Tarifa & Tangier: The Edge of the World

As the bus got closer to Tarifa and the southern coast of Spain, more and more wind turbines started appearing. The winds from the Atlantic blow particularly strong in that part of Spain, and are channeled down to and through the Strait Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. The bus also passed by one of those giant bull road signs. The Tarifa bus station was a distance from the main part of town and by the time I got to the hostel, settled in and took care of other business, it was about 6:30pm. My hostel was just outside the old city and a short walk from the beach. I went over to the beach and got there just in time for sunset. Where I live in America the mountains cutoff the setting sun, so I normally don't get to see the more dramatic sunsets you get at places where the sun goes down on the sea. As the light faded I could see the last of the surfers coming in to end their day and the fog was encroaching on the shoreline further north. I followed the beach for awhile and then came back up to town. Back at the hostel I found that there was an outdoor clothesline on the roof, so I spent the night doing laundry and leaving things out to dry.

The next day was one of the more interesting ones on my trip. I didn't sleep too much the previous night because one of the guys in the room would shout something in Spanish every two hours or so. Regardless, I had major day trip ahead of me and no amount of tiredness was going to stop it. I started in the morning back down at the beach where I had been the previous evening. With the sun out I could better see the rest of the coastline. I could also clearly see the continent of Africa on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Later in the day I would be going there, but for the moment I was checking out Tarifa. The town of Tarifa sits on the southernmost point of Europe. Jutting that far out from the rest of the continent, it has an end of the world feeling to it, like you're standing at the farthest edge of the known universe. Across the sea is a whole different world. The southernmost point of Tarifa is actually owned by the Spanish military and called the Isla de las Palmas. You can't go in there, but you can walk along the causeway up to the gate. Tarifa's old city doesn't have much of anything going on. I spent a little time in there looking around and taking a few photos, but whatever sightseeing there is to do in there is quickly exhausted. The main reason people come to Tarifa is either to enjoy the beach and surfing, or to take the ferry across the strait to Tangier, in Morocco. I was there mostly for the latter. I bought a ticket for the midday ferry to Tangier and also bought a return ticket that would give me about 5.5 hours to explore before I had to return to Tarifa. The ferry ride took about 50 minutes and most of the immigration stuffs were done on the ferry, so I only had to do a quick passport check when I arrived at the port. There was no visa requirement to visit Morocco, but I did have to fill out a short form with my information. Morocco is also on the same time zone as the UK (one hour behind Spain) so I had to adjust my watch. The boat docked, I got off and had my passport checked, and immediately upon walking past the security guards I was confronted by Tangier's friendly guides and salesmen. The salesmen in Tangier are even more aggressive and persistent than the ones in Istanbul, but as annoying as they may be I can completely understand why they do what they do. Tourists like myself have money (otherwise we wouldn't be there) and these guys can make a lot more by selling stuff to or assisting tourists than they would with a regular job. If I was in their situation, I might consider trying to make money off of the tourists too. For me, the most effective way to deal with them is to just ignore them completely and not even respond to their overtures. On one hand this is very rude, especially given that Moroccan culture is naturally outgoing and extroverted, but on the other hand it was the only way to get them to leave me alone. Once I cleared the ferry dock I made my way over to the old city. I had just a basic map on me, but because the town is built on a hill the only directions you need to know are uphill and downhill. In town I saw a few tour groups moving around. I actually could have been part of one, and strangely enough it would have cost a little less to be part of a group than to buy my own ferry tickets, but I wanted this visit to Tangier to be my experience, even if it meant I missed out on some of the information and context a tour guide would have supplied. That not to say I was going in blind - I had read a bit about Tangier before arrival so I knew the basics. Tangier is a tangled network of small streets and alleyways, so there's often no direct route to get from one place to another. I hiked up through the old city, ducking into the covered market and eventually wound up at the Grand Socco; a large public square/park with traffic circling it. There was a map there with more details than mine and I tried to memorize it as best I could (in retrospect, I should have done the easy thing and just taken a photo of the map). Later on as I was walking nearby the Casbah (fort) I ran into an Australian couple that I had talked to during breakfast earlier in the day. They were spending the night in Tangier before moving deeper into Morocco and I walked with them for awhile before we parted ways. As they went their way, I ventured into the maze of small lanes that run through one of Tangier's residential area. I honestly have no idea where I was but I eventually came out near the covered market. At that point I had seen all of the old city that I wanted to see, so I went downhill back to the shore and then followed the beach eastwards. The farther east I walked, the more modern the city became. The current king of Morocco is channeling a lot of money into redeveloping the city. He wants Tangier to to be the premier tourist destination in his country and there's a lot of new apartment buildings and other structures going up. The beach at Tangier was fairly wide with decent sand, though the waves are not that big. I saw people riding horses along the beach, a few windsurfers in the water, and even a pair of camels sitting around (I'm guessing they are for tourist to ride). I kept walking further and further, not realizing how far I'd gone until I turned around and saw how distant the old city was. Before turning back, I saw a windsurfer get his parachute too close to the water. It caught the edge of the water and went down. The surfer had to drag himself, his board, and his parachute back to shore and spent a few minutes adjusting his gear before going back into the water and catching the wind again. With him back surfing again, I started making my way back towards the ferry port. I got to the port with a little time to spare, but the ferry ended up leaving 45 minutes late for some reason. While I was annoyed, I knew it was better to be annoyed than to have missed the ferry and having to buy another ticket. When I got back to Tarifa and cleared immigration, the sun had already gone down so I didn't get a second Atlantic sunset. There was also a bar that I was thinking of going to for its tapas (which sounded good from what I had read online) but the bar was mysteriously closed, which seemed really weird for a bar in Spain on a weekday before 9:00pm. Maybe it's a seasonal bar that's only open during tourism's high season. The day ended, and my short adventure to Morocco was done.

Nobody was shouting the previous night, so I slept a lot better. My bus out of Tarifa was at 9:30am, leaving me no time for doing anything else in Tarifa. The bus took me to Algeciras, a depressing industrial port town that I was only coming to in order to catch a train to Ronda, the next city on my journey. As I was waiting for the train, my backpack got inspected by a local cop, who didn't speak much English, but I was able to understand that they were inspecting anyone who had been to Morocco, as a lot of illegal stuff crosses into Spain from there. After that somewhat awkward encounter, I still had to wait a little longer for the train to show up. When it did, I got on, and I bid the southern coast of Spain goodbye. I was heading back inland into Andalusia, and to the whitewashed hill town of Ronda.

