Hi bloggers!

Two days ago, we woke up in Belarus after a long bus trip. It’s the last country we are going to visit before we arrive in Lithuania, our destination!

The official name of Belarus is the Republic of Belarus but we also call it in Dutch “Wit Rusland”. The official languages are Russian and Polish from which we didn’t understand a word. Thank goodness they also speak English!
The capital of Belarus is Minsk, the largest city of Belarus and situated in the centre of the country. Belarus is very dependent from the economical support of Russia. Russia provides profitable crude oil to Belarus and in exchange Russia can use for free the pipelines who are situated under Belarus.

The first day in Belarus, we visited the capital Minsk. We moved through the city by subway because it is very fast but we noticed that there was a lot of police and everyone had to walk through a metal detector. Of course the reason was the bomb attack of Monday 11 April in the metro station that was close to the president’s residence and the Palace of the Republic. There were 11 people killed and 126 people wounded. We read an article (see source article) about the bomb attack and we must say that we were a little bit scared.

Minsk is such a big city! Did you know that there are more than 20 cinemas and about 140 libraries? There are also a lot of churches and museums. The infrastructure was almost completely destroyed after the first and certainly after the second world war. The city is totally rebuilt with a lot of large streets and also the economy has improved. Nowadays Minsk produces e.g. trucks, bicycles, televisions..   

The journey was a real experience but I’m very excited to be back home with my family and friends and to tell them more about our journey!

Delphine Van Vooren

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk
http://www.belarus.by/en/travel/belarus-life
Article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/04/11/minsk-subway-explosion.html

Kyiv

Hello everyone! 

Wow, isn’t it amazing that we have come this far? Now we have arrived in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The capital is the largest city of Ukraine and is an important industrial, scientific, educational and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. We immediately noticed the city has high-developed infrastructure combined with old buildings and has as in Iran, an amazing metro station. The stations are built very deep underground so can also be used as bomb shelters even though it is right beneath the centre. Not only are they really useful in a busy city like this, they are also very beautiful, they use these vivid and colorful decorations. It was also well maintained because there was absolutely no graffiti or vandalism as you would expect.

There was so much to see so we went to a tourist centre and asked what we should definitely visit in the limited time we have. They said we should definitely visit the two most important monuments, such as the Saint Sophia Cathedral and the Kiev Pechersh Lavra (or Kiev Cave Monastery complex). Those two monuments were inscribed on the World Heritage List  made by UNESCO. All outstanding cultural buildings are written down on this list. We were amazed by the beauty of these buildings, fortunately we had bought new batteries for our cameras. 

We were very hungry so we decided to eat some of the local specialties such as pampushki and varenik. Pampushki is a type of sandwich soaked in oil and fresh garlic and varenik is a small pie with all sorts of stuffing. We had beautiful weather visiting Kiev so we decided to have an early dinner in one of the many botanical gardens. 

Afterwards we were so exhausted so we headed back to our hotel and planned the next day before we went to sleep.

The next day during breakfast we discussed our plans for that day and as Julie mentioned in the previous blog, I was going to tell you more about Chernobyl. So we decided to go on a Chernobyl Tour, which was very interesting. We made sure we had a guide and he could tell us that on 26 April 1986 a reactor N4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station blew up during a routine maintenance operation. Almost nine tons of radioactive material was blown in the sky. It even influenced Belarus, Poland and the Baltic region. About 135.000 people were evacuated.

Before we went on the tour our luggage had to be checked and they gave us a quick lesson about evacuation. We first arrived at a monument dedicated to the fireman of Chernobyl, the ones who saved many people. They showed us how they improved security, where everyone works, there even was a movie and a photo gallery about the disaster. After that we went to the town of Chernobyl where you can find the Park of Glory, Second World War Memorial and the Board of Memory to liquidators. Some things were just very sad to see, such as the abandoned flats where private things such as toys still can be found. It was all very interesting but we were happy to go back to the city.

Later that day we were so happy to be back in Europe that we were still full of energy, so we decided to go out in some of the clubs nearby. It was fantastic, we enjoyed ourselves and knew that the next morning might be less active.

We were so tired the next morning that we just decided to take a bus in which we could take a nap because the other night we didn’t get enough sleep. Still, everything was worth it. I'm writing you this blog while everyone is asleep and the next morning we will wake up in Belarus.

Just keep on reading!

Sofie Van Laeken

Sources:

http://www.kievapartmentsforrent.com/kiev_chernobyl_tour.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev

Ukraine

Hello everyone!

