Forward March, About Face, Cut Cake

I guess now I have officially been inducted into the bizarre cross-world where US military meets UN meets civilians. Last weekend I joined several of my American friends (3 ladies) as their escort to the second annual Kosovo Marine Ball. It reminded me a bit of a high school prom in the sense that it was anticipated for awhile since it is one of the rare official social occasions and everyone put on their best dress, uniform, tux (or suit) in my case. Difference being that even with open bar, a majority of the men in uniform could not drink since they are technically on active duty. At least most the firearms were checked at the door at the restaurant which was located out in the countryside with well secured check-points, car bomb inspections and a security detail of about 50 men. Once inside we were still subtly reminded that we were in Kosovo as the power cut off several times momentarily and once seated at the tables we still had to make our way to the bar to get our own drinks instead of relying on the wait staff.

Before the meal could be served we listened to a good half hour of official speeches from various officers and Marines congratulating one another, paying their honor and respects, presenting the flags, singing the National Anthem and most entertaining watching the honor guards carry a huge flag sheet-cake to the end of the room where they officially called out maneuvers to cut the cake with a sword and serve a couple pieces to the highest ranking General and the guest of honor. We did get a good laugh as they introduced the young Marines that were there serving at the American Office of Pristina, all whose birthdays were in the early to mid 80's.

Finally with formalities out of the way we dove into a fairly nice dinner with plenty of gossip going around commenting on some of the outrageous make-up and dress selections from a number of the local women. Eventually, I was able to steal away and hang out with about 6 lovely ladies I know from playing ultimate Frisbee out here. Fortunately, they are all a ton of fun and love to dance. Aside from some questionable DJing, one of the Marines finally grabbed control of the mic and rapped the rest of the night away. All and all, a good night at the Prom...

Halloween in Dracula's Homeland

Rather ironic that I spent Oct 31 in Romania, the birthplace of the mystical Dracula and Transylvania, yet did not see anyone dressed in costume. It also might have to do with the fact that I was in Bucharest at the Intercontinental ordering roomservice and coming off the 'high' I had from popping several 'Dayquils' trying to fight off a cold.

But I digress. Romania rocks. I was attending a week long regional trade conference with mostly USAID development contractors and officers networking, listening to some interesting speeches and attending different work groups. It was a very interesting, multicultural group (12 countries represented) where we seemed to work and play well together. Each evening involved an open bar reception and plenty of finger-food along with those awesome mini chocolate mouses (I averaged 3). I wish I could say these were relaxing events to personalize with all the conference attendees but I was networking my ass off. I had to come away from this event with some serious leads for my project in Kosovo and I'm proud to say of the 100 attendees, I have about 40 key contacts to hopefully make some trade linkages for my farmers back in Kosovo.

This said, we did break out of the networking mold since our last night involved a very nice outing where we were all bused to a traditional Romanian dinner extravaganza which involved flaming platters of meat, Romanian opera singers and violinists strolling among our tables of food or the absolutely stunning ballroom dancers that floated above the dance floor as we moved from Rakia (plum wine) to salad to vegetable to meat to meat to dessert. Your average 4 hour Romanian meal. But I knew it was time to head back to the hotel when many of the very old timers were trying to dance with the any of the attendees that were single (and half their age).




The highlights actually came after the conference when I ventured out of the hotel to stoll the cold Romanian boulevard (10 lanes wide) with a steady mixture of snow and rain coming down. Eastern Europe was hit by the first winter snow storm of the season and the damp coldness alerted me to the fact that I was not prepared for winter and I now remembered why I moved to California. Anyway I was joined by some very nice attendees of the conference to visit the massive Parliament building (People's Palace) which is the 3rd largest building by volume in the world where Ceausescu was to house his entire Communist regime. This place was truly remarkable with more halls, ballrooms, conference centers, churches, offices, apartments than you can imagine. Ironically he was executed before it was finished and he was never able to rule from the empire.






For my last night in Bucharest I found a Serbian partner (Boris above) in crime that I had befriended during the meetings. After a lovely Italian dinner with my USAID officer counterparts, he and I emerging to experience the nightlife, Romanian style. As it turned out, we had to keep going from one bar to the next as a pre-party before we could go to the real club to dance the rest of the night away (they opened at 1). With beers under a dollar, each of the 'bars' filled up quite quickly where most the Romanian men seemed to act like assholes chasing the ladies into their secure, non smiling circles for protection. Finally we antied up a pricey cover charge to experience 'the office' with fantastic lounge and dance music accompanied with live bongos, stunning tall slender Romanian women wearing the latest European fashion (ok, so allot dressed like they were straight out of a Shakiro video) and men who seemed much more laid back and thankfully ranging from late 20's to grandpa in the corner. Unfortunately, I had to call it an early night since I ran out of steam around 3:30. It was a very nice change of pace from rockin Kosovo.

Although the conference had officially ended, I felt compelled to experience at least some of the Romanian countryside before leaving. So I had taken the initiative to speak with some of the locals I had met that week and had planned to train up to Brachov to see the medieval city in Transylvania and castle-hop for an afternoon (mind you is was now 5 below 0 C with 4-6 inches of snow up in the countryside). But as luck would have it my wing man from the night before was already doing the same trip with his boss and one of the local project Directors (American) who owned a mountain cabin which looked out to Dracula's castle. Perfect. I had two days of driving in the beautiful mountains with 3 great guys from the comfort of a heated SUV. Not to mention our 'guide' filled us in on all the local history and took us to the best castles, restaurants and pubs (see for yourself).










