Shvil Israel Day 0.5-1 Kibbutz Dan to Geological Camp

Shvil Israel Day 0.5-1

Starting km: 0.0

Finishing km: 20

Distance walked: 20km

Overall not the most remarkable start.  Almost all of the walking on the first, 12km stage was on roads (or roads under construction).  

Right near the end was a pretty interesting/beautiful spot: an Israeli war memorial and cemetery overlooking the Golan Heights.

Figured I'd have time to press on a bit further before dark and knock three stages into two.  Carried on through a national forest, again. mostly on road but with some nice mountain bike tracks to follow too.

More lovely views of the Golan heights across the valley and the towns down in the valley between me and them.  Nice look at Mt. Meron above and ahead as well.

Was correct about my pace and the daylight, but just.  Arrived at the "Geological Campsite" ten minutes after official sunset.  Saw a couple of foxes (jackals?) just before and just after arriving. It was a windy evening, so I found a nice campsite in the lee of a huge boulder.

Got the tent set up sans fly while eating chocolate then settled down to write this, drink some water and eat my first hummus in Israel for dinner (packaged, store bought stuff, but man I was hungry, and you've gotta start somewhere!)

Shvil Israel Day 0-0.5: Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Dan

Sarah and I had originally planned to arrive in Israel together, but because she's such a fabulous daughter (and person) she headed home to NZ to be with her mom who needed some help around the house after back surgery.

This left me with about two weeks on my own in Israel before she comes to rejoin me.  So I figured why not spend it walking!?

For the next dozen-ish entries I'll be documenting my walk on the Shvil Israel, the Israel national trail.  It runs about 1000km from Dan in the north, right near the Lebanon border to Eilat in the south on the Red Sea.

I'll be walking the first 40-45% of it, from Dan to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

I arrived in Tel Aviv and just zipped through passport control and customs.  I don't think it took me ten minutes after a very long bus ride and a long walk got me there.

No trains because of track work, but there was a free shuttle to Ha Havana station, which is convenient, cause it's right where I wanted to go.

Spent the night at a very friendly hostel, then, later than I'd planned, caught the bus north towards Kiryat Shmona.  There's no real distinction between municipal and national public transit in Israel, and both were free because it was election day.  Score!

I was amazed at the number of military personnel (virtually all of them young) on the buses.  It's one thing to know about the compulsory military service here, even have friends who have done it, but quite another to be sharing your ride with a dozen young men in uniform, most of them carrying automatic weapons.

Got to Kiryat Shmona and met my first three fellow hikers.  They'd been on the same bus but, curiously, after I'd done some shopping and got aboard the first bus headed to Kibbutz Dan, the start of the trail.

Bought a spoon in little Dan from the one store there, then began the walk proper…

A Quick Dip Into Copenhagen

Our stop in Copenhagen was brief, barely three days, but we managed to cram a ton into it.  A few weeks before Sarah and I had been debating which was our favourite capital city that we'd visited on this trip.  I think Copenhagen makes a good claim to knocking Sarajevo off its top spot.

We were visiting because Sarah's stepbrother Ryan and his partner Brenna live there.  Which gave us another good reason to minimize the costs of visiting this expensive (even if it is the least expensive in Scandinavia) country.  We arrived at Ryan and Brenna's place and after a flurry of hellos and hugs and The Best Coffee in Copenhagen™ we set out for our first day of exploration.

Over our few days we saw heaps of historical architecture, the city's famous canals, local icons like the Little Mermaid (about which I must say, I agree with the many who can't see what the fuss is about), and the outside of the famous Tivoli amusement park.

We had a really lovely walk along the quiet backwaters and old fortifications that surround the Christiana free zone.  The free zone is an enclave that effectively operates as a community outside the Danish and city governments, where architectural and artistic experiments are part of the landscape, where marijuana is sold freely despite being illegal in Denmark, but where messing with the quiet enjoyment of residents and visitors is deeply frowned upon by the community's residents.

We drank quite a bit of beer, including at the original Mikkeller bar, but more significantly at the Kiosk, a dairy right near Ryan and Brenna's that had a spectacular array of both Danish and international beers for sale.  Oddly, although they have an outdoor seating area for those buying food or soft drinks, but not for those buying beer. While drinking on streets or in parks is entirely legal, only licensed restaurants and cafes can serve alcohol on site, so the tables are covered with stickers in many languages suggesting beer drinkers cross the street to the boulevard park about ten metres away.

