The Road Less Taken (there's a reason it's less taken...)

Okay.  So.  Sarajevo.  In order to get there from Dubrovnik, we had to take a six hour bus ride.  The ride through the Bosnian countryside was very beautiful.  The steep mountain slopes were rich with greenery and fell softly into peaceful valleys often holding small villages. Above winding freshwater rivers, the blanket of vegetation parted to reveal jagged, layered cliff faces. We were kept company along the way by the songs on our iPod and ended up sleeping about half of the way there.  

Once we arrived, the cousin of the owner of the guesthouse where we stayed picked us up at the station.  After checking into our room, we decided to head into Sarajevo's "Old Town."  We walked down the rough cobblestone alleyways and past a large graveyard spotted with tall, white tombstones.  When we reached the town, we thought it would be a good idea to find a tourist information office, in order to see what was worth seeing in the short time we had to explore Sarajevo.  Now though this may sound like a simple task, it was not so...
First of all, most people who we asked directions from spoke very limited English.  On top of that they gave us conflicting instructions on where to go.  When we finally reached the place where we were told the info kiosk would be, we found out that it had closed down a long time ago.  Needless to say this was a rather frustrating way to spend some of the precious time which we had there.  Anyway, we finally found the current info place and got the information we needed.  After that, we had to figure out what train we needed to take out of Sarajevo the following day.  This meant a forty-five minute trolley ride to the main bus station, plus another hour or so figuring out what the best option would be, then we had to buy our tickets--rather difficult when the ticket vendor only spoke Bosnian, and then another forty-five minutes to get back to the Old Town.  The whole situation left us rather emotionally exhausted.

After we got back, we did spend some time looking at some of the main sites.  Unfortunately, one of those sites, the city hall--supposedly the symbol of Sarajevo--was completely under construction making it impossible to see any of it.  Things did brighten up greatly when we went out for dinner.  We went to a funky, little place called Barhana which was just lovely.  The food was absolutely delicious and our waiter was very friendly.   So in the end, our Sarajevo experience was redeemed :)

We left our room the next morning and boarded our bus for the ten hour ride to Niš, Serbia.  Once we got there, we had to figure out how to get from there to Thessalonia, Greece.  The language barrier was once again a huge challenge.  Thankfully some very friendly strangers who knew some English helped us out.  They told us that the best way to get to Thessalonia would be by taking a four hour bus to Skopje, Macedonia, and then another four hour bus ride from there to Thessalonia.    So, we had to wait at the Niš bus station for five hours until midnight when our bus showed up.  That day also happened to be Annalea's birthday, which was just so very unfortunate that it happened to be on the only day that we would spend the entire twenty-four hours traveling/waiting for a bus.  We tried to recognize the special day by buying a slice of cake from the restaurant at the Niš bus station, but sadly, the cake tasted like cigarettes :(  So, we decided that we would properly celebrate her in Athens by going out for dinner/drinks/gelato/etc.

We arrived in Skopje about four in the morning and tried to navigate our way to a bus or train which would take us to Thessalonia.  This was tricky since Macedonia has a different alphabet, similar to the Greek alphabet.  We managed to find out that there was a bus (well actually it was more like a shuttle) going there at 6:00am.  Soon after, we found out that it was full.   On top of that, there were no trains going that day and the next bus was leaving at 8:30, but would mean a very complicated route and a bus transfer.    This was very bad news because we needed to get to Thessalonia in order to get to Athens for our hostel booking that night.  Then, miraculously, an incredibly helpful tourist infomation guy went out of his way to help us.  He called the 6:00 bus and asked them to bring a bigger shuttle so that there would be room for us.  They agreed and we were able to board the bus and head to Thessalonia. :)

Once we got there, we walked to the train station and booked our seats.  Then, we went to explore the city for a couple hours.  We headed back to the station thinking we would have about an hour before the train left.  On the way back, however, we suddenly realized that Greece is an hour ahead of the time zone we were on.  This meant that instead of arriving at the bus station with ample time, our train was leaving at that moment, while we were still several blocks away.  Thankfully, there was another train going to Athens an hour and a half later.  We got tickets for that one, then boarded the train.  We were both incredibly relieved to finally be on the train to Athens.  Seven hours later, and after making friends with three Greek guys, we pulled into the Athens train station at 11:20pm.  The guys helped us read the map (all in Greek) and pointed us in the direction of our hostel.  We checked in then met our friends Sonja and Surya there.  We made some plans for the following day, and then went to bed.