ASK Balkans: Summary and Final Thoughts

                   

I don’t even know where to begin. The entire ASK Balkans process has been so memorable. I have travelled before, but this trip takes the gold for best travel experience. I will go over some of my favorite memories in hopes of doing the trip justice, but I don’t think any number of words or pictures can capture how truly spectacular this experience was.

When the acceptances for this program went out in early spring, I was overjoyed to have received a spot on the trip, but somewhat concerned because I didn’t know many people on the trip. I’d say I was an acquaintance to about half of the group. That began to change even before we hopped on a plane to Europe. We were all thrown into our city planning groups. I was hesitant at taking on more work at first, but soon looked forward to these meetings. We laughed and joked around and somehow ended up with some solid plans for Livno and Sarajevo (which almost all changed once we got there, but more on that later). The more I spent time with the people on the trip, the more we planned, and the more I learned about the Balkans, the more and more excited I became.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the semester was over and we were meeting up at ORGT to head out. We were exhausted from finals week, but even more excited for what was about to come. We finalized some necessary logistics, grabbed our Mountain Houses, and were on our way.

 We touched down in Zagreb and made our way to Samobor, Croatia. I didn’t sleep at all on the plane. Indeed, most of us were sleep deprived when we arrived. That didn’t stop us from scarfing down a hearty meal of bread, salami, and cheese. Little did we know just how many meals those three ingredients would supply over the course of our trip… Refueled with food, several of us headed up to a run down castle on the top of the hill adjacent to the village. We climbed around, laughed and talked, and took our first pictures of the beautiful Croatian landscape. I ate with a smaller group of people and feasted on some delicious cevapi. Dessert followed when the rest of our group made it from the airport. We decided no one should miss out on a chance to see the castle, so I went up to the castle again with a larger group. Staring up at the night sky, speckled with stars, so far away from home, felt serene.

The next day, we split up into the two hiking groups. Fred, Kyle, and I went with the first group, but had time to kill, so we decided to hike to the peak of Anika Kuk, one of the best lookouts in the park, allegedly. Turns out it was. Highlights of that trip included finding a donkey, thinking we were lost, and realizing we were at the top of the mountain when our comrades were pulling into the park. This realization prompted a rather speedy trip back down the mountain. Our group camped at the base of the national park that night. We shared more laughs, frustrated each other with riddles, and enjoyed the delicacy that is a Mountain House.

 Some drunk climbers stole our tent stakes in the middle of the night, but we got them back, along with the message that “there is no respect in the Balkans.” The whole ordeal was humorous, in hindsight. In the morning, we dawned out packs and started our trek north. The hike was great! It was so much fun enjoying the nature and everyone’s company.

Eventually, we made it to our shelter. We met Tom and Berry and Seka (Tom’s dog). We talked with them and some Polish people into the night. Since we didn’t have gas for our stoves, we made do with what food we had. This led to us “Creating the Moment” with our dry hot chocolate packs. Cheese and Nutella also goes surprisingly well together. Canned rooster is not good; neither is Kikiriki “peanut butter.” The cabin shelter in which we slept got so hot in the middle of the night. It felt like a sauna, which seemed very out of place for the middle of the night on top of a mountain.

We woke up and said our goodbyes to our new friends when the rain lulled. We hiked back along a ridge line with some more gorgeous scenery. The weather improved as we hiked, and Kelsey and Fred kept spotting more of “God’s fingers” along the way. There is supposed to be a rock formation of God’s fingers somewhere in the park, but having not seen the actual formation, Kelsey and Fred decided to name finger-like rocks in the distance as individual fingers of God. I think we might have ended up with all five by the end of the hike. When we did end our hike and meet up with the other group, we all departed for Skradin for the next portion of our trip.

We met our sea kayaking guides, Philip and Tin (unsure of how he spelled it), and I explored the city with a few people before dinner. We ordered a pizza after dinner because apparently hiking for 4-6 hours several days in a row makes you pretty hungry.

