always learning

All throughout college I could not wait for the day I would be “set free”. Free to explore wherever I wanted in the world, free to satisfy all my wanderlust desires, free to feel fulfilled by what I have seen. My life quote was, "not all who wander are lost". Well, I am here. I am “set free”, I have seen more of the world than most. I have seen incredible sunsets in 13 different countries and 2 different continents, but I am no more satisfied or fulfilled by life than the next person.

See, lusting after adventure, lusting after satisfaction through seeing the world and feeling free is a sin. Why did I and why do I still believe that by seeing the world my life will have more meaning or more value? My life has meaning because I was made for something so much bigger than myself or my desire for adventure. I was made for Jesus alone, to be used at his disposal wherever I may be. 1 Timothy 6:6 says, “now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of it”. At the end of this life it does not matter what I saw or where I adventured.

We live in a culture that makes travel and adventure appear so sexy. They forget to mention that it is freaking hard sometimes. I miss people a lot, you spend a lot of money, you don’t know languages or your surroundings the majority of the time. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful I have gotten to see everything I have, but it hasn't always been easy. We are so obsessed with making our lives look fun and making them look satisfying. When in reality, I have learned that apart from Jesus nothing is satisfying, nothing is beautiful. I have to look at the world through His eyes, and that is when the moments become valuable and memorable. That’s when this sinful world appears beautiful. Wherever I am, Arkansas or Spain.

            From the outside looking in my life looks “perfect”, but dang, I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss coffee shops and the South. I cringe when people comment on my Instagrams, “you are so cool” or “I am so jealous” (I’m guilty of this as well). The article “Stop instagramming your perfect life” has never been more real to me. Sure I surfed in Africa, and it was a blast, but I was on the verge of hypothermia the whole time. What I have learned in my time here is that we always want what we don’t have. So many people would love to be living my life, desperate to escape the norm, but little do they know that I would love to be living their lives as well. The Fall trees, Razorback games, being with people that love and know you well enough that you can sit in complete silence and be happy.

            I haven’t at all figured out the solution to this problem, and I know I will fall back into it. Although, I read a quote by Ray Wylie Hubbard that says, “the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectation, those are really good days”. I had incredibly high expectations for this adventure and guess what- I’ve had days that I was very let down. So, here is to learning to be grateful for today. Not looking ahead and planning for the next season but focusing on today and being grateful for everything it has to offer.

munich, germany, venice, italy and cinque terre, italy :: september 5 - 8

        Munich, Germany was one of my favorite stops of the trip and I believe that was due to the people I was with and the laughter that was had. We arrived in Munich and went to purchase tickets to Venice. Unfortunately the lady at the ticket office told us that our 15 day Eurorails were invalid. Quick rewind: when we boarded our first train in Istanbul a man came around to date our 15 days Eurails. He wrote the wrong date and we tried to tell him that, but he just said “no problem, its no problem” and refused to change it so we trusted him. No country we traveled to even looked at our Eurails until we got to civilized Germany. Luckily the lady there really liked us (having Diana and Hilary on your trip helps you get A LOT of unexpected favors) and she reprinted and dated our Eurails for free with the correct date.

With our 6:30pm tickets in hand we headed out into the city to look for the Biergarden in the English Garden. Once at the garden we enjoyed beer and snitzel. Hilary had been to Munich before and she remembered a place in the park where people were surfing on the river so we set out to look for this place called “The Wave”. We stumbled upon it and watched people surf this Huna-like wave on a river that runs through the middle of the city. I saw this wave and knew I couldn't leave without experiencing it. As we continued to watch, we noticed people floating down the river, just their bodies, so I knew I had to jump in. I asked who wanted to join and Diana quickly agreed. We jumped in. The river was freezing and the wave was massive…that’s all I can write about that experience.

We continued on our way back to the train station to head to Venice. We got their 20 minutes before our train and looked at the boards for our platform so we headed that way, sat on the ground, and ate some food. About 6:28 we realized the board above our platform did not have anything written on it.  We run around very confused looking for our train and finally give up. No train. We head back to the ticket office again and ask them what has happened. It turns out the train had switched platforms but that had not been communicated to anyone. They refunded us our tickets and we were advised by the same nice lady (who now referred to us as the 4 Americans) to attempt to convince the conductor on the overnight train to let us ride in the corridors.

