Blog 13

Howdy campers – welcome back to the trail. Today we hike through some more communist concrete, catch a bus to Istanbul and join an organised tour. Your intrepid traveller has become cattle so feel free to put away all previously held respect or, God forbid, admiration.

Heikki is a Finnish man. He is blonde. He likes hiking. He claims however that he is not Scandinavian. When it looks like a rock, feels like a rock... Anyway, Heikki and I decided to head from Brasov to the Bucegi mountains in central Romania, hike up a mountain and stay in an isolated hikers' hut. Upon reaching Sinaia at the foothills of the mountains, we were told that the huts were expecting torrential downpours and winds of over 70ks. We decided to head back to Bucharest instead. Like true travellers, we were bored with waiting for the right bus so took the wrong one with the crazy ranting Roma guy on it instead. After an hour of babble from our new friend we arrived in Tragovista, a typical communist concrete slab-like town which seemed entirely surprised by these odd intruders. We stayed in the best hotel in town, ate at the best restaurant, crashed a wedding and went to sleep.

It was supposed to be a fourteen hour bus ride from Bucharest to Istanbul – that's bad; the bus actually made it in eleven hours – that's good; this meant I arrived in a new city at three-thirty in the morning – that's bad; the bus dropped me quite close to my friend's place – that's good; the bridge that separated me from his place was open for ships meaning I had to wait for another hour before walking across – that's bad. I could go on.

Istanbul is a massively confident city and it has good reason to be. Towering behemoths of mosques wail the call to prayer, oblivious to the cranes that continue the rapid expansion of the city. Straddling two continents, with one foot in Asia and the other in Europe, this is a city that has been front and centre of world affairs for thousands of years and so no longer feels any stage fright. I spent five days wandering its bazaars, taking ferries to the Asian side and quietly appreciating the peace of the mosques. Spending three of these days with some folk that Leo, Emma and I met in Vietnam meant that I had some knowledgeable and fun guides.

One of the Germans was good friends with a Turkish fixer (the guy that makes stuff happen for foreign movie producers) so I managed to find myself on a beautiful yacht sailing the princess islands, a turquoise watered paradise. Check the facebook photos to rouse jealousy. After the cruise we returned to have dinner on their rooftop terrace overlooking Istanbul at night. There are no words that could possibly describe the view. I felt very lucky.

I have certainly decided that places of worship are my favourite tourist destinations, whatever their denomination or creed. That said I am still yet to make it into a Jewish building in Europe. This was an area that once housed the vast majority of the world's Jews. I shudder every time I turn up at another abandoned synagogue.

I am now on a bus tour and am struggling to find the same magic of travel. So far we have 'done' Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Croatia. The places we have seen are stunning but I feel no sense of discovery. That said, the endless bombed out buildings are a gut-wrenching yet fascinating reminder of the wars that have ravaged the Balkans. Sarajevo and Belgrade were particularly scarred. Abandoned and burned houses line the roadside, testament to the ethnic cleansing that was the Balkan hallmark of the 1990s. The people of these cities have been all too happy to share with us their experiences and I feel blessed that I have the opportunity to visit Europe in this rare era of absolute peace.

The light is clear and crisp to the point of being blinding here in Croatia, the landscape is relentlessly beautiful and the colours consistently worthy of postcard status. Given this I think I shall return to the view out the window.

I continue