Seville: Lost in the Familiar

Spain's high speed AVE trains are pretty slick and feel like a step up compared to the other trains in Spain. In my case, the AVE train took me from Madrid to Seville - one of the major cities of southern Spain. Like Madrid, there was an air of familiarity when I came out of Seville's train station and into town. My hostel was located near the large white structure that sort of looks like a grove of trees. Locals call it the mushroom, which would probably be a more accurate description of its appearance. As I normally do, after settling in, I took care of business for when I was going to leave by walking all the way down to the southern bus station and purchasing a bus ticket to the next city. When that was done I went over to the Alcazar (royal palace) to take advantage of the afternoon free entry that day. The line was already long when I got there at around 3:40pm, and by 4:00pm I couldn't see how far it extended behind me. I got around 4:15pm and worked quickly though the Alcazar on the assumption that the staff would kick everyone out at 5:00pm when the Alcazar closed. Thankfully this was not the case and I was able to linger until around 5:30pm. Normally such a short visit would be undesirable, but I had visited the Alcazar back in 2012 and it appeared to be exactly the same as back then, so I wouldn't have felt bad if the staff had been more strict with the closing time. However, I did stumble upon a part of the gardens that I had missed the previous time, so I can say that I saw something new. When I left the Alcazar I took a long walk along the river, passing by both the Torre Del Oro and the bullring. During Spain's golden age, Seville was a major port connected to the Atlantic via the river, however these days the river has silted up and is too shallow to take large ocean ships. Before returning to the hostel I bought some food, including a jar of hazelnut chocolate spread. It was similar to Nutella, but had two different types of chocolate swirled together. I remembered having some back in 2012 and being addicted to it like crack cocaine. There are similar spreads you can buy in America, but I generally don't purchase them because I already do enough without them to sabotage my fitness goals.

The next day I started my sightseeing at Seville's Fine Arts Museum. It's not the biggest collection around, and certainly can't compare to the Prado in Madrid, but it was interesting enough to keep me there for just under and hour. I then went to the Church of the Savior. The church houses one of the major floats used during Seville's Passion Week parade. The church also also has a number of ornate chapels and altars, and if the Seville Cathedral did not exist, it would probably be Seville's lead church. I next went down to Plaza San Francisco and was standing near the city hall when it started getting really warm outside. There was no rush for time, so I walked back to the hostel and stored my jacket and then came all the way back to the plaza. From there I continued on to Seville's cathedral. The cathedral is the third largest church in the world (after St Peter's in Rome and St Paul's in London) though depending on what criteria you use, it can be argued as actually the largest church in the world. It also on the site of a demolished mosque, which is common thing in Spain. As the Moors were slowly pushed out of the land, it was usually the case that in a conquered town the Moorish mosque would get torn down and a church would get built on top of it, which was meant to be symbolic of the triumph of Catholic kingdoms over Islam. I got lots of photos of the interior and the courtyard and then went up the bell tower. Instead of stairs, the tower has an interior ramp that you climb to the top. The ramp makes the ascent to the top easier and was actually a Moorish idea; the idea being that by having a ramp instead of stairs, a person could ride a donkey to the top. The view from the bell tower is good, and because Seville doesn't really have much of a modern skyline you can see far on a clear day. After coming down the tower I explored the church grounds for awhile longer before leaving. I decided to go to Plaza de España next, but somehow found a "scenic" way to get there. Despite having a map and general idea of how to get there from my memory of the last visit, I still managed to lose the route. I got to Plaza de España eventually, and took in one of my favorite spots in Europe. The fountain was turned off for maintenance, but even so, the place is still very beautiful and a masterpiece of artistic design. It's tricky to describe, so go to Google Images some time and look it up and you'll see what I mean. Interestingly enough, Spain's military has an office in the building on the plaza, which seems really out of place. After some time walking all around the plaza and getting photos, I crossed the river to the west side and walked all the way out to where Seville holds its annual spring fair. The fair grounds were empty, of course, but I was curious enough to make the long walk out there to take a look. I returned to the east side and made my way back to the hostel. Dinner was followed by uploading photos to social media and later in the night I went for another walk around town. Again, I somehow found a way to get lost on the way to Plaza de España, and found myself instead passing through some sort of community fair that was going on. At the plaza there was hardly anyone walking around, though a few runners did pass by me. By the time I got back to the hostel it was after 10:00pm. The hostel staff had prepared some pasta and there were some leftovers that they let me have. Combined with the meal I had eaten earlier, I went to bed very full.

In the morning I woke up with a strong sense that the end of the journey was closing in. I had known this as a fact just by the steady advance of the calendar, but this was one of the first times where my return to America felt near. My bus was in the early afternoon so I didn't rush the morning. With my time before departure I checked out the Triana neighborhood on the west side of the river. Triana used to be the bad part of town, but now it's doing as well as the rest of the city. I noted a bicycle shop - a sure sign of hipster gentrification. There was also an indoor market and a church with another one of floats for the Passion Week parade. Before returning to the hostel for my backpack, I took one last look at Plaza de España. Then I walked to the hostel, got my stuff (and checked email), and walked down to the bus station. I was moving even further south, down to the southern coast of Spain. The next city was Tarifa.

Madrid: Secondary

My train from Salamanca brought me back to Charmatin Station in Madrid. While on the train I had been working on a speech that I had to give at a friend's wedding, but it was turning out to be harder than I anticipated. There was still over a month left before the wedding, but I was hoping to have the speech mostly done by the end of the trip, so from time to time over the following few weeks I would stop to brainstorm. Anyways, I rode the metro down to Atocha Station and made reservations for my train to Seville. I could swear that the last time I was in Spain the reservations on the AVE trains were about four euro, but now they were ten. While it's true that just about everything was a little more expensive than the last time I was in Europe, the train reservations had made the biggest jump. From Atocha Station I walked to my hostel, which was a short distance north of Puerta del Sol. I was actually staying in the same hostel I had stayed in back in 2012, though it went by a different name back then. By the time I finished checking in and settling down, it was almost 5:00pm. The plan was to visit the Prado Museum again during the free hours, but I didn't want to get there until around 6:30pm to avoid the long line that forms at around 6:00pm, so I walked to Retiro Park and passed the time there. When I went to the Prado I finished seeing the rooms I had missed the first time. The free hours at the Prado are always crowded, but for me that's an acceptable trade to get free admission into Spain's top museum. As the Prado closed down everyone slowly exited and I walked back to the hostel. I bought some groceries and made dinner, though I had to navigate around other peoples' cooking in the kitchen area. The hostel that I was in was very good, but the downside of that is that it's also very popular, and being a Saturday, it was fully occupied. After dinner I did some miscellaneous things and later in the night I felt like going out for ice cream. I looked up one place online but when I got there it was closed. I looked up another place and went there instead. The ice cream was good, but seemed a bit overpriced. Generally speaking, I find that Spain isn't the best place to get ice cream, just in terms of what you get for what you pay. I have no idea why that is.