Yesterday we still had lunch in Bucharest and then we left for Ukraine. Ukraine stands for ‘country of the border’ and is mostly known for its nuclear disaster in 1986 in Chernobyl.

Three main rivers cross the country namely the Dnjepr, the Dnjestr and the Donets.

Ukraine lies in between Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Moldavia. It also has a big coast next to the Black Sea.

We chose not to pass through Moldavia because we already lost a lot of time. We entered Ukraine in the South via Odessa, near the Black Sea. Odessa is the 4^th biggest province of the country after Kiev, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk. It also has the most important port of Ukraine. In Odessa we first visited the Potemkin Stairs. These stairs are considered to be the entrance of the city and are therefore the best known symbol of Odessa. The top-step is 12.5 metres wide and the lowest step 21.7 metres. The staircase is 27 metres high and extends for 142 metres. You can imagine we were really exhausted once arriving on top!

Later on, we learned that Odessa is famous for its therapeutic resorts, it also houses one of the most developed hospitals specialized in Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy. Something to remember whenever our eyes decide to stop cooperating!

The last thing we visited was the Odessa Opera and Ballet theater, we were too late to order tickets for Swan Lake, but just seeing the building, with its Baroque façade, was enough.

We spent the night in a youth hostel and then the next day took a bus to Dnipropetrovsk. In Dnipropetrovsk there were not so many things to see. It’s the industrial capital of Ukraine and much more we actually cannot say about the city. The reason we travelled to Dnipropetrovsk however, was because we could follow the river to Kiev, Ukraine’s capital. Seeing Dnipropetrovsk is an industrial city, which exsports a lot, we decided to search for a small shipping company that could take us to Kiev. The realistic few of our group, said no one would ever take us on their boat, but after hassling some men, we managed to find one that would take us. He was an elderly fisherman who travels every day back and forth with his fish which he sells on the market in Kiev. All excited we jumped on the boat and took off for Kiev!

Once we arrived in Kiev, we thanked the fisherman and searched for a hostel. Crossing through the city, we could see a lot of ‘signs’, 'remains' of the Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl lies at the North of Kiev, near the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. 

Sofie is going to tell you more about Chernobyl and the city of Kiev, which we are going to visit tomorrow, but I wanted to tell you something about an article I found concerning nuclear plants. The article explains Russia just signed for a new nuclear plant in Belarus which is worth 9 billion $, now, while Fukushima is still luring and Chernobyl is never far away in the minds of the people. The article also uses a little controversy, letting Leonid A. Bolshov say the the Japanese disaster will give the world a lesson. What he means is that it’s a shame that this had to happen before safety became an issue. Russia however reacts with a dry ‘Lesson learned’ as an answer to the contract they just signed for a new plant. I personally think it's awful to build a new plant while disaster, in such cases, is never far away...

Anyhow, this was it for today, keep on reading our blogs and see you soon because we’re almost there!

Julie Hamerlinck

Source article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E4DF1231F930A15750C0A9679D8B63&ref=ukraine

Other sources: wikipedia.com

Hi bloggers!

Today we are going to continue to explore Romania. Like you have read in the blog of Lies, we have already visited a part of Bucharest but today we decided to stay another day in Bucharest because it is such a beautiful city.

We were walking through the city when suddenly we thought we were in Paris instead of Bucharest! We saw the well-known Arcul de Triumf, The Triumphal Arch. It looks just like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. We have read on the internet that some of the buildings in Bucharest are influenced by French architects and therefore the city is once called “Little Paris” or ”The Paris of The East”. Bucharest is also the centre of the Romanian economy and industry.  

Yesterday we were walking in the woods with a guide. He warned us that we could see some animals such as bears and wolfs. We didn’t believe that we would see a bear or a wolf because we thought that this would be a coincidence. Suddenly we heard something rustle in the distance and when we looked, we saw a bear! The guide told us not to panic because he was far away from us.

During the trip in the wood, the guide gave us some information about Romania.
Did you know that the fountain pen and insulin are two famous inventions of Romania? We also got to know that the national drink is a kind of jenever made of prunes. Romania is a member of the European Union but the switching from leu, the current currency, to euro has to take place between 2011 and 2012.

Today we visited Vulturi, a small village situated in the Danube Delta. The delta is the second largest delta in Europe and has about 30 villages. Almost all the inhabitants of these villages are fishermen.

We will stay another day in Romania before we leave for Ukraine.

Thank you for reading our blog!

Delphine Van Vooren

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Delta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucharest

Hello everybody!

