Athens, Greece

Recently I had a dig at Skopje for all the fake-classical buildings there. And in years gone by I've had more than one giggle at the Americans for believing that history began in 1776. Now I'm in Athens and, well, I'd better keep my big mouth shut hadn't I? This is where Western civilisation began, after all.

As you might expect, Athens is a much more racially diverse place than the former Yugoslavia, and here I had a conversation with a black person for the first time in a couple of months. Admittedly it was only a very brief conversation, on account of the fact that no I didn't want any drugs thank you.

Again I'm staying in a private room in a hostel. (The main reason for me preferring hostels is that I like having access to a kitchen, where I can cook myself dippy eggs & soldiers). In this room there isn't a bed as such; rather, there are mattresses on a raised platform which occupies the whole of one side of the room, and there's a lip at the edge of the platform to keep the mattresses in place.

I only mention this configuration because I forgot it was there one morning, rising in semi-darkness and staggering blindly in the direction of my alarm clock, thinking I was walking across the floor when I was in fact still on the raised platform. Inevitably I tripped over the lip and proceeded to perform a kind of forward aerial half-somersault onto the floor. Fortunately I retain just about enough youthful agility that I managed to distribute the impact paratrooper-style, otherwise I'd undoubtedly have broken something. The one tangible after-effect was a badly bruised toe, second smallest on the right foot. It's still swollen and purple. Yowch.

That bruised toe has put paid to my long walks for the time being, but fortunately I'd already done the tour of all the main Athens monuments. See pictures below.

The Parthenon (obviously). 438BC

Greece's Parliament building (1843 AD).
In classical times, Greeks would argue about how much money to demand from their colonies.
Now they gather here and argue about how much to send to the Germans.

Odeon of Herodes Atticus (161AD)
A theatre on the south slope of the Acropolis.

The Acropolis and Parthenon, seen from the Ancient Agora (6th century BC) to the north.

Panathenaic Stadium, built for the first modern Olympics in 1896AD

Temple of Olympian Zeus (begun 6th century BC)

Tirana, Albania

Part 2 of my trip begins: Albania. Possibly I've never before arrived in a country bearing such low expectations and indeed total ignorance. I just blithely assumed that Albania was some kind of dystopian post-apocalyptic wasteland, and that I'd be dealing with shady people-trafficking mafia types at every turn. As such I was fully prepared to dish out some swift gruff-voiced butt-whippings after the example of Liam Neeson in 'Taken'...

How wrong I was. Tirana may be a bit hair-raising at times, but for the most part it's a lovely place to spend a few days. The positive parallels with their ethnic cousins in Kosovo (see my last-but-two blog) are striking. More and more I feel justified in having had a partial man-crush on Lorik Cana back in 2009.

I'm staying in a hostel, but I have a private room, in which the bed has a 'Star Wars'-themed duvet cover. (Obviously I'm far too mature to approve of that. Obviously.) The hostel has a big open rooftop where I can kick back in a hammock and lie there reading, my hat pushed over my eyes against the sun, with no interruptions and nobody around other than the locals hanging up their laundry on distant balconies, and no noise other than that of the traffic five floors below; all in all, a luxury worth more to me than all the poncey cocktails & cappuccinos of Europe combined.

Another thing in Tirana's favour is that it has a nice little airport, easy and cheap to get to, and small enough to be entirely hassle-free. A good way to head out for part 3.

Looking west from the hammock at sunset...

...and east.

Grand Park of Tirana.
The lake is artificial, but that's fine. 

Namazgjah mosque in the foreground.
Dajti Mountain (5,292ft) in the background.

Memorial for the late and unlamented dictator Enver Hoxha.
Probably this will get knocked down before too long...

...in the meantime, the cops turn a blind eye if you scamper up it.
Here's a picture from the top.

This was my first breath of Albanian air, coming over the border in a bus from Macedonia.

Edd vs Food #71
Caesar salad (my default half-hearted attempt at being healthy) with chips.
Also the nice but unfortunately-named Puka Albanian craft beer.
At Spaghetti Western.

Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

Lake Ohrid was one of the preferred holiday destinations of the former Yugoslavia's communist despot Marshal Tito, and indeed you can still visit his big posh purpose-built summer residence here. (As with most communists then and since, Tito's rejection of Western materialism & consumerism never quite managed to transcend the realms of the theoretical). Right now it's off-season and not too crowded, but even in November it's still pretty hot during the day.

