite drunk, but he introduced us to his mum, who tried to sell us some beautiful quilts and traditional costumes which were displayed in her living room. It ended up being really interesting to see, and the guy was harmless. I'm glad Eric was there though, otherwise I would have run quickly in the other direction and not had the fun tour of the yard and barn animals!

Yesterday we went with Rob and his family (who own the hostel) across the Ukranian border to see a market. It was an experience, let to say the least! Eric's written up a bit more about this, and you should read it. It wasn't exactly fun, but it was certainly exciting at parts!

I'm sure if you've read this far, your eyes are sore, so I'll stop here. Tomorrow we head on towards a region called Southern Bucovina to see some famous monasteries and frescoes. It should be great, but I'll be a bit sad to leave here. I love the place we're staying, it feels like we're a part of the family almost!

Anyways, I miss everyone lots, and hope things are going well in good old Canada!!!! xoxoxoox
Joce

Hello,

So now we're down in Krakow, a five hour train ride south of Warsaw - a train that never went faster than about 20 km/h I might add. When we arrived, we hiked from the train station a few km to where we thought we'd be staying, but instead found a sign on the door with my name on it directing us to a bar. We went and got some drinks while waiting for the owner to show up and drive us to the place. The evil place. I'll explain later.

The next day we took a bus to Auschwitz. We took a guided tour and were herded around with mass amounts of tourists. Nonetheless it was a good experience, I'm glad it's over, but very glad we did it. I think it was more important to Eric to see it, but I really learnt a lot.

The day after, we went to see the main sight in Krakow, Wawel hill, which has a castle and a cathedral on it. It was really cool, we picked the perfect time of day to go see it because a huge thunderstorm came crashing down on us as soon as we got to the top. The storm must have been right above us, I don't think I've been frightened by lightning before! Anyways, after this we walked around the old town, which was really cool, but not as great as we'd been led to believe. We both agreed that the fact that all the old buildings had huge chain stores in them took away from the 'medieval' feel of the place, and instead we felt more like we were in a mall. A really nice mall. Anyways, I think perhaps we're being spoiled with old towns and now we're being more choosy. In my mind Riga is still the best, but maybe that's because it was the first one I saw and now they're all blending together. But maybe it really was better!

The next day was a non-day. We tried to go to the salt mine outside of Krakow, but got stopped right at the door. We were locked in our apt by the other guests who hadn't realized that if you double lock the door you can't open it from the inside. This was fine we thought, a little annoying, but not the end of the world. We were, afterall, checking out that day so we just had to wait for housekeeping. Unfortunately, housekeeping never showed up, as the room apparently wasn't booked for that night. We didn't have any luck shouting down to the street for help either because everyone spoke Polish... and we honestly didn't try to hard because we kept thinking someone would show up. Around 12 at night the other guests finally came back and we charged downtown for some much needed kebabs and icecream. Luckily we hadn't starved all day because there was some brown rice in the cupboard that we cooked in the kettle. We've decided, to keep our spirits up, that this day never actually existed, and will therefore hopefully never speak of it again.

Today we went to the salt mine, which I must say was worth the wait. It was really interesting, and (thankgod) cold! I think we've only had one day under 30 degrees since we arrived in Europe. We had an awesome tour and our guide gave us some salt crystals (illegally, shhhh she could lose her job). Afterwards we went to our favourite perogi restaurant and then ate icecream from Poland's best icecream place. We assume it was anyways, for some reason this place had the hugest line up of locals despite the fact that there were many other icecream places around. Eric likened it to the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld and since I haven't seen this episode I'll take his word for it. Except that the people inside were really nice even thought they were so rushed. I don't get the logic, but fair enough.

Anyways, I'm sure your eyes are sore now....
I'll let you all return to your lives in Canada, and I'll be sure to write again soon and let you know what's going on... We're heading to the mountains and then to Slovakia, then Czech Republic... we think.

Miss everyone lots,

Joce