This week, you can follow us visiting the famous Romania. As you all know, it is a country situated in Central and Southeastern Europe. It is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area and on top of that, it has the seventh largest population of the EU with over 21 million people.

Romanian, is the official language of Romania. The name comes from the Latin word “Romanus”, a legacy of Roman rulers who took control of ancient Dacia. Other languages are French , especially spoken by the young people. We also did have not any problem with communicating in English.

Romania is a semi-parliamentary democracy based on a bicameral Parliament: the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. The head of state is the President who is elected every five hears. This year, the President is Nicolae Ceausescu.

While traveling to Bucharest, I read in my book about Romania that this country is the home city of a lot of famous people like Constantin Brancusi, one of the most famous modern sculptors. Angela Gheorghiu,  one of the world’s greatest opera soprano and Nadia Comaneci, an Olympic champion gymast, the first in the world to score a perfect 10.

For many centuries, Romania’s economy was based on agriculture. In the 1930s, this country was one of the main European producers of wheat, corn and meats. It used to be called “the brad basket of Europe” until the communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu began developing heavy industry.

 Now over to the fun part where I’m going to tell you the attractions me and my co-travelers visited!

You definitely have to visit The Parliament in Bucharest that was known as Casa Poporului and was built in Soviet-style. It is the largest building Of Bucharest and the second largest in the world after Pentagon.

Close to The Parliament is the Romanian Athenaeum that serves as a concert hall and is truly one of the most beautiful buildings. Sir Albert Galleron built it at the end of the 19^th century.

We also visited Stavropoleos Church, an Reastern Orthodox church in central Bucharest.  This church was built in 1724 but suffered from an earthquake but it was fully restored in the 20^th century.

I’m sure you will love following museum: The Village Museum. It is an open-air ethnographic museum located in the Herastrau park ant contains 272 authentic peasant farms and houses form all over Romania. This fabulous museum was created in 1936 by Dimitrie Gusti, Victor Ion Popa and Henri H. Stahl.

The Union Square is one of the largest squares in Bucharest built in the Communist ara as the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism and renamed after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

I hope I convinced to explore Bucharest yourself. I’m sure you will remember it for the rest of your life!

Lies Descheemaeker

Julie, Delphine, Lies and Sofie in Sofia!

Sofia, a city which Sofie couldn’t wait to visit! Actually, we all couldn’t wait to visit it. We had heard a lot of great things about the city and now we are about to explore it!

Sofia is the 17^th largest city by population in the European Union with a population of 1.3 million people and 1.4 million metropolitan population. Sofia is located at the foot of the mountain Vitosha and is ranked as a Beta world city (a global city).

We also learned that Sofia’s mayor is Yordanka Fandakova as we passed city hall.

The first thing we visited was the Sofia City Art Gallery housing numerous pieces of Bulgarian art. Next up was the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library which houses the largest national book collection and is Bulgaria’s oldest cultural institute.

As the day had passed really quickly and we were tired of our journey, we decided on going back to the hotel, relaxing a little and then washing up for dinner. After enjoying a wonderful meal, we went out to look for a bar or a pub to have something to drink and close the day with. We encountered a  ‘mehani’, a Bulgarian traditional tavern. The word ‘mehani’ comes from the Turkish word ‘meyhane’, ‘mey’ means ‘wine’ and ‘hane’ means ‘house’. In the picture you see people dancing in the ‘mehani’, we didn’t participate because of the weird people in there.

The next day we took the bus to visit the Museum of Earth and Men. (All areas are well covered by public transport although a lot of vehicles are in a poor condition.) Arriving at the Museum of Earth and Men, we were a bit disappointed. We thought it would have shown us the history of earth and men, and it did, but not in the way we’d expected it to be. 

The museum was full with minerals and things of which we couldn’t make up what it exactly was, although they were very pretty. We figured we'd miscalculated big time! We had to inform ourselves better next time because now we’d lost money for the bus and for the fee to enter the museum. Bummer!

Anyhow, we decided to walk around town the next day to explore the city some more and realized that we’d seen it all after 2 days. So we packed our bags and took off for Romania. The next city in the European Union which we just entered!

Thanks for still following us!

Love,

Julie 

Bulgaria, quite something

We arrived in Bulgaria, and we were happy and sad at the same time because we were getting closer to our home. But we didn’t want to think about that so we tried to enjoy ourselves by exploring this fascinating country.