And although this trip still has a long way to go, Ohrid is where my time in the former Yugoslavia draws to a close. I've enjoyed it. I regret not having seen more of Croatia - I was very tempted by Zagreb & Split, but they didn't quite fit in. And of course I've ended up omitting Slovenia altogether. (I hope they don't take it personally).

My blog has avoided delving too deeply into the thorny thickets of politics, history and conflict which are so prominent in this part of the world. But that doesn't mean I've been oblivious to it all. It's hard not to be affected when you see so many urban cemeteries full of graves that are all too new, containing people who died all too young. In Bosnia in particular, the air is thick with unfinished business, unredeemed sacrifices, and restless ghosts.

When I got to Mostar, and expressed an interest in hiking the impressive hills surrounding the town, my host frowned and said something about landmines. Also I visited the genocide museum there, a sobering experience to say the least. Some of the events it records are portrayed very crudely: scale models of concentration camps, green toy soldiers standing upright with weapons levelled, civilian-coloured figurines lying prone and daubed over with bright red paint. The directness of it all is shocking. But then why should they water it down?

In a mosque near the museum, where they let tourists look round and climb the minaret for a small fee (they need the money because the upkeep of the mosque is beyond the means of the ever-dwindling elderly congregation), my guide told me ruefully that before the wars of the 1990s there had been many intermarriages - Christian & Muslim, Bosnian & Serb - but no longer.

I got a slightly different perspective from a PhD student in Novi Sad. She found the whole break-up of Yugoslavia tiresome: she said things had made much more sense for Serbs like her when Yugoslavia was one country with one capital (in Serbia). Well, she would, wouldn't she.

For me personally, the main thing is that I've enjoyed visiting all these cities, but the views from the bus & train rides have been so stupendous that I'm determined to come back here one day and do some car rental in order to see the countryside properly. In the meantime, part two of this trip begins with the next blog.

Lake Ohrid and Ohrid town, from Samuel's Fortress

This theatre dates from 200BC, and was used for gladiator fights and executions as well as staging plays.
Many thanks to sponsors T-Mobile for ruining the whole view with the splurge of purple to the left of centre.

Struga, just round the lake from Ohrid town

Edd vs Food #70
Drum roll...orchestral swell...hold the front page...
A vegetarian meal! At a vegetarian restaurant, indeed.
Falafel, hummus & sundries. Really nice. And cheap as chips.
At Dr Falafel, Ohrid

Skopje, Macedonia

Most of you will already know that Alexander the Great was Macedonian. The rest of you would find out pretty quick if you came here. Macedonia's capital is an absolute orgy of homage to its imperial past, with statues and monuments and Neoclassical architecture everywhere.

Admittedly it's all very impressive. But at the same time there is a sense that they're trying just a little bit too hard; one feels rather too heavily the weight of a national chip on a national shoulder. Even the statues of the Mothers Of Macedonia, breastfeeding their infants, seem to have been sculpted to appear more intimidatingly buxom than the Mothers Of Lesser Countries.

And, frankly, it's all ever so slightly fake. Most of what you see in the pictures below has been built only in the past decade or two, and at considerable expense. Sometimes you feel like you're in ancient Greece or Rome, but more often you feel like you're in Las Vegas.

There are three things to be said in favour of all this. Firstly, the city was levelled in a 1963 earthquake and they had to put up something to replace it; secondly, it's been a successful tourist draw and thus an important earner of foreign currency (mainly from Germans and Italians); thirdly, Neoclassicism can be a bit kitsch but it's still preferable to the living death of glass'n'steel in which most capital cities are wreathed nowadays. I must also concede that it's a bit rich for a Briton to deride another country's attempts at celebrating their imperial past...

Well, anyway, good luck to them. It all makes for decent photos.

Archaelogical Museum

Museum Of The Macedonian Struggle (yes it's really called that)
The slightly creepy appearance of the river is due to the long exposure of the photo.

Another angle of the Archeological Museum

Ridiculously big statue of Alexander the Great
(here they call him 'Alexander of Macedon', just in case anybody forgets)

They may have 30 copies of 'Mein Kampf' on display, but they also have 9 books by Nelson Mandela.
So that's alright then.

