15 September 2007 · Comment [5]
Poverty is the best weight loss plan!
Hey everyone! We’re in Sarajevo and their currency is all freaky and pinned to the euro but you can’t exchange it in most countries and also most stores accept the euro so we’re going to try and not exchange money for the whole time we’re in Bosnia which means we don’t have enough money to get gelato and that’s kind of exciting! Because we’re both wrestling with severe gelato addictions. Oh and also, I think I’ve found the most annoying keyboard in existence! The keys are marked like the normal, messed up Eastern-European keyboard, but they don’t do what they say! It’s mostly like an American keyboard except I think the apostrophe is moved? Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it being in the completely wrong place. At any rate it’s incredibly annoying. Why don’t I complain about it some more! Okay! No just kidding, I’m done.
So! Bosnia! Today we went to a town called Mostar, which is entirely built around this really pretty footbridge. We saw some pictures before deciding to go and I was really hoping it would be just like the Skybax city in Dinotopia and it pretty much was! Pictures coming in a second, just as soon as they finish uploading. We got to Sarajevo just as the sun was going down so I don’t have any pictures yet, but I’ll take some tomorrow. It’s pretty nuts because it looks like any other European city (except for the massive number of mosques), but every so often you’ll see a building that’s been all shot up or that’s in total disrepair and filled with trees because there are still land mines in it. Crazy.
We spent the last three days in Croatia, going from Split to the island of Korcula to Dubrovnik. Mostly we just looked at the old architecture (which was amazing, pictures coming in a second) and went to the beach. Did you know that sunscreen is virtually unheard of throughout all of Croatia? We went to a huge, Target-like store and asked the only surly employee we could find were the sunscreen was and she pointed us to lotion that helps you tan. Not what we needed! Then after scouring every little market around the beaches, I finally found some and you know what it was rated? SPF 4. I didn’t even know they made SPF 4! What’s even the point. So in conclusion we almost certainly have skin cancer now. Nurrrrp. Also I just finished reading the second Bridget Jones book so now I’m tempted to say stupid things like “durrr” and “nurrr” even more often than usual, which quite frankly I didn’t think possible.
But Croatia was beautiful. The colors were just unreal. And they have tons of pebble beaches, which sound really unpleasant but are actually perfect because they’re pretty comfortable to lie on and you don’t get sand all over your everything! Nurr, why won’t the pictures upload faster so I won’t have to go through all the effort of thinking of things to write about.
Okay, fine. I give up. I’m just going to write about things in reverse-chronological order. Why do I care so much about such stupid things? World may never know.
Well that’s good, let’s start this one off on a bizarre, morbid note. This is a bone sculpture from the bone church in a little town outside of Prague. It was pretty neat, but probably not worth the four different trains that we then had to catch in order to make it to Budapest. Which brings me to my next photo!
This is us in some Czech town in the middle of nowhere huddled under Jovanna’s survival blanket because we were freaking freezing at 2 in the morning after we got kicked out of the train station and had to wait in this tunnel and it was gross and scary and the train didn’t come until 4:30, boooo. But at least we made it through the night without losing any toes, but it was touch-and-go for a while there.
Oh my gosh, just finished putting all the pictures into this entry and there are like three hundred of them! And it’s almost midnight and I gotta get up at 7 and I’m already tiiirrrred! Whine whine whine. Okay, this should be quick. This is a picture of the outside of the Budapest Communist and Nazi museum. They didn’t let you take pictures of the awesome inside but the outside is pretty neat, too. The left symbol is the Hungarian Nazi party symbol. Okay good enough, next picture.
These are some cute buildings in Buda Castle. And an ominous sky and a really irritating streetlight that I wish I could photoshop out but it’s just not going to happen when all this computer has is Paint and besides I’m not good enough at photoshop to make it look right anyway.
This is the view of Pest from a neat little sandcastley castle. Oh shoot, I better find a picture of that and post it here as well. Nurrrrr.
There you go. Very sandcastley and cute. Next to it was the Marzipan Museum, which I was kind of tempted to go in but Jovanna hates marzipan and anyway it was like ten dollars!
These are some flowers outside the gate to the Buda Castle main building.
This is the Buda Castle main gate. Yesss, at this rate I’ll be in bed by 2!
This is a bath in Buda! Oh Hungarian baths, how I miss you. So pretty and relaxing and fun.
These are some doorways in Diocletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia, which is an UNESCO-declared World Heritage Site. Neat. Also, this picture brings up the issue that I think my entire body is lopsided. Supports: when I put my hair into a ponytail, it is always always always like, two inches off center and I am completely incapable of taking a straight picture even though they look perfectly fine when I look in the viewfinder. Maybe my viewfinder is crooked! That doesn’t explain the ponytail issue, though. Curses.
This is a brick window thing in Diocletian’s Palace. I don’t know, I just thought it looked neat.
This is a leaf in a courtyard in Diocletian’s Palace. Yar.
This is the view of the palace from the courtyard! You see what I mean about the colors in Croatia being amazing?
This is another thing that you could see from the courtyard in Diocletian’s Palace. In retrospect it’s a pretty dumb picture but it still makes me kind of happy to look at. No time for grammar.
These are the ancient souvenir-selling grounds in Diocletian’s Palace.
These are some stairs leading down to a rock beach in Korcula that Jovanna wanted to put her feet into so I took a bunch of pictures of the stairs.
