The MyTrails News Feed

New blogentry 'Amazing Norway, Amazing Views' was added to 'Fjords of Norway'

2011-08-01 00:00:00

Unfortunately the weather proved too cold to hike to Trolltungan – partly because we hadn’t brought the right gear and partly because the snow hadn’t melted on the high altitude path as we had hoped. So instead we headed south on some magnificent roads, passing more splendid waterfalls and beautiful mountain views than we could count – after a long detour thanks to the crappy lonely planet maps, we arrived at Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock) visitor center, near Lysefjord. It would seem most the tourists in Norway had found their way here as well, on this perfect sunny day, but as we had taken a while coming and it had gotten afternoon already, most seemed to be heading down from the trail.

The first part of the path was really crowded and we hurried past many not so fit people, simply because it wasn’t that fun to walk in the crowds. Half way through we got to the hardest part of the trail; a ravine with big rocks that one must climb – it was somewhat fun to watch all the cruise ship tourists descending, huffing and puffing their way. The trail should take around 3 hours (we did it in 2h15m) to complete and is a mix of easy walking and some harder parts, with a few pretty steep parts. Everyone should be able to manage, if they stick to their own pace. As we got longer into the trail, the amount of people started to diminish and soon the crowds had thinned out to a more enjoyable number. The last third of the trail was very beautiful, crossing some granite plains with incredible vistas.

Finally we rounded a corner and Preikestolen unfolded itself before us; jutting out into the void it looks amazingly precarious. A fair amount of people were enjoying the views, and they were right to do so. From Preikestolen it is a vertical drop of several hundred meters, directly into Lysefjord, with the Lysefjord stretching far inland to one side, and all the way to the North Sea to the other. As with many natural sights in Norway there are no fences to stop you from doing stupid things - a really nice change to many other sights around the world. Creeping close to the edge, I couldn’t help but feeling vertigo and peering directly out over the edge was a thrilling experience. One old man, didn’t suffer from the same freights as others, as he gingerly sad right on the edge, with legs dangling in thin air and a big smile on his face.

Walking up further, one could get a great view down on Preikestolen and Lysefjorden far below. Boats were sailing on the blue waters, illuminated by the golden evening light – what a sight!

Around 6 o’clock most people had returned down and because of the long days, the sun was still high in the sky, so peace descended upon the magical place. Once again we enjoyed every bit of the atmosphere, sitting close to the edge in the warm summer evening and seeing the sun slowly set on the return hike. We took in every moment and raveled in the beauty and serenity of it all.

This was out last stop on our mini trip to Norway, but we could definitely have spent lots and lots of more time in this amazing country. We can’t recommend a trip to the western fjords of Norway more; and I believe we can say only one thing: Go now!

New blogentry 'A City Steeped in History' was added to 'Road to Jakarta'

2011-08-01 00:00:00

I like taking sleeper trains, it is a form of travelling that still has a bit of a romantic air about it. Hua Lompong station in Bangkok is large and busy with countless people passing through on their way to all corners of Thailand. Railway staff is also very helpful towards sweaty, flustered farangs with way too much luggage, and we were quickly guided towards platform 4 where we were to catch a train to Hat Yai in southern Thailand. All tickets on the train directly to Penang were sold out, so therefore we had opted for this train as it would get us as close to the Malaysian border as possible.

The train was chugging its way down through Thailand, we passed by little homes built right by the tracks, if we had put our hand out the window we could have touched the rusting tin roofs and the laundry hung out to dry. As the train got further away from Bangkok we entered a part of Thailand where life moves at a much slower pace. We passed an intersection where a dog was standing in the middle and a pickup truck was driving around it. The next morning we had reached the countryside, and everything was so green. Rice paddies, banana palms, papaya trees and suddenly large limestone cliff started jutting up from the ground, it was a bit like driving through a dry Halong Bay.

Penang was everything I had thought it would be. And so far I really like it, I love old shop houses and I’ve been photographing facades, doors, signs - you name it - like a mad woman! Martin seems slightly worried that I’ll be run over by a car or motorbike on the pretty heavily trafficked streets here, but I kinda have to walk in the middle of the road to properly photograph the lovely old houses and temples :) We live an old, heritage house – in bright green and have a view right out to an old cemetery, I love it, it has so much character! And who cares if the toilet only flushes every other time, right?
The streets are filled with gorgeous, crumbling old shop houses, I saw hundreds of buildings I wanted to buy and restore back to the former glory, it was great walking around gazing in through open doorways and imagining what it would be like to run a quaint little boutique hotel where the patio would be filled with sweet smelling flowers and each room would have a balcony where you could stand and look down on the busy street below.

