GetDotted Domains

Viewing Thread:
"Travelling"

The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.

Thu 25/05/06 at 02:16
Regular
Posts: 132
This is a bit of a mixed post, firstly I want to say it's nice to see the forums are back :), they're looking much more professional, which definitely suits the image of the rest of the site. Are there any ex-SR crew who I knew working for Freeola now?

Secondly, this is a blatent GAD attempt because I'm poor and need to buy stuff, but it's also to chat about my plans for the summer and hopefully get more people travelling to countries that you wouldn't normally think of as holiday destinations.

Last July I had my first proper backpacking experience, I'd had many previous trips where I'd go to specific city for a few days and come home, but a mate asked if I'd like to spend just under a month in Eastern Europe with him over the summer and I jumped at the chance. After a few days of checking out cheap flights and talking about possible destinations, we decided to skip the "commercial" Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Poland etc.) and experience countries that have a very different culture to the UK, we were going to travel to Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.

Anyway, we did this trip and without a doubt it was the most amazing experience of my life, one that really made me think about how good life is over here. We had the whole journey planned out from start to finish, where we would sleep, which trains we would catch, how many nights we'd stay in each location etc, and things really didn't go to plan. Trains were rarely on time; our first journey from Budapest into Romania was supposed to depart at 8PM but didn't arrive at the station until gone midnight, the entire time the board said "delayed 30mins", even 3 hours later the status hadn't changed. Once on the train we had no sleep, we were woken up at least every couple of hours for ticket inspection or passport control, and it took 3 hours to cross the border. I'll never complain about my train to London being 15 minutes late again. While at face value this might not sound like the ideal holiday, it's experiences like this that make a trip, every mishap is a story to tell.

After a few days our schedule was thrown out the window, certain places we wanted to stay longer having met some amazing people or just loving the vibe of the city, others we wanted to leave fairly quickly, plus we had so many recommendations to visit Croatia we managed to squeeze in a couple of days there on the coast. The most under-travelled countries were definitely the best, Bosnia was amazing because there were very few tourists and the country is one of the most beautiful I have ever been too. Countries like this are given such a bad image on TV, but Bosnia is a safe and incredible country, with my favourite town in the world, Mostar. Check out a few pictures here, here and here.

The best bit about travelling these countries is that for the most part you don't need to have a plan, you can almost always find a room when you arrive in a city, even during the summer, same goes for transport; you can generally buy train and bus tickets a couple of hours before departure without a problem, when you feel like moving on, go to the station and pick a destination from the departure board.

Another great thing is the price. Once you're there, living is practically free and hostels are far more relaxed than in Western Europe. In Romania we were given free beer and cigarettes at our hostel! Shame I don't smoke. In Bulgaria you could buy a bottle of local larger claiming to be 10% alcohol for just 18p, and it actually tasted fantastic! To top it off, the kebab stand down the road sold kebabs for 40p, I was in heaven!

Anyway, this year I have decided to travel independently, with only a basic plan of which countries I'd like to go to and having done some research on what there is to see in those countries. I'm going for 7 weeks and have only book my first hostel, three days in Athens. From there I intend on trekking up to Albania, then Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Moldova and Ukraine. I leave on June 17th.

If anyone has even the slightest interest in travelling to the Balkans, don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have, it really is a treasure that should be visited before it is engulfed by the EU and flocks of tourists.
Sat 27/05/06 at 08:45
Regular
Posts: 19,415
Wow that's going to be some trip, good luck to you, hope you have a great time.

I'd love to do something like that myself, maybe in a few years. At the moment I'm planning to live in Japan for a few months. Love the country, have been learning the language a year now. Would you be interested in backpacking the asian countries at all?

Oh and will you have a problem with the languages on your trip? How's your Turkish and Ukranian? :)
Thu 25/05/06 at 08:20
Regular
Posts: 11,038
GAD attempt!
Thu 25/05/06 at 02:16
Regular
Posts: 132
This is a bit of a mixed post, firstly I want to say it's nice to see the forums are back :), they're looking much more professional, which definitely suits the image of the rest of the site. Are there any ex-SR crew who I knew working for Freeola now?