The next day I was slightly thrown off by the time change. Europe's daylight savings time ended and I had to adjust my internal clock. In the morning, after eating quite a few churros for breakfast, I walked over to the El Rastro flea market. The market takes up a long section of a city street and it felt like the whole community was out and about. It seemed much like any flea market you would find in America and I didn't buy anything, though I'd be willing to bet that you could probably find something nice if you looked hard enough. I also saw something later that morning which I hadn't seen before in my previous times in Madrid: a massive flock of sheep being paraded through the center of town. It was part of some sort of old shepherding tradition that happens each year and several hundred sheep come walking through Madrid, passing right by Puerta del Sol, and continuing off to somewhere I don't know. In the afternoon I visited the Archaeological Museum. The museum focuses on the history of the Iberian Peninsula, (the part of Europe that contains Spain and Portugal) from prehistory to early modernity. Next to it is the National Library, which I wasn't able to go into because it closes early on Sundays. On my way back towards Puerta del Sol I stopped by a bar called Museo de Jamon and got a pair of one euro sandwiches. I was expecting them to be small, hence why I ordered two, but they were decent sized and I was very full when I left. I'm not sure if a place like Museo de Jamon is "touristy" or not. I saw another one in another part of Madrid, so it's clearly some sort of chain, but there were definitely locals in there. More importantly, the sandwiches were good, so I guess it's kind of irrelevant whether the place is touristy or not. I returned to the hostel and got some blogging done, which I think was the first time I had been able to do so since I was in Sarajevo. A friend of mine and I were supposed to do a Skype call that day, but he was predictably not on schedule and nothing happened. I was feeling a bit tired at the time. Instead of taking a nap, I went back outside and just walked around the neighborhood until I was feeling more awake. At around 7:30pm I had dinner. I probably should have waited until more like 9:00pm because of those sandwiches I ate in the afternoon. To finish off the day I walked along Gran Via.

My train the following day was in the morning and I only had time to eat a few churros before packing up and leaving for the train station. I was leaving Madrid, again. And the thing is, I would be coming back on more time after eight or so days in southern Spain. I probably could have planned the route a bit better to not have that happen, but there are worse places to come back to repeatedly. That said, I was off to Seville. Southern Spain was calling.

Salamanca: Searching for a Bench

I've heard a number of people, including locals, tell me that Salamanca is the greatest city in Spain. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did have an enjoyable time during my short stay there. When I arrived at my hostel in the evening I found that I was the only person in the room (which had six beds). Being late October, the high season for tourism was over and there didn't seem to be too many other people in the hostel at the time. I also didn't see as many other tourists as I expected walking around town the rest of the time I was there. Salamanca is a university town that doesn't draw as much tourism as other places in Spain, so it sort of made sense that I wasn't seeing as many tour groups while I was there. On my first night nothing major happened but I did stay up late, as that's the sort of thing you do when you're in Spain.

The next morning I slept in until around 10:00am and left the hostel around 11:30am. Before doing any sightseeing I took care of business at the train station by validating my rail pass for Spain and reserving the 12:30pm train back to Madrid for the next day. When I was ready to start checking out the city in more detail, I went over to the tourism information office and purchased a Salamanca Card. The Salamanca Card works like other city cards you can find across Europe in that it gets you into various sights and if you use it a lot you are effectively getting discounted entry fees. It saved me a few euros, though not as many as some of the other city cards I've used elsewhere. The first place I visited was the Clerica Towers, which had a decent view of the city. Next I went into the old university. Salamanca's university was once (back in Renaissance times) the best in Europe and is still a well known school. On the outside at one of the entrances is an facade that is famous because it has a small frog on it that people try to find for good luck. After a minute of searching I was able to locate myself. Inside, I got to see the old lecture halls and meeting rooms. The old library was also interesting. It still has it's original books and there's a sign from a long time ago warning students that if they remove anything from the library without permission they will get excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Right by the university are the old and new cathedrals. Normally when a town's cathedral is to be replaced, the city usually demolished the old one and then built the new one on the site of the old one. In Salamanca's case, the city left the old cathedral and built the new cathedral directly adjacent to the old one. Connecting the two together, the old cathedral serves like an extension of the building, even though it is the older structure. I spent about an hour inside the old and new cathedrals and there was an audioguide that came with admission and gave more details on the cathedrals. Moving on, I paid a visit to the Art Nouveau Museum. As I'm not an art historian, my knowledge and understanding of Art Nouveau is limited, but there are elements of it that I'm able to enjoy even in my ignorance. From the Art Nouveau Museum, I went over to the San Estaban Church. Inside I found a giant, 100ft tall golden altar. I assume it's a wooden altar that is gold plated and not solid gold, but still it was impressive. The last museum I visited was the Automotive Museum. Most of the cars in there were European, but they did have a special exhibit on American cars from the 1950s through the 1970s. That night I just walked around town and got some photos of the city at night, including Salamanca's main square. Some sort of book fair was being set up in the square, so I could get the photo I wanted of the whole place, but I just had to make the most of it. A second person was in the hostel room for that night, and she spoke some English so I was able to talk with her a little. Apparently she was in town for a single day as part of her college studies and was returning to Bilbao the next day.

The following morning the other person had to leave early and was already gone when I got up. Before leaving the hostel I uploaded photos to social media. I still had almost two hours before my train when I checked out, so I first went over to the main square and took a look at the book fair that was going on. I had no plans on buying anything, though I did come across a book by Karl Marx. Clearly this is what I should have been reading in high school Spanish class instead of that bourgeoisie propaganda. It then occurred to me that I still hadn't found a certain bench that I was looking for. Back in 2012, prior to my first trip to Europe, a friend of mine had recounted to me about being in Salamanca and at one point sitting down on a bench and taking in the beautiful light of the city. I had hoped to find this particular bench and get a photo of myself on it, however my friend hadn't responded to an message I sent him on Facebook, asking where the bench was. After some searching, I realized that I wasn't going to find his particular bench, so I just picked a bench and pretended that I was sitting on the same one that he had sat on. Then it was time to leave, so I got up, and walked to the train station. I was going back to Madrid, for a second visit.