Penang was also hot and humid, way too hot and humid and we decided to head to the beach for a day. We jumped on a bus to Penang National Park where we embarked on a 1 hour 20 minute hike through the rainforest to reach the beach. Talk about it being hot and humid!! It was unbelievable humid in the jungle, it was so bad that I ended up taking off my t-shirt and just walking in my bikini top. Anybody who really knows me knows how I dislike tourists who wear beachwear while not on the beach, but there you go. I will have to take back all my bitter talk about inappropriate tourists because sometimes you just don’t have a choice…

The beach was lovely and it was practically deserted, we swam and lounged on the warm sand all day. A few hours in we realized Martin’s t-shirt had vanished. It had been laid out on a fallen palm tree to dry and suddenly it was gone. There were only 3 other tourists on the beach plus some Malaysian school kids on a fieldtrip, but really would anybody want to steal a sweaty, old t-shirt? We of course got the national park beach guard involved in this mysterious disappearance of the 100 baht t-shirt, I searched the beach together with the guard while Martin lay on his beach towel contemplating how he was gonna survive the heavily air-conditioned bus ride back to our hotel without a t-shirt, not to talk about the disapproving stares he no doubt would have collected by the Muslim locals. The guard and I returned from our search empty handed, just as all was starting to look really grim the guard offered up a spare shirt he had in his guard house – what a sweetheart! Even though it was way too big and bright yellow Martin accepted it with open arms :)

New images in 'Road to Jakarta'

2011-08-01 00:00:00

82 new images was added to 'Road to Jakarta'

New blogentry 'BKK' was added to 'Road to Jakarta'

2011-07-31 00:00:00

After a long flight arriving at Bangkok in the very early hours of the morning was a blessing. As soon as we stepped out of the air-conditioned airport, the heat and humidity clang to us as it just do in Bangkok – one of the world’s hottest cities. It wasn’t the first time we had experienced this sweltering and clingy heat, but you never expect it to be that bad. With lots of luggage we were even worse off – even the cabdriver couldn’t believe his eyes. Two full backpacks, a huge suitcase and a rather large sports bag…yep, it was as outrageous as it sounds.

To our defense, this wasn’t the beginning of one of the usual trips round one or the other part of the world. We were actually kinda moving to Jakarta, as Laerke has gotten an internship with the Danish Embassy there. Though we did have two-three weeks of holiday first, which was to be spent the usual semi-backpacker way. First stop Bangkok, and then a few stops down through the Malay Peninsula. We hated the luggage already!

Got a cap to the hotel, who luckily gave us our room right away, even though we came at four in the morning – no extra charge added. Guess that is what you get when you don’t stay at the cheapest places on Khao San

A little jetlagged, we went out into the urban jungle of Bangkok, scouting out the area and trying to find the BTS station, which should have been close. In reality it wasn’t that close and the heat and oppressive humidity were getting to us… we had walked for 20 minutes or so, when it started dripping. Knowing Southeast Asian downpours, we sought refuge under an overhang and soon enough, that turned out to be a good move.

The sky opened up and a torrential downpour ensued. Tuk tuk drivers also scrambled to relative safety under half roofs as the rain became too furious for them to drive on; no-one seemed to be surprised though – except one farang family sitting in a tuk-tuk, from where the driver had already taken flight. The girls were screaming, while dad, unsuccessfully was trying his best to keep the troops together; what a spectacle! What would have been a flood in Copenhagen was everyday life in Bangkok.

When the sky cleared, we continued through Lumphini park, where the local “wildlife” of monitor lizards, tortoises and birds came as a slight surprise for us. The park, a little too manicured though, is a nice retreat from the traffic heavy streets of Bangkok. And the very proper uniformed park police on pink bicycles gave us a good, if discreet, laugh.