Only one museum made it on the agenda (primarily because it was free entry day), but we were both big fans of the Thorvaldsens Museum, displaying a huge array of marbles by one of Denmark's most renowned artists (and, perhaps even cooler and more unusually, many of the plaster casts that were used as models for the marble sculptures displayed elsewhere in the gallery).

But probably my favourite parts of Copenhagen were in and on the canals/harbour.  Swimming is understandably popular amongst the locals, and while there's a fair bit of boat traffic, there are loads of official swimming spots in protected areas around the city.  The weather was just warm enough to make the cool water nice in the bright sun, but very chilly when it was hidden by cloud or buildings in the late afternoon.

But possibly even more memorable than the swimming was the cruise through the canals on a "picnic boat", small electric motored craft with bench seats and a central picnic table that locals rent to go for a cruise complete with self catered food and drink.  

I guess I'll finish by thanking Ryan and Brenna for the picnic cruise in particular, and just got being such lovely hosts during our short visit to Copenhagen generally.

Beer Reunion in Belgium

Originally we were really just going to Belgium as flying via there was an inexpensive way to get from the Balkans to Denmark.  But of course it's Belgium. And I'm a brewer. So not only did we visit one of the greatest lambic (spontaneously fermented sour beer) breweries, we also arranged to spend a few days in Namur centred around a beer festival.  Even better, because Kiwis are such world travellers, we had several friends in Europe who we'd convinced to come meet us there for the festival as a sort of Wellington beer scene reunion.

But first the lambics.  We'd had a fairly lengthy bus, then train trip in to Brussels, then back out to Lot (Brussels South Charleroi airport is one of those ones that is actually in an entirely different city than the one it claims to be serving, though I'm not complaining, as we knew about this beforehand and the flights were super cheap).  Anyhow, a single Airbnb is the only place to stay in Lot, a suburb of Brussels. We'd decided to stay there and visit the Lambik-o-Droom, Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen's aging and packaging facility and tasting room.

The whole experience was marvelous.  The tour was super-cool, the host was lots of fun, there was a huuuuuuge (somewhere over fifty I think) list of bottles available in the tasting room and nowhere else.  In some of their beers 3 Fonteinen use a full kilo of organic sour berries and raspberries for each litre of two-year old beer that goes into the bottle! The one minor downside was that between the tour a few bottles to drink on premises, some branded merch and some takeaway beers (including a magnum of their premium Cuvee Armand & Gaston Geuze) we spent about four full days of travel budget.

From Lot we headed to Namur, where we checked into our big, fancy Airbnb and met up with our reunion crew who were joining us from London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Ghent.

Namur isn't one of Belgium's premier tourist destinations, but it has a lovely medieval centre, several very nice beer bars and we'll more than it's share of fun and whimsical public scupture.  And of course there was a beer festival on while we were there.

We set out in a convoy for it the day after arriving and as Rory said, we managed to find the only hill in Belgium.  The festival was held within the remains of an old citadel on a big rocky outcrop over the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse Rivers.  To be honest the beer wasn't particularly special by Belgian standards (the exception being a Lindeman's-Mikkeler collaboration basil lambic).  The weather was fairly grey too. Nonetheless we had a great time playing with traditional Belgian games (including a crazy one which involved strapping a frame to your body, then lifting a tray with your drink in it to your mouth using a system of four pullies).  And of course one another's company was the main attraction anyway!

We spent most of Sunday going from one closed shop to another (maybe half of the cafes in Namur were open, and pretty much nothing else) trying to find a place to print boarding passes for our departing flights.  We eventually managed by going into a boardgame cafe, having a few beers and playing a game or two of Citadels and then asking very nicely.

Most everyone was leaving that night.  Sarah and I were at least technically departing the. ext morning.  But so early was our flight from (not even that terribly distant) Charleroi that we had to wake up at 02:15 to walk out to a petrol station near the motorway and catch an 03:30 bus to the airport.  I'm usually okay with our money saving decisions when it comes to flights, but this is something I'd probably not choose to do again.

Everything else went smoothly enough, however, and by a bright and early 08:30 we'd arrived in Copenhagen for our final stop in Europe.

