Not so slowly from Vienna to Izmir and back: Tad Palac

“I was just thinking…..”, said Annelore. Whenever I hear those words from her, I know something special is coming up! “I’m coming with you! But why don’t we drive down by car and explore the Balkans a bit? It can’t be that far.”

In 2014 I had accepted an assignment to co-facilitate two back-to-back PPP training workshops for the CEE/CIS Region to be held in Izmir, Turkey. On our travels we had come across many Turkish German and Austrian families making the annual trip “home”, so if they can do it in vans packed to the roof, so can we, said Annelore. We can take a week going down and another week to come back.

After consulting the Austrian Automobile Club (the ÖAMTC) and being told it’s perfectly doable, checking our insurance coverage, and getting clearance from the Regional Office to take the lump sum in lieu of the Vienna/Izmir/Vienna flights, we worked out a tentative daily route plan, made a couple of hotel bookings (in our younger days we wouldn’t have bothered!), packed our suitcases, threw a few extras in the back of the car, and set off on a Sunday morning in September: approximately 2,000 km to Izmir, according to Google.

Our first stop: Pécs  (pronounced Pey-ch!), in Hungary, a mere 350 km from Vienna and not that different, since it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Pecs

Day 2 – Crossing into the north-west corner of Croatia - few dozen kilometres along a stretch of fine but almost empty highway and we were in Serbia. We bypassed Belgrade and headed south to Niš.

Niš is Serbia’s third most important city with some stunning Orthodox churches ….

Inside of church

Dinner at a local eatery included the finest Baklava we had ever tasted.

Would have loved to stay longer but the road to Bulgaria beckoned.

Bulgaria, heading towards Sofia

We stopped in the centre of Sofia for couple of hours to have a quick look around and have some lunch. It reminded us of Paris. We decided we would have come back and have a longer look, which we did but only some four years later.  

Approaching the centre of Sofia

Annelore having lunch

Heading towards Plovdiv, our next overnight stop, we drove through a small town that turned out to be the paper producing capital of Bulgaria if not the Balkans: every shop along the main road through town seemed to be piled high with toilet paper, kitchen rolls and all sorts of other paper products. Next time there’s panic buying of loo roll, you know where to go!

Shop in the tissue paper capital of Europe!

Plovdiv is Bulgaria’s second city and claims to be one of the oldest cities in the West. It has extensive Roman remains as well as stunning wooden architecture from the 19th Century which has been well maintained and renovated. The city had recently been “discovered” by the same crowd that had almost ruined Prague, Krakow and a couple of other places in the region, though we certainly didn’t see anything of that “scene” during our brief stay there.

Old Houses

Dinner in Plovdiv – now that’s what I call a shashlik!

EU cooperation: the Bulgarian and Greek border police sharing a container!

From Plovdiv we headed south to Greece. We decided to avoid the usual and very busy route into Turkey via the Bosphorus and headed instead for Alexandroupoli and on to the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Dardanelles

Beach at Alexandroupoli, early morning

One of the more unexpected sights we ran into: medical aid (for Syria?) from the Muslim community in the UK, getting the full customs treatment on the Greece-Turkey border.

After crossing the Dardanelles by ferry, we headed down the coast of the Aegean Sea. The road winds its way past numerous coves and peninsulas  We couldn’t stop everywhere we would have liked to;  but when we saw a sign for “Troy”, we just had to make a stop!

To be honest, there wasn’t much there, and we were not over-awed by the replica wooden horse. The one in the film “300” was more impressive! 

Thursday, 9 September, Day Five already: we stopped overnight in the seaside town of Ayvalik less than 200 km from Izmir so that we could have a leisurely last day on the road before arriving in Izmir. We even had plenty of time to explore the town, the market and the fishing port…..and observe the local pastime of watermelon tossing!

Man tossing watermelon

Man sewing

Finally, Izmir, Turkey’s second city and our “home” for the next two weeks where co-facilitator Rodney Phillips was already waiting. The weekend was mostly spent preparing for the first workshop, but we managed to gout and sample some excellent seafood!

Izmir’s “Malecón” at dusk

Rodney having dinner

The training took place in Izmir’s very comfortable Hotel Suisse with the added bonus of some splendid sculptures in its gardens, including this giant statue of “Man on horse” by the famous Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero.

While Rodney and I were stuck inside most of the day, Annelore would go off to explore on her own. Izmir is (or was then) a liberal city by Turkish standards and very safe. The local markets were particularly fascinating as was the Ethnographic Museum.

Market

Cloth seller

On the weekend between the two workshops, we took a trip to the impressive ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus, just down the coast from Izmir. It was crawling with tourists: the only way to deal with this is to imagine that it is still a bustling city with a population of several tens of thousands of people. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it must have been like two thousand years ago. We also explored the very popular Cesme Peninsula with its fishing villages and markets.

Ephesus 

Baklava and other local delights in Cesme

And yes, we did do some work during the two weeks! A group of UNICEF staff doing some Causality Analysis

Tad with fellow trainer and retiree Rodney Phillips.

