yatb

So here I am in china trying to remember the highlights from the many contries we passed through in Europe and the bordering lands. Not an easy task. The highlights have to be Paros – a small Greek island and Istanbul – the first place you really feel in a different world.
We arrived in Athens after spending a night in thessolonici not a brilliant place and certainly the worst hotel we’ve stayed in so far!
Arriving in Athens in the evening we checked into a hostel and planned our trip to paros by ferry the following day.
Paros was a paradice. After rushing around Europe itwas nice spending some time just relaxing. We checked into a campsite and spent a few days there renting 50cc scooters – a good way to find the deserted beaches. We were out of tourist season by this point so this was not hard. Had a midnight swim with some Dutch girls and drank cold beer on the beach into the night. Perfect.
After Athens we headed back to thesselinici. Thistkme stoping Ina photo gallery and an art museam and staying in a decent hostel – thessolonici redeamed itself somewhat.
From Greece we headed to Istanbul, Turkey – arriving at the border we had not a euro to our name, well not in cash anyway so the 15 euros required for the visa posed a problem, quickly solved by some generious travellers – thanks guys.

Istanbul was quiet when we arrived. Nothing like the chaos we had read about. We walked around the city taking in the sitesof the giant blue mosque and leafy parks. It was not until around 2100 that suddenly the place came alive! We had arrived during the fasting of Ramadan! Everyone came out onto the streets eating from the hudereds of tempory errected eateries – the whole place was buzzing! One the second night there was a powercut seemingly all the cheering worked as all the food stands began cooking again – a major disaster avoided! Check out my pictures by this time I had purchased my new 1000d. A small canon dslr, but does the job and fitted my budget!

Brasov Concert

From Istanbul we headed into romania and up north to transalvenia – a place I would highly reccommend we stayed in Brasov in a very nice place run by Radu and ‘Mrs’ although not Radu’s Mrs. Mrs had husband who worked on an advertising farm whatever that is?
Walking into the center of town from our appartment we found a huge stage being set up and cameras being planted onto huge tripods and arms. There was something going on! We chose a spot at the nicest restaurant in town overlooking the stage. Romania was the first place in Europe where Issas really quite cheap – we lorded it that nice ordering beers wine and good food! No more cheese sandwiches!
Instraments were tuning and an orcestra paraded onto stage. They played a mixture of more popular classical pieces and some romanian pieces. A fantastic evening. The following days we headed to Bran to see the castle there. Bran is where dracula or Vlad the inpaler was born or perhaps visited.
After we had seen the sights in romania we went to book our train to the Ukraine where we had booked a flight to St Petersburg thiswas the beginning of a long night. As it turned out the train was booked, so standing at the station was decided to after ataxi driver how much it would be to drive to Kiev it turned out that would mean two drivers and perhaps two cars so we opted to be dropped of at the border and make the rest of the way on our own.
The taxi driver was an interesting man, he spoke good english and td us lots about Romania and also what an aweful and dangeroois comtry Moldavia was. Around 6 hours into the drive we got out our road map to confirm our progress it was then we realized that what we though had been just idle chatter was in fact advice and that we were not headed to the ukraine border, but the Moldavian border! Nothing we could do now.
Some time later our driver flashed down a coach just driving down a road and stopped to get out and talk to the driver. The next moment we were being bundled into the coach headed accross the border! We arrived in Moldavia around 0600 and felt rather uneasy about it all. We didn’t spend long getting on the next coach out of there headed to Kiev.
Needless to say we caught our flight and entered Russia!
Typed in my iPod touch – please excuse any typos or spelling errors.