We had a lot of time to kill so Hilary worked her magic and got a hotel to hold our bags for free as we explored the city a little bit more. We enjoyed architecture, good music and an apple strudel before going back and attempting to get on this overnight train. We got to the platform and sent forth our strongest weapon, Hilary, but we got a big ole no. The next train was the following morning and we were going to sleep in the train station, but once we saw where we would be sleeping, Diana and I decided to go get a hotel across the street and get a good night’s rest. Hil and Connor eventually weaseled there way into getting a free hotel later that night so no one was surprised there. In the hotel room I decide to check and make sure I had everything because things got chaotic for a while. I cannot find Hilary’s Eurail or mine and I panic. I am convinced that when we were refunded for our missed train that I had left them in the ticket booklet I handed to them and that they had realized this after we had left. Our only hope was that they were waiting for us at the desk to pick up the next morning.

After not sleeping due to anxiety over these $500 pieces of paper we head to the station again and go back to the same nice lady. We explain the Eurail mishap to her and she frantically starts searching through the trash and desk. The Eurails are nowhere so she calls over the owner of the ticket business, Alan, and I explain the situation to him as well. He shoots us straight and says we will have to buy new Eurails.

Pit.In.My.Stomach

Not only did I lose mine, but also Hilarys.  Alan sees the fear in our eyes and he tells me that he will search through their trash bin and that I am helping. So we go to the back of this office and start searching for the booklet of tickets that I am confident our Eurails are stuck in the back of.  We get to the bottom of the bin and there is nothing. No Euroails anywhere. So I leave the back of the office, sick to my stomach, and decide to look through my bag one more time. We all start searching our bags and I find them!! I don’t know if I was just stupid and didn't search hard enough the first time or if God placed them there. I like to think it was God and will continue to believe it was Him and not my stupidity. I run to show Alan and he is so relieved and excited for us and then tells me I owe him a beer for everything he has done for us.

He walks us to a restaurant in the train station and orders beers for all of us. We listen to Alan talk for 45 minutes, telling stories and giving advice. We eventually figure out he is an American from Chicago who moved to Germany to start this business many years ago. He then leaves me to pay for these beers. A 35 euro mistake…better than a $1,000 mistake. Afterwards we finally board a train to Venice!

We didn’t make reservations for this train, but ended up in our own cart. We watched Harry Potter as we made our way into Italy, which was so beautiful. We arrived in the evening and walked quite a ways to get to the hostel, but it turns out there was no vacancy. We decide to not stay in Venice that night, but to catch the midnight train to La Spezia, Italy. We grab some Italian dinner and wine along the river. I lose my own 1 to 10 and have to ask the woman sitting next to us if we could have her fries…she says yes. So we chow down on these fries and make new friends. We continue to walk around the city and explore. Venice is incredible. People really do get places by boat. They really do park their boats outside their houses. It’s fascinating. After we have seen all there is to see, Hil pops into the nicest hotel in Venice and asks if we can use their wifi and sit in their lobby. Of course they agree.

We board our train with no reservation and attempt to get in multiple different carts, but get kicked out of every single one. The train is completely full so we had to relocate to the halls and corridors, which were packed body to body with people. We found a spot in the corridor and sat there for the next 2 hours having to move every 15 minutes for people to get on and off the train or to go to the bathroom. We met some of the strangest people.

We arrive in Bologna, Italy at 2:30am and sleep until 5am in the waiting room children’s section. I happened to wake up around 4am and noticed a very creepy man standing over us and staring. When he saw me looking at him, he tried to act natural and sat down next to Diana’s backpack. I watched him for a little bit and then tried to shut my eyes for a little bit, but had a bad feeling. Every time I opened my eyes he would have his hand on Diana’s backpack and then jerk away very quickly. So eventually I just sat up and he left about 5 minutes later. Train station living. We board the next train, which was completely empty. We were able to have entire rowS of seats to ourselves to sleep on for the next 3 hours.

