The Adventure Really Begins!

Tomorrow I fly out of Istanbul to Bishkek. I arrive Saturday morning at 4am (oy!), but will thankfully be met at the airport by a representative from the London School, where I'll be taking my Russian classes. I think I'm going to institute some strict English usage rules for myself for at least the first month that I'm there to really help my Russian come along. So I'll probably only be blogging once a week to start. Although, we'll see how disciplined I am.

But, before I head off to Kyrgyzstan, I wanted to reflect on some highlights and memorable moments from the last couple of weeks traveling around the Balkans:

-- Speed limit signs in Kosovo for cars, trucks and tanks. UN presence much?
-- The three Japanese girls on my Rila Monastery day trip who spent the entire trip singing. It was adorable...mostly.
-- People who ask where I'm from, then, when I say "The States" pull a "Oh, yeah, I could tell by your accent." I mean, it's not a secret. We all have accents. I'm not trying to hide it.
-- Learning a fun new card game from the staff at Berat Backpackers. The staff that outnumbered guests 2 to 1.
-- Somehow successfully translating between Spanish (which I speak an okay amount of) and Albanian (which I do not speak a word of) for an older Argentinian couple that I met on the bus to Kosovo who were trying to buy return bus tickets.
-- Ramadan bread!
-- Hiking all the way up to the fortress overlooking Berat. On my way back down, two Albanian guys in a car stopped and offered me a ride back down the mountain. I politely declined. And, although they didn't speak any English, I could tell that they basically said "Can it, fat boy. You look tired. I know you want a ride." So I took them up on it.
-- Getting in a discussion with some Romanian travelers in Skopje about EU expansion. Regarding Turkey, one of them said, "But do we really want 80 million Muslims in the EU?" His traveling companion deftly pointed out, "There are at least that many in the EU already. What's the problem?"
-- Sharing a look with an older Macedonian woman while climbing a mountain in Ohrid. We clearly both looked at each other and thought "If s/he can do it, I can do it."
-- 2 liter bottles of beer in Macedonia and Bulgaria. 2 liters! (And it was still cheaper than a pint at just about any bar in the US)
-- The Bulgarian taxi driver (who was clearly in his late 50s at the youngest) singing along to Celine Dion on the radio.
-- The hirsute German owner of Tirana Backpackers answering the door in electric blue shorts - and nothing else. That was pretty much all he wore the entire three days I was there.

That's pretty much all I can think of at the moment. I've got the day in Istanbul tomorrow, and I intend to spend it getting a haircut, doing laundry, and catching up on the Internet. I'll post some travel details from Kosovo and Bulgaria then.

İyi geceler!