            
To the water! The next day we embarked on our sea kayaking portion of the trip. I have kayaked on a lake before, but never for the amount of time that we did that day (~8 hours), much less on the Adriatic Sea. Again, it was great to be challenged physically while enjoying the nature and talking to friends, new and old. We stopped in Sibenik for lunch, which was scrumptious (local seafood for me) and then completed the second leg to Prvic Luka. We even made it in the local newspaper! (Link to Article) Hotel Mistral was so nice and the staff was extremely friendly. I remember watching the sun set on the island and thinking about how grateful I was to be there. That night, we talked about our progress as a group and what we’d learned so far.

The next day, we kayaked about 45 minutes to an adjacent island called Zlarin, where we played Frisbee, swam in the sea, ate gelato, and relaxed after a hard day of paddling the day before. When we got back to Prvic Luka, I walked to Prvic Sepurine, the other village on the island, with some friends. We explored the town, had a blast hanging out with each other, and got some breathtaking photos of yet another beautiful sunset on the island.

The following day was basically the first day of kayaking in reverse. When we were departing from Sibenik, however, the water was very choppy due to more intense winds. We braved through it, but I got caught by a wave the wrong way and flipped over in my kayak. The water was… refreshing (very cold). Once I climbed back in and pumped out the water, the rest of the trip went without a hitch. We drove to Split, Croatia after shaking the salt water out of our ears and picking up our vans in Skradin, which marked our trip’s transition from the wilderness portion to the academic portion.

The academic portion of our trip started off with exploring Diocletian’s palace in Split. Chaffee gave us a short tour that recounted some of the history of the palace, as well as some facts and tidbits about palaces and castles in general. It was so neat to be walking through halls and pathways where the stone building around you was built in the fourth century! The architecture was grand and still looks breathtaking to this day; I could only imagine what it looked like when it was built. After exploring the palace, we broke up into smaller groups to wander around the city. I ended up finding a spectacular view with Chandler and Angela at a café on top of a mall. We played around with different filters on our cameras and enjoyed some downtime. Here’s one of the panoramas I took of Split from the rooftop with some filter fun applied.

The next day, our group headed to Livno, Bosnia. Livno is more of a rural town, and as such, it seemed like we were the only foreigners there. I like the feeling of not being overrun by tourists from so many different places, so Livno gave a nice reprieve from that being in between Split and Sarajevo on our itinerary. We had a fancy dinner the first night in Livno with many local guests who were friends of Chaffee’s from the last time he visited the city. The next morning, we climbed into the vans bright and early to go see a herd of wild horses! The horses could have been anywhere in a 50 square acre stretch of land, but we were fortunate to find them after hiking for about 5 minutes from where we parked. It was so neat seeing about 150 wild horses just living peacefully and naturally without any human influence. It was also nice to just walk among the horses and reflect on the trip while practicing some photography.

The next stop was an old tower about halfway down the mountain. We parked our vans, and then hiked over to the tower. I’m still not sure what exactly the tower’s specific purpose was, but the best part of the hike was seeing Livno spread out below us. We also happened upon a shepherd, which I had never seen in my life before. It was so cool to see a different lifestyle. Everything in Livno (and Europe in general) seems much slower and laid back. That evening, we did a “helium stick” team building exercise in which we had to lower a tent pole with everyone touching it the whole time. The five to ten minute exercise ended up lasting an hour because we had so many leaders and couldn’t come to a consensus to get everyone on the same page. To be honest, we never actually did the exercise successfully, but we learned a lot along the way. That following morning, I attended my first every Catholic mass, which was quite the experience since it was in Bosnian instead of English. There was a lot that I didn’t understand and had to be explained to me after, but I thought it was neat seeing another religious perspective. I compared and contrasted a lot of what I saw and learned to what I practice as a Protestant Christian.

We then drove to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. We ended up staying in Sarajevo for three days instead of the original two because of historic flooding in the Bosnia-Serbia region. This closed about half the roads between Sarajevo and Belgrade, so we ended up staying in Sarajevo for one extra night while we figured out the logistics of traveling between the two final cities. Sarajevo is city that’s seen wonderfully peaceful times and horrifically violent times. A group of us went on a self-guided walking tour and saw the Latin Bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated, which sparked the beginning of World War I. It was humbling standing on the spot where one event 100 years ago altered the history of the world in such a significant way.

