Picking Cherries

// May 22nd, 2007 // No Comments » // hospitality, travel

Lying in a tree, picking cherries. How wonderful life can be. One day earlier, in Belgrade, I didn’t even know I was going to be in this place as I was trying to hitch out of Serbia, to Macedonia. But there I was, a day before departure to Istanbul, in a cherrytree in the beautiful and extremely relaxed countryside of Serbia.

Before arriving in Istanbul, I had my last stop close to the city Niš, the third largest city in Serbia. I stayed with a family who hosted me through couchsurfing in a nice and self-build house on one of the hills around the city. Staying here turned out to be one of my more distinctive experiences during my four months of traveling. Continue Reading

Le Grand Finale

// May 18th, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

Hitchhiking in the middle of the night! Never had I really done it before. Always do I calculate my travel in such a way that I would be sure to arrive at my destination or to have my final ride, within the last hour after sunset, just before it really gets dark. But there I was, some hours before midnight at the Turkish border and 350km still to go for Istanbul…!

Some actually thought I had already made it when I wrote last week I finally arrived in Turkey. Nothing was less true. I still had over a thousand kilometers to go but Wednesday night at 3 a.m I arrived. Le Grand finale you could say. One of my most exciting hitchhiking adventures as I was traveling from Niš in south Serbia to Istanbul, Turkey, through Bulgaria.

I was given rides by smoglers, salesmen, truckdrivers and refugees. It took me over 12 hours to drive 750km. A relatively good day with 60 kilometers an hour as half of my road were no highways, and half of trip was done with slow trucks. I crossed two borders in one trip, both by foot. Continue Reading

Finally Turkey

// May 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

Turkey, finally I made it! The border of the Ottoman empire used to be here in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade. Although almost three hundred years ago for the last time, those in total five-hundreds years left a great influence without a doubt.

It had already started in Slovenia, with only two types of coffee: Turkish coffee and ‘other coffee’. But here in Serbia there is a lot more. The typical dishes are Turkish, many people look Turkish even, and the chaos in Belgrade makes it a little brother of Istanbul. The language is different but they share one thing: I don’t understand a single word.. Continue Reading

Zagreb: City in Transformation

// May 9th, 2007 // No Comments » // photography, travel

So I have heard the requests. You have seen enough buildings, birds, flowers, abstracts, waterfalls, sunsets and so on. Now it is time for a people-report! “We want to see how a city feels like from the viewpoint of those who live there. We want people-photos!” So I have heard, and so I thought myself too. It is time for something more indept.

Therefore I made a photo-essay about Zagreb, its life from the inside: how the city breathes, how the people think and what is going on over there. I discovered it is very much a city in transformation, a city full of life, with people who are not having it easy but who remain positive and smiling.

You can find a series of photos with the article called “Exploring Cosy Zagreb, a Changing City” at the homepage for JPG Magazine. The list of all photos you can find at my profile. And do not hesitate to leave your feedback, remarks or your comments here.

Urban Exploring in Zagreb

// May 7th, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

Sometimes you come to places with a touch of magic. Take Zagreb for instance. Here it feels, above everything, really cosy. It’s a city of one million but it feels as a town with its picturesque medieval center, lively markets and friendliness everywhere. There are no big touristic attractions and not many tourists either, so overcrowded places are hard to find.

There is a lot of beauty in this place but it is also very much a transitional city. Croatia has a war-past and is currently in a process of moving from a post-communist country to a country that mainly based on consumerism. A lot of the city is broken down, houses are waiting to be renovated or to be destroyed. Housing-speculation is very populair which also leaves a lot of space for urban exploration. Continue Reading

Traveling as a Profession

// May 3rd, 2007 // 5 Comments » // travel

Traveling is biting the dust. You are not living the luxury tourist life but you live low-budget, maybe work while travel, be a bohemian, a troubadour, a busker sometimes, or a person who just finds a regular job at the temporary permanent location.

