Final Days of Bliss

 

Arriving in London was an unnecessary hassle. I was stopped at the passport control office because of my lengthy travels and my “’denied entry” stamp (see previous post). The length of time shouldn’t have been a problem because I had a 6 month UK visa but apparently it’s suspicious. The “denied entry” stamp also shouldn’t be a problem again because of the 6 month UK visa but apparently it’s suspicious. The boarder folks wanted a print out of my return ticket back to Canada to prove I was planning on leaving the UK before my 6 month visa was up. I hadn’t printed it out yet as I still had 4 days in London before leaving for Canada. This was an issue for them, apparently it's suspicious. I had it electronically but without wifi, I couldn’t prove to them I had a flight out. But I “should have known” to print off the ticket according to grumpy passport lady (Beverly). Another issue was that I couldn’t prove I had a hostel booking in London. I had it electronically but again, without wifi, I couldn’t prove it. Lots of questioning, waiting, searching through my expertly over stuffed backpack, more waiting, more questioning, and phone calls to the airline to confirm my booking to Canada. After an extra hour and a half in Gatwick airport and a lecture from the boarder guards about printing off all my bookings (ie waste unnecessary paper), I was free go.Thanks Bev!

My first visit to London back in September wasn’t that great. I mean, it was great being in London but I was tired from the flight over, switching time zones, then I got sick. So up until this point “London” in my eyes was not a great city but I was determined to change that this time around.

Shopping! Hello Oxford street! Ok, I had held off on shopping for my entire trip... 6 whole months of zero shopping... so I had a small budget (whatever I had left on my visa, read: not much) to blow in London. Don't get me wrong, this shopping experience had been carefully planned: mapped out a route, made a prioritized list of necessary items, snacks were packed, breaks scheduled (kidding!)... but I had been thinking about this day for a little while but I am not kidding about the prioritized list. 


To quote Lisa..."in Lahndan... let the shopping commence!!! Whoop!". Starting at the Marble Arch end, I worked my way past Primark, Marks and Spencer, WHSmith, TopShop (Lisa: "go to topshop in London!!! Its the BEST!!"... and it is, I just stood in one spot for a couple of minutes just taking in the expanse of options), H&M (not at all like the ones in North America aka: better), Debenhams, House of Frasier... the list goes on! 

1) Perfect Dark Brown Leather Boots (PDBLB). Check! But only after 2 full days of searching.

 

 

 

In such an amazing mood after finding PDBLB, I was feeling creative so snapped this one. The people in the mini cars stopped at the light here probably thought I was a little nuts: crazy smile on my face carrying a large amount of shopping bags snapping a photo of a couple bikes...

 

End of a long day (read: mega tired and hungry) and you probably can't tell by the look on my face but I am extremely excited to have found PDBLB. I snapped a photo (after trying on a ton of dresses in one of the stores) to eventually txt to my sister and show her my great find but apparently I was too excited to actually send this photo to her... sorry sis.

 Look closely and you will find the reason I took this photo. Made me smile. Oh those Brits and their sense of humor.

Feeling a little homesick? Maybe. Trilled to find a familiar brand? Yep! 

 After stumbling upon Chinatown, I stumbled upon the theater district of London! Could these 4 days in London get any better??? -Palace Theater

 And looky-look whats playing! Singin' In The Rain!

Back to Marble Arch where I sat and ate my packed lunch. I am still a backpacker on a limited budget people : )

Inside Covent Garden Market, London

More market! Lovely little shops and a lady singing some opera. 

Tea on the promenade anyone? 

 Where I retired to after a long day in London. This is the Phoenix Hostel/Bar. More like the Second-worst-place-I-stayed-at-during-6-months-of-traveling Hostel. It was stuffy, small, crammed us into the rooms like sardines, over charged for beer (though this might be a little biased having just come from Croatia/Eastern Europe), not enough bathrooms... ya, it wasn't a good one to end on though surprisingly on par with other hostel prices in London. Please don't base your opinion of hostels on one you may have stayed at in London. They are 100x better in every other city in the Europe. 

 

How much do I love history? Enough to go back to the British Museum a second time and spend another whole day there exploring! Isn't he gorgeous?! Those Greeks knew what art was.  

 

Fight sequence: Grab ear, choke, wrap legs around each other, fight to the death.  

 

Please tell me I am not the only one creeped out  by this.

 

Thought this little fella was pretty darn adorable. 

 

Looks like he likes peanut butter just as much if not more than me.

I got lost in this room. Its beauty, sculptural prowess of the artists... that, and I actually got lost in this room. I couldn't find my way out and was starting to get flustered. 