Scoping Out Skopje

So I'm writing about our time in Skopje, Macedonia's capital, way after the fact.  This may lead to a shortish entry and slightly hazy memories. In short, our time there was weird but good. 

Perhaps more than any other former communist capital city we'd visited, Skopje has managed to erase almost all traces of it's former government.

This took the form of reviving historic quarters, sprucing up residential areas and, most obviously, a huge investment in monumental buildings and statuary around the city's centre.  So pronounced was this that it looked almost crazy. Giant bronzes of Alexander the Great and Phillip of Macedon staring at one another across the river. A huge choreographed water fountain.   Lots and lots of white marble. And dozens of more only slightly less grandiose sculptures. If actually reminded me of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. Or an extra large Vegas casino.

However there were lots of positives to Skopke as well.  We are at the same lively local restaurant every night, where we are the best food we'd had in the Balkans.  Admittedly, this was probably due to the individual restaurant more than anything, but it was fun and memorable.  At the restaurant we drank plenty of Skopsko beer, whose cleanness and qaulity was a welcome relief after the uni spiring Albanian macro brews.  And on the way home we regularly saw an incredibly floofy chow how that seemed to have a regular crew of admirers and patters.

We went for a stroll in the pretty old Turkish quarter, which reminded me a lot of Sarajevo's old town.  And where we escaped a ferocious rainstorm by popping into a quirky little brewpub and watching the end of the cricket world cup final on my phone.

We climbed up to the old castle (with pre-Roman origins) and strolled to the fabulous Skopje modern art museum.  It had a really cool exhibition of installation type pieces from a Macedonian artist (whose name I've already forgotten, sadly) and a fascinating show of 20th century political posters from Switzerland, from which I learned the astonishing fact that Swiss women were only granted the vote in 1979!

And we had a lovely outing to the Matka gorge.  It was very pretty, and, at least in theory, very accessible from the city.  It was let down a bit by the inscrutable ticketing system on Skopje's city buses and the non-appearance of a scheduled bus on the way back, meaning that we spent as much time waiting for the bus as we did actually enjoying the impressive scenery of the gorge.

On departing we took a bus to the airport (only private buses were available, which was a mixed blessing as they were somewhat more expensive than the municipal ones but very much easier to navigate).  Once again, a budget airline (Wizz Air this time) managed to run everything smoothly and pleasantly. We said a fond farewell to the Balkans and had a fairly pleasant flight to the first of several quick hops to Belgium.

Before concluding my discussions of the Balkans, I will make one more observation that I'd forgotten to up til now: we met an absolutely crazy number of Kiwis travelling in the Balkans.  To the point that on more than one occasion, Kiwis were about half of the people on an eleven-seater minibus. Whether it was hearing an accent or noticing someone's ponamu you couldn't escape them!  I'm still a little unclear on why this was. Possibly because the NZ dollar isn't a particularly strong currency and the Balkans are the cheapest region of Europe to travel to? Whatever the reason, we had plenty of reminders of home as we journeyed from Beograd to Skopje.

The Cheese Market ('Cause That's What It Was Primarily About)

Sadly I'm writing this entry too long after the fact, and I doubt it will really do justice to our time in Kosovo.  Our experiences there were a series of wild swings and extremes, but were almost uniformly positive and were unquestionably memorable.

We started our visit with a bus trip from Tirana to Peje in Kosovo's far northwest.  And right from the moment of our arrival it was clear we were an interesting place. We walked down Avenue Bill Klinton, past billboards welcoming (US) congressman Eliot Engel to the city and would later run into streets named after Wesley Clark and Madeline Albright, statues of Bill Clinton and clothing shops named after his wife Hillary.  Clearly Kosovo has not forgotten the diplomatic and military lengths that the US went to to assure their independence (even if it's very unlikely that they would do the same today).

Following this walk we were met by our host at the Safari Hostel.  I still don't know quite what to make of our experience there. The place was clean, and although it was really just an apartment with sofa beds in the lounge-kitchen area, our room was comfy enough and had a balcony with a nice view up into the mountains to boot.  But he was friendly to the point of being overbearing, and encouraged guests to leave positive reviews to the point of badgering, peering over their shoulders and insisting they finish writing before leaving. When I left an 8-point-something review (after departing), we got twenty one (un-replied-to) WhatsApp messages berating us, complaining, calling us dishonest, and eventually concluding that the review couldn't have been left by us because we were such nice people.