And so it is a very fascinating country, in the east there is a coastline of 378 km. Besides Black Sea, the also call it Zlatni Piassatsi which means Golden Beach. The name came from a legend that once golden treasures were transformed by magic into sand. We really enjoyed walking on the beach, the legend might be real because the sand looks like gold. 

After walking on the coastline we took a small boat to Nessebar, which is a very old and famous seaside resort located on a small peninsula. I must say, it is quite difficult to find your way, with all these small paths but fortunately it is not very big. The houses are very nicely decorated with wooden bay windows as you can see in the picture. This city is also called the city of the 40 churches because they are that many ruins of churches from the Middle Ages. I really got a pleasant feeling because I like little villages, they are very pleasant to walk in.

Again taking the boat we went to Varna, there you will find the biggest port of Bulgaria. There are more than 150 monuments in Varna only so we walked around, for a couple of hours but we were too excited to visit some museum. We were looking for something adventurous.

So we then took a two-hour bus ride to the Stone forest, something we had never seen in our entire life. What you could see were these huge stone pillars all next to each other like they were put there. You could also climb to the highest point, where we got a gorgeous view of the Stone Forest. They even say it was once the bottom of the sea. It is very hard not to believe any legends because every villager will be glad to talk about it and they really believe it.

Looking from a cultural view, Bulgaria is perfect, every city and village has their own cultural centre and there are these old houses that are so well preserved. Walking through the streets you can  buy lots of handmade products, I couldn’t pass it before taking a look what they had.

We were only 400 kilometers away from the capital Sofia, so we decided to took some busses and before visiting Sofia we went to the Rila Monastery, south from Sofia. It is definitely the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria.

It is located on a mountain at a height of 1,147 m above sea level. Inside the main church you could see some nice frescoes, a gold plated iconostasis (wall of religious paintings) etc. So worthwhile visiting!

Over all Bulgaria is a nice country, so now we are going to visit Sofia. I hope you enjoy reading our blog and hopefully you will keep on reading our blog!

Sofie Van Laeken

Sources:

http://reizen-en-recreatie.infonu.nl/buitenland/13299-bulgarije-vakantie-aan-de-zwarte-zee.html
http://www.islandpassions.nl/eilanden/nessebar-is-een-juweeltje/
http://www.varna-bg.com/museums/pobitikamani/st_f_uk.html

Bodrum ve İzmir

Today we are continuing our journey in Turkey. After we visited Antalya, we are ready to move to Bodrum and to Izmir. We really want to visit Bodrum because we have already heard a lot of this beautiful city and it is also a popular holiday resort.

Bodrum is a Turkish port that faces the Greek island Kos. It’ s a very popular city among young people to spend the holidays but because of the tourism Bodrum has one big problem. There is a very low rainfall and therefore they suffer of a shortage of potable water. The problems become more and more critically as the population and the number of tourists are increasing.

At our first day in Bodrum, we visited Pamukkale which is a natural site. Pamukkale, Turkish for “cotton castle”, is a terrace made of travertine that is formed by water from a lot of hot springs. We had never seen something beautiful like this terraces. It looked like snow or salt! We met an old woman who comes everyday to Pamukkale. She told us that the water could cure many diseases and has also a beautifying power. We didn’t understand how you could become more beautiful because of this water but she explained us by telling the legend of Pamukkale:

“Once upon a time there was a young and unmarried girl. She was so ugly that nobody wanted to marry her. She threw herself off the travertine to commit suicide but she wasn’t dead. She fell in the water of the pool and changed into a beautiful girl and she soon got married. “

We thanked the old woman for her explanation and moved back to our hotel in Bodrum because the next day we would like to sunbathe and in the evening we had to leave for Izmir.

We spend our last 2 days in Izmir, a city located on the Aegean Sea with a very important port. Furthermore it is the second largest city of Turkey. Izmir is not the original name of the city because in 1992, the Turkish government changed the name original name Smyrna into Izmir.

At night we went to the Izmir Clock Tower because it is beautiful illuminated. The tower has a height of 25 meter and there are 4 fountains, one at each corner of the tower.

Today is the last day in Izmir and we have visited the building of the Izmir International Fair, located in the heart of the city, because we wanted to see something of the economy in Izmir. A lot trade fairs, congresses and exhibitions are held in this building. Not only national ones but also international ones.

Now we are going to sleep because it is already very late and tomorrow we have to wake up early to go to our next country Bulgaria.

Hope to see you soon!

Delphine Van Vooren

Sources: http://www.pamukkale.net/listingview.php?listingID=7&name=Legend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodrum
http://www.bodrumlife.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0zmir