Balkan Route | FindPenguins

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Trip start
August 5, 2017
Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Another hell off a journey
August 5, 2017 in Hungary ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C
Yeah, a new trip!!! And another example that you are capable of a lot more thanyou think.
Before I caught my flight to Budapest this morning at 8 a.m., I went to the goodbye party of a friend who will spend the next semester in China. That means that I had to take my luggage to the party and hope I wouldn't miss out on the right moment to leave in order to catch the train to the airport (which at night runs only once an hour). It also means that I would arrive in Budapest without having slept a minute to meet a friend who had already arrived the day before and thus was rather well rested.
I will spare you the details about the number of transportation means I had to take that night, cancelled trains, Schienenersatzverkehr and a 1h queue at the baggage drop-off, but in sum it was quite a pain in the ass. Probably it was only because Pauline and I would have no more than two days I Budapest that I would manage to walk the whole town and even go out the same evening - but I made it 💪Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Budapest here we come
August 6, 2017 in Hungary ⋅ ⛅ 30 °C
Finally in Budapest, there was no slowing down. We were only going to have two days, so we started our sightseeing right away, walking around the touristy center and to Danube river. For lunch, we went to the central market hall, where we shared a huge Langós (a kind of deep-fried bread), then we continued to the other riverside. Despite the 38°C we managed to climb our way up to a view point. Afterwards, we went to the millennial monument, just to relax a bit in the Napozórét park it belongs to, and that has a beautiful Disney-like castle.
Although tired, we didn't have much time for a power nap before we went to dinner in a stylish restaurant, trying some real Hungarian goulash soup and Chicken Paprikash. On our way to find a nice place to have a beer before going home, we found a pretty cool hostel in the pub area, where we met some people at the bar and ended up at a fun karaoke place.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
From Buda to Pest
August 6, 2017 in Hungary ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C
Today's itinerary included the castle, the fisherman's bastion Halászbástya and the Hungarian parliament.
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
War Stories
August 7, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
I've now arrived to Sarajevo, which has quiet a unique charme. Although the historic center is well restored and bustling with restaurants, cafes, handicrafts and baklava stores, the second you turn into a side street you can't deny the presence of war reminders on every corner.
During a walking tour, I was explained some details of the war (which however are still a bit confusing). In principle, after Bosnia and Herzegovina had sought independence from Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Serbs tried to split from the rest of the country (i.e. the Muslim Bosniaks and the orthodox Croats), which resulted in 44 months of war. The Serbs now have their own administrative level, and together with the national, regional and cantonwise administration levels Bosnia now has a lot more politicians than necessary for a country of 4 million people. Maybe that's why after more than 20 years the economy still is vastly affected by the war aftermath: there is just no way to efficiently organize a country on so many levels and in the presence of corruption.
On the pictures I posted, there are some remainders of the war period: a Sarajevo Rose (in places where people have been killed by shell explosions, the impact point is filled with red paint), shell holes in a house wall and a memorial to the 160 children killed in the war.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Olympic memories
August 8, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
I didn't have very specific plans as to what to do today, so I joined Majo and Carla to the old bob sled that has been used for the Olympic winter games in 1984. It doesn't really look impressive at first sight, but imagining that it was actually used for Olympia is pretty weird, especially looking at it now.
Also walking back the 6 km back to the hostel through the steep hills of Sarajevo was worth the trip, allowing for great views over the city. However, we were happy that we didn't also walk up there, because in addition to a hard ascent on a hot day we would probably have gotten lost.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Sarajevo Historic Center
August 9, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ ☀️ 36 °C
On my last day in Sarajevo, I did another walking tour, this time trough the historic center and covering what happened before the war. From the ottoman founders over the communist Jugoslawien regime and the short Austrian-Hungarian period till the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, in between the orthodox and roman-catholic churches as well as countless mosques, Neno gave us a really good overview.
You can still see many of the original influences: the whole town is full of baklava and Turkish silverware, not to start about all the covered-up women in the streets. Even the name of Sarajevo comes from the Turkish word for palace. After the war, Turkey and Greece donated money for the reconstruction of the mosques and orthodox churches, respectively.
Although I'm slowly getting used to it, it keeps striking me not to understand a word of what is spoken. I tried to learn the most basic words in Serbian, but except for Hello and Thanks I wouldn't even know when to apply them... You kind of want to know what you say yes or no to.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Train ride with views
August 9, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ ⛅ 36 °C
Sarajevo -- Mostar

... Simply beautiful
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Herzegovina Tour
August 10, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ ☀️ 35 °C
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Mostar Impressions
August 11, 2017 in Bosnia and Herzegovina ⋅ 🌬 36 °C
The pictures here are a bit of a collection of different days in this micro town.