So that concludes my first couple of AMAZING days in London. I had a few more to go but that will be in another post. Ice cream, meeting up with a travel buddy, pictures of strangers, night walk... still to come! 

K

Day Trip!

I had one more day left before heading north to London for a few days so decided to squeeze in one more day trip and one more country to my trip count total. Slovenia is north of Croatia with the capital city, Ljubljana, just a 3 hour train ride from Zagreb. Sounds perfect right? WRONG! I had such good intensions: got up at 7am, packed a lunch, bought my return train ticket, had a whole compartment to myself....

Waiting on the train in Zagreb, Croatia.

Whole campartment to myself!... 2 of the 6 seats in the cpmpartment... excited to be back riding German/Austrian trains.

After a lovely 30min train ride, the train stopped at the Croatian boarder where the robo-cops acted very important and stamped our passports. Business as usual. Next stop was the Slovenian boarder where I was questioned then taken off the train by a Slovenian boarder control robo-cop who was trying to explain to me why I was not allowed into Slovenia or the EU for that matter. Yicks! What is going on here??!!

Thankfully Robo-cop's supervisor spoke very good english and explained that I had over stayed my alotted 90 day visit in the Schengen countries within a 6 month period so I can not return to the majority of the EU countries for another 6 months. Oh boy. Turns out I had spent 102 days in the Schengen countries which isn't enough to get a fine (250 euros apparently), but means I had to get on the next train back to Zagreb and abandon my day trip to Ljubljana. 

This is the lovely poster that was in the `holding room` where I was kept until the train arrived. I thought it was a joke at first. If you can`t see, it is depicting how to identify different races of people. Its written in Croatian so I can`t read it but certainly understand it.... looks like what a certain insane, controlling, evil, and sadistic group of people used during a certain major world war... starts with an N and ends with an I....

I was only held for 45 mins or so but was extensively questioned as to my reason for travel, reason for wanting to visit Ljubljana, where my luggage was, why was I alone, why would I want to go to Slovenia, where was my luggage, why was I alone.... repeat... I had to explain multiple times that I was only going for the day and my luggage was in Zagreb. I don`t think they understood until they searched my day bag and found my packed lunch....`Oh! You were only going for the day`... BINGO robo-cop. 

Lucky for me, the paper work was signed by the robo-cops and myself in time for the next train otherwise I would have been sitting in the holding room for another 4 hours until the next train arrived. I now have a bold DENIED ENTRY INTO THE EU stamp in my passport which will cause me some trouble when I arrive in London the next day, but thats a different story altogether. 

I did acheive my goal for the day however, I made it into one more country and got one more stamp in my passport! Thank you Dobva, Slovenia!

After that adventure, I could not wait to get to London! That post next....

Kylie

12 hours, 12 photos

Something different: I decided to do a small photo project just to see how it would turn out, 12 hours 12 photos. Pretty straight forward: take one photo every hour where ever you are. Zagreb seemed to be a fitting city for this project and it was a bit of an unusual day for me so why not?

This is the main square in the old town in Zagreb. The cathedral is getting cleaned... like just about every other church in Europe.

I took a stroll to the huge inner city park where the zoo is located. It was a long walk so an hour later I wasn't there yet but this shop sign made me laugh.

Back from my long walk, this is my dorm... nap time!

Lunch! The most amazing pasta with pesto I have had since Florence, Italy!

Notice board in the hostel kitchen. Where to eat, what to do, how to get a free beer... everything a traveler needs!

Snapped this one on my walk to the train station.

Yeah! European hockey! I met a photographer on the train from Sarajevo to Zagreb a few days ago. He was in Sarajevo covering the "Brangelina" event and we got to talking about Canada which of course lead to talking about hockey. Long story short, he invited me to a playoff game Zagreb vs a Czech team on Sunday. The Zagreb team is about 50% Canadian players as well as a Canadian head coach. We had 4th row seats which was pretty cool. This is the warm-up... Czech team is in white.

Player intros.

The most AMAZING hockey fans! Matko describes them as "drunk football (aka soccer) fans at a hockey game". I haven't been to a football game in Europe before but I have seen them on tv and would have to agree. The fans were on their feet the whole game, singing and chanting the entire game. They must have had at least 12 different chants and songs. A group of fans behind us had huge drums and were pounding on them leading the crowd in songs/chants. It was an amazing experience.

The Czech team has a Canadian player who was in jail for 6 years for hiring a hitman to murder his agent. This isn't him... it just reminded me of that story. It was front page news of the local newspaper on the day of the game.