Avila: Endurance Training

After the transit issues in getting to Segovia, I made an extra effort to make sure nothing went wrong with my stop in Avila. In the morning I made sure to get to Segovia's bus station and when the bus finally showed up (running fifteen minutes late) I double checked to make sure it was the right one. It only takes about 45 minutes to reach Avila from Segovia and rather than read, I spent the time looking out the window and keeping careful track of the bus' progress. Central Spain is fairly flat except for a few scattered hills and mountains puncturing the landscape. When I got to Avila I bought a ticket for the 5:00pm bus to Salamanca to give me the rest of the morning and the afternoon to explore the town. There was supposed to be some sort of luggage storage in the bus station but I couldn't find it. Consequently I would have to haul around my full backpack the entire time, resulting in a day of unplanned endurance training. Exiting the bus station, I knew I needed to move west but I didn't know exactly which road to be on. I had loaded part of a map of Avila onto the Google Maps on my phone while I had wifi in Segovia, but I hadn't loaded far enough east to see where I was. Thankfully, heading directly east from the bus station brought me onto the map and after ten minutes of walking I reached the medieval walls of Avila. The walls are the main draw of the town because of how preserved they are, though there are a few other things worth seeing besides them. Before going into the old city I went around to the south side of the walls to get a photo of the surrounding countryside and then entered through one of the south gates, making my way up to Plaza Mercado Chico and then on to the small indoor market. From there I went on to the town cathedral. Avila's cathedral was the first Gothic cathedral in Spain, but more notable (for me) is that parts of the church are built with a type of rock called "blood stone." The type of stone has reddish patches on it, like it has been stained with blood, and I don't remember any other churches in Europe that used this unique looking stone. It may be that blood stone is only found around Avila, or maybe nobody else liked the look of it. In any case, it makes an otherwise average cathedral stand out a bit more. Having skipped breakfast, I was starting to feel hungry when I left the cathedral. I remembered there was a Burger King just outside the city walls on Plaza de Sta Theresa, and my mind made a quick rationalization for doing more "research." In the plaza I passed by what appeared to be a student group leading a small protest. I couldn't full read all their signs, but I believe they were demanding some sort of educational reform. After eating, I returned to the old city and went up the city walls, starting at the middle gate on the east side, and slowly going along the east, north, and west sides until I got to the west gate, where I had to come down. I climbed a lot of stairs and went up nearly every turret that was open along the walls. With the added weight of my backpack my legs got a significant workout and my quads would end up feeling strained for a day or so after it was all done. I got lots of photos up on the walls and when I came down on the west side I walked through town back to the east side. There I went up one more small section of the walls and then came back down. At this point in the day it was getting close to when I needed to start making my way back to the bus station. I returned to Plaza de Sta Teresa and bought a box of yemas, which are soft boiled egg yolks that have been sugared/candied. I know that might sound disgusting but they're actually quite tasty. With the box of yemas stowed in my backpack I started walking towards the bus station, and then I had a scare. I looked at my watch and it was now just after 5:30pm. A panic came over me. How did this happen? How did I allow another screw up? I'm not supposed to make these kinds of mistakes! But then, I realized that I actually wasn't in trouble. My watch was showing the current time in Istanbul, Turkey, which is (strangely only) one hour ahead of Spain. The truth was that I was exactly on time to get to the bus station and catch the bus. Relieved, I continued on to the bus station and when the bus came, I got on. It was Thursday, and I remember the bus to Salamanca only being half full, perhaps because it was the off-season for tourism. Whatever the case, I left Avila behind and continued my journey.

Segovia: Unfortunate Victim

I nearly missed my stop in Segovia because for some reason I thought there were two Segovia stops and I wanted the second one. Realizing my mistake at the last moment, I grabbed my backpack and got off the train just before it departed. A bus took me from the station to nearby Segovia's old Roman aqueduct, where my hostel was located. The staff were kind enough to give me suggestions on how to best spend the remainder of the day in Segovia and where to find the bus station that I would need to be at in the morning to get to Avila, the next town in line. To avoid potential problems the next day, I walked over to the bus station before checking out anything else in Segovia, just to make sure I knew the route. With the few hours I had in the afternoon I walked around Segovia's small old city and checked out the aqueduct, cathedral, castle and a few other places. I unfortunately got to the castle too late in the day to go inside. Had I not screwed up earlier in the day back in Madrid, I would have had another two hours in Segovia. On the way back towards the hostel, in the late afternoon, I took a detour and walked along a path by a stream that one of the hostel staff had suggested. A serene stroll through a quiet park with autumn foliage was probably just what I needed, after a morning of self-inflicted travel stress. I got back to the aqueduct as the sun was setting, coloring the stones in a light shades of red and purple. Cool winds from the Atlantic were blowing in. I felt kind of bad that Segovia had gotten shortchanged by my circumstances. Granted, from my time walking around Segovia I knew that I could only get at most a single full day out of it, but another few hours would have made for a much fuller experience.

The next day I got up and made sure to get to the bus station early. Of course, the bus was running late that day, and with the construction going on at the bus station I was starting to wonder if I was standing around in the wrong place, but it came, and I got on. The next city was Avila, which I wasn't even staying the night at, but merely spending a few hours at on my way to another city.

Madrid: Primary

A 4.5 hour flight from one end of the Mediterranean to the other was sort of fitting for the transition to the last major leg of my journey across Europe. I would be spending several weeks in Spain, though I would only be spending two nights in the vast majority of cities I was visiting. During my 2012 Europe trip I had seen a lot of Spain already, so some places like Seville didn't merit a longer stay, while a few other places I was going, like Ronda, were either small or only had a few things I wanted to see, so they too didn't require anything more than one or two days. My time in Spain began in Madrid, which I would end up staying in three times just because of the way my path looped around the country.

Madrid's airport is located a ways outside the city and after clearing immigration I took the metro to Puerta del Sol, which is the official center of the city. For my first visit to Madrid I would be staying in my final Air BnB accommodation; an apartment just a block off of Puerta del Sol. The lady who hosted me spoke a bit of English and with my limited knowledge of Spanish we were able to have basic conversations. It was late afternoon when I was settled in and I then walked over to the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia carries mostly modern art, which is generally not my thing, but it does hold Pablo Picasso's famous Guernica. In 2012 I had visited the Reina Sofia late in the day when the museum has free entry but missed Guernica because I wasted too much time on a different floor. This time I was again back at the museum during free hours, but I instead made a beeline directly to Guernica to correct my previous mistake. Although modern art normally does not impress or interest me, for some reason I felt it was important for me to personally view this particular piece of art. Before the museum closed and I had to leave, I checked out the other rooms on the same floor as Guernica. Then I worked my way back to Puerta del Sol, stopping at an ATM for cash, and then continued west, on past Puerta del Sol, and went over to a cafe I had read about. There I had my first chocolate con churros of the journey. Personally, I think chocolate con churros should be the mandatory first meal of anyone who travels to Madrid, or Spain for that matter. After enjoying the meal, I got a bit of food from El Corte Ingles, a major department store in Spain, and returned to the apartment.