Edd vs Food #69
Chicken and grilled cheese at Kaj Serdarot
Not all that great. Off-season tourist food.

Pristina, Kosovo

Kosovo is disputed territory. The Kosovans say it's Kosovan, and the Serbians say it's Serbian. NATO intervention in 1999 was in favour of the former, and this is why Pristina has a big statue of Bill Clinton, standing under a big portrait of Bill Clinton, on Bill Clinton Boulevard; which, if you follow it all the way, takes a quick turn up Monica Lewinsky Alley. (OK that last bit isn't true).

Possibly not everyone knows that nails-on-blackboard warbler turned wry Twitter wit James Blunt was formerly an officer in the British Army and played quite a significant role during that 1999 intervention. I mention him only because hearing one of his ghastly ditties in a bar has been just about the only unpleasant thing about my time here. Pristina is crowded, run-down, polluted and poor; but that's no reason not to visit. Some of the cafes here are as good as anything anywhere.

My one concrete gripe is the cashpoint machines. They all charge a flat withdrawal fee of 5 euros a go, and also they dish out ridiculously large notes. What, in the name of all that's holy, am I supposed to do with a 100-euro note, in a country where an espresso costs 80 cents and people suck their teeth if you try to change a five? More to the point, why do 100 and 200 and 500 euro notes even exist at all, other than to facilitate smuggling and money laundering?

I did eventually get rid of that 100 euro note by purchasing a pair of quite obviously counterfeit Converse trainers. We'll see how long they last.

From my hotel room window.
The entrance to the American embassy at left, and FC Pristina playing at home in the distance.

Double Bill (see above)

Mother Teresa Cathedral

The university of Pristina's library building

Smog & traffic at sunset

Christ the Saviour Cathedral

Edd vs Food #68
Pepper stuffed with beef & cheese, on mashed potato
At the Miqt Taverna

Podgorica, Montenegro

So far on this trip I've seen some truly spectacular scenery through the windows of various buses and trains. Unfortunately, photographs taken through those windows just never seem to come out right. But it's the memories that count. And in leaving Serbia I had the most memorable journey of all: the legendary sleeper train from Belgrade to Montenegro, covering 296 miles and 254 tunnels and 435 bridges. We arrived in Podgorica shortly after dawn, just as the first yellow sunbeams were beginning to tickle the mountain peaks.

I paid 20 euros extra to travel in a 2-berth couchette, rather than the 6-berth compartments in peasant class. There is no segregation by sex and so one's couchette-mate is a matter of blind luck. Obviously my first choice would have been a visually-impaired young lady with an affectionate nature and flexible morals; but in the event I was happy to settle for my second choice, which was that nobody at all turned up and so I had the whole compartment to myself.

Admittedly the term 'sleeper' is something of a misnomer. The train frequently stops at signals and the sudden diminution of noise wakes you up every time. (It's funny, I'm always driven to distraction by smartphone pings and earphone leakage, but I can abide the deafening clatter of 1950s rolling stock with the utmost complacency.) Also there was the abrupt 3am bang on the door from the Serbian border guards, closely followed by a similar visitation from their Montenegrin counterparts. There were no shower facilities on the train, and the toilet was of that kind that makes me just thank God that, as a man, I didn't need to sit down on it.

After five nights in my Belgrade fleapit, plus the overnight journey described above, by the time I arrived at my hotel I was in a fairly advanced state of decomposition. I threw myself on the mercy of the receptionist and, like an angel in human shape, she let me check in even though it was 8am and I was five hours early. In accordance with the laws of justice and karma, I've given that hotel five-star reviews across all platforms.

With its wide sleepy streets, bright sunshine and distant mountain ranges, Podgorica reminds me in some ways of the remoter parts of Arizona or California. Admittedly there isn't a whole lot going on here, but the people are friendly and there are plenty of places to get coffee and good food for a pittance. And on the rainy days I've settled for sitting on my hotel room balcony with a book and a beer or two. It's a tough life.

Surely the world needs more capital city centres that look like this.

At the train station, looking north at the mountains through which I arrived

View to the east from near my hotel

I didn't manage to find out the names of these teams,
and so I don't think this counts towards my foreign football badge collection
(USA, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Scotland)

Edd vs Food #67
Chicken, bacon, cheese, chips, pita bread
At Home of Gyros