In the following days, we did nothing much else than shopping and eating (ok, and a lot of sweating too). As usual the small warrens of Siam Square were a hit with Laerke, who needed just a few more office appropriate attires. MBK made a nice retreat from the heat and I even bought a pair of nice shoes and a new bag (pretty much similar to the other two that I’ve bought in MBK on other occasions, just a different color). We visited the weekend market as well, but could stand more than a few hours, as it was simply too hot. Thai friends have also tried to tell us, that the weekend market is decidedly not up-market, and therefore not an appropriate place for a nice pair of farangs to buy clothes. It so cheap though, that we just can’t help it.

We met with friends for a night out as well; good Thai food, some beer and drinks was an always winning combo. The beer and drinks where hard to come by though, as it was Buddhist lent, which means contemplation and prayer, again meaning no alcohol to be had in the entire city…by law! No law without exceptions though, the exception of cause being a place that is not really Bangkok – Khao San Road. Here the party was in full swing as always, and with a little luck, we found a little more quite corner and had a great time.

We left for Malaysia on the sleeper train, having crammed the latest purchases into our next to impossibly stuffed bags and suitcase…

New images in 'Road to Jakarta'

2011-07-31 00:00:00

29 new images was added to 'Road to Jakarta'

New travel 'Road to Jakarta'

2011-07-31 00:00:00

A short summer holiday, before Laerke starts her internship with the Royal Danish Embassy in Jakarta. We started out shopping in Bangkok, seeing som colonial architecture in Penang and finally restin...

New blogentry 'A weekend in Sweden' was added to 'Weekend in Sweden'

2011-07-06 00:00:00

My family had arranged for a bit of a family gathering at my Uncle’s house in Sweden and we were happy to join in. We decided to add an extra day and go camping in Hallandsåsen and do a bit of walking there. The weather wasn’t the best but it was fun to get the tent out again and we loved walking in the fresh air and camping next to one of the many beautiful lakes.

On the way to my Uncle’s house we passed a sign saying ‘Elg Safari’ and I’ve always wanted to see Moose so we went for it. It turns out it was calf season and there were so many calves in the park – they were so cute :)

Time spent at my uncl’s place was lovely, he has completely fixed up his house and it looks so great. Martin and I got to sleep in the best bedroom with a huge, soft bed, it made for a lovely night’s sleep. We enjoyed spending some time with my family, ate well and went on a daytrip to a lovely old farm and went for a walk. All in all a lovely weekend!

New images in 'Weekend in Sweden'

2011-07-06 00:00:00

26 new images was added to 'Weekend in Sweden'

New travel 'Weekend in Sweden'

2011-07-06 00:00:00

A weekend trip to Sweden to visit family and do a little camping.

New images in 'Fjords of Norway'

2011-07-06 00:00:00

77 new images was added to 'Fjords of Norway'

New images in 'Taiwan'

2011-07-06 00:00:00

41 new images was added to 'Taiwan'

New blogentry '9 days of the Roskilde Vibe' was added to 'Roskilde Festival'

2011-06-30 00:00:00

We drove from Copenhagen towards the Roskilde Music festival in a small and tightly packed car; two Danes (Lærke and I) and two of our Norwegian friends. Tents, sleeping bags, beer and food were crammed into the trunk and passenger seats, while the three girls sat in the back. Getting through the car-queues leading to the festival area was our first encounter with queuing, something we would get annoyingly familiar with. For the girls, it was their first time at the festival - I have been to the Roskilde Music Festival 5 times before, but this time was the first without my normal festival-gang – so it was kindda new for me too.

The last few years the festival got overrun before the official opening, which means that tents starts to be erected by eager participant on the camping areas early in the morning or even during the night before the opening of the gates. This year was to be different; steps had been made to help prevent this, which meant that this year you could book a spot in one of the specially marked camping areas beforehand – this should in theory make it unnecessary to take part in the early pushing and shoving. I didn’t really believe this though, but we didn’t wanna go and take part in the usual overrunning and my fears were unfortunately true. The fences had been overrun 5 hours prior to the official opening, and therefore the festival had decided to open for all shortly after. When we entered the camping areas, 1 hour before official opening hours, we could see that the mass of tents were already almost all encompassing. We made it to the special booking area, where a special entry pass was needed to get in, but this area had also been opened up to early and although it had been promised that there would be enough room for everyone that had booked, it looked bleak – the amount of tents were massive.

