HUBBERS BLOG

Today I left the disgusting Hotel Laki (pronounced lucky) which should probably be renamed Hotel Shetol (pronounced shit hole). Apart from the overwhelming filthiness of the place the staff all gave me the creeps. Last night they refused to give me one shirt from my washed laundry until I went to a distant cash machine and got them five Euros. Honestly, who holds laundry hostage? This morning another traveler was asking for part of her money back because her room was so disgusting. The answer was no of course. Avoid unless you are packing antibiotics.

The is a dense smog that seems to always hang over Skopje and Macedonia. I haven’t seen much heavy industry so I have to assume the problem is caused by cars and smoking. Yep smoking. Virtually every man woman and child here that has the requisite number of fingers smokes. Those that don’t probably smoke using their toes. And they smoke everywhere from restaurants, buses and probably even operating theatres. Gross.

Ohrid is on Lake Ohrid and is like landlocked Macedonia’s beach resort town. Got a room in some old guys basement and walked the town for a few hours.

My new friends and I day tripped out to the nearly deserted town of Mavrovo. Economic realities have forced the people of this beautiful mountain village to move to the cities for work. Lunched at the Hotel Bistra which is a ski resort in the winter. Delicious.

Been eating a lot of feta cheese made from, wait for it, sheep. Yep they milk sheep here. Weird. The locals seemed surprised that we didn’t milk some of the 40 million sheep in NZ. I told them we already get enough shit from the Aussies about shagging sheep. If we started touching their teats there is no way it wouldn’t get called ‘foreplay’.

Saw two local bands as part of a peace promotion run by a local radio station. Both bands were excellent and I even ended up at an after party. Strangely it felt more like a quiet house party than an after party as it wasn’t full of desperate groupies and class A drugs.

Hired a taxi to take me out to Matka and St Pantelejmon monasteries. Both were very pretty. Am left with two thoughts. No one smiles in Christian art and Jesus had great abs, he must have worked out.

Had a date with a Macedonian interpreter. It went well.

Another change now that Runty is gone is that I don’t have anyone to listen to my inane drivel all day long. The net result of that is more blog for you guys. Apologies.

Walked the whole city and saw pretty much everything slightly touristy in one long walk.

They have a clock here that is stuck on 5.17 the moment when an earthquake struck on the 27th July in 1963. It was left on that time as a memorial to the people who died.

Saw the Museum of Contemporary Art. This was like any contemporary art museum in the world in that the only people who understand each exhibit are the nutter/scammer who made it and maybe the mug who paid forty thousand pounds for it. The beauty of this museum was that there is only one exhibit so there is less to misunderstand. The exhibit was a giant guitar/boat called ‘Mozart’s Boat’. Contemporary.

Saw the Sveti Spas church which is half dug into the ground because when it was built in the 17th century no church was allowed to be higher than a mosque.

Went to the excellent Bourne Identity which was slightly out of focus and the sound was a little fuzzy and a big chunk in the middle got cut out when they changed reels. Hang on. Blurred? Fuzzy? Memory gaps? I’m sure I wasn’t drunk.

Went out with some Dutch ex NATO workers and some Macedonian girls. Much fun.

Did a day trip up to Rila monetary. The monastery was really impressive and proves that there is plenty of money in organised religion. As I don’t already have an imaginary-super-being I am thinking of starting my own religion. Will have to come up with some commandments and post office box for the cheques. Think I will call my god Bob and instead of going to church at an obscene hour on Sunday morning you can do your worship any night of the week at the pub. Any of you who don’t have an imaginary-super-being or are unhappy with the unreasonable rules of your current one can switch to believing in Bob. You will get just as much salvation as your current religion but at half the cost. And there will be other benefits like more beer and sex. Oh and girls can join for free (Greg’s brilliant idea).

Tonight was my last night out with Greg. Sadly skipped the last piss-up as Greg had another suspect hangover. The latest theory is that the problem may be caused by something in Redbull.

Saw a movie called Super Troopers. Very funny I fully recommend you see this movie, baked if possible.

Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria, the 56th country I have backpacked. Woohoo.

Spent the morning trying to get my Iranian visa. This is the most difficult visa I have ever applied for. Apart from wanting a letter from my non-existent employer the biggest hurdle was that the duplicate forms had to be typed. Like typed on a manual typewriter like they did back in the dark ages before personal computers. My skin crawls at the very thought. Where on Earth do you find a manual typewriter these days apart from a museum? Well it turns out that they have the last six manual typewriters on the side of the road here and you can pay an old woman a few dingbats to type anything. There is only one catch. The keyboards are all written in the Cyrillic alphabet with all the unusual suspects like backwards N, E that has fallen over on it’s back, two K’s humping, grand piano shaped key, b with extra bit and the ubiquitous letter 3. Thankfully the women with the enigma coding typewriters knew of another woman who had the only normal typewriter in Sofia. An hour later we were back at the Iranian Embassy getting more suspicious stares and pointed questions about why I want to go to Iran and why I don’t have an organised tour to keep an eye on me. Eh? The embassy people don’t realise it (or maybe they do) but they come across as ultra paranoid. Why? What does Iran have to hide? Oh apart from their secret nuclear weapons program. I give myself a fifty fifty chance of getting the visa. The worst thing is that I’ll waste ten days I don’t have finding out.

Since I have some time I am thinking of taking in Albania and Macedonia. I Hear there are dodgy cops and good scammers down there. Fingers crossed because the scammers up here are mere beginners who wouldn’t last a day in Cairo.