Traveling is not the same as being on holidays. The people I know who consider themselves travelers don’t have a home, work while they travel and are always busy with all kinds of things. I also consider traveling as a profession, a daily occupation, with some breakes in between.

Generally people on holidays stay at place A and maybe circle around it. But what is traveling? People on holidays do they also travel? When they are ‘traveling’ to their location or when they circle around their location?

Traveling as a profession means you are making it part of your life; it is your life. You are no longer a tourist leaving its fixed location to visit and consume another location, or someone with a regular job and place.

Traveling is also like school. You learn a lot. You know what it is to be dependent on others, you exchange skills and happiness. You are not just consuming a town, a city or a country, but many times also bringing something back into the communities you visit. Well, at least you try.

Traveling is a profession, a daily occupation, as you organise your life between life, work, pleasure, planning, traveling and relaxing. So my main question is whether I am on holidays, and I think not. I do touristic stuff, but I also work: I plan, I organize, I travel. Hitchhiking can be quite an exhausting activity too as it requires quite a lot of energy most of the times. And never to be able to really go ‘home’ is sometimes just another.

Social-Cultural Shock

// May 1st, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

Fifty-six cents was the fee at the border with Croatia but no change was given. “Welcome to the Balkan”, said my Slovenian driver as a response.  He had picked me up from a gas-station ten minutes before and was used to the toll-worker not giving him back the change. My driver is a pizza-maker who “knows people here very well” and whose only interest in me is the price of drugs in Amsterdam and Barcelona.

So I finally made it to the Balkan. Slovenia was already a beginning but now I really have the feeling I arrived in a country where culture seems to be very different to what I am used to. People look different, they talk different, interact different, and so on. After a tough hitchhiking day, this was quite something I had to get used to. Continue Reading

Freezing Water

// April 29th, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

It was a green-golden present, hiking in the mountains, cycling up the hill -and down again- taking off shoes and walking through freezing water…

In Salzburg I stayed on the foot of a hill in the North-eastern part of the Alps, in Slovenia in the village Godic in a house on a hill, at the South-East part of the Alps. “When you leave Slovenia, you will remember it for its nature, not for its cities”, said a friend when we were walking through the mountains. Continue Reading

Finally the Balkans, right?

// April 27th, 2007 // No Comments » // travel

So I managed to arrive in the Slovenian Capital Ljubljana in just less then four hours. I thought that would be it: I finally arrived in the Balkans. But there is some confusion about this. One person told me it is not really part of the region, but rather Central Europe, and yet another tells me it is. It is clear for me anyhow this country has a bit of everything, it seems to me a nice mixture of Austrian Folklore, Italian style and Balkan Temperament. But one thing is for sure, I arrived in a real hitchhikers-country.

It took me only two cars, after my Graz host dropped me at a rest-area on the highway close to the border, 250 km away from Ljubljana. Whereas the first driver, an Austrian, asked me to hold his beer at the border, the second was a hitchhiker himself. Continue Reading

Mozart in Plastic

// April 25th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, Observations

Mozart is alive and well. I went looking for him, and was shocked to find him really everywhere: at my breakfast-table staring at me from my cup of coffee and behind windows and on walls while I was cycling around town. We shared chocolates too and he even took me for a boat-ride.

I arrived in Salzburg some days ago, the birth-town of Mozart and a small city in Austria. It seems like Mozart, born just over 250 years ago, never died.

How the city and commercial interests have turned Mozart into plastic, goes beyond my imagination: a bridge, a street, a square, a house. And chocolates, dairy products and other food carry his name too.

When the city wrote a name-contest for a new panoramic boat the name came up first: Amadeus, the first name of Mozart.

I went looking for Mozart. I thought I would find him here in Salzburg. But all I found was a piece of plastic as any other brand. Salzburg? That’s Mozart! Nice for tourism maybe but I visited a city where I found a dead artist reborn in plastic.

And what about art? I thought while looking for Mozart. As I went to his birth-house the only art I could find were the last three letters of his name