Once in La Spezia we grabbed a taxi to get to Cinque Terre, Italy. We arrive at our hostel and are told that we have a 5-minute walk up to our room where a man would meet us. 200 stairs later we find this man and he shows us our private hostel room (we had booked an 8 person dorm). We didn’t have wifi in our room and it was all-uphill so Hilary and Connor decide they were going to stop at the office and demand the 8 person mixed dorm. The hostel owner was very confused because he gave us an upgrade for the same price as the mixed dorm. This doesn’t sound funny now that I have typed it, but we were laughing so hard afterwards. It is like booking a room at a hotel and they overbook you so they make up for it by giving you the honeymoon suite for the same price and you try to tell them you are very upset that you are not in a normal room….

We walked down to the ocean and layed out on the rocks, read, swam and eventually fell asleep. We were going to train to the other villages but needed our Eurails so we hiked back up to our rooms and decided to take a 50-minute nap. We all thought Connor was setting the alarm, but he didn’t get that memo so we slept for 3 hours. We trained to Moterrosso and had dinner then walked on the beach.

The next morning we enjoyed crepes and a nutella coffee, which was nutella smeared on the inside of a cup with an espresso shot poured in the middle that was infused with nutella as well. Afterwards, we walked Connor to the train station because he was leaving us to head to Florence, Italy. We went back to lie on the rocks, but it was chilly so we read and then trained back to Monterosso to grab lunch. After lunch we attempted tohike to the next village. On our way we saw a cave in the cliffs so we climbed down and explored. Swam inside the cave, which was actually pretty eerie. We then trained to Vernazzo and as we got off the train we heard people screaming and cheering so we ran down to the city square to figure out what was going on. We see a bride and groom standing up on a balcony of a hotel throwing candy down to masses of people standing at the bottom (including an old couple hanging out their window catching candy in their nets). We jumped in the middle of the chaos. I have never been boxed out and pushed harder in my life. These people were serious about their candy. After being pelted in the head multiple times with hard chocolate we got the heck out of there. Afterwards, we grabbed dinner at a build your own pasta restaurant (recommendation of Eric White) and split a bottle of Cinque Terre wine. Hilary and I decided we wanted to jump off a cliff into the water since it was our last day so at sunset we headed to the ocean. We jump in the freezing cold water and climb up to the cliff. Once we are on top we realize there are about 60 spectators who have gathered to watch. We can’t chicken out now. So we take the leap and as we come up the surface, people are going nuts! Yelling, cheering, snapping pictures. First and only time in my life I felt like a celebrity. We started a movement and people started swimming out to this cliff to do the same thing. We headed back to our hostel and fell asleep so we could catch the 5am train to Monte Carlo, Monaco.

salzburg, austria :: september 4-5

We left our hostel in Ljubljana about 45 minutes before our train was leaving, thinking this was plenty of time to get there and grab breakfast…we were wrong. Again. So we arrive at our platform with empty stomachs and what we thought was going to be a 12 hour train ride ahead of us. Hilary and I decided we couldn’t do this to ourselves again, so with 10 minutes until our train we took off back to the McDonalds we passed on our way in to grab some breakfast. We ordered whatever they had ready at that moment and sprinted back. I tell you this because we were the stereotypical Americans, sprinting with a huge McDonald’s bag in hand. I’ve never seen Hilary run so fast.

Little did I know that I was about to jump on a train that would be the most beautiful 5 hours of my life. I began reading the Harry Potter series as the train took us through the Austrian Alps.  Truly the only way I can describe how I felt on this train ride is exactly what was written on those pages of Sorcerer’s Stone. JK Rowling writes of Harry’s first Diagon Ally experience, “Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked down the street, trying to look at everything once”. This could not better sum up the way I felt during these five hours. 

We had jumped on this train with the intention of going to Venice, but once we saw the scenery we decided we had enough time left to detour and stop halfway in Salzburg, Austria. We arrived in Salzburg early afternoon and immediately set out to find a supermarket to find food. We walked into a shopping center and took a seat in a restaurant, buying two sprites and two cokes, bumming their wifi and acting as nonchalant as we could, we pulled out our ingredients and pocket knife and began making our sandwiches in the restaurant. That lasted about 10 minutes before we were asked to leave…so we enjoyed our delicious sandwiches on a bench in a mall.

Afterwards we set off to find a hostel for the night. We began going in and out of hotels attempting to see if we could sneak four people into a 2-person room for a good price. Eventually we stumbled upon a hotel, the Salzburg Hof. Things worked out in our favor and we ended up in a huge four person hotel room, each with our own bed, an incredible shower, and a wonderful breakfast for only 25 euros a person. We felt like kings and queens, especially after living on trains for the majority of our trip thus far. After celebrating our find, we headed out to explore Salzburg.

