After flying back to USA#1 from French Polynesia, I spent the next few months helping out with some family stuff in DC that had come up during the sail. Some time around mid July, my help was no longer required, and I was free to continue meandering about. This timing worked out pretty well, as some friends were planning on on sailing from Greece to the Caribbean starting in October. I had the option to join them a little early, but decided instead to spend a little time exploring Eastern Europe, specifically Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria.

I had gotten my passport situation squared away while back in DC, and it was time to devirginize it with the first stamp:



before catching my connecting flight to Prague, Czech Republic. I started things off in a nice hotel:



and as usual focused on eating local food:



which is heavy on soups and dumplings. I'm not much of a beer drinker due to not liking the taste, but this was the Czech Republic where beer is super standard to order and it's kind of odd if you don't, so I went with the flow and was pleasantly surprised by how good it tasted. That bread was very soft and doughy, perfect for dipping in the stew.

These were all over the place:



I managed to find one without nuts, which was not easy. Those are trdelnik, which is a super common street pastry in various Eastern European countries. That is the kind of thing I'm all about eating, except these invariable are made with walnuts or hazelnuts, and I'm allergic to pretty much all nuts. Eventually I found one without, and all was right with the world.

Speaking of things that were all over the place, this guy was everywhere:



He's a mascot for some kind of nasty soda, but all I could think of was the Taco Bell dog. I think a variant of that poster was in pretty much every subway station that I entered in Prague.

After a short stay in the nice hotel and exploring the river area around it, I moved further into the city, and switched over to a hostel. I barely found the hostel, as it was on a residentialesque street on the edge of the business district. The buildings were all 4-6 stories high, and each block was pretty much one huge continuous building with a bunch of different entrances, and then subdivided up inside.

The hostel was decent. Very new, so nice and clean without beat up furniture. The room I was in only had 4 beds, which is about as good as it gets for shared accommodation. Here's a shot of part of the room:



Note the large lockers. You needed to bring your own lock, but the front desk let me borrow one of theirs because I hadn't brought one. Hadn't really intended on staying in a hostel as smaller hotels are more my style, but something was going on in Prague at that time and almost all of the hotels were booked, so I had no choice.

Unfortunately that lower bunk was taken by a Russian who is probably the world record holder in snoring volume, so I didn't get much sleep. That's the primary reason I avoid hostels, there is always one ridiculously loud snorer.

There are a ton of Segways in Prague. The locals don't use them. They are all Segway tours. Prague is a relatively small place, so I suppose it makes sense to use Segways, but I grew to hate them after working in downtown DC for many years and watching tourists riding them around and constantly clogging the sidewalks. Seems like walking would be easier, but I'm admittedly biased.

Due to the popularity of the sidewalk cloggers, there are also a bunch of these:



which I found amusing.

I hadn't really made any kind of plan for Prague. My time there was spent just walking around the city, back and forth over the bridges, and checking out little markets, cemeteries, chatting with locals, and riding the tram around aimlessly to see the city. I'll spare you those photos, but here's one of what is and isn't allowed at the main cemetery:




Prague wasn't all that interesting. It is a nice city, but I never need to go back.

Next up was Bucharest, which I headed toward by train, via Budapest. Here's the Budapest train station:



which is almost as impressive as the sweet kabobs you can get right outside it:



I'd been to Budapest before, so I was OK with just passing through this time. Budapest is superior to Prague in pretty much every way you can imagine. It's just a really wonderful city (or cities, Buda and Pest) to explore and enjoy. Great food, wonderful culture, and nice places to walk and explore the city. Superb place to rent a bicycle and just bike around without a plan.

The train from Budapest to Bucharest was pretty standard:



only had one other person in my compartment, which is infinitely better than being full with three people. Also met a young American couple in the next compartment and chatted with them a good bit.

Here's what came with the train fare for food:



I gave my coffee to the Americans because I don't drink it. The cookies were not horrible.