The night shots are from my first evening, when I went up the “sniper tower“ with a couple of people. In reality it's an abandoned bank building that was used by snipers during the war. Nowadays, some tourists climb up the naked stairs to have a view from the rooftop. Entering this building that is covered in broken glass and fallen rocks at night by climbing over the walls, and especially imagining what happened here 20 years ago, was one of the creepiest experiences of my life, but definitely worth doing.
The sandwich on the next picture is only one example for the delicious and creative breakfasts we got every morning at the hostel, individually prepared for each guest once they woke up.
The rest are some images of the town on my last day, including the old bridge, where people jump 24 meters deep into the 7° cold Neretva river and a fountain at one of the mosques. I didn't really do much more this day, it was just way too hot. The 45° in combination with the tour the day before made me incredibly sleepy, such that I only walked around a bit and had some ice cream. Later, I met with the English guys for refreshing beer and dinner. It turned out that I should probably spend my whole life with only a few marks left in my pocket - I didn't spend a cent the whole day but lived in luxury, being paid more things than I'd even wanted.
Then it was time to say goodbye to Bosnia. It may not be the country with most places to visit or the easiest accessibility, but it's absolutely worth going. Especially it's multi-ethnic character makes it very different from most countries I've seen so far - and I'll really miss the chanting prayers from the minarets at every corner.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Zagreb part I
August 12, 2017 in Croatia ⋅ 🌧 16 °C
Due to a few problems with the length of her passport validity, Julia hadn't been able to meet me in Bosnia, so we changed our plans, skipped the anyways too touristy and expensive south of Croatia and met this morning in the capital Zagreb.
We walked a bit around ourselves, then joined a free walking tour to the most important sights and ended the day with a Štrukli (reminds of a lasagne, but with much more cheese and not a lot of pastry) for dinner.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Zagreb part II
August 13, 2017 in Croatia ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C
Today, we first visited the “Museum of broken relationships“, a place that is at the same time funny, shocking, weird, cute and depressing. It consists of donations of objects by people from all over the world that remind them of a past love, together with their story. After that, we took a walk a bit outside the mere center and relaxed in one of the parks.
In the hostel we had been recommended to also go to the cemetery, which was “only a 20-minute walk“ away - turned out it was almost an hour. Tired, bad reported and starving as we hadn't had lunch, we finally got up there, not really believing anymore that the place was worth all the effort, but we were surprised: the cemetery, which gives home to all great former Croatian personalities, from the outside looks rather like a castle. Due to its enorm size, it is divided into over 100 areas, each of which contains another load of graves.
When finally we had gotten back to the hostel and eaten dinner, we met our Argentinean friends Ángeles and Matías, ans a Chilean named Bruno, who took us to a cool hippy-style place with pingpong and beers.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
A “hot“ stop on our way to the coast
August 14, 2017 in Croatia ⋅ 🌙 22 °C
As you can see in the pictures, we witnessed a wildfire on our way from Zagreb to Zadar. The whole traffic was held up for at least half an hour before it was safe enough to drive by. But also then pilots were still flying back and forth to a close bay in order to get enough water to extinguish the fire.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Stony beaches & Zadar old town
August 15, 2017 in Croatia ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C
It was never actually our intention to come to Zadar, we hadn't even heard about it. But since all other Croatian beach destinations were either super expensive, fully booked or too far away (or all at once), we had to look for alternatives.
In the end, it is one of the quieter coastal towns, and still it was completely packed with tourists. Luckily we only wanted to be a bit at the sea before heading to Slovenia, so it was good enough for us.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Nin, Kroatien
August 16, 2017 in Croatia ⋅ 🌬 30 °C
To get ourselves moving again instead of just lying around on the beach, Julia, I and Elsa (an Italian girl from our dorm) rented some bikes today and drove to the island of Nin, about 15 km from Zadar.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Europe's greenest city
August 17, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C
We arrived to Ljubljana at 2.20 a.m., but after a few hours of sleep somehow managed to get up rather early. On our way out to get breakfast we meet Ray, a guy from Melbourne who spent the day with us. He actually brought his bike from Australia to cycle the entire way from Milan to Athens!! 😱
We had breakfast at Celica, the partner hostel of our's, which used to be a prison and has a decent morning buffet.
