Serbia: Belgrad, Majdenpek and Bor

I have just come back from 10 days in Serbia, where I met some friends. Although Serbia is not that far from Moldova (obviously depending on what you compare it with) it still took 26 hrs to get back by train and bus.- mostly because the bus broke down going from Bucharest to Chisinau (Personally I thought it was a hint...)
Serbia, or the parts of Serbia I saw were amazing. People are very friendly towards travellers, and speak english (which is something you learn to appreciate when living in Moldova).
I couchsurfed in Belgrad and manage to stay in a flat right in the center, got my own key and the next-door neighbour was the Nikola Tesla museum. After staying in Belgrad for a couple of days I went to majdenpek, which is a small mining town 4 hrs out of Belgrad. As in Moldova and Romanina, when you visit families in Serbia, the first thing they give you is dracia (strong alcohol that usually tastes like...) but in Serbia it actually pleasent to drink! I stayed there a couple of days and then headed to another miningtown on the border of Bulgaria called Bor. The first night I went to a motorbike festival with a gun's and roses' copyband - they put on quite a show. I have not so much to tell, since my main goal was to hang out with some friends. It as a really nice trip and I will defently come back to Serbia.

The view from Belgrad castle.

I have seen this a lot of different places, and apparently its a pro-Putin campaign. To start with I thought it was a joke - a funny way of criticizing Russian foreign policy, but I guess not.

One of the buildings in Belgrad thats still stands as an evidence of the Balkan war. This is the newsstation that was bombed by NATO killing 27( journalists and editors) because the leder of the newsstation was told by Serbian officials, not to take the threat of  bombing seriously.
This topic is still very sensitive, even amongst people my age, who were not directly involved.
My friend told me that because of all that happened, it is very important for most Serbs that visitors and travellers leave Serbia with a very good impression. In the tourbus (yes, I took one, I was lazy) they even started, "Serbia the country and Belgred the city that a known by all visitors as a friendly and relaxed place".

Nenad playing the harmonica. He lived in Bor.

Sonja, my friend who lived in Majdenpek.

Dracia...

Serbian countryside.

View of Romania, from Serbia,

The view of the mine.

The view of Bor.

Nenad and his father, in the village. His fathers family use to make wine and owned a pub in the village. They still make wine, but only for personal consumption.- and guests:)

At the motorbike concert.

Going for a hike.

The locals.

Saturday jam with friends: homemade pizza, house vine and jazzzzzy music

Romania re-visited. Iasi and surrounding areas

The best thing about rep. of Moldova is that it is such a small country that it is easy to cross the boarder (if your not moldovan and need a visa that is). Clemence, Marcia and I decided to go on an extended weekend to Iasi (pronounced Jash), which is the old capital of Moldova in the pre-commu years (when moldova in romania and rep. Moldova was still united before USSR).
Iasi is known as a student town, and has been nominated the "capital of modern Romania". Overall it is a really nice place. Downside - they will not accept Moldovan lei in the exchange office!!! We felt discriminated against.

We went to visit a friend of Clemence, who is originally from Iasi, and she had arranged a small roadtrip around the region Moldova. Read btw. the lines: we saw churches, monestaries and a castle now and again if we were lucky;) Dear mom, you should be proud.
The picture to the right is the entrance of one of the old castles called "blabla", where Stef. Cel Mare use to stay. That stef cel. mare dude has been all over, cause it was the same story we got everywhere.;)

This is one of the monestaries still functioning. My conclusion was: if you have to spend all day praying, you get pretty good at baking bread:)

In each monestary they had to rows of candles. One for life and one for death. Candles where 5 lei each, so many of the monestaries were very well keept.

Marcia, respecting the dress code. It was a bit hard for people not to laugh when they saw us, somehow we couldn´t really blend in.

We got a friend (slightly tipsy) and a really bad businessman: He was selling religious artifacs and his wife was selling homemade jam, but after drinking a bit to much of her amazing vina de casa, he began to give out all the things. He was very impressed with meeting foreigners, and wanted to make sure that we had a safe travel, to the extent that he gave us a glue on cross for the car.  We felt bad for the wife and ended up spending an equavalent amount of money on her homemade jam.

My friend mr " i-am-si-tired-of-seeing-churches-that-I-take-photos-of-everything-else". He was very cute. And green.

awww another church. Now in round version.

Kids either playing at the wishingwell or trying to get some money.

The view from somewhere in the montains.

"Drive-by shooting" which was really hard cause the car was going very fast.

again...

Clememce at the place we stayed for the night.

Piata! YAY.

We went up a gondola. It was amazing. It would be really cool to come back when it is winter.

One of the really nice churches, painted all around.

Odessa:)

Hitch-hiking in generel is a very exciting experience, and especially from Moldova to Ukraine, where you don´t know either language well enough, to fully understand directions. For a friend and me it meant that we were stuck at a container drop-off for quite a while. It would have only taken 3 hrs to get from Chisinau to Moldova (including boarder control), but it ended up taking us 5 hrs. It was an experience though.

We went to Odessa to celebrate the birthday of a british girl (3rd girl from left). Odessa is a beautiful city, and the most amazing thing about it is that it is SO close to the black sea. After spending 5 months in a land-locked country, this is worth travelling for. The photo below is me with my feet in the sea. It was veru warm, and the water was warm enough for a swim even thought it was in late May.
On this picture(from the left) Constance (FR), Suzanne (BE), Sus (the UK), Samira (GE) and Natasha (GE), singing karaoke)

Overlooking the beach from a shady spot.

The famous Tomkin stairs. I am not sure why they where famous, some ppl told me about a movie about Odessa, so if any of you have any ideas, pls feel free to comment on it. Apparently this fame has reached many place, because turist season was slowly kicking in.















One of the other cool things we got to experience in Odessa was the Opera. It was pretty cheap ( 30 Ukratkiiiis (lacking a better, or just the real name for their money) for seats that weren´t that bad.
This night they were showing a ballet made over some music of Chopin and Carmen. It was really good, and I will defently recommend it.