summer of love

Yes, yes, yeeees, why I don't care about my blog? But there is a reason that is going to be explained...
After I left my job in Ireland (what nobody expected neither did I) I came home for 3 weeks. and I enjoyed it really a lot! I met all the friends again and I saw the beauties of the magical Slovak nature again...
12th July the big day came and we started our big journey to the countries of southeastern Europe and we started our new job :-) Our working agreement was not so well done - we didn't have any idea how much we will earn, where we will sleep next day and our future was absolutely unsure :-D We became street musicians. Rodan as a very good musician, who plays everything he touch, this time learnt how to play the bagpipes and I as an absolutely beginner tried how to play the shamanic drum.

We started our journey in the north Croatia in Rijeka and we were heading for Greece.
In Croatia hitchhiking and basking weren't the best, but we tried to enjoy it and felt like on holidays - every second day in a different town, every day swimming in the sea and everyday evening work :-)
Monte Negro was even nicer - big mountains, the sea and fjords. Sometimes we felt like in the Norway just the temperature was probably much higher. There was just one problem - with our big backpacks and musical instruments to reach the top of the mountains was quite complicated. The only thing we could do was to look to the mountains from the see level and bark at the moon.
But anyway it was a great experience to live like this! From the beginning I was a bit shy to play in front of the audience because I have never done something like this but slowly slowly it started to be OK. I liked to watch the people's reactions and tried to guess what they are thinking about when they saw us playing. Some of them really enjoyed the music, started to dance and gave us some money, some of them just past, some of them commented that we should rather find a normal job and maybe they thought that we are just beggars without any home and education. If they new that we bought finished university :-D
After Monte Negro we passed Albania and it's capital Tirana. I can not really say anything from one day visit and only capital... But OK we were in Tirana and it was obvious that it is totally different culture to other European countries. I rather felt like somewhere in Asia than in Europe. I just remember that we saw a lot of colorful concrete blocks of flats and some mosque in the center and that's it. But I believe it can be a beautiful country covered with nice mountains and full of forgotten small villages...
After long long time spent in a bus and only 200 km in the dark night we got out from the bus in Macedonia. We had absolutely no idea where we will sleep and it was impossible to find a place for our tent. Situation started to be quite difficult because Rodan was sick so we ended up in a first guest house we found. But the next days was OK. We came to the nice ancient town called Ohrid. We enjoyed that we didn't need to play so much because everything was quite cheap.
When the moon was full we at last reached our dream destination Greece and beautiful town near the big lake Kastoria where we were invited for a Greek party with Greek music, Greek food and Greek everything... We stayed in a nice old house for 2 days and met very interesting people like hippie in hearth Nikos, who time to time lives in a cave or makers of ancient Greek musical instruments.
We visited and played in quite a lot of places of the northen Greece like Thessaloniky, much from Chalkidiky, beautifull town built on a hill - Kavala (where we earned unbelievably 140 Euro) and the magical island full of good energy Samotraky.
Samotraky was our holiday destination. Till that time we played nearly every day and we usually didn't spent more then 2 nights on 1 place what wasn't easy sometimes. We needed to go to holidays from our holidays :-)
It is a very special and beautiful island. In the middle there is summer residence of Zeus - mount Fengary, what means moon in Greek. It is great view from there to the both sides of the island. There is aninteresting magical forest with old Platanus trees that remember a lot from the past and the gorges are filled with glassclear water that creates waterfalls and small ponds where you can swim. Many people do so and quite a few from them are naked so we had the feeling that we must be probably in paradise :-)
In the village Therma we felt like back to the 60's - you go to do shoping and you can listen to the Doors, in taverna Led Zeppelin, another place - Dead can dance... Village is full of long haired hippies and stalls with beads, krystals and other interesting things.
This was our last trip together in Greece for the moment because dear Rodan had to live home. Children in the school were waiting for him.
But somehow I didn't really feel like going home so I stayed and tried to explore the other unknown greek places. Anyway I left my job, so what to do home now...
I am very lucky that I found somebody like him and he understood and didn't say anything about my choice. Sometimes it might be a bit difficult with me but I just need to go through it :-D I have always wanted to try to travell alone and know this feeling. I quite like it but I think it is even much nicer to share the experience but before I tried it I didn't know...
It is sometimes interesting, sometimes a bit sad, sometimes full of joy, sometimes adventurous, sometimes a bit dangerous, sometimes unsure but still it is just another interesting life experience that hopefully will bring me there where I always wanted to go - to the open hearth and peaceful mind.