Kosovo

Sacrilegiously good time...

I find the problem when travelling alone is sometimes you have to hang out with less than questionable characters, people you probably wouldn't associate with at home. I guess you don't have to hang out with them but the reality of spending everyday by yourself is a lonely one.

The old rubber arm is also my other problem; I will rarely say no to anything. So when I was hanging out with a group of Croatian students and one of the girls innocently asked me if I would like to smoke some weed with them, who am I to say no.

River Miljacka

It was the days leading up to New Years Eve and everything was full, I found a hostel that was really nice but a bit more than I would normally like to pay. Everyone who was staying there knew each other except me. They all went to the same university in Zagreb, most of them studying medicine.  One of the girls had smuggled some weed across the border. Her theory was that Bosnia was a poor country and therefore wouldn't have drug sniffing dogs. She was probably right but I can't help but feel a drug conviction wouldn't look good if you were trying to apply for your medical licence.

The weather was pretty poor in Sarajevo that day so we just hung around drinking coffee, after we left the coffee shop some people decided to shop. One of the girls pulled me aside and asked if I would like to join her to have a smoke.

Not wanting to go all the way back to the hostel we snuck into an alley way and smoked this reasonably sized joint, when we finished we realized that we had been in full view of a mosque the entire time, perhaps I was just high but I didn't feel too bad.  The next day when we shared another joint we actually went into the oldest temple in Bosnia I did feel a little bit guilty.

Smoking shisha in the old Turkish Quarter of Sarajevo

I think I may start a section entitled statues I do not understand.

Starting with this one.

It could be the lower half of two different bodies.

It could just be random shapes.

From this angle however it looks like a malformed butterfly.

Your guess is as good as mine. 

I don't remember the sun setting, ever, and especially not when I'm on buses. I don't know what I am so engrossed in that I don't notice a giant orb dipping into the ocean or sneaking away behind the mountains. I hope on and then the next time I think about it darkness has fallen.

Which brings me to my main point.

I don't think is possible or me to catch a long distance bus ride without their being an insane person somewhere along the journey. What brought me to this conclusion was today on what should have been a three hour (it was six) ride into Macedonia there was an older woman who was yelled at my chair companion. I'm normally the first person to hate the person I'm sitting next to. Something about being confined in such a small place with a person you have never met before and have no desire to talk to (there is exceptions leads me to blind hatred for no explainable reason. I think the reason I like this one is because she didn't make me take assigned seat 41, the window seat; the worst seat. But this older woman in the coat that made her  look like she had skinned a Labrador had the same seat number as one of us, there was 30 empty seats though so it made no sense for to be yelling and screaming about it. The conductor told her the what I'm sure is the Serbian equivalent of "sit down and shut up."

But the award for craziest bus passenger goes to a woman on the overnight from Ankara to Sarpi. Her "friend" (pretty sure this woman was just another crazy) had trouble getting her on to the bus to begin with, I personally think this was the sign that we should have just left her behind. Every time the bus would stop she would scream and fight her way off and refuse to get back on. Eventually her friend would coax her back on and she would, settled and when the bus was moving she was silent.

I don't know where she went to from Sarpi... nor do I care to know.

Niš Fortress, Niš, Serbia