 We walked along the river to the center of the city where we saw the home of Mozart. We also tried a Mozartkugeln, the staple candy of Salzburg, made up of a pistachio covered in nougat, dipped in dark chocolate. We searched for a place to sit and have coffee and beer, but stumbled upon a very large cathedral where we tried to gain entrance, but were not successful. We asked a lady how to get in (she spoke no English), she smiled big ,nodded her head and pointed us to a door. We walked in and it turned out to be a large white art exhibit room with “AEIOU” written on the wall and that’s about it. Not sure why we believed that that was the entrance to a grand 17^th-century cathedral or why they consider that art, but hey, it happens. We snapped a picture and got out of there. We walked around some more, Connor willingly ran through a fountain, and then we found a hotel with a restaurant/bar on top. We enjoyed a beautiful view of the city while having great conversation.

We headed out to explore a little bit more and also search for a good dinner spot. Again, we were all craving Asian food because we had yet to be successful in the search for noodles and rice, but alas we found a restaurant! It had great student prices listed on the outside menu so we were sold. We climbed the stairs to the empty restaurant and took a seat, where we accidentally ordered the most expensive water to date…3,50 for a small glass. We looked at the menu and saw none of the student discounts so we asked the man, who spoke little English, and he explained that those prices were only for lunch. We would have understood and ordered anyways but the prices for dinner were outrageous and our water had already used up half our budget so we told him we were going to leave. He quickly offered to give us the student discount if we stayed…so we stayed. We each ordered one of the things listed on the student menu. Hoping for a variation dinner by sampling each other’s plates, we we surprised, but not surprised, when we all received the same meal! Rice and teriyaki chicken! Dang language barrier. So after throwing down the big bucks for water and rice we walked to Mirabell Palace and Garden. We got there just in time to see all the flowerbed designs… in the pitch dark!

 With full stomachs and no money in our pockets we wandered back pretty early to our hotel room to at least get our money’s worth out of what we spent there…and we did! Full night’s rest for the first time in awhile.

The next morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast and headed to the train station to catch a train to Munich, Germany.