We wandered around looking for a spot, and weren’t in the best of spirits – but a small spot in between two major camps could be our salvation. We put up our tents, which barely fit and got one of the two camps to move some tents to give us more room – they had way to much open space, and they agreed to help us out. More of our friends from Norway were to come, but due to lack of space their tents were set up a little from ours; it didn’t matter though, ‘cos our camp now had room for a common area, and a couple of days later we bought a camping pavilion, which provided much needed shade!

Camp life

The weather was great, the sun was shining, blue skies and the summer had finally started; during the 9 days of the festival, it got warmer and warmer, and many water fights broke out between us and our neighbors – in fact it was essential to carry a water gun around with you on the hottest of days, as you could be attacked by anyone…so the need to be able to defend yourself was real.

The waterposts got a bit crowded, but who cared – we praised our fortunes, while we were swimming in the lake or the big pool area, or sunbathed in our camp. When the lake had to close because of bacteria (as it usually has to), the demand for the swimming pool got high – it was actually a newcomer to the festival. Driven by a eco-generator, sun panels, and pedal power the water was cleaned without too much clorine and cold beer were for sale in the bar. To get in, one had to (after queuing of cause) pedal on bicycles that produced power for the area, which was hot in the heat…but the ultimate goal was in range: the cooling pool! When finally in, it was like being in heaven, cold beer, a big pool and even people as naked as god created them ;) Unfortunately most of the completely naked bodies belonged to men…well, at least it was a good laugh when the made acrobatic dives naked from the jumping platform.

The pool

We had brought quite a lot of games with us; and they were put to good use. Mixing it up with lots of beer and alcohol suddenly made trivial games like “ring-throwing” very, very fun. Beer races were good to quell the thirst and Norwegian singing games attracted neighbors from far and wide. We did go visit friends in other camps as well, which as always was so much fun – you are sure to meet all sorts of cool and wired people. In the evenings we ventured to some of the “party” camps and danced the night away, or simply sat talking and drinking somewhere until it got cold, and a warm sleeping bag was needed.

When the concerts finally began on the 5th day, it almost felt as if our camp and tent was our new home. We did get to see a lot of concerts – Muse, Prodigy, Paramore, Kashmir, The Crooked Vultures, Nephew, Prince, Robyn, LCD Soundsystem, Marley and many more less-known bands. Some concerts were great, others good; we enjoyed them all, but as we aren’t the biggest music freaks, it was more the camp life that left a lasting impression.

Good music

After nine days of fun, beer and music the last concert was in full swing, but it was time to head home. The car had been driven home a couple of days prior, and we had to take the public transport. Luckily trains and busses leave directly from the festival to Copenhagen, but I knew that queues would get longer and longer as Prince played his final tunes; we waited maybe 45 minutes, and were lucky to get a seat on the train. Later I was told by colleagues of mine, that people who left later that evening waited until 3 AM or more to get home! Not fun when it’s a normal work day the next morning.

All in all, it was one of the best Roskilde festivals I’ve experienced – thanks to good weather, good music, good fun and must importantly, good company!

New blogentry 'A trek through Aurlandsdalen' was added to 'Fjords of Norway'

2011-06-30 00:00:00

From Aurlandsfjorden, a tributary to the great Sognefjord, which is one of the great fjords of Western Norway, the Aurlands Valley stretches inland, following the river Aurlandselvi. It is a dramatic and diverse gorge like landscape formed by glaciers, which are so typical for Western Norway.

Most people do the this part of a greater trekking route from Østerbø in the east to Vassbygdi in the west, taking advantage of the downhill direction, likewise many start in the morning and walks the 7-8 hours trek in one day. We had planned it a little different, leaving from Vassbygdi in the afternoon/evening, spending the night en route and walking the major part the day after. This way we could enjoy the mountains better by sleeping in the wild, have the trek more to ourselves and avoid walking to much downhill (which I find annoying).

Having spent a lot of time driving along the Snow Road (see former blog entry), we set out late in the afternoon. We had planned spending the night a couple of hours in at Sinjarheim, an old farmstead 2-3 hours in from Vassbygdi, where we parked our car, donned our backpacks with tents, sleeping bags and food and set off.

As we sat out the sun was luckily starting to break through the clouds, breaking the last days of grey, featureless clouds. We hadn’t walked for more than 15 minutes, before we were smack in the middle of a breathtaking landscape of waterfalls, ravines and lush forests, with snow specked on the steep slopes.

