eastern europe asap | Squat the Planet

eastern europe asap

Jessamyn

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hey ive already seen western europe and now my visa is expiring. thinking about going east and seeing what happens. russia, ukraine,... romania, hungry... its way cheaper and i hear the people are hostipable.

im alone and would like a partner. much safer that way.

whos interested??
 

stove

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...you do know that Romania, Hungary (learn to spell the country you want to visit) and many of the eastern european countries have the same visa system as western europe, right?

Slovenia is incredible!
 

Jessamyn

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yeah all part of the Schengen agreement, but I didn't know Hungary was included.

Slovenia was beautiful didn't see Ljubijana, but the coast was nice and they have some awesome, famous caves that are worth checking out if your still there. The Å kocjan Caves.
 

BazOoka

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also check out autonomous cone called Metelkova there are squated ex military buildings with lots of stuff happening. and then also squated ex bike factory called Rog with huge complex and fun and opened people. bouth are in the center of Ljubljana. there is also a squated swimming pool in Kranj where is lots of gigs and just the whole place is a must see. when have you partied inside a pool before:flush:
 

stove

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Where'd ya end up? Currently in Zagreb, idling to avoid Schengen issues, but heading north from here. To the south the people are really incredible.
 

Jessamyn

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ended up sneaking to italy to stay with my cousin for a while. im planning to go back to berlin to see a lover before catching a flight out of frankfurt mid-november. can't decide to opt for a cheap flight, and risk being caught, or going more under the radar. either way, i must get back into germany.

But heres the deal: i entered spain and 10 days later my passport expired, honest oversight by myself and the spanish governemnt. fast forward and i get a brand new, blank passport in berlin equipped with one of the rfid chips. i leave germany, go about my travels and the first person to look at the new passport is a slovenian border patrol as im taking a bus out of croatia. she scans it, stamps it and give it back no problem. i can't believe that its that simple, that i have a new visa and everythings golden.
 

cranberrydavid

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Schengen issues? What kind of issues? Overstay on the 90 days?
Can you just leave the Schengen area, say like Zagreb, and then reenter and then get a fresh new 90 days again?

Nope. The rule is 90 days out of any 6 months, so if you're going by the book you would need to stay out of the Schengen area for at least 3 months before re-entering .
 

Komjaunimas

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Im currently back in Lithuania, gonna stay here till september. So if ya want to visit drop me a PM, i could arrange sleeping place for you etc... we have quite an underground scene.
 

oki

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i love bosnia. probably hard to enter though., with all the foreign troops there. sarajevo is awsome.
 

kickthatshit

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I wasn't all that impressed with Metalkova; it felt like an alternative shopping mall rather than a squat. The kids at the infoshop were nice, though.

Places to check out outside the Schengen Area:

Bosnia is very easy to enter and exit (if you have a western passport), and the hitchhiking is easy as well; nice, hospitable folks, little suburban sprawl, and almost every road has shoulders rather than curbs. The ability to read cyrillic will help you with navigation in Serbian areas. I would also advise one not to hitchhike at night, and be very careful of wandering around overgrown fields and forests as many, many landmines still remain. If you want to take photographs of ruins, be respectful and don't aestheticize another people's tragedy.

Croatia's nice, the coast is beautiful, and Zagreb seems to have a cozy little radical scene. Split's a beautiful city, but pretty damn boring if you're there for more than a day; there's no easily located counter-culture. The rest of the coast is very scenic, and the coastal cities up towards Slovenia seem to have an active squat scene. Be aware that Croatia has a large and active neo-nazi presence.

I've never been, but friends have told me that English teaching gigs in Turkey are relatively easy to come by, and this can be a good way to wait out your 90 days. Wages are low, so don't expect to make much money.

Kosovo/Kosova is friendly, but didn't seem to have much of interest to travelers. I'm told hitchhiking is doable here, but when you can take a bus across the whole country for five bucks, why bother? Macedonia didn't feel too different from Kosova, but was more ethnically diverse.

Montenegro is gorgeous, but one of the more difficult places in the Balkans to hitchhike. The country looks small on maps, but can take a really, really long time to travel through, as road conditions aren't so good, mountains are abundant, and switchbacks - rather than bridges and tunnels - are numerous. The coast is pretty touristy. Small, off the map mountain towns can get a little dicey at night, and after dark in border towns, you can easily be robbed, so don't stick around.

Serbia is rough around the edges, but worth a visit, anyhow. Only the intellectuals and merchants speak fluent English, so communication can be tricky. Russian is a good second language to know. Hitchhiking is easy, just know where you're going and remember your "hvala". Even with the economic reforms, Serbia still has the feeling of an old time socialist society. Novi Sad is a nice, quiet university town that has a friendly infoshop. Beograd is big and intimidating, but it's not a bad place to make some new friends and go out drinking and dancing.

Construction sites are abundant in every Balkan country (real estate's a great way to launder dirty money...), and most make excellent places to sleep on a rainy night. If you enjoy different music, bring a portable radio so you can listen to all the various types of music on the Balkans. Every ethnic and national group prefers a slightly different type of music, and different musical instruments are associated with different regions, so each country's radio stations have their own particular flavor. (Turbo-folk reminds me of ranchero...) Between Zagreb and Thessaloniki, don't expect to find much of a punk scene.

Didn't go to Albania, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, or Belarus...

Have fun.
 

llamer

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excellent post, kickthatshit, except for your final word. just because albania, et al, lack punk scenes, doesn't mean they somehow are not worth visiting. unless you're trying to keep them a secret...

I'd also recommend, although i have a feeling the OP is no longer visitng this thread, that she go to Greece (probably not in the Schengen zone, due to its non-contiguity with the rest of the EU?), because it's AWESOME, although not very punk and more just an extremely radical anarchist scene, which can be less fun than educational and inspiring....also Romania is cool, and as with Bulgaria, full of nice people but lacking in above-ground punk culture. At least it was five years ago when I was there. Bucharest probably still has shows in clubs, and you'll always find the few random anarcho-punks, but it's rare...i woudn't even bother searching for the scene unless you had the time to spare. everyone under the age of 35 speaks english in those countries, by the way, so don't worry...

anyways, the only thing that still needs to be said is how to rid our consciouses of the false concept that "eastern" europe is categorically cheaper than western europe. In a nutshell, it's trivial. At best, over the course of a week you'll spend half as much, but with the inclusion of all of these nations into the EU/Common Market, you see what only appears to be a modest discount as opposed to a full-on cheaper spending-spree kind of difference. Bosnia, I once read, had food prices which rivaled Germany, due to the fact that the government had contracts and agreements with the World Bank and other lenders which regulated the economy to such a degree that everyone was basically left in total poverty...Maybe it's recovered but that what I read in a zine about five years back...and a lot of these places don't have the same supercenter-type stores that you see in western europe, in which certain fixed commodities are nice and cheap (i.e. beer). whatever though, hopefully that has loosened up a little since i was there (but it never does, does it?)
 

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