Knowing that I would be coming back to Madrid two more times on the trip, I was in no hurry to do sightseeing the next day. I slept in and didn't get out of the apartment until almost noon. Puerta del Sol was the starting point, with the bear statue, Kilometer Zero, and the Governor's Office all getting their respective photos. I then walked over to Plaza Mayor, which was partially under construction/renovation. As always, the guys selling stuff to tourists were out in force. Next I visited the San Miguel Market. Since my last time in Madrid, the San Miguel Market seems to have added some seating inside a few bars. There's some good looking ham and other stuff in there, but I couldn't bring myself to buy anything as I suspected I could get everything for cheaper elsewhere. On the way to Almundena Cathedral I passed by Madrid's town hall and when I got to the church I found the crypt was open. I didn't remember the crypt being open the last time I was in Madrid, so I went in. Granted, it's mostly a forest of columns (being directly under the cathedral, they are large support columns) and tombs, but it was interesting enough for a short visit. I then went into the cathedral itself and looked around and sat in the pews for awhile doing some reading. Right next to the cathedral is Madrid's royal palace, which has one of those maddening no-photo policies. The interior of the palace is arguably even better than the interior of Versailles, but Versailles is still the best palace in Europe overall. The route through the palace felt a little shorter than my previous visit in 2012, but that might have just been me misremembering it. When I finished at the palace I went up to the Egyptian Temple of Debod. The temple is not very big, but unlike a lot of other Egyptian structures you see across Europe, this one was given to Spain voluntarily by the Egyptian government. It was closed the last time I was in Madrid so I went in and checked out the hieroglyphics engraved into the walls. My plan was to finish the day over at the Prado Museum during the free hours, so I walked along Gran Via until I needed to turn to get to the Prado. Gran Via is sort of like the Broadway of Madrid. When I got to the Prado there was a line about 100 years long of other people waiting to get in. It still wasn't time yet for the free entry to start, so I continued on past the Prado to Atocha Train station to buy a train ticket to Segovia, the next town in line. When I got back to the Prado the line was much shorter and I got in after a 15 minute wait. The staff at the Prado are very serious about enforcing the no-photo policy. Even a photographer as sneaky as me would have a hard time taking photos in there. I was able to cover most of the ground floor during this first visit to the Prado. Since I was coming back to Madrid in a few days I was fine waiting and seeing the upper level another day. Back at the apartment I made eggs for dinner; the first time I had cooked eggs on the trip. Later in the night I went for a short walk and ate more churros con chocolate.

The next day was one of those days. People who know me know how thorough I am in planning and execution of travel planes, but even I suffer setbacks, and this would not be the last one on this trip. I got to Atocha Train Station on time but couldn't find my train and ended up missing it. The ticket I had was nonrefundable/transferable, meaning I would have to purchase another ticket and the next train for Segovia departed from Charmatin Train Station, at the north end of Madrid. When I got to Charmatin a train to Segovia was about to leave and I couldn't purchase a ticket in time to get on. It would be 2.5 hours until the next train, which gave me plenty of time for self pity. Still, I knew that this was a comparatively minor problem and lots of people around the world would eagerly trade their problems for mine.  I was still a bit upset with myself when the next train left but I was doing better mentally. All I could do was keep moving forward, and the path was now taking me to Segovia.

Istanbul: Metropolis

Oh boy, this is going to be a long one.

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I wasn't totally sure what to expect when I landed at the airport in Istanbul. After getting off the plane I made my way over to the immigration area and found the appropriate line. I had my tourism visa ready but when I got to the immigration officer he only checked my passport. He looked it over, scanned it, and then stamped it and let me go. Somehow this seemed anticlimactic. Then again, it's always better to have a boring immigration experience than an intense one. To get to the old part of the city, where my hostel was, I needed to take out some money from an ATM to buy a metro token. I got my cash but the bills were in too large a denomination for me to use on the machines at the tram, so I went over to the airport grocery store to break one of the bills. It was there that I had a moment of fake culture shock. One of the entrances to the store appeared to read "girls entry." While Turkey is a Muslim majority nation with strong Islamic influences throughout society, I had figured that separate entrances/facilities for men and women were relegated to places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. It would be later that I would find out that what I actually saw was merely a sign that needed to be fixed/replaced. The Turkish word for "entrance" is "giris" and on the sign the second letter "i" looked more like a lower case "l." So, the sign actually just said "giris entry" instead of "girls entry." I went down to the metro station and bought a token. When you purchase a ride on Istanbul's mass transit system, in the place of a paper ticket you get a small plastic coin, which you use to enter the station. Unlike most other places, you can't transfer for free between trains/trams, so for each leg of your journey you have to buy another token. Granted, at the time each token costed 4 lira, which was something like $1.33, so it's not like I was worried about going broke buying tokens. The ride from Ataturk International Airport to my hostel took about an hour and involved one transfer between lines. The hostel was located nearby both the Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sofia, and for most of my time in Istanbul I was able to walk to wherever I wanted to go to. For me the biggest thing adjusting to when I arrived in Istanbul was not any cultural differences, but the fact that you cannot drink the water out of the faucet. Well, you can, but you'll get sick if you drink it regularly. The chemicals put in the water to clean it are in higher concentrations than what you get in most of Europe, though it is still safe to do things like laundry and bathing in it. Everyone drinks bottled water and nearly every single store in Istanbul sells bottled water. At one time I accidentally drank some of the faucet water and didn't feel so good for about 15 minutes. After settling in at the hostel, I went out for a walk and crossed the Golden Horn, which is the water inlet that divides older and newer parts of the city. Originally I was thinking of going up the Galata Tower on the other side, but at this point in the day the sun was in a bad position for taking photos looking southwards, so I crossed back to the old city and paid a visit to the New Mosque. I don't know what's "new" about it. Alongside the mosque is the Istanbul Spice Market. A lot of the shops in there are selling the same stuff and can be hard to tell apart. It's a pretty touristy place, but if you're willing to look you can find a bargain or two. After some more walking around the area, I returned to the waterfront and then walked out to the Sarayburnu Park at the northeast tip of the old city. The sun was setting and a number of fishermen were out along the rocks, casting their lines in to the water. For dinner that night I ate the sandwiches I had bought at the Sarajevo airport. The hostel had a rooftop balcony with a decent view of the city, so I ate up there. That balcony would become my normal end of day spot.