Another highlight of my time in Sarajevo was exploring the ruins of the bobsled track from the 1984 winter Olympics. A group of us ordered five taxis and went up to Trebevic, a mountain next to Sarajevo. The elevation change between the city and the bobsled track was so great that it was snowing on the mountain! It was almost surreal to be having a snowball fight in Bosnia in the summer. We hiked up to one of the starting positions of the bobsled course and walked down the actual course. At one point, you could see holes in the track that had been used as sniper mounts in the siege of Sarajevo from 1992-1996 (“longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare” – Wikipedia). There was also a neat acoustic phenomenon at one of the turns in the course where you could stand 20 feet away from someone and whisper to them. The concrete bobsled track would carry the sound along the turn to the other person.

We went to a museum on the genocide in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. I learned a lot, but found myself emphasizing with the victims and trying to imagine what life would be like if I was in that situation. It was a humbling experience. To continue the new religious experiences, I visited two more cathedrals in the city, as well as he world’s first electrically illuminated mosque. That was the first mosque I had entered, so seeing the inside was a neat experience after having done some interfaith work over the past two years at Tech. We also tried to go into a synagogue, but it closed about 15 minutes before we got there. The fact that all these religious facilities were within mere blocks of each other seemed out of the ordinary and pretty special to me.

One last noteworthy mention for Sarajevo: coffee. I don’t like coffee, personally, but I went to so many little coffee shops and cafés with my friends. The Bosnian style of drinking coffee is unique. They serve concentrated coffee in a pot with some hot water. My understanding is you pour some of the hot water into the cup and some of the coffee and voilà, you have coffee (that might be the Turkish style.. they’re very similar and I get them confused a lot). The whole procedure is very methodic and ritualistic. Here are my friends and I in a tiny coffee shop in the historic district of Sarajevo.

Due to the flooding I mentioned, we ended up flying to Belgrade, Serbia. Due to flight logistics, most of us were only in Serbia for about 12 hours. That didn’t stop us from making the most of it though! We hit the ground running by visiting the Kalemegdan fortress in a park near our restaurant for dinner. The view of the city over the river was spectacular and, you guessed it, plenty of pictures ensued. Our dinner was at a nice restaurant that was woefully unprepared for the size of our group. We were packed into tiny tables and the food was handed out haphazardly, but it was still a great experience. I sat next to Angela’s uncle, who happened to be a conductor and composer. We talked about music and his experiences living in the Balkans. It was a great night, but the night bled into the morning as we got back to the hostel. We closed out the trip with a group discussion and packed up our stuff. We all stayed awake and hung out until we had to leave for the airport at 3 AM.

It was hard saying goodbye to all my friends. I got accepted to the trip knowing maybe half of the people, but I felt like I ended the trip being best friends with everyone. I deeply cherish and will hold on to my memories of my experiences on this trip, as well as my friendships with everyone with whom I traveled. These relationships that formed and grew over the course of the trip are perhaps the most valuable takeaway I’ve gained from my Balkans experience. I know we’ve all headed our separate ways for now, but I’m looking forward to the reunions with these friends in the future. Even if some people aren’t at Tech because they graduated or if their life leads them somewhere else, I’ll keep in touch. I am extremely grateful to have made the friendships and connections I made on this trip.

So what now? Well, I’ve gained an even greater appreciation for planning and learning through traveling. I hope to take these experiences and keep them in mind so I can make the most out of my future travel. Furthermore, I’ve come out of the trip with a much greater global perspective. Seeing and experiencing these new cultures always teaches me how my world at Georgia Tech is not all that’s happening. It’s easy to get sucked into the college bubble and live in my own little world. There’s so much out there. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have seen some of it on the ASK Balkans trip, and I can’t wait to explore the world more in the future!