After successfully inducting some 60 UNICEF staff from all over the region into the joys and mysteries of UNICEF's programme planning process, it was time to head back to Vienna. On our last evening in Izmir we took a boat ride across the bay and caught this magnificent sunset.

Heading up the Aegean coast we stopped overnight at another of Turkey’s many historic sites - the port town of Assos, with its ancient Temple of Athena, built on top of a crag with views over the Aegean.

The ruins of the Temple of Athena in the early morning

  

And wandering among the ruins….real Turkish turkeys!!

Back across the Dardanelles – a rather blustery crossing

We headed for Alexandropulos again and then up towards Bulgaria. Rather than using the main road through central Bulgaria up to Sofia again, we decided to drive via Zlatograd, a fascinating small town in the Rhodope Mountains, located just 2 km from the Greek border. It’s basically an open-air ethnographic museum but the locals are able to carry on with life as before.

Museum

Part of a traditional evening meal in Zlatograd– Bulgarians love to put grated cheese on almost everything!

For our visit to Rila Monastery we had booked a night in a nearby guest house where, much to our delight,  we had the best fresh trout we have ever tasted!

Rila Monastery is one Bulgaria’ s most important religious centres as well a major tourist attraction. 

After spending the morning there and being absolutely enthralled by the magnificent icons, frescoes and murals, we discovered one can actually stay there overnight! Though time-wise we couldn’t afford to take too long getting back to Vienna because of other commitments, we decided to spend another day there. The rooms were, well, monastic! But seeing the monastery in the peace and quiet of the evening and in the early morning before the tourists arrive was a very spiritual, almost magical, experience.  

On, on! - into Macedonia, or North Macedonia as it has since become. We first headed south to the stunning Ohrid Lake which Macedonia shares with Albania, where we spent a couple of days admiring the beautiful lake, the picturesque houses and some of the towns’ many churches. Ohrid is at one time supposed to have had 365 churches, one for each day of the year.

Ohrid Lake at dusk – that’s Albania on the other side

One of the many (though no longer 365) churches in Ohrid with Annelore

As we were leaving Ohrid, we had our one and only mishap of the whole trip: a bit of an argument with a very low stone wall! With the help of some duct tape and a bit of string, the bumper survived to Vienna without falling off.

Our car and the wall

Skopje must be one of the quirkiest capitals anywhere. It was devastated by an earthquake in 1963 in which 80 per cent of the city was destroyed. In recent years Macedonia’s leaders have built a staggering number of public buildings and over-sized monuments in a sort of classic/brutalist style….. including this mammoth pedestal-statue-fountain which bursts into action every few minutes to the strains of “The Blue Danube”….just in case we were missing Vienna!  

The statue of a warrior is based on local hero Alexander the Great.

In addition, the city’s bridges are adorned with statues of countless other local heroes, major and minor

And then there are the plaques commemorating another famous Skopjean, although she was actually Albanian.

"You can’t get there from here"

We thought we could take a short-cut to Belgrade, Serbia, and drive through Kosovo; but we unexpectedly ran into the only border-crossing problem of the whole trip. After purchasing a special compulsory car insurance for a hefty €30, we drove into Kosovo, through Pristina, and on to the Serbian border. The Serbian border guard pointed repeatedly to the Kosovo entry stamp in our passports and said “No! You must go back!” “You must return to Macedonia and enter from there”. Serbia still regards Kosovo as part of its territory but will not allow travellers to enter the country via Kosovo. So, it was back to Skopje for an extra night. 

Coming into Pristina

The main economic activity in Kosovo seemed to be building large multi-family houses bit by bit (presumably through regular remittances by Kosovars working abroad). The main road from the Macedonian border to Pristina was lined with huge, half-built houses like this one ….and store after store selling building materials and new and old domestic appliances.

House under construction

After our extra night in Skopje, the next morning we left Macedonia and drove “legally” into Serbia and stayed overnight in Belgrade,  a capital one would have to describe as somewhat scruffy – it could really do with some of that EU money!

The Danube….we’re almost home

Trinkets and souvenirs of heroes…and villains!

Crossing from Serbia into Hungary on a Sunday afternoon – four and a half hours in line! The slowest border crossing we have ever experienced anywhere! Many of the cars had German or Austrian number plates – residents of Turkish origin returning home: it was their journeys that had inspired us to undertake this trip.

Cars on the border

The last stretch
Belgrade to Vienna in one day is a bit too much even without the four-and- half hour wait at the border; so we stopped for the night in the lovely Hungarian town of Shigeti or Sheged, the paprika capital of Europe, home of Shegediner Gulash and of the 4th largest synagogue in the world. By coincidence, this was the town where Detlef and Gabi Palm spent their first night on their recently documented road trip from Germany to Armenia!!

The Synagogue

It’s nice to go travelling …..

Twenty eight days after leaving Vienna we were back home: 8 countries, 5,300 kilometres, and one slightly loose bumper. It had been the longest road trip we had ever done. We wished we could have taken longer and stopped at more places; but there were other commitments. We thought of doing a trip the following year down the Western side of the Balkans – through Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania etc - but we haven’t managed it yet. But there’s still time and our trusty Honda shows no sign of giving up!