Day 73 to 75 Craiova (Romania)

It was quite interesting to go from Serbia to Romania… in the end I actually stayed one night in Bulgaria on my way… tried everything from hitchhiking with a group of gypsies (who turned out to be really cool and nice people). To having to walk almost 15 km in the middle of the night in Bulgaria when I couldn’t find a ride… (but I finally did). To being offered a blowjob by a guy in the morning in Bulgaria when crossing over to Romania (I politely declined…) Well, then Craiova turned out to be a great place. Met these fun girls that showed me a round a bit in the beginning and have been staying with this cool dude that have really been the perfect host… have had so much fun!

Later on in the night when we where going back to his place we met up with a third guy who say that we had two guitars with us and suggested we should go to a park and play for a while… it ended up with us sitting there for several hours just playing… really cool!

 

I was stuck with a guy on the road for about 40 minutes while these road workers was shoveling dirt down on the road (and look at the safety of that… just next to the edge, welcome to Serbia 😉

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A truck driver bought me lunch (and I saw these nice grapes hanging in the restaurant… so I had to take a photo… after I had tried one of course :D)

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Going towards the crossing to Romania (just after the guy had offered me that blowjob)  I came cross a group of goats on the road….

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There are loads of dogs running around everywhere in Craiova… but they are really friendly

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My host in Craiova to the right and a friend of his that he has a band together with… great dude 😀

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Me on a pub with a live band (and yep, I am writing this in the pub)

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The band playing in the pub.

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The guy who we played with in the park

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Ion playing in the park (a friend of my host)

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Alex playing (my host)

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Day 68 to 72 Belgrade

Hi guys, have spent the last couple of days in Belgrade… just a fantastic city… I am so amazed with the people who are extremely friendly and helpful to strangers. If you stop someone on the street to chat or ask for directions they always take the time and perhaps walk with you a part of the way to make sure you get right… amazing!

During my hitchhiking over from Sarajevo I had a long chat with a truck driver that had been a tank commander during the war. Was very interesting to hear the horrors of war from someone who actually had been there destroying all those buildings I saw on the way… (He had been leading a division of 10 tanks and destroyed several villages… something he was very sad and embarrassed about).Or as when my first host in Belgrade lost his hole company when the war started and had to leave the country since he was a deserter… so many peoples live changed due to that war.

There where a LOT of hitchhikers outside Sarajevo… definitely another culture here (and a lot of people picking people up as well…)

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You can’t really see it here, but behind these trees is something as special as a catholic and protestant church built together into one building… cool!IMG_1057

My Serbian friend had a passport issued in 2008… and it still says Yugoslavia…

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A nice lake in central Belgrade that we went swimming in (yea, the water was warm :-D))IMG_1064

Visiting the mother of my host… she made great food for us. (My first host in Belgrade on the picture)

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The new train station that has been under construction for the last 25 years… someone got something wrong in the planning I think 😉

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This is what happens when the US decides to send some cruising missiles into your country… (this was the military headquarters in Belgrade that was bombed during the Kosovo conflict).

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Belgrade by night

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The third largest Cathedral in the world… currently under construction… will take another 10 years to finish all the paintings inside.

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A great t-shirt print 😀

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Going to the air-show… cars are driving on both the left and ride side of the road…welcome to Serbia in a traffic jam…

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Of course the kids should climb and play on cruise missiles…

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Loads of cool airplanes and helicopters. The guy to the right was showing me around 😀 IMG_1094

Probably the most “up hotted” Yugo in existence 😀 (Yugo is a Serbian car brand)

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My second host in Belgrade in the middle and two Slovakian girls who where also surfing with her at the same time as me.

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Ivana on a close up 😀

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Day 66 and 67 in Sarajevo

A short stay in Sarajevo turned out to be a bit longer than first expected. I met a lot of nice and fun people and just had to hang around for a while longer. We have been doing some sightseeing, I have gone to a museum or two, seen the spot where the Habsburger heir was shot, a museum on the War in the 90’s, a football game between Bosnia and Turkey on big-screen (people here really needs Hero’s badly!). Gotten a bit of a sense for the culture in the country… definitely a more macho mood than I am used to and… well… just seen things 🙂

Souvenirs in Sarajevo… pens that looks like bullets… IMG_0998

In what other country in Europe would a sign saying “Mr Sexy” be a fun a cool thing to put on your car? (Or miss Sexy further down 😉

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This is where the first world war started… with the shootings in Sarajevo…

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Me and a cool CS-girl that I was hanging out with during my stay in the city. IMG_1007

Since Bosnia is a Muslim country they had a lot of really cool Mosques, and since it was Ramadan almost no-one was drinking alcohol even in pubs (there are some Christians in town as well… but mainly Muslims)

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I love this picture because of the windows… the top left is a really new wooden window, the two ones to the right are really old murky wood and down to the left is one ornamented in gold and is really fancy… and yepp… there are of course the traditional bullet holes in the wall as well…

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Three Swiss girls I was also hanging out with a lot when in town.

