Loganbilian Travel Diary

This is the travel log of Dana and Scott Loganbilian. We're headed west across the whole of the world. Click here for a copy of our itinerary.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Glücklicher Jahrestag

Scott and I are currently in Vienna, Austria, after exploring Budapest, Zagreb, the island of Hvar, Split, Ljubljana, and random parts of Austria with our best friends Adam and Sully. We're about to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and it seems that some schnitzel and wine are in order.

Our trip with Adam and Sarah was an experience we will not soon forget. It was so great to see friends again- we'd been sorely missing everyone at home, and it was so much fun to catch up and have someone (else) to talk to. We haven't laughed so hard in ages. Consider this snapshot of one day of our trip together:

We're driving together from Ljubljana to Austria, no hotels booked, no real idea of where to go other than a vague notion of a quaint B&B, possibly with a roaring fire as it was pouring rain. I mean really really pouring. Like so much that the rivers were flooding. Poor Adam was driving for hours as we searched for a fun place and explored the countryside. After making our way into Austria, we decided to pull off the freeway as a certain sign for Schloss Seggau caught our attention. It looked like a big castle or similar and it looked like fun. We wound our way through the lush hills of the Austrian countryside in the growing darkness and finally came upon a large medieval looking building on the top of a hill. We were unsure at this point what Schloss Seggau actually was. Scott and I run inside to see if: 1) this place is a hotel 2) If so, do they have rooms available and 3) why is it so creepy?. As we run in, a large streak of lightning slices the sky and illuminates the castle(?). We walk in to the dimly lit room and notice that there is no one behind the reception desk. Except, there is one man alone waiting in the room: a priest, of course. We wait for a while, no one shows up and we leave with the mystery of Schloss Seggau still intact.


Jump ahead a few hours and a few fruitless searches for hotels. We think we may have stumbled upon the Austrian wine country in the middle of harvest season. Anyway, we're getting hungry and restaurants close early here. So, we see the sign for McDonalds. We enter the drive through, pull up and Adam asks "Sprechen zie English?". "Nien" says the tinny voice from the speaker. Scott, with a deep aversion for over-mayonnaising of food is con viced that he will receive a hamburger covered in mayo, especially if there is a language gap. So, Adam says to the drive through attendant: "danke!" and we pull forward, intending to screech through at a high speed and avoid the drive through window after our awkward exchange. However, there are now 2 cars ahead of us and we have to wait in line to leave. We are all inanely giggling and somewhat embarrassed and still hungry. As we finally approach the window, we quickly drive pass and sigh with relief.

Now, we're still hungry, so we decide to park and walk in. This is somewhat embarrassing as we'll have to face the employees inside who know that we're the Americans from the drive through. We walk up, and begin ordering in broken English/German and it's immediately apparent that they know who we are by their giggling and pointing. Sarah orders the Austrian favorite: A Mr Fantastico! When the McDonald's girl says "Eine McFantastic?" Sarah exclaims "Si!". Again, more laughter. Adam also orders what he believes to be a 6 piece chicken Mcnugget. However, when we open the bags of food at the counter, we realize we've received: most of our order, and an additional 6 McChicken sandwiches, plus 3 extra fries! At this point, we're all crying with laughter, along with the girls behind the counter. Eventually, the girl adds a free apple pie and shrugs. We leave immediately to avoid further awkward exchanges.

We had such an amazing time with Adam and Sarah and they really did an amazing job of showing us the sights in Budapest. We also got to see Adam's parents and meet their family friend, Tommy. We miss all of them already and it's only been one day!

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Bosnia

Montenegro

Croatia

Greece

Egypt

Kenya

Zanzibar, Tanzania

Tanzania

New Delhi and Agra, India

Montenegro and Bosnia



Hello all! We are currently in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, after spending about a week in Montenegro. Montenegro is officially the newest country on Earth, having just gained its independence in 2006 from Serbia.