zagreb, croatia - plitvice lakes, croatia - ljubliana, slovenia

   We caught an early train to Zagreb, Croatia but before boarding the train, Connor realized we had not eaten and had no food so he quickly bought skittles, snickers, and pistachios for us all to share on this 8 hour train ride. Diana and I literally rationing out skittles and pistachios...actually doing the math in my head of how many skittles I could have per hour. We have somehow made the mistake of not buying food before every long train ride so far, but this was the last time we would do that.
Once in Zagreb we walked to the bus station to check our bags and purchase tickets for the bus that would be taking us that same night to Plitvice Lakes. We took off to explore the city for a few hours. First order of business: dinner. We were craving chinese food and as I had already learned on this trip when our minds and hearts get stuck on a certain food, we will not give up until we have found it (ex. fish sandwiches in Istanbul). We asked the locals where to go and every single one thought we were crazy and had to look up Chinese food on their phone for us. After receiving directions from 2 different people to a place called Wok and Woke that is exactly what we did...we walked and walked and then walked some more and NEVER FOUND Wok and Wok. We had finally met out match. We were so hungry at this point (remember, we had only had skittles, pistachios and snickers since the previous night) we decided to die to our crazy desire for chinese food and try local food. Every local we asked suggested Nocturna and gave us what seemed like fairly simple directions. But again, we walked around in circles for 25 minutes, passed said restaurant 4 times, and ran into our American friend, Joe (we had met Joe in the train station earlier that day), who accompanied us to dinner. Joe was a 30-year old TALKER from California who was traveling by himself. We were all so tired at dinner it was nice to not have to talk...at all. We enjoyed some local flavor and learned all about Joe's life and adventures then headed back out to the city square to search for some Wi-Fi. We stumbled upon a coffee shop that was decorated like a teashop and we took a seat. The waiter approached us and asked what we would like and Hil responds, "we like the feel of your place, and we'll take your Wi-Fi password"...not the best response, but it worked. Her magic truly never ceased to amaze me. We enjoyed Wi-FI for 30 minutes and ordered two coffees out of guilt. Poor Joe didn't get the hint. He continued to talk and talk and talk while social media and friends back home were our priority. Lots of walking and talking that night.
   We take a cab back to the bus station to catch our 11:30pm bus to Plitvice Lakes. 11:45pm...no bus. 11:55pm...no bus. 12:15...still no bus.We were giving the bus driver the benefit of the doubt because of the laidback European lifestyle, but a fellow rider went to ask the desk when the bus was coming and she told him, “oh, the bust driver called in and doesn’t feel like driving tonight”. No one came to tell us that. Who does that? Europeans do. So we head back to the ticket counter to get refunded and purchase 5:30am bus tickets to Plitvice. The best option at that point: sleep in the train station. We found an outlet next to those toy machines with the claw. That claw machine would play the step-up song, Show Me the Money by Petey Pablo every 2 minutes for the rest of the night (listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbYj01Grag and play the first 13 seconds over and over again for the next 5 hours to get the full experience).  Diana and Hil immediately fall ‘asleep’. Hil in a sleeping back made of a purple sheet and Diana on a towel. I read Chronicles of Narnia and Connor listened to podcasts. My favorite part of the night came around 4am when a lady with a rolling backpack planted herself right in front of the claw machine and would spend the next 15 minutes dancing for those 13 seconds of Petey Pablo over and over again, each time incorporating her rolling bag in a new way. No one else saw this because they were sleeping, but I had tears rolling down my face from holding in laughter. About 4:30am I washed my hair in a sink and got many stares, probably having my length hair didn’t help the awkwardness of it all, but I needed it to be clean (washing your hair in a motion censored sink is very hard, FYI).  The time finally came for us to board the bus and we each took up our own row…Connor took up the entire back row, 4 seats, no shame. I enjoyed a beautiful sunrise before dozing off for the remainder of the ride.

We finally arrive to the lakes early in the morning, and the bus truly drops us off in the middle of nowhere.  Let me set up this scene…we are all looking nasty because we have “slept” in a train station, no showers, layers on layers of big clothing because it was surprisingly cold, our backpacks and four Aussies. We look around for a sign, for a human, but nothing. One of the Aussies looks over at everyone and very seriously says, “where the hell are the waterfalls?” We just start walking, searching for civilization, for waterfalls, for warmth, for any sign of life. We eventually stumble upon a path that leads to a hotel, we ask if we can keep our bags there, but he responds, “only for 5 minutes”. That’s just not gonna cut it. So, we ask to use his bathroom and he agrees. We brush our teeth, change our clothes, etc. and continue to search for a place that will hold our backpacks. About 40 minutes later, keep in mind my backpack weighs about 36 pounds, we find Hotel Jezebel that has a luggage room! We head to buy our tickets for Plitvice Lakes and Hil attempts to get us the children’s discount by telling the woman we are 17…big fail. But by implementing the “foot-in-the-door” approach, she manages student discounts for the 4 of us with the use of Connor and Diana’s uark IDs. We enjoy a cup of coffee and a chocolate pastry with about 27 swarming bees, not flies, which was surprising for the hygienic state we were in. 

We jump on the tram and head to the top or bottom of the trail…not really sure which direction, but we take the tram to the furthest trail, trail H, and begin our 6 hour journey. The whole path throughout the entire place was made out of logs. We enjoyed 4 hours of beautiful scenery before taking a boat across the lake to a place where we could grab some lunch. We enjoyed some rubber hamburgers that were worse than Harrison Junior High School’s cafeteria burgers and watched a dog fight. Except this wasn’t just any dogfight, I watched the owner of one of the dogs begin to bark at and chase the other dog away. Very scary, a little demonic, but made for some good laughs. Meanwhile, Hilary was asking the restaurant for free tap water, but because of the language barrier, we received 4 cups of boiling hot water. We continued on with the hike and made it to the “big waterfall” that you see in every picture when you type ‘plitvice lakes’ into Google search. Maybe rainfall was low that year, but the waterfall was pretty lame. Side note: Plitvice Lakes was incredible but the whole day we were waiting to get to this incredible waterfall, very high expectations, very let-down, but we set ourselves up for failure. We approached the waterfall and saw SO many people posing on one of their two options, a big boulder, or a wooden bleacher. The best thing about the waterfall was the people-watching, see above.