This is the gate to someone’s house. Croatia’s pretty awesome. Yup.
This is the view of Old Town Dubrovnik from the top of the city walls! Wish I had a wider angle lens.
This is some random Hebrew that I found in the city wall. I don’t understand what it’s doing there even a little bit. Probably they found the original ten commandments and thought they’d make nice supports for a lookout window.
This is the ceiling of a lookout tower on the city walls. I like how the brick circles are bean-shaped.
This is Old Town Dubrovnik! People live there and every day hundreds of tourists tramp all over the place and it’s really small and I can’t imagine what it would feel like to live there. Like living in Disney World maybe.
(As a side note, my carpal tunnels are starting to hurt. Gonna start picking up my wrists but I am so lazy.) This is a roof in Dubrovnik. I just liked it is all.
This is one of the lookout windows that looks out onto the Adriatic Sea. One of the best seas, as it turns out. Dead Sea probably wins, though. You think it’s going to be all gross because of the name but it’s actually so salty that not even plants can live in it so it’s perfectly clear blue and the sand is completely white and you can just sit in the water and you float! The only bad part is when it splashes into your face holes and then you’re in a world of hurt.
People’s laundry in Dubrovnik. See, this is what I’m talking about. You just try and lead a normal life and dry your laundry and then dumb tourists go and take a picture of it and post it on the internet! But really, if they didn’t want their laundry posted on the internet then maybe they shouldn’t have arranged it in such a good color order.
This is a roof in Dubrovnik. That’s it, nur.
This is a seagull in Dubrovnik. A second earlier it had been squawking its head off and it looked so dumb and exactly like Scuttle from “The Little Mermaid” but I got my camera out too late. Also, did you know that Scuttle was supposed to be short for Scuttlebutt? I don’t know if that’s true because I learned it on the internet. Also, one time David Simon tried to say scuttlebutt but he spelled it “skutlbut” because he couldn’t be bothered with proper spelling. Also I’ll get around to posting a stalker picture of David Simon eventually. We met on the first day of classes freshman year of college and he was one of my like, three Jewish friends at Berkeley. He took me to Seder at his parents’ house in Sacramento! Awesome. Also he’s incredibly witty in a delightfully bizarre way, as evidenced by his comment on the last post.
This is a… oh my holy crap, I’ve totally forgotten the word for these things. Steeple? I blame the lack of sleep. It’s in Dubrovnik, I can tell you that.
More crooked picture! Argh! But it’s Dubrovnik. It’s the picture from the cover of the Lonely Planet Eastern Europe guidebook, which was the whole reason why I was so excited to come to Croatia but then I had to go and crooked it all up. Curses!
Some buildings in Dubrovnik.
The main street in old Dubrovnik. It’s pretty when the sun goes down. Durr.
Ummm, the corner of a building. Yeeeah.
A shale roof in Mostar! Mostar was completely destroyed in 1993 and they rebuilt it all so perfectly, even putting the shale roofs back in!
The bridge in Mostar! So pretty.
Oh gross, this was supposed to be the last picture but I just can’t end it this way. This is one of the local boys who make money by getting tourists to pay them to jump off the bridge. They act like they’re going to jump any second now for like an hour so as to get as much money as possible but it’s really irritating when you just want to walk around in the banks of the river but you don’t want to miss them jumping.
Yep, so the guy in the orange speedo walked around collecting money from all the tourists while the guy in the blue speedo acted like he was about to jump any second. Pretty terrifying just watching them but the river did look really deep. Also it was unnaturally blue like amusement park water except it was real! Awesome.
Okay, those are the pictures! And now I sleep!
Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
« The first Eastern European update!» I'm in Santorini, loafing around on the internet for hours on end!
I think you will find it comforting that I am stalking you while sitting like 10 feet away! it is also nice that you found the apostrophe key! I have not yet found that. btw, I think that I have achieved my goal! you have even more exclamation points now than in the beginning! success! I can go home now!! haha, just kidding! I would not miss this upcoming two day bus and train ride for anything in the world!
— recovering gelato addict number 2 · Sep 15, 01:22 PM · #
that photo of you and jovanna just screams HALP!!!!!! :(
ps. once you are back in ny, i think you’ll really love the photo-xcore groups here, e.g. bluejake.com.
— al · Sep 16, 11:23 AM · #
Yay, another linguistic mystery! I’m pretty sure the Hebrew isn’t of the ten commandments. Turns out להאיר means ‘illuminate’, so I think ולהאירה would mean ‘and illuminate it’. Not sure about the first word though—per the dictionary, the two closest options seem to be להתעייר ‘become urbanized’ and להתעיד ‘document/certify’, both of which sound unlikely. If I get a chance I’ll ask one of the Hebrew teachers about it.
P.S. The word you were looking for is ‘belfry’. :)
— Nate · Sep 16, 02:15 PM · #
Random, but: your picture of the corner of the building is pretty kickass. Also, I found random ancient Greek written a sidewalk near my school today (it read “beauty and goodness always”), and it makes me feel close to you that you also found random old language stuff where you are halfway around the world <3 <3 <3 Are you really going to visit Mike in Ghana??!! Neeeeat!!!
— Catie · Sep 16, 04:09 PM · #
Beautiful pictures.
— David Wallace · Sep 18, 01:16 PM · #