The next morning I had a near disaster. I was cleaning the lens of my camera when I accidentally dropped it. The gears that focus the lens were knocked out of position but thankfully I was able to push them back into place and get the camera working properly again. This little misadventure delayed my departure by an hour but once I got outside I didn't stop until the end of the day. I started out at Topkapi Palace, home of the old Turkish sultans. There I purchased a three day pass but the guy at the ticket booth gave me a five day pass instead. Not sure why that happened, but I wasn't going to question the windfall. It took me about three hours to go through the whole palace grounds. One of the most notable parts of the palace was the relics rooms, which held a number of items that supposedly belonged to famous ancient people. I say "supposedly" because I'm not really sure how you could authenticate some of these things. Anyways, among other things, I saw the staff of Moses, the sword of David, and a bow and sword of Muhammad. Towards the end of the relics area was one of the guys whose only job is to memorize and sing the Koran. There was a screen with a translation of what he was singing, and I actually recognized the section being sung as the part of the Koran that draws on the Arabic infancy account of Jesus, which gives a similar story to the one found in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas. When I was leaving the palace I was thinking over the similarities between it and the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain. Both are grand palaces of sultans, but personally I think I prefer the Alhambra overall. I moved on to the nearby Archaeology Museum. The museum is split into three parts and I checked out all of them. The main section with most of the artifacts was under renovation and not everything was on display. Next to the Archaeology Museum is the overlooked Hagia Irene Church. It looks a lot like a smaller version of the nearby Hagia Sophia and was the city's lead church until Hagia Sophia was built. The interior is empty and not particularly notable. I then went into Hagia Sophia. As some of you know, Hagia Sophia was originally a church, but got converted to a Mosque when the Turks took over the city, and today it is a historical site. Part of the interior was covered in scaffolding for restoration work but the sheer size of the open space inside it is still breathtaking. You need a wide-angle lens to properly photograph the inside of Hagia Sophia, and even then photos don't really do it justice. I could have spent a long time looking around Hagia Sophia's interior, but I knew I needed to keep moving, so I eventually left. A short walk from Hagia Sophia is the Blue Mosque, but I got there too late in the day and it was now closed to visitors for the day. However, the Turkish Arts Museum across the street was still open, so I went in there. The museum chronicles various arts in Turkish and Islamic culture and was good enough for a half hour or so. Outside the museum there were a pair of obelisks, one of which looked Egyptian, which if nothing else is a status symbol for a city or nation. Your country isn't anything until it's got a stolen Egyptian obelisk. The sun had now gone down and I got groceries on the way back to the hostel.

It was Friday on the following day, so all the mosques were closed to the public for all or most of the day. After leaving the hostel I walked across the Galata Bridge to the new town and climbed the hill up to the street leading to Taksim Square. I could have taken a funicular up the hill, but having lived in Colorado as long as I have, I felt compelled to climb. Taksim Square is a large, round, open area with a monument to Ataturk in the center. I may have mentioned this already, but Ataturk is the title of the guy who founded the modern state of Turkey. There were lots of Turkey flags flying around the square. Next to Taksim Square is Gezi Park, the site of the 2013 protests which were triggered by a government plan to bulldoze the park and build more shops and apartments. I got a video walking around Taksim Square and then made my way back towards the funicular. On the way back I paid more attention to the stores lining the street and was struck by how many western food companies were there. I remember seeing McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, KFC, Arbys, Shake Shack, and a few others that I'm forgetting at the moment. This sort of thing really shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Ignoring all of those food offerings, I instead bought one of those bread rings that are sold all over Istanbul. Not sure exactly what they are, but they are sort of like a soft pretzel but made out of a different kind of dough. Continuing my walk, I stopped at an old Eastern Orthodox church and a Catholic church. When the Turks took over Istanbul, the vast majority of churches were converted into mosques, but a few were allowed to remain. When I got back to the funicular I did a short visit inside a whirling dervish school and then walked part way down the hill to the Galata Tower. The tower costed 25 lira to go up, which felt borderline overpriced, but the view was just good enough to warrant the expense. It has a 360 degree view of Istanbul, though you can't see the entire city because of how large the city is. After finishing up at the tower I walked the rest of the way down the hill and crossed the Galata Bridge back to the old town. I visited the Spice Market again and bought some dried mango slices after doing some price comparisons. Then I navigated the maze of streets southward until I reached the Grand Bazaar. I spent over an hour just walking around inside the Grand Bazaar, but truth be told, I was disappointed by the lack of variety. There was also the issue that most of the stuff in there was likely mass produced over in Asia and shipped in, rather than being made in Turkey or nearby. I saw most of the bazaar (a claim I know some would dispute, but I'm very thorough) and came out through the south entrance/exit. At one of the main roads I noticed a gelato shop, which you might not expect in Istanbul, and I gave it a try. The gelato was decently good, but couldn't compare to the gelato in Italy. I got a few more groceries nearby and then made the long walk back to the hostel. Before going to bed I uploaded some photos to social media and did some planning for the next day.

During breakfast the next morning I was talking with an Australian named John and an Englishman named Ron and we agreed to meet up for lunch. With that plan now set, I used the hours before lunch to do a few things. I walked over to and took a look at the Burned Column, near the Grand Bazaar. The column originally had a statue of Constantine on top, but that was lost, and later it got a cross on top, but that was lost too. Over the years a number of fires have swept through the area, giving the column its scorched appearance, and today it just stands around, ignored by almost everyone. Next I made my way towards the Grand Bazaar but went inside the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, which is right next to it. The marble exterior reminded me of some of the churches in western Europe, but otherwise there was nothing that stood out (in my mind) about the mosque. Inside the Grand Bazaar I went into the core of the bazaar, called the Cevahir Bedesten, and found a shop that I had passed the day before. The particular shop sold tobacco pipes made from meerschaum, a type of clay native to Turkey. The previous night I had done some online research and everything I had viewed indicated this shop sold genuine, handcrafted pipes made in Turkey. I don't smoke, but a friend of mine who was getting married does, so I bought him a pipe as a wedding gift. With my friend's gift finally in hand (I had been on the lookout for a gift since arrival in Europe) I walked out of the bazaar and moved north, passing Istanbul University and arriving at the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was the meetup point where John and Ron were going to be waiting. John was already there and I had a few minutes before Ron was supposed to show up, so I went inside the mosque. The interior was really nice, but I think I liked the Blue Mosque a little bit more. When I came outside there was still no sight of Ron, so I went to go look for him while John waited at the meetup point. Sure enough, I found Ron on the other side of the mosque, and he was looking for John and me (he had been mistakenly waiting for us on the wrong side of the mosque). I brought him back to John and then we all went over to a nearby restaurant for lunch. John had been to this place before and was able to get us back into the kitchen so we could look over what was being cooked and select our meals. I had some sort of meat dish with rice, and a blue can of Coca Cola, which tastes exactly the same as the Coca Cola that comes in red cans. We had a long lunch and talked over our respective travels. John is retired and was in Europe purely for vacation, while Ron is an author who writes historical fiction and was getting close to the end of a long trip across Europe. The next leg of his journey was going to take him north into Bulgaria, Romania and then into Ukraine. When the lunch was over I said goodbye and returned briefly to the hostel to put the pipe in my locker and wash two of my shirts. I then took the tram and light rail to Istanbul's old city walls and the Chora Church. I had some trouble finding the church but got there with some searching. The central part of the church was closed for restoration so I just looked around the hallways and the old mosaics in them. I then went over to the city walls and found that a few sections were open to the public. I climbed one section, which had the most dangerous set of stairs I've ever ascended. Each "step" was two inches deep and there were shards of glass on several of them. At the top of the stairs I was up on the walls and then I walked on the wall to a tower which gave me a better view of the area. Even way out there, I still couldn't see the end of Istanbul. When I came down from the walls, which meant going down those stairs, I walked around the neighborhood a little before heading back to the light rail station. There were no other tourists out there and I wonder if it was weird for the locals to see someone like me walking around. I took the light rail and tram all the way back to the hostel and did some miscellaneous things there. That night I walked from the hostel back up to Taksim Square. The square seemed even more crowded and chaotic than when I had visited during the previous day. I spent some time taking it all in, and then made the walk back to the hostel to end the day.