Today a Bulgarian mob boss with 10 bodyguards was shot through the heart by a sniper as part of an year long mob war. This was the fourth attempt on his life. Best of all it was right near our hostel.

Ran into the Ritalin sniffing investment banker at our hostel. He says he has shagged ten girls since we left him three weeks ago. When asked how many he paid for he said ‘nine’. There is some speculation that he got a buy nine get one free special. We have also run into Gayle and Noel an older Kiwi couple that we met in Sarajevo. They are from Matamata and are on an eighteen month backpacking tour of the world. They are very interesting, experienced backpackers and it’s a bit like having your Kiwi parents on tour. Choice bro.

Went bowling and to a big student club which was quite full for a Monday. Greg asked me to be his wingman and chat to the second girl of two who he was talking to. I politely refused because being Greg’s wingman often thankless and I was far to smashed. Fortunately there were plenty of other guys in the group who were keen. I had to laugh when the volunteer wingman returned saying that the second girl didn’t speak English. Greg sometimes doesn’t bother to talk to the girl he isn’t interested in shagging so he fails to notice the simple things like if they speak English or whether the have a boyfriend or if they used to be called Bruce.

Was badly bent out of shape by the time we got home and fell asleep on the hotel computer.

Cruisey day looking around town.

Had to listen to Greg talk himself up all day about what a legend he is in the sack. In his own words he is ‘blessed’. Was nearly sick on several occasions.

Weighed myself today and am down to 94 kilos. For the last eighteen months I have been trying to put some bulk on my lanky frame by eating and gyming loads. I managed to get up to 99 kilos before I left so I am losing two or three kilos a month. Trying to think of a positive spin for this I realised that if I keep travelling for another eighteen months I will be light enough to post myself home for a fiver.

Caught the overnight train to Sofia. We are missing part of our tickets so they made us pay for another one even though our reservation form clearly showed that we had paid. I don’t think we were scammed but you should have seend the train guys reaction when I went to take his photo. He nearly hit me on the spot. Anyway the train guy was a difficult bureaucrat. At the border we changed train guys and the new train guy was another difficult bureaucrat.

On the whole the level of scamming in Romania was far below what we had expected. The biggest scam we encounter was on the way out when an overly helpful local guy ‘helped’ us to our train when we didn’t need any help. Pitiful.

Finally made our Romanian road trip today. It started late because we had to wait for Runty’s Romanian girlfriend (yes there really has been one in almost every country) to finish her driving lesson.

The main roads in Romania are quite good. The smaller roads are another matter. Some of the potholes were so big they had their own gravitational field. On the plus side if we had driven into one it would have saved us a lot of money on airfares to New Zealand.

While on the subject of the roads there don’t appear to be any roads laws here. I have seen a few creative driving moves that would have received a approving yellow toothed smile from a Bangkok tuk tuk driver.

Romania has a bit of a wild dog problem. It is not uncommon to see packs of dogs in built up areas. From the amount of dead dogs on the road the solution to this problem seems to be to run as many of them over as possible.

Saw two cool castles. The first was Peles Castle which is a 18th century palace with lovely statues in the garden and the like. Very nice. The second, Bran Castle, was a striking hilltop fortress which is billed as Dracula’s castle even though the Count never actually lived there. And not because he is undead and technically doesn’t actually live anywhere. And not because he didn’t exist either. Even when he didn’t exist he didn’t live here. Get it? Yeah me to then.

Greg had a date with his girlfriend so I went to Club A with some of the people from the hostel. A good night but the most interesting even of the evening was when a pack of glued up Romanian street kids tried to pick my pocket on the way home. While the bulk of the group distracted me from the front one of them rammed his hand into my camera pocket and they all ran for it. Thankfully my pockets were deeper than his grab and he got nothing.

Greg didn’t make it back to the hostel until the next day. Have to assume that the Romanian girlfriend is his favourite of the plethora of girlies who have had crushes on him in Eastern Europe since she was the first to put out.

We were going to rent a car and got out into the countryside but everyone slept late and we pulled the plug on the idea. Did some more walking around the city which was okay. They have good coffee here.

In the evening we went to a bar called Twice which our friend Brett said was a topless and bottomless chick bar where three vodka redbulls cost one quid. The bar staff were fully dressed and three beers cost a pound fifty. An appropriately scathing email has been sent.

Twice had a safe sex promotion and were giving away condoms. Apparently Romania has a very high instance of AIDS amongst their youth.

Disappointing start to the scamming with the usual four hundred percent increase for the tourist taxi scam. Easily dealt with.

While not actually scammed we were right royally screwed over by Elvis Villa in Bucharest. Four days ago we received a confirmation email for our twin room in Elvis Villa. In their words ‘We will have a room for just two of you’. Nice. While on our overnight train yesterday they emailed us again to say that they had cancelled our booking to accommodate a larger group. On arrival at EV at 6am the girl at reception had no knowledge of our original booking and turfed us out onto the street.

Anyway the point is don’t stay at Elvis Villas in Bucharest they are wankers.

Found another hostel and am in a crowded dorm with loads of couples. Ick.

Did all of the major sights in Bucharest by midday. Decided to skip their captivating museum scene which included ‘the peasant museum’ (European museum of the year 1996) and ‘the museum of watching paint dry’.

A great night out at ‘A Bar’. As usual the Runt was in fine form with the local lasses.