We spent some time on the coast, in an old walled city called Kotor. Scott kept singing "Kotooorrrrr" in a heavy metal voice, since it does sound like a heavy metal band name. Kotor has an amazing old fortress wall that extends way the hell up the mountain its next to. We hiked up to the top one day and had a great view of the city, the bay and a surprise rainbow from the brief rainstorm we experienced. We stayed in the old city itself, which is actually quite small. I may or may not have experienced contact with a ghost in the old walled city. The apartment we were staying in was thousands of years old, and had the remnants of a carved stone door in it. One night, I awoke to a tap on my shoulder, a very distinct feeling. It was clearly not Scott since he was about a foot away. It scared the crap out of me, and I'm still not sure what it was. Perhaps my overactive imagination...

After Kotor, we took a bus up the windy mountain roads to Zabljak, near Durmitor National Park. The bus ride itself was an experience. Here, buses operate a bit differently. You can board at the bus station, or just stand by the side of the road and the bus will pull over and pick you up- your choice. The bus drivers all smoke while driving, and tend to answer their cell phones while turning the full bus around a hairpin curve. There are official bus stops, plus any passenger can stop the bus when its convenient for them and get off. This happened quite a bit in the countryside as passengers would randomly stand up and get dropped off in what appeared to us as the middle of nowhere.

On this specific bus trip, Scott was annoyed by a rather loud passenger behind him interrogating a fellow passenger. It was in another language so he was forced to imagine what they were talking about. It was one gruff deep voice, and one meek whispered voice. It kind of sounded like:

Deep voice: shmovish kantokosh?
whispered voice: dobro
Deep voice: cevapi danas ylrjo zelort?
whispered voice: nema

and then the Deep voice (dv) would do something to fill the uncomfortable space between lines of questioning that sounded a bit like "shooooshoooo shooooooo."

But Scott imagined they were saying something like:
Deep voice: Do you live nearby?
wv: maybe
...
DV: How far do you live in kilometers?
wv: not far
...
DV: Would you say it was greater than 10 kilometers?
wv: could be
...
DV: Would you say it was greater than 20 kilometers?
wv: I guess so
...
DV: How many steps do you think it would take to walk there?
wv: I don't know
DV: Shooo shoo shooooo shoooo

Anyway, we've been laughing about it ever since.



Durmitor National Park was lovely. We met a fellow traveller on the bus and teamed up with him to do a 30 kilometer hike the day after we arrived. We walked around the lake called Blake Lake there, and then walked up through the forest to the edge of Tara Canyon, the second biggest canyon only after the Grand Canyon. There is really no infrastructure, you just follow a road on the map, and end up stumbling upon the canyon when the road just ends. The walls of the canyon were incredibly steep. Scott and Colin (our new friend) walked all the way up to the edge, but I couldn't do it. We also laugh thinking that some day, it'll come up in casual conversation: "Hey, do you know what the second biggest canyon is after the Grand Canyon?" And we'll say, "But of course, it's Tara Canyon!" (Or the information guy was really enthusiastic and misled us).

On the first part of our hike that day, we were accompanied by a cute dog. He walked with us and kept us company for a good half hour. Then, as we walked deeper into the woods, we came upon a veritable pack of dogs- about 10 of them. They all immediately got up and started walking with us too. They were friendly- most likely some or all had been pets at some time. They walked with us for almost an hour- and we couldn't shake them. It was an experience we still laugh about.

We took the bus from Montenegro to Sarajevo yesterday, and it took about 8 hours. We arrived, took a tram to the city center, got a hotel and went out for dinner and a few drinks. We immediately loved Sarajevo. On the bus, we were befriended by a couple of teenagers who helped us navigate and practiced their English. They both had surprisingly good knowledge of Heavy Metal bands from the US. That night, we also met some Brits who are working at the embassy here and a nice Canadian guy who is working in a hospital.

We're excited to explore this city!