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This picture kind of shows how Sarajevo still looks like… 15 years after the war.

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Want some ice cream? Why not try the red bull flavor… (was actually better than I had expected…)

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Me, the Swiss girls and Alen our local Bosnian guide (CS:er). He was really cool and showed us around the whole town and told us a lot about life in Sarajevo.

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Watching the football game Bosnia/Turkey (it was a draw which was really good for Bosnia… there where a lot of firecrackers going on when there was a goal :-D)

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Afterwards everyone was celebrating here… look at the guy to the left climbing up the building to join the others standing on the top of the balcony… these guys where crazy… 😀

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One not so lucky guy fell down and hit his head… so the police is there until the ambulance arrives… the police where quite brutal btw… wouldn’t like to go to a Bosnian prison…

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Day 65 Traveling to Sarajevo

This day was a travel day again, usually these are not really something I write about but going through Bosnia turned out to be a quite emotional ride…

First getting out of Split… I took a few short cuts through small pathways and suddenly I was attacked by this huge dog… luckily I managed to jump just outside the reach of his line… so his jaws snapped shut in mid air… phew!

Later on I got a ride with this truck that drove about 80 km/h on the small mountain road with sharp turns (and a speed limit of 40). The big thing was not the crazy speed though, but to see all the bombed out houses in the landscape… there is so much destruction here… even in Sarajevo most houses still have bullet holes in the plaster… you can really feel it wasn’t long ago this country was in war.

The countryside in Split… or rather this is actually still in the city.. these people LOVE their vegetables…

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This was the dog that jumped me… I had to go back and take a photo (on a safe distance)

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The roads to Sarajevo where beautiful in the beginning… blue water… green trees and sand

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They had signs warning for cows on the roads which I thought was funny to start with…

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Then I realized why… there where cows walking over the roads here and there…

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Later on the was a more common scenery… almost every second house was without a roof, and the ones still standing usually had big bullet holes in them.

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More houses

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I walked by a 5 star hotel in Sarajevo and saw a sign saying that you are not allowed to bring dogs … or GUNS into the hotel… kind of tells you where you are…

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Day 56 to 64 sailing in Croatia

Sailing in Croatia was definitely an adventure especially since most of the crew where Polish which meant that both me and Dilman picked up a bit of a new vocabulary in Polish… quite fun!

The adventures ranged from going out in the evenings meeting cool people to sailing in hard weather and having fishing lines caught in the boat. (Luckily for us we had a full insurance on the boat with no cost… because when we got back to land they had to lift up the boat since we had gotten salt-water into the gear-box… it did happen quite often though the guys in the marina assured me…)

Dilman also made a Google map over our trip if anyone wants to see : http://tinyurl.com/lrs9uk

Electric wiring in Croatia… most of the streets where so small that you couldn’t have fitted a car into them even without the stairs…

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Our boat

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Me in the water… I have just saved my hat from drowning…

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Dilman and Betty (one of the Polish girls on the trip)

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Dilman in the cabin

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Dilman trimming the sails 🙂

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Me and my cool hat 🙂

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More polish girls 🙂 IMG_0774

Coming up to a port

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I love the colors on the water 🙂

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Perhaps not shaved… but happy…

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Sunset sky

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The whole group… the guy bending down next to me is Chris… he was arranging the whole thing

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Two guys and their cannon…

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Dilman liking the view

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Me being a bit sweaty… it WAS a very big climb…

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Some people had really cool boats… like the wooden one behind me here… IMG_0827

Me and two of the girls again

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We are all having our heads down (the observant can see that this is my new profile picture on many places :-P)

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Don’t mess with me… or I’ll hit you with my anchor… aaaargh!

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The group in a tower

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Me and Dilman climbing around on a playground in the middle of the night

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The boat is leaning quite a lot…

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Some streets where smaller than others 🙂

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Us posing again, this time at night

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We experiment with the self timer in the harbor… or boat is the one behind us with the light.

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Me sailing when it is leaning a bit… yeeehaa 🙂

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That guy looks quite happy…

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Yet another harbor at night… and yes… they where more beautiful in reality…

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Dilman by Sirius, our boat.

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Our boat in the air

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And this was the reason… loads of fishing line caught inside the propeller and gearbox…

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Leaving the boat area with my new backpack

IMG_0948In the old palace area in Split… the moon looked quite cool

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Dilman on a square in Split… with cool background

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We found a band playing by the water… I am in the front dancing with a girl

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The same girl the day after… turned out she was selling her own stuff on the square

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Me and Dilman caught on a fishing hook

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Split… quite a beautiful place

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Going to a MC-club festival in the night… it was hard rock all the way 🙂

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They even had pole dancers performing

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The lights in the background is on the other side of the ocean… yea the festival was on the beach.

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The street sellers that I became friends with in Split

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One of the attractions they had was a carousel for the kids… driven by manual labor.