Not many photos from Bucharest. The city was a little dreary. The women were beautiful. The food was somewhat similar to Czech. Lots of thick soups and stews:



and yes, that's another beer. Same deal in Romania. Only spent a few days here checking out the city and walking around. The boat I was joining in Crete was changing their plans and things were kind of up in the air where I was going to meet with them, so I spend a lot of the time in Bucharest doing logistics stuff instead of exploring. Checked out a few parks and some grocery stores. Prices for everything were cheap, including both food and lodging, and quality was good. I would definitely go back. Made sure to eat some sarmale, which are Romanian cabbage rolls, as well as some ciorba which is a sour soup I'd never heard of. The closest thing I could compare it to is borscht, but it's still nothing like it.

From Bucharest, it was on to Sofia, Bulgaria by train:



those dogs were at pretty much every train stop. They weren't aggressive - they were super friendly. Of course they were hoping for a scrap of some kind, but they also just wanted a little attention and some shade. They got some at the Bulgarian border, we waited there for about two hours before the train crossed over:

The way this kind of entry works is that the train stops at the border, gets clearance, then enters the country. Then it stops again and the border control guys get on the train and collect all the passports. Sometimes they ask you questions, something they don't. If they ask questions, you usually get asked where you are coming from, where you are going, and where you plan to stay while in the country. Sometimes they demand an address of a hotel or a friend in the country.

This crossing went pretty smoothly. They didn't really ask anything, and after sitting there for about an hour or so, they came back on the train and handed our passports back with entry stamps.

Things got a little sketchier when the train arrived at Sofia. It was late at night, around 23:00 or so when we finally pulled in, an hour or two late. My Project Fi service was working, and I had already booked a hotel and notified them I'd be arriving late in the evening.

The point where things got sketchy was disembarking at the train station. This was the final stop for the train, and everyone got off. I was one of the last people off, toward the end. I was carrying my two backpacks. One is a large 70L backpack with all my clothes, sailing gear, etc. The other is a smaller backpack with laptop and electronics.

As I exited the train station, some guys walked up to me and told me I needed to go with them. They didn't identify themselves as police or anything, so of course I was immediately on guard. I refused, at which point they said they were police. It was dark out, and we were just outside the train station. They didn't show badges or anything like that, and I couldn't really make out their clothing very well. They insisted that we go "over there" pointing to an alley so they could check my bags. Most of the other passengers had already left the station at this point, so I was getting a little nervous. I said I'd go back into the station with them, but I was not going "over there". They were getting agitated, and tensions were rising a bit, but they eventually agreed to go back into the station. When we got into the station, I could see they were wearing uniforms, and I was more comfortable with them probably being real police.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean much, as there are corrupt police everywhere. They were still irritated with me for refusing to go with them, but they didn't force the issue, and started searching my bags on a bench in the main station. I was keeping a hawk eye on the guy searching because I was pretty paranoid of having something planted on me, as that is a scam that happens. The last thing I wanted was to have them plant a bag of drugs or something then haul me off to jail or demand a bribe.

I cooperated and was polite the entire time during the search. At this point I figured it was 90%+ that they were legit cops, and was only worried about them planting something. They were still clearly irritated with me for demanding the search happen in the well-lit train station, and they went through every single nook and cranny in my laptop backpack first. They were methodical but professional, and when they came across my small stash of hidden USD, they handed it to me to hold and didn't hassle me about it.

When they finished with the small backpack, they turned to the larger one and asked me to open it. At this point I think they realized I didn't have any contraband, but just felt like giving me a hard time due to my insistence that this happen in the train station. I opened the bag and was very helpful with the search, pointing out all the pockets, etc. They decided to skip the rest of the search a few minutes in, and just told me to close up the bag and that I was free to go.

Not sure what would have happened if I had went with them "over there". Even though they ended up seeming legit, I'm glad I held my ground and demanded the search happen in the train station.

Once I got to my hotel (which I phoned during the search and loudly told that I'd be late arriving due to being searched at the station, so the cops would know someone knew where I was and what was happening), I researched things a bit. Turns out that train station is usually crawling with cops, because it's a pretty big entry point for drugs into Sofia and Bulgaria as a whole. That made me feel a lot better, and I understand why they'd profile a single male traveler with a large backpack.

Still glad I didn't go "over there", though.