Secondly, this is a blatent GAD attempt because I'm poor and need to buy stuff, but it's also to chat about my plans for the summer and hopefully get more people travelling to countries that you wouldn't normally think of as holiday destinations.

Last July I had my first proper backpacking experience, I'd had many previous trips where I'd go to specific city for a few days and come home, but a mate asked if I'd like to spend just under a month in Eastern Europe with him over the summer and I jumped at the chance. After a few days of checking out cheap flights and talking about possible destinations, we decided to skip the "commercial" Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Poland etc.) and experience countries that have a very different culture to the UK, we were going to travel to Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.

Anyway, we did this trip and without a doubt it was the most amazing experience of my life, one that really made me think about how good life is over here. We had the whole journey planned out from start to finish, where we would sleep, which trains we would catch, how many nights we'd stay in each location etc, and things really didn't go to plan. Trains were rarely on time; our first journey from Budapest into Romania was supposed to depart at 8PM but didn't arrive at the station until gone midnight, the entire time the board said "delayed 30mins", even 3 hours later the status hadn't changed. Once on the train we had no sleep, we were woken up at least every couple of hours for ticket inspection or passport control, and it took 3 hours to cross the border. I'll never complain about my train to London being 15 minutes late again. While at face value this might not sound like the ideal holiday, it's experiences like this that make a trip, every mishap is a story to tell.

After a few days our schedule was thrown out the window, certain places we wanted to stay longer having met some amazing people or just loving the vibe of the city, others we wanted to leave fairly quickly, plus we had so many recommendations to visit Croatia we managed to squeeze in a couple of days there on the coast. The most under-travelled countries were definitely the best, Bosnia was amazing because there were very few tourists and the country is one of the most beautiful I have ever been too. Countries like this are given such a bad image on TV, but Bosnia is a safe and incredible country, with my favourite town in the world, Mostar. Check out a few pictures here, here and here.

The best bit about travelling these countries is that for the most part you don't need to have a plan, you can almost always find a room when you arrive in a city, even during the summer, same goes for transport; you can generally buy train and bus tickets a couple of hours before departure without a problem, when you feel like moving on, go to the station and pick a destination from the departure board.

Another great thing is the price. Once you're there, living is practically free and hostels are far more relaxed than in Western Europe. In Romania we were given free beer and cigarettes at our hostel! Shame I don't smoke. In Bulgaria you could buy a bottle of local larger claiming to be 10% alcohol for just 18p, and it actually tasted fantastic! To top it off, the kebab stand down the road sold kebabs for 40p, I was in heaven!

Anyway, this year I have decided to travel independently, with only a basic plan of which countries I'd like to go to and having done some research on what there is to see in those countries. I'm going for 7 weeks and have only book my first hostel, three days in Athens. From there I intend on trekking up to Albania, then Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Moldova and Ukraine. I leave on June 17th.

If anyone has even the slightest interest in travelling to the Balkans, don't hesitate to ask any questions you might have, it really is a treasure that should be visited before it is engulfed by the EU and flocks of tourists.

Freeola & GetDotted are rated 5 Stars

Check out some of our customer reviews below:

Continue this excellent work...
Brilliant! As usual the careful and intuitive production that Freeola puts into everything it sets out to do, I am delighted.
10/10
Over the years I've become very jaded after many bad experiences with customer services, you have bucked the trend. Polite and efficient from the Freeola team, well done to all involved.

View More Reviews

Need some help? Give us a call on 01376 55 60 60

Go to Support Centre
Feedback Close Feedback

It appears you are using an old browser, as such, some parts of the Freeola and Getdotted site will not work as intended. Using the latest version of your browser, or another browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera will provide a better, safer browsing experience for you.