Walking was pretty easy; a narrow, but pretty good path followed the river, slowly climbing uphill with the river up through the valley. We had to lose our shoes a couple of times, as waterfalls or streams crossed and flooded the path. Once we had to take of our shoes and pants, wear our raincoats and pack our backpacks in their weather protection gear, because a rather large waterfall fell almost directly onto the path – we got quite wet anyway, but as the sun was shining, we quickly dried up!

The path twisted and turned, sometimes ascending rather steeply, but there was no parts that were too problematic. After around two and half hours, we arrived at the small Sinjarheim farm, perched high on the mountain side. Now the farm is unoccupied, but it is used by students of an agricultural school as a summer learning camp, and by trekkers as a convenient stopover. Luckily, we were the only ones there.

I set up camp, raised our tent and started cooking, while Lily was busy taking a lot of photos. We hadn’t brought a lot of water (we didn’t wanna carry it), but the many streams had plenty for the taking. Unfortunately 2011 was declared “Lemming year”, meaning that there is a massive rise in the Lemming population. This leads to mass migration, which in turn leads to many Lemmings drowning when crossing rivers, which again gives a slight risk that the normally so clean mountain creeks may be contaminated. Boling the water, before using it solved the problem though.

Again, the Norwegian summer gave us its best. The sun was setting behind the mountains, but at that point it was around 22:00 and it didn’t get dark before midnight, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the magnificent scenery and quiet evening.

After a good night’s sleep, we set out again late in the morning. Again the path was pretty straight forward, but climbed somewhat more steeply, all the time following the raging river. After a couple of hours or so, we reached a fork were you could choose to follow the river or walk up the mountainside over Bjørnstigen (“Bears ladder”). We choose the ladder. The path up the Bjørnstigen was steep, but again, any reasonably fit person could do it. Arriving at the “summit” we were blessed with another great vantage point and beautiful views – we had lunch overlooking the valley and spent some time enjoying the perfect day, with blue skies and warm sunshine.

Walking on, this time we got to walk downhill for a bit, but luckily not too much. Lily has problems with her knees when walking downhill, so we like walking uphill more ? We reached the farm at Nesbø in the afternoon; and fell quite in love with its cuteness and perfect setting right by the glittering lake. Half an hour or so more and we had finished the last part of the trek and reached the small community at Østerbø.

From here, we had to get back to our car in Vassbygdi; as it wasn’t high season yet, not many busses left from Østerbø; so we either had to wait 3-4 hours or try to get a lift from someone. So we sat down besides the main road and waited; unfortunately not that many cars passed and none picked us up. But 20 minutes or so later, a small bus came by. The bus belonged to an elite sports college, whose student literally ran the stretch we had just walked. Luckily the students had been dropped off and the bus was returning to the other end of the trek to pick them up, so we got a perfect ride and were dropped of directly at the small carpark were our car was parked! Couldn’t have been luckier - a big thank you to the driver of that bus.

And so our trek through this part of Aurlandsdalen was over, and we drove on to the next adventure.

New travel 'Fjords of Norway'

2011-06-30 00:00:00

A spur of the moment, extended weekend to Western Norway. Bought our flight tickets and rented a car a couple of days before flying to the western capital of Bergen, only 1,5 hours from Copenhagen.

New blogentry 'Korcula Island' was added to 'Croatia'

2010-08-22 00:00:00

Korcula Island was just what we wanted, peace and quiet and not many other tourists, coupled with super cute little towns and the drop-dead beautiful azure blue ocean what more could you want? Ohh what about the dozens of vineyards and neat little fields filled with olive trees? We had some great drives around Korcula Island taking it all in.
Korcula town was like a mini Dubrovnik, an old walled city built with big stone it was very charming. Unfortunately the weather was cold and rainy, so we mostly cuddled up in bed and read a ton of books :)

The weather cleared up and we headed on to the other end of the island, here we found a nice campground. Within walking distance was lots of beautiful little coves with the most amazing water, we could have easily spent a week or two here just lazing by the ocean.

One night as we were having dinner by the harbor in Vela Luka, we were lucky enough to witness a procession walking through town, they were celebrating the feast of "Corpus Christi" - an important festival in the Catholic Church. It commemorates the institution of the Holy Communion.