His cabin couldn't have been more perfect. Quite small but with all the comforts of home and free! Plenty of good conversation and some great 'war stories' were exchanged among these men who have been doing international development for decades, all over the Balkans and Africa. Very inspiring I must say. For my last day I was actually going to have to train it back early to catch my flight out of Bucharest but since we got off to an earlier start than expected, I was able to add one more fantastic meal in Brachov before we all returned to the city where they dropped me off directly at the terminal. I couldn't have had planned it to ever have worked out so well. And with Romania joining the EU next year, this country will continue to flourish and prove to be an inviting and hospitable place for all tourists (oh, except for the fact that the Romania has some of the worst bank and Internet fraud and therefore all of my credit cards were blocked for my entire stay) and watch out for those cab drivers...

Just Another 3 day Weekend, in Greece

What I can say except that a great bonus of being located in Kosovo is that fact that it is relatively easy to get out. To celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid, everyone here had 3 days to scatter to any of the great regional destinations. From the international crew I am hanging with, the travel menu options for this past weekend included your choice of a spa visit to Montenegro, shopping in Bulgaria, clubbing in northern Greece or the combination package, which I put together with my now very close friends from Australia, Belgium and Spain. What better way to make some good friends (or bitter enemies) than to spend 4 days together in a car driving over 1200 km?

Friday night we bolted out of Pristina with no clear agenda in mind other than making it to Thessaloniki Greece which should have been a mere 4 hour drive except for the fact that I took the crew to one of my sheep client's restaurant and he served is up a killer lamb diner with all the traditional fixins. Fortunately the drive was uneventful except for the fact that when we passed through customs I was planning on telling my driving friend that the Greek translation for 'Have a good night' was 'I am a tree'. Guess you had to have been there since we were all laughing hysterically. I'll be sure to save that one for the next roadtrip... Our very late arrival put us in at around 2am with only the energy to find a VERY basic Class D hotel (communal bath) where we all fit in one room with single beds for under $50 euros. Except for the tossing and turning of my 6ft 1 friend unable to fit in the bed next to me and the Greek shouting match in the lobby of the hotel at 4am, it was a well earned sleep.

Our first day out was rainy and chilled but we enjoyed being in a European city with western shops everywhere, proper streets and the smell of ocean air. A short hike took us to White Tower which was almost as exciting as the Starbucks Coffee located diagonally across the street (Gosh you would think I have been out in the bush for a year). Not sensing the true adventure we were aiming for we all decided to head inland towards Mount Olympus in hope of better weather and a chance to hike around Greece's tallest mountain.

Less than two hours later we were selecting which post-card to purchase of the beautiful mountain that was sitting right in front of us veiled by the rolling fog and steady rain. No matter. A good reason to find a local eatery and dive into a sampling of Greek salads and perfectly cooked lamb. It was a no brainer to decide to head to the highlight of our adventure: Meteora. For those 'Bond' fans, one of these mountain-perched monasteries was featured in 'For Your Eyes Only'. Ironically I had been here before as a poor post-college backpacker in 1993, but all I could remember was that on that day too, it was cold rainy and too much fog to actually see the monasteries. This time the weather was going to cooperate since the skies cleared as we approached this magical town the following days full hike up and into 4 of the 6 still open to the public. It is hard to describe the awe one feels in not only how these beautiful sacred places were created but also the lightness of being that high up in the air with the villages far far below. The pictures tell the tale best...

Well almost. See after we had our calm adventure of basically walking up to and from the monasteries like tourists, we decided to try and find a small dotted-line trail from our map that was supposed to lead us back to the town where we were staying. As it turned out, the guide book was over 3 years old and at best these trails were goat tracks (literally). The first set of trails I was able to navigate my crew to without too much difficulty (except one nice fall and turning the corner to be scared to death by a turtle). The next set proved to be much more allusive. We tried one set of trails 3 times before giving up to return back to the road. Now our one other hope was a more direct trail which we clearly saw marked and decided to take. Well, for some reason it went clearly up one of the mountain passes to a 'saddle', but then seemed to fad into a very faint trail, which we took since it clearly headed into the original valley we had hiked up from. So deductive reasoning would suggest just going down right? Well, that is exactly what we did and for the next hour we scrambled down the side of a mountain with me using every keen sense of wilderness training I learned from Boy Scouts decades again. I was having to look in the dried creek beds to find the outline of a shoe print, notice broken branches where people had passed before, strips of rock where the moss had been removed by peoples' shoes and tree branches whose bark had been worn from peoples' hands using them as a guide towards their next step. It was pretty fun for awhile until I started to think it was all in my head and we were completely 'buggered' as Natacha would say. Eventually we all stumbled out of the dense forest onto our original trail completely covered with scratches, thorns, aching muscles yet a very keen sense of accomplishment and a craving for an ice cold beer to celebrate.

Our final day involved 9 hours of driving but included a fantastic stop off at Macedonia's Lake Ohrid, which I will certainly plan on hitting again soon since it is only 4 hours from Pristina. See for yourself. Just a perfectly normal, average, 3 day weekend:-)