Kept with eating the local specialties, here's a shopska salad:



which is also known as a Bulgarian salad. Very tasty. Most of the food was similar to what I had already seen in Romania.


Sofia had a lot of these kind of storefronts:



they are called klek (knee) shops, because you have to kneel down or squat to interact with the owner. They exist due to rental prices of store space being super high when private businesses were first allowed. Most of them are like tiny 7-11s, but some specialize in fruit or other things.

I liked Sofia a lot. Part of that was because there was street art everywhere. All of the electrical utility boxes were covered with art:



there were tons of little markets full of books and art:



and even random blocks of concrete were used as canvas:



Everything was cheap, especially the food. The people were friendly. There were lots of little gardens everywhere. I don't know how to describe it, other than to say it was an extremely welcoming city. I didn't really want to leave. They also had this lemonade drink with ginger in it and some kind of berries that was pretty popular. I put away quite a few glasses of that stuff.

Very surprised by this. I found Prague to be one of the most interesting cities I've visited. I found amazing that all those old buildings were still being used, the backdrop of the castle, the bridges and the river. I am not used to old cities like Prague, and would definitely go back if given the chance.

Chop,

Awesome updates! Keep em' coming

I've always said Prague is the most overrated city in Europe if not the world. I feel like people who haven't traveled around that much in Europe are always stunned by it because zomg old buildings, since for many it's the first city like that they visit. The buildings in Prague are not special compared to about 200 other cities in Europe though, they are just overhyped. There are so many better options for a similar but much more authentic experience. Obviously coming from USA or something Prague is probably great because it's so different, but from a European perspective it really is subpar even in the category of cities with a river and old buildings.

Personally I've been to Prague I think 6 times and I didn't like it the first time around and I still don't. I can't quite put to words what exactly it is about the city that bugs me, it could just be because I generally am pretty hostile towards overrated things (don't get me started on Shawshank Redemption), but I've always felt like the city lacks, I don't know, soul? Like I know there's supposed to be a lot of history there but you just don't feel it in any way, unlike in say Budapest. And at the same time it's not really a vibrant metropole either. I'd much rather spend some time in literally any other European capital.

I spent some time rafting in the Czech countryside last summer though, a lot of cool places there.


Anyway sorry for the derail, keep the updates coming sir!

Maybe Americans are impressed with it because the old buildings didn't blowed up in world wars?

sub

Pretty much what Chuck Bass said. It's kind of hard to put it into words. I've been to a fair number of European cities, including almost all of the Western European capitals. Something about Prague just felt boring/artificial. Even outside of the tourist area, which was jam packed with very standard tourist garbage. Riding the open air tram around the city didn't change my mind.

It was nice to walk across the bridges, and walk up around the castle area. It was also nice to just stroll around the non-tourist parts of town. But it was nothing special or particularly interesting. A place like Budapest completely blows Prague out of the water in this respect. Like Chuck said, you just feel it in Budapest. Places like Vienna, Tallinn, Madrid, Berlin, etc all have a certain vibe to them. Prague just felt kind of empty.

After some days in Sofia, the sailboat was ready for me to join them in Greece. I reluctantly got on a plane and flew down to Heraklion, which is a city on the island of Crete. The flight had a brief layover in Athens, which would have been fine except that I almost missed the connection to Heraklion because the greeks decided to freak out about my life jacket.

Because I sail a lot, I carry sailing gear with me. One of the things I carry is a life jacket aka PFD (personal flotation device). This is the one I use:



it's a good PFD, built for offshore sailing. If you fall in the water, it automatically inflates. That's useful especially if you get knocked unconscious while falling overboard. The downside is that the method of inflation is via a small co2 cartridge. There is a little pill that rapidly dissolves on contact with water, which causes the cartridge to release co2 which then inflates the vest.

Airlines are not fond of people bringing compressed gas cartridges on the plane. I'm very used to this, and I always check the airline I'm flying to make sure it is allowed, and how - sometimes it is only allowed as cabin baggage, sometimes only checked baggage.

It is also always a hassle to go through security, as they often freak out when they see you have a compressed gas cartridge on you, even when you declare it in advance before it shows up on the scanners.