New blogentry 'Durmitor National Park' was added to 'Montenegro'

2010-08-22 00:00:00

We enter what we think is the camping ground, but it might also just be somebody’s front yard… An gnarly man meets us with a grunt, we confirm that this is indeed a camping ground and put up our tent. Martin ask the guy how much it cost to camp, and we think he said 9 euro’s, he is not too easy to understand…
We put up our tent – and it has been a while since we had a view like this from our tent – right behind us a huge snow capped mountain juts out of the green pine forests and reaches way up into the blue sky, this place is gorgeous!

Gnarly man points toward the forest and ushers us that way, pointing we understand so we head off. It turns out it is a back road into the national park (gnarly man just saved us the entrance fee!) and we are surrounded by mountainess beauty all around us. We decided to do the walk around the lake, it is a pretty easy and very scenic walk, or at least it is easy on one side of the lake, on the other side we have to pass through several small waterfalls thundering down the mountain side. We take our shoes off and wade through; the water is freezing cold as it was melted snow from the top of the mountain – brrr!

New blogentry 'The Montenegrin Coast' was added to 'Montenegro'

2010-08-22 00:00:00

Puh! we have covered a lot of ground already and by the time we left wet and rainy Drumitor we were a bit tired. It turns out that geographically Montenegro is pretty much just mountains, upon leaving Drumitor we kept expecting to get down from the mountains soon, but no we just kept going up one mountain and down the next, a bit tiring to drive through. But we were in luck because when the mountains finally ended – when we hit the coast, there was the bay of Kotor! A narrow road led us down one side of the fjord and we came upon a cute little village where all the houses are built with rustic stones, here we found a lovely man who rents out apartments. We have a balcony with a view out into the fjord, the village is pretty quiet, only happy chatter is heard as our host and most of the other older men in the village have gathered down by the water to discuss world business :) This is just what we needed!

We have explored the surroundings and walked around the old towns of Kotor and Perast, very charming places with little plazas and seaside restaurants that serve rustic Italian and Montenegrin fare; we have had pizza, pasta, grilled squid, grilled chicken breasts, local cheese etc.

Our host also has a little swimming platform, beaches here are pretty much nonexistent it seems with the mountains plunging right into the waters, instead little platforms has been built from where one can jump in the water – a great invention!

New blogentry 'A little corner of Serbia' was added to 'Serbia'

2010-08-22 00:00:00

We nipped into Serbia to the region of Zlatibor. Zlatibor is a charming mountainess patchwork of small village settlements, in the winter it is a skiing destination and in the summer people come to hike, bike and horseback ride in the green rolling hills. We managed to find a whole apartment with kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom (bigger than our place own at home) to rent for a couple of days, we thought it was quite a bargain for 20 Euro a night!

Zlatibor enchanted us with its wildflowers, cute old cars and traditional houses and churches in wood. We went for a walks in the green hills and had a picnic lunch in the sun.

We explored the small roads snaking through the mountains from one village to another in our little Skoda. We went to a huge cave that contained some ‘baths’, nobody in Serbia seemed to speak any English and it was the same with the guy taking money at the entry to the cave, but he was friendly and offered us raijka – that is some strong stuff! Luckily we made friends with a little family of 3 where dad was French-Canadian and mom was Serbian, so Stella as her name was, could translate for us, and that was lucky because raijka-guy knew a lot of great stories about the cave including everything from mummified animal to TV-host jumping into the icy-cold baths and almost catching lumonia! Sylvain and Stella and their little girl Lara was heading to a waterfall nearby and we tagged along, the waterfall was beautiful and it was in many layers and we followed it further and further down – good fun! It turned out that Sylvain and Stella had rented a little cabin in an open-air museum that we had been trying to find – so once again we tagged along :) We ended up spending all evening with them, having a scrumptious typical Serbian very meat-based meal and later we had lovely strong Turkish coffee and watched the semi-finals of the Eurovision show. Eurovision is BIG down here, and we all cheered when Denmark made it onto the finals! :) It was a lovely day with great company.

New blogentry 'Bosnian Adventure' was added to 'Bosnia i Herzegovina'

2010-08-06 00:00:00

We drove from Croatia to Bosnia i Herzegovina to the town of Mostar, a very quaint little town in the Southern part of the country. Once we crossed the border the roads got slightly more potholed and the temperature rose a bit.
Upon arriving to Mostar we easily found our accommodation at Hostel Nina where we got a lovely room for 20 Euro. It was nice not to get lost for a chance :)
We spend the rest of the day walking around the little town center, it was picturesque to say the least with its narrow cobbled lanes, robust stone houses and of course the fantastic bridge! For the best view we went into the mosque compound, there we sat in the early evening sun under the minaret and took in the fantastic view of Stari Most and the blue Neretva River gushing under it, it was perfect – it was a great mix of east meets west, orthodox Christianity and moderate Islam, and old Europe as I think it just might was once. We sat there for a long while, occasionally catching the soft scent of the nearby elderflower trees that was blooming, right until the mosque caretaker politely told us he had to close the gate now.