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Day 44 to 55 back in Sweden

On day 44 I was down with a really high fever, around 39-40 degrees and a doctor classified me as having the Swine flu (later on we found out that he was probably wrong… and they never took any tests so…)

This meant that I spent a couple of days in bed sleeping most of the time, when the weekend came I went to my summerhouse Långvind, about 3 hours north from Stockholm and spent a week there. First with some CS friends and then with my parents chopping wood and stuff.

 

My summerhouse  and some of all the sticks that I had to chop up…IMG_8037

More chopping up!

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The house… (my mother was playing around with a wide angle lens for this photo)IMG_8040 

My father sharpening the motor saw… we took down quite a lot of trees during the days we spent there…

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Day 43 Picnic in Stockholm

I arranged a small picnic when I got home and met up with some old friends… was great to see them all again! After that we went to a outdoor cinema-event in the evening… magic!

 

The picnic at DjurgårdenIMG_0742    

One more…

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The film festival… observe the sleeping bag… in Sweden it gets quite cold in the night 🙂

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Day 42 Dilman’s birthday

This Saturday I flew home to Sweden to wish my best friend a happy birthday… we had a calm night and met up with some good friends…

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Day 40 to 41 Sziget Festival Budapest

Long time since update, here comes some pictures from the Sziget festival in Budapest. Was a really awesome festival where I met a lot of fun people… I have realized I LOVE festivals…its like a completely different world! I was also lucky enough to be able to get a place to crash with two nice CS-girls so I could stay there the whole time 🙂

Afterwards I was supposed to take a flight to Sweden from Bratislava which turned out to be a bit adventurous. The day started with me not finding my pants so I had to look for them at the lost and found station at the Festival. This made me miss my public transportation to the city so I had to take a taxi. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough money and my credit-cards where empty (had forgotten to move money to them) so I only got to three kilometers from the station… then I had to run the last part with my backpack. I did make it on time though (thanks to my GPS who took me on the right route!) and boarded the train. There I put my alarm to bell 15 minutes before arrival and then I crashed to sleep (had not been sleeping very much the last couple of days during the festival).

I suddenly wake up from a lot of people stirring around in the train and realize I am at the Bratislava train station (I need to get a better alarm clock!). I run for the door but they close JUST as I get up to them and the train start moving… this is when I realize that my wallet has been stolen while I slept… (no worries, I had spent all my money on the taxi anyway and I didn’t keep any credit cards or something like that in it anyway…) but hmm… now I am sitting on a express train going away from my airport without money in the middle of Slovakia. At this time I had a choice… either I could be upset that everything was going bad and i probably would miss my flight, OR I could decide that it was a pretty cool adventure, where I was discovering something completely new and that I was pretty happy about travelling around… besides nothing would become better from being grumpy anyway…

I chose the second one, started laughing and joking with my fellow passengers about it who all became quite cheerful, 45 minutes later I jumped off at the next station (it was an express train) and found that I had 13 euro still laying around in my backpack. I managed to buy a train ticket for a ride back to Bratislava for 2.15 € and then the airport coaches cost another 0.50 € to the airport (love eastern European countries :-D).  I managed to get on my flight and got a nice ride back into Stockholm from Skavsta by some cool guys in a cabriolet…. nice!

 

The ting tings playing

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Die Toten hosen… really nice to go to with a group of Germans… they kind of increased the experience 🙂

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Some of the CS:ers at Sziget posing

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Fatboy slim IMG_0714 

The girls I was staying withIMG_0726 

In the tent…   IMG_0731 

Meeting up with Adri (from South Africa, who is living in Sweden) in Budapest… yea… that was complicated to write too 😉 IMG_0734

My tent girls and one of the CS:ers who was organizing our camp.

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Day 37 to 39 Exploring Budapest and surroundings

Back in Budapest. Have met quite a few CS:ers on different pub nights (about every night since I came :-D) and have also done some sightseeing to castles in the area and bobsleighing down mountains… not to mention our visit to Slovakia for some food 🙂 or dancing in the cellars of the castle labyrinth in Budapest.

Dancing in the labyrinth

Cs:ers are meeting on Sunday

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Doing some sightseeing with CS:ers, guided by Andras.

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A bar in Budapest… many places had pieces of bath-tubs as chairs… quite… ehm… modern 😛

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More party pics from Budapest CS-meetingsIMG_0703

Thomas (a C:er in Budapest) brought us up to a mountain with a beautiful view of all of Budapest… was really cool to be up there… (although all the couples standing there making out might have been a bit annoyed about our photo-sessions 😉

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The view of Budapest from the castle area in daylight

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Me in the labyrinth hanging out with a… ehm… eh, mummy?

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More art in the labyrinth, a horse, man or a pillar?

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I think someone is in love…

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We look like cool gangsters… ehm… or perhaps not 😛

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Ready to go down the track with the bob-sleighs…

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Proof that we survived 😀

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In a castle with a beautiful view

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