There was no issue flying Sofia -> Athens, but as soon as I tried to go through security in Athens, they freaked out. They told me it was not allowed, that I could not travel with it, etc. I'm pretty used to hearing that, because most airport security personnel are clueless about this this kind of thing. The problem this time was that I had a tight connection that I couldn't afford to miss. Eventually things got resolved in the nick of time, but it really is an enormous pain in the ass to travel via air with one of these.

That said, I did eventually make my flight right as the doors were closing, and was in Heraklion that night. I got a hotel room and awoke to a sweet view:



though not so sweet in the bus station where I needed to catch a bus to the town that the sailboat was docked in:



also managed to get a pretty sweet entry for my collection of "no dogs allowed" / "no dog pooping" signs:



they don't usually draw out the actual poop.

Met up with the sailboat owners, and did a small provisioning run in a local grocery store. Saw a cut-your-own-bananas stand which was a new one for me:



The red thing is the knife that you cut your bananas off with.

after that, we didn't wait long before casting off lines and heading out:



on the way to Malta, our next stop.


One of the other sailing related things I've been lugging around with me is this:



That's a 1g/4l plastic bag filled with a handline fishing setup. Inside is 100ft/30m of parachute cord, a few feet/meters of bungee cord, and a fluorocarbon leader connected to the lure you see. The rocking thing about this setup is that everything fits easily in that bag for simple stowage, and it's very easy to set up and break down. One end has the lure, the other end ties to the boat in two places with strike tension on the bungee cord, last bit of the paracord used as a failsafe connection.

It worked immediately, we caught this guy just a few hours after leaving Crete:



which I was both pleased and surprised at. The Med is extremely overfished, so I hadn't been very optimistic about landing anything. I think we hit this tuna all of an hour or so after I set up the trolling handline. He was a little under 15kg/33lbs. Nice size, and very tasty. Definitely the right way to start off a sailing trip!

Pretty much, yes. But also I'm from South America, where every building older than 500 years is a ruin on top of a mountain, not a functional building in the middle of the city.

I approve of the "Cut your own bananas".

still an awesome thread, thanks

You've got some ruins hidden away down in the jungles, too. Don't sell yourself short!

The best thing about Prague is the Zoo. Next up are the beers and food I would come back for. I just realized I don't rate the place just for the city very high either.

Nice updates, appreciated!

Here in USA#1 some ***hole would steal that knife every day.

Out-freaking-standing! I was going to suggest one of those little Popiel one-foot long fishing rigs, but you would never have landed a fish like that. That's so cool that you got him with such a small plug. That would normally be used to go after a 12 inch trout in freshwater.

Some guys in the Thailand thread were asking about cost estimates for sailing, figured this was a better place to answer them.

The estimate that I gave is for crewing on someone else's sailboat, not for sailing your own.

This boat is a 50ft / 16m monohull.

Yes, you work on the boat, but the work is just the operation of the boat and dealing with anything that comes up. It's not like a fixed special routine of anything in particular, other than taking your turn at watch, cooking, and cleaning. If something breaks, you help fix it. If a situation arises, you pitch in. For the most part you are just chilling and doing watches.

I didn't book this on a website. The owners emailed me directly after reviewing a profile I have set up on a crewing website. We exchanged emails for a bit, and then they asked me to join them on their passage. There are a bunch of websites for matching owners and crew, including Findacrew, Floatplan, OceanCrewLink, and so on. Think of them as dating websites, except the match owners with crew. You fill out a profile, look at other profiles, exchange messages, etc.

The reason I have the sailing expense above listed so low is because the only thing you really have to pay for on a passage is the food you eat. This is usually accomplished by everyone heading to a supermarket, and buying a ton of food for an estimated period of time. The costs are then usually split evenly, with people also often buying personal snack foods on their own dime. Due to the nature of sailing, most of the foods you buy are simple and easy to prepare, like rice, beans, pasta, etc. Because you are buying a large amount, you usually buy bulk quantities. All of this results in a very low per-day per-person spending amount.

On top of this, any fish you catch ends up supplementing the provisions you buy. On a 23 day passage from Ecuador to French Polynesia, we caught a fish pretty much every single day we put the lines in the water, and when we got to French Polynesia, we had barely touched the chicken/beef/etc meats that we had bought in Ecuador.