Final score: Medvescak 3, Znojmo 1

Medvescak is pronounced med-VES-chuck.

Back at the hostel... one more photo before my 12 hours was up...




I couldn't end this post with a photo of chairs so saved this one for last. Croatians are awesome... they didn't have a singer for their national anthem, they had a guy drum the national anthem! He was amazing and the crowed went NUTS when he finished. Think Travis Barker but better.

Kylie

Sarajevo and food!

Having escaped Mostar alive, my first meal in Sarajevo was Italian pizza. Proper, stone baked, thin crust, Italian pizza... made by Bosnians. It was amazing! Maybe I was starving at the time, maybe I had talked it down in my mind ("it wont be as amazing as the pizza you had in Sorrento"), but it was really good! So good in fact, I returned to the restaurant a couple days later for another pizza... then a few days after that, I took a friend there for lunch! If you are ever in Sarajevo and have a hankering for some proper pizza, check out "Cheers" just off the main pedestrian street.

Delicious! My (second) veggie pizza baking in the oven.

Veggie pizza number 2. I had to stop myself before I ate the whole thing so I could snap a picture on my phone for y'all. 

Snow covered Sarajevo. Compared to Mostar, this is nothing. 

This made me think of you, Mom. 

History time! As you know (or should know...) the trigger for WWI was the assassination of Archduke  Frans Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on a visit to Sarajevo. Thus, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. It was an interesting series of events: at first a bomb was thrown at the car but exploded far behind the car. The parade was more or less stopped while Frans and his wife insisted on visiting the injured spectators in the hospital. Afterwards, they were on their way back to the castle when their driver took a wrong turn and young Gravrilo Princip (19 years old), shot the couple. The kid tried to shoot himself but the gun was wrestled from his hands before he could. He then tried to ingest cyanide but vomited the expired poison. He was seen as a hero for a long time and a marble stone with his footprints was placed on the spot where he shot the Archduke and his wife... until the Russians took over control of whats now Bosnia and moved the stone (which I think is in the museum now). On the wall of the museum is a commemorative plaque (pictured above) that says "from this place on 28 June 1914 Gravrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie". In the background of the photo, you can see the Latin bridge (which was re-named to Gravrilo Princip for a short time) which Frans and Sophie crossed in their car before being shot and killed. 

Latin bridge with the Museum and place where Gravrilo stood on the corner. 

This building was covered in shards of mirror. 

Burek... a type of "pite" or pie that is famous in this region of the world. Its originally Turkish, made of flaky dough and traditionally filled with cheese. More common fillings also include meat as well as spinach which is what I got.  

"Garage" in Croatian. 

I am amused by simple things... this is a sign that was posted on the bank door. The choice of dog in this picture... compared to the one below...

No beagles and no German shepherds :(

And no guns... just so you know. 

Sarajevo rose. Where a bomb exploded and they filled it in with red coloured paint/concrete as a type of commemorative thing. It was night time right after the gala so the colours are off but you get the idea. They are all over the side walks in Sarajevo but because of the snow, this was the first one I had seen all week. 

The gala... if you squint, you can see me near the front... there is a photographer in the front wearing orange, I am 3 rows behind him. The announcers are introducing Angelina Jolie to the stage at this point. I didn't get to see Brad at all, he was apparently really drunk so hiding back stage all night. 

A terrible dessert we tried. Bosnians LOVE it so we had to try it. I don't know what it is but tastes like sugar mixed with nut flavoring formed into a square. The texture is really odd (main reason why I dont like certain foods is because of the texture... ie cooked mushrooms but in this case that didnt matter much) and it is stomach-churningly sweet. The block we shared was huge and we each took a small taste, the rest went in the trash. 

Vuchko- mascot from the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984

This isn't Sarajevo, this is Zagreb! Its the Canadian embassy. Down the road is the massive Japanese and Brazilian embassies. Our little Canadian one has a bulletin board out front with articles about the Inuit. haha.  

Valentines Day! I totally forgot about this until I was walking back from the gym and saw this guy walking ahead of me. I love Valentines Day (pun intended)!

More hearts in Zagreb! 

I snapped this one this morning in Zagreb, Croatia. Its the first nice weekend since the massive cold snap and snow storms in Eastern Europe so the cafes have been packed all day... I also like this lady's boots but that was an after thought, not the reason why I took this picture. 

One week to the day I will be returning to Canada. I am dreading it for so many reasons but also looking forward to a few things such as friends I haven't seen in ages (my fellow "dessert" loving pal) and getting to visit the Yukon before starting back to work! 

Carnival tonight and playoff hockey game tomorrow in Croatia, yippy!

Kylie