But all was not always this idyllic in Mostar, we saw a photo exhibition of photos of the town during the war. The photos showed how the bridge and the town surrounding it got more and more out shelled during the years of 92 and 93, in one of the photos someone had placed a white flag on top of the bridge, little did that help though, the bridge fell in 1993 as it was gunned down by artillery fire.
Vast international assistance efforts have since rebuilt most of the UNESCO-listed old city center. In 2004 the Old Bridge was reconstructed using 16th century building techniques and stone from the original quarry. Now it looks as beautiful as when it was first built in 1566. However as soon as you walk a few streets away from the bridge many of the buildings lie as empty shells with no roofs, window glass or floors, the outside walls are filled with bullet holes and here and there rockets had left big gaping holes. Walking around these buildings it was chilling to think that the war only ended 15 years ago, most people we pass on the streets have witnessed the atrocities that happened here not that long ago.

The drive from Mostar towards Sarajevo was surprisingly beautiful, it took us through idyllic rural areas and we entered the mountains, tall beautiful and green – some of them still snowcapped! For a long time we drove alongside the Neretva River that carved its way through the mountains, it was gorgeous scenery.
As we entered Sarajevo we discovered to our delight they still have trams here, in my opinion trams really add to a city! So does the green mountains that jut up just outside Sarajevo. All in all it is a pretty capital and it doesn’t seem very big and we also – quite surprisingly and maybe a bit lucky – easily enough found our choice of accommodation down a tiny lane right after the mosque with a wooden minaret – cute!!! After Split we were expecting to get horribly lost all throughout the Balkans.
Café culture has been perfected into an art form here in Sarajevo it seems, and of course we had to take part! We has lunch down a cobbled lane at the cutest little place with green shutters, cabbage, a yellow curry sauce and smoked meat formed the majority of the meal but it was nice and filling, later after ambling down little lane after lane and admiring one grand old building, church, mosque and synagogue after another we ended up at another little café with sofa like benches, here propped up against big pillows we regained some strength over a Sarajevosko Pivo (the local beer) or two.

The war definitely seems as a thing of the past. On the surface Sarajevo is a capital like any other in Europe; lots of traffic, bustling shopping streets with fashion boutiques and restaurants and beautiful old architecture. Too many graveyards, a few bullet holes in the facades and a “Sarajevo Rose” here and there remind you of the tumults of the past though.

We just had two shots of Bosnian rajki, given to us by our host’s uncle – the first one was simply out of hospitality, the second because we forgot to take a picture of us having the first! It is strong stuff to have in the middle of the afternoon, when you are already a bit tired from walking in the hot sun all day – but it’s nice to feel welcome.

New blogentry 'A Hoi An saturday' was added to 'Vietnam'

2010-08-05 00:00:00

Got up at 6-ish for a day of sightseeing: My Son a UNESCO World Heritage Site, beautiful butterflies and cute geckos added to the experience. Later a hot climb up Marble Mountain, Vietnamese school kids were swarming around my legs like little ants :) Explored baby blue pagodas and huge underground caves filled in sweet smoky incense and Buddha sculptures.

We had seafood at the beach, listening to the waves and comparing funny words in Danish/Norwegian with the Norwegian girls.

Found a cute place for dinner, an old fading colonial house with moldy yellow walls, we stuffed ourselves with fresh spring rolls and Vietnamese dishes we didn’t know – delicious!

A beautiful full moon hung low over Hoi An city and lanterns were flowing in front of every house, the river was a hive of activity, people strolling and boating. We sailed up the river taking in all the lights and I decided I love this city.

Shared to-die-for cakes with good friends and then we moved on to the bar, the rest of the evening a happy flow of mojitos and buckets, crazy dancing all night long, tequila shots in the pool and flying home on the back of a motor bike at 4.30 in the morning, the sweet Asian wind caressing my cheeks.