The next day not much happened in the morning. I was in the new town the whole time and I ran into some Jehovah's Witnesses in Gezi Park, but their English wasn't very good (and my knowledge of JW theology is limited) so I couldn't have much of a conversation with them. For lunch I decided to eat at the Shake Shack. Although it's an American company, there are no Shake Shacks where I live, so I had never been to one before. The milkshake was good, but the burger and fries seemed no better than others that I had eaten. I came down the hill and crossed the Galata Bridge back to the old town. There had been some indecision in my mind about what to do in the afternoon, but at the ferry dock I saw that one of the firms offering a two hour ferry cruise up the Bosporus Strait was about to leave, so I bought a ticket and got on board. I stood out on the deck as the shipped cruised north for an hour and then turned around. The boat passed under the two bridges linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul and the whole time it never left the city limits. Istanbul has the distinction of being on two continents and it covers almost the entire length of the Bosporus Strait. It was an overcast day and I remember that around the point when the ship turned back towards the old city of Istanbul I saw flares descending from the clouds in the distance. I have no idea why. Also I saw a massive new mosque being constructed on the Asia side of the city. When the ferry got back to the old town I got off and searched for a ferry to take me to the Asia side of Istanbul. As it turned out, the ferry I had just gotten off of was reverting to its normal route, which would take it to the Asia side, so I got back on the same boat and rode it over to Asia. I spent about two hours on the Asia side, though there wasn't much going on over there. It seemed mostly residential and I'm told that a lot of people live on the Asia side of Istanbul and then commute across to the Europe side for work. However, I did technically go to Asia, so I can check a continent off the bucket list. The sun had gone down when I boarded the ferry back to the Europe side, so I got to see nighttime Istanbul from out in the water. Nothing else notable happened that day, but at that point I had seen and done everything that I wanted to.

The next day I just had a few hours in the morning before I had to leave for the airport. My backpack was packed and I left it at the hostel while I went out to go shopping for a cheap umbrella. The weather forecast called for rain in Madrid, the city I was flying to, so I figured it would be a good idea to get an umbrella in a place like Istanbul where they cost less. With some looking around, I found and bought a small umbrella. I also found shops selling the most random stuff, like a store entirely dedicated to gun holsters. Istanbul strikes me as one of those places where you can buy just about anything if you know where to look. On the way back to the hostel I stopped at the Spice Market and used my last few lira to buy some more dried mango slices as a snack. The tram and metro ride to the airport took an hour, and when it was time to board the plane there was a bus that took me and other people out to the plane. It was time to leave Istanbul, the great metropolis of 15 or so million people. I was flying to Madrid, to start of a few weeks in Spain and the final leg of the journey.

Sarajevo: Scars

As my bus approached the outskirts of Sarajevo, it passed by a building with a gaping hole in the roof. Not far off was another building riddled with bullet holes. Once the bus entered the city itself there were no more damaged buildings, but the scars of war are not something you forget quickly. The Sarajevo bus station is located a ways away from the old city center (where my hostel was located) and I chose to walk the whole way there rather than take public transit. The sun was going down when I started walking and 35 minutes later when I arrived at the hostel it had gotten dark. The only notable thing that happened the rest of that day was that I talked with a guy from New Zealand and he was telling me about archaeologists had unearthed some sort of ancient underground tunnel network a few miles outside the city. He said he visited the site himself and the workers there allowed him to take a look around. Apparently there's some sort of wall/door into the tunnel network that seems to have been built with techniques for more advanced than what should have been around back then and there's strange things going on with the ground. I can't verify if any of this is true, and honestly it sounds like something that would be on that History Channel show Ancient Aliens. Alternatively, it sounds like the premise of a movie like The Mummy. Perhaps there's an ancient evil sealed within the tunnels and we are unwittingly setting it loose on the world. Of course, it's just as likely that the hoopla surrounding this discovery is way overblown and the tunnels are something mundane. It will likely be years before anything conclusive is known. My personal favorite (highly improbable) theory, which I made up myself, is that this is the world's most ancient practical joke, and the people who created the tunnels long ago set it all up just to mess with the people who would eventually find it.

