Ok, I know this is right on the heels of that last post, but this is one I wrote before leaving Sarajevo that I never got around to posting. It covers some of the more interesting/fun parts of the trip:
It has been brought to my attention that I have neglected to reflect on my social adventures over the last few months so I figured I could make a post dedicated to fun moments I've had so far. I know I previously spoke to the fact that while in Ireland it was only prudent that we go out every night on pub crawls and the like. I mean, its Ireland...its just what you do. Ireland was, however, before the actual study abroad trip started and we did not have meetings and assignments to work on. So naturally, when we arrived in Kosovo and had to begin said meetings and assignments...nothing changed. We still managed to go out almost every night while in Kosovo, which was an incredible experience in itself. I'll get back to that in a minute. After Kosovo we traveled to the Adriatic paradise of Dubrovnik for our mini "vacation" before heading to Bosnia, so as you can imagine not much changed there either. I'd say things only really started to slow down once we reached Sarajevo and started to have to get paper research done in preparation for our time in Vienna. Anyway, I'll try to hit some highlights now.
As I said before, arriving in Kosovo was a bit of a culture shock and I didn't really know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect to have much of a nightlife there, especially after just spending several nights in Ireland. I couldn't have been more wrong. First of all, the Kosovar population loves Americans (generalization, but surprisingly prevalent) and that bodes well for mingling with the locals. Second, everything was so inexpensive. I believe I pointed out in my first Kosovo post that I could have a full lunch including a beer for less than 4 euro, and that is a sit down meal. In Vienna I can maybe get some cheap Asian takeout or a big mac for around the same price, certainly not a beer too. For these reasons we were able to go out to clubs, usually with a friendly Kosovar "tour-guide" we would meet earlier in the day, and have a blast for next to no money. There were exceptions of course, as somehow no matter where we went one of the guys would find a way to spend 50 euros.
The above pictures were taken at some of the clubs we went to in Pristina: Platon, Peppermint and Duplex. On another night when we weren't going out to the clubs we found out the Albanian national soccer team was playing against Argentina. Our teaching assistant Besir Ceka, a native Macedonian, told us about it and said he wanted to take us to a pub to watch the match. Myself and some of the guys had the brilliant idea to buy Albanian soccer jerseys from a street vendor, making that night much more memorable. The locals loved it. It didn't seem to matter that Albania was defeated 4-0 that night, we still had a blast. Check out some of the pictures below:
Moving on to Dubrovnik, we quickly found that since the city is a major tourist/vacation spot it was prohibitively expensive to go out to bars and clubs. Luckily for us we thought ahead and bought alcohol for cheap before we left Kosovo, and then brought it into Dubrovnik. That way we could just party at the hotel, which turned out to be an excellent idea. I can't (or won't) say I have any pictures but we obtained the key to the spa one night and had our own private party at the indoor pool and spa area, which turned out to be one of the better nights on the trip.
Next we have Sarajevo. Now for those of you paying attention to my travels you know I skipped Mostar and Banja Luca. To be honest we were a little scared to leave the hotel in those cities so we just stayed in and hung out there. Nothing too exciting. Anyway...being a capital city we knew Sarajevo would have fun things to do, but we also had some work. This toned us down some but we still went out a couple nights. We celebrated the 4th of July at an English pub (score another one for America), hung out at a Turkish hookah bar one night, received VIP status at the clubs one night and then almost got thrown out of the clubs on another night. Besir also had the great idea of starting a group poker tournament so we scoured the town, finally finding a set of poker chips and cards. We played our first two Texas hold'em tournaments in Sarajevo, sadly I won neither of them. To cap off our time in the city, a large group of us went to an awesome restaurant in the top of the tallest (only?) skyscraper in Sarajevo for dinner on our last night there. The beauty of it was that it was our last night in Bosnia so we all needed to use up the remainder of our currency anyway. The Konvertible Mark (KM) wouldn't be used anywhere else for the rest of the trip so we could either spend what we had left or pay to convert them all to euros. By choosing the former we were able to have a nice full course meal including several bottles of wine, appetizers and dessert.
Finally we reach Vienna, where I am currently situated. We have only gone out a couple nights so far, once to a Cuban Salsa bar and then once we went to this pretty awesome, high end bar called Sky Bar. We have also continued the Texas hold'em tournaments, having so far held three tournaments in Vienna, one of which I finally won! The salsa bar was really neat but I have no idea how to salsa dance (something I'll have to work on for the future) and the drinks were really expensive. For Sky Bar a couple nights later we knew what we were getting into, (pricey, high class establishment) but we just wanted to have an awesome night. We succeeded. The name Sky Bar comes from it's position on the seventh (top) floor of a building overlooking the most central square of Vienna, Stephansplatz, home of the famous Stephansdom (St. Stephan's Cathedral). Cocktails were in the 9-15 euro range each which wasn't terrible but was more than we had been paying at other places. Myself and two other guys drank Manhattans and White Russians all night, which was well worth the price. After a few of these drinks it became increasingly funny to drink the White Russians with our mustaches (see pictures below).
Alright I hope this was a more fun update than some of the academic stuff, even without incriminating myself too much! You can expect more posts like it once my study abroad program ends next weekend (the 30th) and I begin my 3 week post-trip through Germany, Italy and Spain. For one last laugh go to the Sky Bar website and listen to the theme song they wrote for themselves, it'll start playing after the page loads. Its hilarious. I have provided the link here: http://www.skybar.at/index_webpage.html
- Taylor