Other than wandering around and drinking coffees and beers by the river (mercifully, although trade ties are very tight and Kosovo imports tons of goods from Albania, it has its own breweries, far superior to the big Albanian ones) we had two major activities in Peje.

The first was to visit the gorgeous Patriarchate of Pecs, a nunnery just outside of town that, at least in theory, was still the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church.  The church within the walled grounds was pretty from the outside, and covered floor to ceiling by even more beautiful fifteenth century frescoes inside. And the nuns showed us to the gift shop and sold us a bottle of their homemade plum rakia, seven years old and by a wide margin the best we drank (as part of a picnic just outside the nunnery grounds) anywhere in the Balkans.

The other main activity was a visit to the weekly Sunday cheese market.  In fact we'd planned our final days in Albania and our whole time in Kosovo around it (hardly a surprise, for those who know Sarah).  We weren't entirely sure where it was, but found it by first heading to the bazaar, then following the crowds and finally following our noses.  And while it maybe wasn't quite as big as we'd expected, it was inarguably authentic, with fifteen or so merchants selling their multiple varieties of fermented curd out of big wooden casks, and happy shoppers carting away their kilos for the week.  A friendly cheese-seller invited Sarah to try all three of his white, salty, varyingly funky products and we walked away with half a kilo of the good stuff (about as small a purchase as one could make there).

From Peje we headed south towards the city of Prizren.  On the way we stopped at the very memorable Decan Monastery.

None of the institutions of the Serbian Orthodox Church (or indeed, ethnic Serbs themselves) are welcome in Kosovo.  And while the Patriarchate was guarded only by a small Kosovo police post, on the thirty minute walk to the Decan Monastery we passed two fortified checkpoints of KFOR, the remaining NATO force in Kosovo, and had to surrender our passports to the Italian troops at one of them I. order to receive a visitor badge and be checked into the monastery as visitors.

But my, wasn't it worth it!  The church and it's frescoes were even bigger and more beautiful than the ones at the Patriarchate.  And we were squires around by an English speaking volunteer (lay) guide who told us all about the history of the place.  And during our visit one of the monks invited us up to the terrace dining area overlooking the church to enjoy a coffee and some of their homemade lemonade and rakia.  We sat enjoying the blissfully sunny afternoon, the peaceful environment and a further long chat with our guide Stephen until a couple more English speaking tourists arrived and he headed off to show them around.

As at the patriarchate, there was a monastery shop, where we purchased a beer (made at a different monastery) and some cheese (made at the Decan) for another lovely picnic.

Our final stop in Kosovo was the charming town of Prizren.  Despite being about halfway across the country from Peje, in little Kosovo this means that it's only 60km as the crow flies and a couple of hours by bus.

Prizren's historical and religious architecture survived the communist era and the independence war almost intact (except for the old Serbian neighbourhood, which was burned to the ground, showing once again that in the Balkan wars there are no such thing as "good guys").

This makes the city pretty and pleasant.  To tell the truth, if you've been to Sarajevo or Istanbul, it's actually fairly unremarkable.  But the fact that the city centre is brimming with restaurants and cafes, and that it was the time of year when many of the Kosovar diaspora return home for a visit and holiday with their families in and around Prizren, made it the kind of place you want to spend more time than you'd planned.

We went to an outdoor screening of a Yugoslav era romantic comedy movie about a Serbian woman hired to be a waitress in an ethnically Albanian town in (what is now) southern Montenegro.  We went for a walk along the river. And drank lots of coffee and ate lots of watermelon. And went on a pub crawl with our hostel-mates where we got a tour of a seventy year old movie theater (including the projection room and a hilariously interesting collection of 1960s to 1980s posters for foreign movies).  We got to try exotic varieties of Rakia (walnut=great, sweet cherry=less good). And even tried a few local beers (the stuff from a tiny nanobrewery run by some of the tiny ethnic Serb minority was clearly the best beer we had in the southern Balkans).

All of this was so nice that we decided to extend our stay in Prizren from one or two to three days, and skip over Kosovo's capital, Pristina and head due south to our final Balkan destination, the Republic of Macedonia.