Sometimes owners will ask for a flat daily contribution. It should never exceed $15, unless you are on a really swank boat or living it up in an expensive area.

Sometimes owners will want you to chip in for fuel expenses, marina/docking expenses, and certain customs fees. Some of that is reasonable, some is not. Depends on the situation.

Every situation is different, and what you are expected to contribute monetarily will also be affected by how much sailing experience you have and the other skills you can pitch in with.

As far as present day goes, I flew into Phuket from the Maldives at the end of March, spent about a week there, then flew over to Koh Tao (little island in the Gulf of Thailand) where I've been chilling out for the last two weeks learning how to dive.

Locked up my Open Water Diver certification, then decided to get the advanced version as well. Can now dive to 30m and have spent the last couple of days doing fun dives and crushing the fruit smoothie scene.

Probably going to shorten the Vietnam visit or possibly even eliminate it in favor of just staying here in Thailand. Loving it here.

The Solomons -> Singapore thing is still on, so I'll fly out to the Solomons at the start of June for that. Need to pick up some anti-malaria meds as both the Solomons and Papua New Guinea are classified as high risk areas, and Indonesia as a medium risk. Gotta do some visa stuff for Indonesia as well.

Haven't been updating because the internet on Koh Tao is crazy slow. Someone told me yesterday they have no fiber optic cable link and rely on a microwave transmission to the mainland. Yikes.

I'm pretty surprised that the crew is even asked to contribute to things monetarily. I knew you didn't get payed from previous posts (which also surprised me), but jeez. This should go in the stingy thread.

You had earlier experiences where they did pay for your plane tickets and such though?

Goose - every passage is different, every owner is different. I've been on boats where I never paid anything for anything, including food. Also been on a boat (at the start) where I definitely paid too much for "expenses" because I didn't know any better. Have also had people pay for plane tickets, yes. It's always a case by case thing. While some owners are certainly stingy (and some even try to make money off crew by overcharging on "expenses"), others are very generous. It's important to keep in mind also that it's an owner's market out there, for lack of a better term. Lots more people want to crew on sailboats than there are crewing slots for.


Another question from the Thailand thread:

Who you sail with depends on each passage.

I don't own a boat, mostly because I don't want to be restricted to where my boat is, and because boats are an enormous headache to own. I decline paid opportunities because there are strings attached there that you don't have when you are a volunteer crew.

Miami to Dominican Republic was 4 people total. A programmer from NYC quit his job, bought a boat, and put up a post on Couchsurfing asking for volunteers to help sail it to the DR from Miami. None of us had ever met each other before we all arrived in Miami. We split food expenses, and that was the extent of the cost for the 3 of us that didn't own the boat.

Generally you are sailing with 1-2 owners, and 1-2 other crew members on most sailboats. The usual total number of people on board is around 2-5.

like what? apologies if covered before, i only pop in occasionally

My uncle is wealthy enough to own a boat but won't buy one along these lines. Actually lives near some very nice lakes. Says it's much more convenient to rent a boat from time to time (which he probably rarely ever does actually anyway).

He also told a story about attending the boat of his former boss (who is legit rich) on a lake in Switzerland on a beautiful weekend. No one else was around, and apparently, most people at this harbour just own their boat to show off. How common is this in your experience?

Yeti - think of it as volunteering to help your friend build a deck, as opposed to being hired to build one. There are different expectations that come with being paid to do something. When you are a volunteer, things are more relaxed and informal.

blind squirrel - your uncle's boss gave a pretty standard viewpoint. The nicer the boat, the more likely it is to be a status symbol, and the less likely it is to actually be used. There are a lot of boats out there that haven't left their spot in the marina for years. The time that I spend is more often around boats owned by people who have just retired and are sailing around the world. These boats get a lot more use, because people are generally living on them and living out their dreams. Like your uncle, I could buy a boat if I wanted to, but I'd much rather enjoy experiencing different boats in different places with different people and not deal with all the headaches that come with actually owning one.

When did you arrive in Malta? Pics pls.