We hiked to the top of the waterfall to see if the view was better, but it was actually worse, so we explored on our own and found this awesome view and decided to attempt a “cute” dog pile photo, I wish the photo had been taken from behind because it was really just a mess of awkward legs. We finished up at Plitvice and took the bus back into Zagreb where we bought ingredients to make sandwiches and enjoyed dinner by a fountain and then searched for Wi-Fi until our train left that evening for Ljubljana, Slovenia. We only stayed the night in Ljubljana but from the little we saw, it was incredible. There was a beautiful river running through the city. I hope to go back there one day! We enjoyed an 8-bed hostel room to ourselves. The next morning we made our way to the train station for a 9am train, but Hil and I realized AGAIN that we had no food. We took off sprinting out of the train station at 8:50am to the nearest McDonalds and grabbed whatever was ready at the moment. Two American girls, sprinting through Ljubliana carrying a huge McDonalds bag back to the train station. You're welcome, America. We boarded a train to Venice but we got sidetracked….

           

istanbul, turkey - sofia, bulgaria - belgrade, serbia

Hello everyone!

I write this with 2 weeks of traveling and three weeks of being a nanny under my belt. I am not good at this kind of stuff (writing) but the purpose of me writing a blog is that I hope more than anything that reading what is going on in my life gives you a desire to e-mail me back and catch me up on your life (ckbennet@uark.edu)! I have realized with the time change here (+7 hours) it is nearly impossible to keep up with everyone.

            Let’s see…I’ll start with the 11 countries I traveled to in 15 days. Chaos. Lots of time was spent on trains, but since the scenery is so beautiful, it was more than okay with me to sit for that long. We started off in Istanbul, Turkey where I met up with my long lost friends, Hilary and Connor. Diana and I arrived in Istanbul with no luggage…so that was a bummer seeing that we had already spent more than 30 hours in the same clothes due to plane cancellations in Chicago (our luggage would not arrive for another 30 hours). After getting settled into our hostel and applying deodorant, since that is all we had, we headed out into Istanbul to search for fish sandwiches for dinner. After searching for these sandwiches for over an hour we found them and they were exactly what you’d expect…pungent fish on bread. Needless to say, we took one bite and threw them away. Afterwards, we walked up and down Taksim Street, which is known for its nightlife and saw a lot of famous landmarks then returned to our hostel at about 1am where Diana and I bunked with 8 boys. It was our first hostel experience and we were really welcomed into the rawness of that world when Diana and I were awoken by 7 alarms set for 4am and 7 farting English boys who sprayed entirely too much Axe to cover up their stench. Needless to say, Diana and I didn’t sleep that night and after one hour of enduring these farts and squirts of Axe the boys finally left and Diana and I rolled over, looked at each other from across the room and said, “what in the world just happened”.

The following day we explored the Spice Market and the Grand Bazaar, where Diana and I purchased underwear that snapped upon putting them on. We also bought these cool Euro pants that actually ended up being not that Euro since we got lots of stares…maybe it’s because of three of us were wearing them. Confession, I was probably too confident wearing these pants because I felt like I looked like the musician, MIA.

That evening, Diana and I endured over 4 hours of attempting to repossess our lost luggage and were successful! Once the luggage was recovered we decided to get the heck out of Istanbul. We went to the train station and booked train tickets to Sofia, Bulgaria at 9:15pm for 10:30pm, but here is the thing….on the plane to Istanbul I recall Diana saying, “if I can see the Blue Mosque I won’t have another opinion on what we do the entire trip”. This flashes in my head and I look at my watch, see that it is 9:15pm, look at Connor and Hilary to tell them what Diana said and we decide, we have no other choice, we have to see the Blue Mosque before we leave Istanbul. The quickest and cheapest option?...run. The four of us take off sprinting through the streets of Istanbul (all uphill I might add) and arrive to the Blue Mosque, snap a few pictures and attempt to sprint back to our hostel, but we were running low on time, so we had to jump on a tram. We grab our backpacks at the hostel and again, sprint back to the train station, stopping at a McDonalds on the way for dinner and catch the bus that brought us to the train just in the nick of time!