On the following day I did my best to see as much of Sarajevo as possible. Although I didn't get to everything, I saw most of the biggies. Sarajevo sort of reminds me of Zagreb, but with a more eastern spin. This makes sense, of course, because for a long time Sarajevo was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. I started the day at the Sebilj Fountain on Bascarsija Square. The square was all torn up for construction but the water was still running in the fountain. I walked around, doing my best to stay out of the way of the workers, and visited some of the nearby streets that were full of shops selling various goods made of copper. From there I roughly followed a self guided walk from the pages of one of my guidebooks. I stopped briefly into the Morica Han, a former travelers' inn, and then moved on to the Gazi Husrev Bey mosque. The mosque is named for a local administrator from Ottoman times who built up Sarajevo and then willed his fortune to the city to continue building. While inside the mosque I overheard a nearby tour guide tell his group that at this particular mosque all the calls to prayer are prerecorded and then broadcast over the loudspeakers. The reason for this is that the local imam is very old and unable to climb the mosque's minaret. After leaving the mosque I continued west along the main pedestrian road and then turned south the check out the covered bazaar. Nothing caught my eye while passing through and I moved on further south to the Latin Bridge. Right at the bridge is the street corner where Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated, setting off the chain reaction that would lead to World War I. Today there's a plaque that marks the spot where the assassin stood and a museum is on the street corner. I pondered for a few minutes these deaths which sparked a conflict wherein over 17 million people would die, but then I had to get back on schedule. I returned to the main road, and then went north to pay a visit to an old Eastern Orthodox church. After that I passed by the Sarajevo city hall and then walked up to a viewpoint on a hill. Along the way I passed through a graveyard that had been dug during the siege in the 1990s. There were a number of wild dogs in the graveyard but they weren't aggressive. In America there would probably be a public outcry if there was a pack of wild dogs wandering around town, but in Sarajevo no one seemed to care. The dogs were only in one part of town and I would hope there would be some program to get them spayed or neutered, but I really have no idea what, if anything, is being done about them. It was a cold, foggy day in Sarajevo so when I got up to the viewpoint I couldn't see the whole city. Sarajevo is in a valley between mountains with the oldest parts along the river in the middle and then as you look further out from the center the city gets more and more modern. There were a few skyscrapers in the distance that I could barely see through the fog. When I came down I walked over to Sarajevo's Catholic cathedral. There was a school group in there and a priest was telling them something. I assume it was a history lesson on the church. I looked around in there for awhile and next visited the Eastern Orthodox cathedral. The curtains to the back of the church were open, so I could see into the place where the priests perform part of the mass that is normally hidden from the public. Outside the orthodox cathedral is a city park where old men play chess with giant chess pieces. The game that was going on looked like it was most of the way over, so I joined the group of people standing around and watched. I've never been big on chess and don't claim to know much of the strategy behind it. The guy with the white pieces seemed to have his opponent on the ropes, having removed most of the black pieces from the board, but the other guy rallied and mounted a comeback before finally being outmaneuvered and forced into checkmate. With the match over and a new one about to start, I left the park and passed through a market hall and then a covered outdoor market. I didn't buy anything, but some of produce did look good. I kept going west and came to the eternal flame; one of several war monuments scattered across the city. The flame is in an outdoor alcove of a building with bullet holes that have intentionally never been repaired. Scars like these serve as a reminder of the siege, the longest in modern history, and the people who died in it. Down the street, past the Bosnian central bank, is a park with more makeshift graves from the siege and another war monument. At that point in the day I stopped my sightseeing. There were a few more things farther west in the city that would have been interesting to see, but I had gone through all the things I really wanted to do. That is, except for conducting more "research." I had passed by a McDonalds while walking around town and was really curious to give it a try. To my delight, the burger I got at the Sarajevo McDonalds was fantastic. I guess I shouldn't be surprised - Bosnian cuisine has a lot of meat in it so it would make sense that the Sarajevo McDonalds would use quality beef. After leaving McDonalds I slowly walked back to the hostel, taking in the city as I went. At the hostel I spent some time blogging and looking up potential hostels for down the line. Later that night a group of people staying at the hostel invited me to come along for dinner. Some of them were going to one restaurant in the Austrian part of the city and two of them were going to a place in the old Turkish quarter. The restaurant in the Turkish area sounded more interesting, so I went with those two people. We found the restaurant and ate a traditional Bosnian dish, which was meat wrapped in some sort of thin, flaky bread. We chatted for awhile about our respective travels, so I got to eat Bosnian food and practice being sociable. Back at the hostel I did some more work online and packed my backpack for the departure the next day.

The next morning I had to get up early for my flight to Istanbul. The hostel staff called and arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to the airport. If I had hailed a taxi myself of the street there's a decent chance the driver would have overcharged me, so I was appreciative of the hostel staff making sure I got a fair price for my ride. My driver spoke a little bit of English and a tried to converse as best I could using simple words and phrases. At the airport I had a few Convertible Marks left over and was hoping to spend them at the airport store, however everything there was for sale in euros. Thankfully the cafe was taking them and I bought a pair of sandwiches to eat later in the day. My last few "cents" I dropped in a charitable donation box. Soon enough, the plane to Istanbul arrived and I boarded. As I looked out the window I felt bad that I didn't have more time for Sarajevo, but then again I now have a reason to go back one day. The plane taxied around the airport onto the runway. Then it lifted off into the sky and I left Bosnia behind. Next in line was the finale of my time in the east: Istanbul.

Mostar: Cultural Bridge

I'm currently at my family's house, but I'll still update the blog when I can.

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I had passed through Bosnia while traveling between Split and Dubrovnik, and now it was time to actually stay there. From Dubrovnik my bus followed the coastal highway back towards Split but after awhile turned north and crossed into Bosnia. Since I had departed Dubrovnik in the late afternoon, it was nighttime when I arrived in Mostar. The rain was coming down and the ticket office had already closed for the day, so I would have to come back the next day to buy a ticket to Sarajevo. My hostel in Mostar was only a short walk from the bus station, but at night and in the rain it felt longer. The hostel itself was really nice and felt more like I was staying in someone's home. Despite the rainfall I ventured back out into the city and walked down to the area around the old bridge. Hardly anyone was walking around that night; understandably so. I got a few photos of the old bridge before returning to the hostel, at which point I was thoroughly soaked. A few of the other people at the hostel commended my fortitude but also said I was crazy for wandering around in the rain with no umbrella (I was wearing my shell jacket, but that was the only piece of waterproof clothing on me). Perhaps they were correct, but I was only staying a single night in Mostar, so I couldn't wait for the weather to improve.

The next day I had until the mid afternoon to see Mostar. Because I was only interested in checking out the bridge and the old town area around it, this wasn't a problem. Certainly there's more than that to see in Mostar, but it is the highlight of the city. I got some money from the ATM (in Bosnia the currency is called the Convertible Mark, and the abbreviation is BAM, which I found hilarious) and bought my bus ticket to Sarajevo. Back down at the old bridge I was able to find my way down to a better viewpoint than the night before, and while getting photos I got to see one of the town's famed bridge divers take the plunge. Mostar's bridge was originally built during Ottoman times but was destroyed in the 1990s during Bosnia's war of independence. After the war it was rebuilt using the same stonework as before and is again a symbolic bridge between eastern and western cultures. The city of Mostar itself is something of a cultural melting pot, with Catholic churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, and Muslim mosques dotting the city. When I finished at the bridge I spent some time wandering around the old town. Along the way I made a fortuitous discovery of an ice cream stand that accepted Croatian kuna, so I got to use up all but one of my leftover kuna... and eat ice cream. I also walked through part of the more modern section of Mostar, which is much like other European cities, except some of the buildings were used as sniper nests during the war. With some more walking I eventually wound up back nearby the old bridge and did some reading there, and even talked with a British couple whose photo I took for them. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was time to head over to the bus stop. When I got there I sat down in the back (all the other seats were filled) and waited for departure. Just before the bus was about to leave an elderly man came running up to the bus and got on. He moved to the back and sat down next to me, and proceeded to hurriedly tell me something. Since I don't speak Bosnian, I have no idea what he said, but I'm guessing it was a long story about what happened that caused him to nearly miss the bus. Part of me was flattered that he mistook me for someone who speaks Bosnian. Or, then again, maybe he was just being old and senile. Whatever the case, I just nodded my head and pretended that I understood. After a few minutes he calmed down stopped talking. All the while the bus was winding its way through the mountains and valleys of the Bosnian interior. Final destination: Sarajevo.