This Really Felt Like The Amazing Race

On our way to Kosovo, Penny and David took us to the capital city of Macedonia, Skopje.  It was beautiful weather, and I enjoyed touring the birthplace of Mother Teresa and visiting a memorial built to honor her.  The town square was a busy place on Sunday afternoon, full of people and music and dancing.

One of several statues of Mother Teresa

Macedonia also claims Alexander the Great as a native son.

I really loved this fountain which honored mothers with their children.

While we were in Macedonia, a couple of our experiences reminded me of the real Amazing Race.  We were able to walk through the open market full of booths with all kinds of merchandise and produce.  The sights and smells reminded me of the many times teams are sent to hunt an item at a market just like the one in Skopje.  It made me smile to think about it.

But smiling was not what I was doing on our next leg of the "race."  David and Penny wanted to take us to a lake they had found during a previous visit to Macedonia, but they did not know for sure how to get there.  They looked at the map and found a town that seemed to be on the way, so they entered that town in their GPS.  Now, when you're in unfamiliar territory and you're using GPS, once you begin, you find yourself at the mercy of the GPS.  The voice of our mechanical guide took us up a narrow mountain road with many curves and switchbacks.  Meeting another car was a nail biting experience.  

We stopped once to ask a local person for some directions and were told that we were on the wrong track.  But we continued into the remote mountain terrain until we had determined to turn around if we had not found the lake we were looking for in another ten minutes.

It was only a couple of minutes later that we arrived at, not our original destination, but an overlook that gave us the most glorious view of mountains and a distant lake.  The thought that we might have turned back before finding this beautiful place makes me cringe.  We truly enjoyed to unexpected discovery, and found our way back to civilization and the road to Kosovo.

Veliko Tarnovo

We flew from Prague to Sofia, Bulgaria, where Penny and David picked us up.  Then we were on our way to their home in Veliko, Tarnovo.  We made one stop at a large cave long the way.

And finally we were there in their town in central Bulgaria.  For your information, Bulgaria is about the size of Ohio.  Sofia is on the western border and Veliko Tarnovo is in the central part of the country.  The next day we spent time touring the town.  It was a charming town.

Mother Bulgaria honors those who have fought for her.
Bulgaria has been on the losing size of every war.

Bulgarians takes pride in their graffiti.  It is everywhere.
Some of it is very interesting.

The art museum

It was really great to spend time with my sister and see what her life is like.  It was great to go in the spring too.  Penny said they have a tradition in Bulgaria.  At the beginning of March people put a woven piece of string around their wrist.  They wear it until they come across the first blossom on a tree or bush, and then they tie it on the branch.  We saw many strings ties on the branches around town.

Notes from My Trip

We left for Europe on April 12.  I was accompanied on this trip by one of my sister's friends from Pikeville, Kay Berkebile.  Kay and I had only met to book our flights prior to leaving on this trip.  She turned out to be a fine traveling companion.  I was very thankful to have her along.  She is an experienced international traveler, and she thought of many things that I would not have.

The first leg of our journey took us to Prague in the Czech Republic.  We were met at the airport by a friend of Penny's and a fellow missionary, Melissa Wells.  She accompanied us to our hotel where we encountered a problem with our room.  When we had booked the hotel, we had forgotten that although we were traveling on Tuesday, we wouldn't be to Prague until Wednesday night.  We booked our hotel for the wrong night.  Kay made several calls to try to correct the problem before we arrived, and Melissa even went to the hotel on Monday to try to straighten things out in advance of our arrival, but no luck.  When we arrived we were told that we would be charged for the night we had book originally.  Since they were so uncooperative with us, we decided not to spend the night there.

Melissa arranged other accommodations for us.  That's how we ended up in a Korean hostel.  Melissa had met the owner of the hostel in her language classes where they were both learning Czech.  The owner, Bryan, was a nice young man with fairly good English skills and the hostel was nice.  It included breakfast which turned out to be Korean fare.  Bryan's mom prepared squid, salad with homemade dressing, a beef dish, and some kind of seaweed soup.  It all tasted pretty good to me, but it certainly was a strange meal for breakfast.

Here are some of the highlights from our day in Prague.

The pictures above are all views of St. Vitus Cathedral in the center of Old Town Prague.

The impressive outside view of the cathedral

A beautiful view of the Vltava River

There were beautiful gardens everywhere.

Our Korean breakfast, squid in the center,
and I forgot about the beets.

Bryan, Kay and another guest, with Bryan's mom
in the background.  We invited Bryan to visit Tennessee
and he was very excited at the prospect.  Everywhere we went,
if we mentioned we were from Tennessee the response was
"Jack Daniels."