            

We would then spend the next 18 hours on an overnight train to Sofia where our sleep was interrupted every 80 minutes for a passport check. The longest 18 hours of our lives, no food (I really thought there would be a food cart that came around, thanks JK Rowling), smelly train, and only a bed to lay on. We finally arrived in Sofia, where we were greeted by a man named Angel. We originally believed Angel was an actual angel because he got us the last 4 tickets on the train out of Sofia that night, but then he ended up dooping us and charging us money for all the help he provided…no longer was he an angel to us. We had about 5 hours in Sofia and that was more than enough. We ate a huge lunch, bought some gelato, took a picture with some soldiers who looked important, befriended a stray dog who followed us around the rest of the day, and went inside a cathedral to watch the strangest weddings (brides lined up outside waiting for their turn to get married). Some of the bridesmaids were truly wearing dresses I saw Katherine Heigl wear in 21 Dresses. After a short day, we boarded another train and headed to Belgrade, Serbia.

            The train to Belgrade was a party train, majority of the people were our age and were just drinking alcohol the entire time. Diana and I ended up in a cart with the nicest family from Iraq. As I was climbing up to the very top bed in the cart (3 beds high), my Nalgene fell out of my bag and hit the dad right on the head…so that was good for the American reputation.

            After training overnight, we ended up in Belgrade where we walked miles to get to a hostel that was non-existent and ended up finding a random hostel where we met a new friend, Mahbir from Amsterdam. We showered (no shower in 3 days) and enjoyed wifi for a little bit before heading out for some breakfast and a free city tour. This tour lasted about 3 hours, but we only stayed for one. We saw Bohemian Street, aftermath of WWII bombings (which we would later realize is why Serbians hate Americans). On Bohemian Street we tried “Raiki” which is the most popular Serbian alcoholic drink…or just drink in general. After ditching the tour we found bikes and spent the rest of the day biking around Belgrade. At the end of our biking trip, Hil, Connor, and I decided to venture up to the Belgrade fortress. On the way there we heard a futbol game happening in the distance and went to watch a little bit of it. We had to climb up a grassy hill with our bikes to get to the game. I was leading the group and as we got to the top of the hill this man was standing in the middle of the path and wouldn’t move out of the way so I stepped off the path and sank down to my knee in nettles (if you do not know what nettles are, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinging_nettle ). After racing to the nearest fountain to rinse my leg off we began the hike up to the fortress…carrying our bikes. We get into the fortress and I instantly see a wall that I want to climb on…only problem is that it was trespassing but I promise I didn’t realize that at the time/Hil and Con didn’t say anything about it. So we take a very cool sunset picture on this wall and before I know it a policeman is running at us, blowing his whistle, and screaming in Serbian. We say sorry over and over again, but he can only say, “no sorry” in English so naturally we got kicked out of the fortress without our bikes so we had no choice but to walk about 30 yards out of the fortress with the policeman standing at the entrance watching us and as soon as he turned around to go back into the fortress we take off sprinting back into the fortress to grab our ‘rent-a-bikes’.

            We return our bikes and head back to the hostel where we meet up with Mahbir and decide to go to dinner then go to Bohemian street for Raiki. We eat pizza and head to the party spot of Belgrade but it was very low key and of course Diana wanted to dance so we asked around for the best dance spots in Belgrade and the bartender told us to head to the clubs on the river. After Mahbir bargains with every taxi driver in Belgrade, we finally catch a ride for 500 dinars ($5) and head to the river. Little did we know that you have to have a reservation to dance at these clubs so again, we spent the next hour watching Mahbir and Hilary try to persuade every bouncer                   to let us into their club but we had zero luck.
At the very last club, Hilary was really playing all her 

cards but it ended in a big fat NO because “you are Americans and you bombed us, so 'eff' you, leave!” We all decided to throw the towel in there, except for Hil, who as we were walking away realized Belgrade had been bombed 44 times, so who hasn’t bombed them (thank you free city tour for that useful information). I truly wish this response would have come out of her mouth, however, it was God’s will that it didn’t because we would have probably all ended in jail that night if she had.           

We returned back to the hostel, very confused how Belgrade was voted the best nightlife in the world (2011), and went to bed so that we could catch an early train to Zagreb, Croatia!

GAI

https://vimeo.com/30518864