Then we joined the free walking tour, went to the fruit & vegetable market and up to the castle. It already feels like having a daily new-city ritual. In the evening we had our usual mixed salad and then went down to the common area, where soon we got a group of people together to go out for another bit.
Worth mentioning is our “hostel“: during the year, it is a university dorm (maybe the name Student's Residence should have been a hint), but in summer they take in travellers. It was fine for two nights, but I cannot imagine how people spend their whole university life here. Two persons share a room that is at most 10sqm to barely fit bed, desk and a little cupboard for each of them.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Vintgare Gorge
August 18, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ 🌙 21 °C
Today was adventure day! We hiked to Vintgar, which is part of the Mount Triglav (highest mountain in Slovenia) National Park. It's a beautiful river with crystal clear water flowing through tall rocks.
Since we hadn't walked enough yet, we then also went all around Lake Bled (pictures in next entry), which is another 6km. On the way, we found a tree with a kind of swing that you could jump into the lake from like Tarzan.
In sum, we walked a total of 25km, climbed trees, refined our swinging skills and swam. Useless to say that even the next day we'd still be tired, but happy about a great day.Read more
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Lake Bled
August 19, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C
This is just a collection of pictures I took during our 1,5 days here. One of the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen!
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Lake Bohinj
August 19, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C
We didn't want the rain to stop us from making something out of the day (which is not so easy in a purely outdoors-oriented destination like Bled). Thus, we took a bus to the close by lake of Bohinj, to at least walk around a bit and have some coffee.Read more
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Julian Alps
August 19, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ 🌧 13 °C
Coming to Bovec was already worth the drive for the spectacular views on the Julian Alps. The pictures are not the best from out of the bus, but I still felt like I had to share them :)
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Allround Tour around Bovec
August 21, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C
We had spent the whole last day down because of food poisoning, so for today we wanted to start slowly with our outdoor ambitions. It came very conveniently that Alan, a Slovenian guy from our dorm, was going to drive to different spots with a friend and offered to take us. At all of them there was a little hike, but not too much for our still a little week stomachs.
We first drove to a starting point for the waterfall Kozijak, intending in jumping in and swimming a bit. But when we arrived there, saw that the waterfall was in a cave and realized how cold the water was, Alan was the only one crazy enough to go in for a moment.
We went on to the river Nadiža, which was probably even colder, but after we saw children playing in there, Julia and I decided that we had no excuses anymore and went for a swim. The water was icy ⛄
After a stop at the Museum Kobarid, that depicts the history of the war against Austro-Hungary in this area, we made a picnic at the Soča river before continuing to a barrier lake. There, we hiked up to a cave the military used to hide in during the war.
In the evening we even went to a festival back in Bovec, with amazing dancers from Russia, Mexico and Indonesia!Read more
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Jump in(to) Italy
August 22, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
Today the guys took us up to Mangart, which's peak is at 2679 m and which lies partly in Slovenia, partly in Italy. We couldn't go all the way to the top, as you need special equipment there, but from where we were you already had an awesome view on the border triangle of Slovenia, Italy and Austria. Since we were so close and had already jumped over the border several times in the mountain, we decided to drive to Italy for a short visit at Lago di Fusione Superiore. At the end, we enjoyed the sun at a ski lift in Kranjska Gora.
Since today again most of the trip had been by car, Julia and I used the evening for a small 2h hike to nearby Kal Koritnica -- after all, we had planned for active holidays.Read more
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Kayak time
August 23, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
Great kayak tour on the Soča! However, it made us want more: longer time on the river, faster rapids and a higher level of difficulty. We're going to have to come back and do a real kayak school.
In the afternoon, we first had a coffee with our Dutch friend Remco, before he left for Ljubljana. Then we did another of our evening hikes.Read more
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Hiking towards and along Soča
August 24, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C
As the title says, we walked a beautiful route along the Soča river, from Bovec to the town of Soča. Enjoy the pictures!
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Balkan Route annalovestraveling
Slap Virje
August 25, 2017 in Slovenia ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C
The day has come, it's time for us to leave Slovenia. Especially after spending almost a week in Bovec, extending our stay till over and over, it is hard to say goodbye to the gorgeous mountains and crystal rivers. But we will come back.
In the meantime, we wanted to make as much of our last day as possible. By mountain bike we went up to the waterfall (= slap) Virje, then a bit through the parts of Bovec we hadn't seen so far. After that, it really was time to catch our 4h bus to Ljubljana, in order to be there in time for our bus to Stuttgart.
Bye bye Balkan 👋Read more
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Trip end
August 25, 2017