#balkanblitz

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#BalkanBlitz: Day 30/30 #Skopje, #Macedonia This is it. The finish line. I’m absolutely exhausted after this long month on the road: 9 countries, 30 days, 30-something spomeniks; several thousand miles and more rakia and burek than can possibly be healthy. My feet are blistered, my backpack is falling apart, and when I get home tomorrow night I’m probably going to sleep for a week. Thank you all for tagging along, for liking, sharing, commenting, and for generally participating in the adventure. Let’s finish with a colourful one. Right now, Skopje is in the middle of staging its ‘Colourful Revolution’. Citizens here have been protesting against their government for weeks, holding marches against a regime accused of surveillance and wiretapping, rising nationalism and criminal extravagance. The symbolic target of these protests has been the wave of new monuments erected around the city, decorations on which the government has spent more than 600 million Euros in the last few years alone. Pictured here is a memorial panel on Gotse Delchev Boulevard... now freshly redecorated by protesters armed with paintball guns. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Skopje)

[darmonrichter]

#BalkanBlitz: Day 26/30 #Veles, #Macedonia Found four more spomeniks yesterday, while cruising around the Macedonian countryside. Everything was going so well – until our hire car got rammed by a drunken police officer. Anyway, this was my favourite location of the day: the Memorial Ossuary at Veles. Built in 1979, the monument houses the remains of around 100 local partisans who gave their lives fighting the Nazi occupation during WWII. It’s a beautiful structure… and it was nice to see a #Yugoslav monument so well maintained. The ossuary even had its own caretaker, who was kind enough to give us a tour of the interior. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Veles, Macedonia)

[darmonrichter]

#BalkanBlitz: Day 23/30 #Tirana, #Albania I’m in Albania now, braving torrential rain as I explore the capital city. It’s a strange and wonderful place, and absolutely nothing like any of its neighbouring countries. Pictured here is the Pyramid of Tirana, one of the city sights I was most excited to visit. The pyramid was opened in 1988, intended to serve as a mausoleum for Albania’s communist dictator, Enver Hoxha. After the communist period came to an end however, the people decided that their former ruler didn’t deserve that privilege. The pyramid served as a conference centre for a while, then during the Kosovo War it became a base for NATO forces in the area. These days though, it’s largely abandoned – a crumbling giant in the heart of the city, awaiting an uncertain future. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Tirana, Albania)

[darmonrichter]

#BalkanBlitz: Day 13/30 #Željava, #Croatia Found this chap earlier on, slowly falling apart outside an abandoned airbase in Croatia. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Željava Air Base)

[darmonrichter]

#BalkanBlitz: Day 12/30 #BanjaLuka, #Bosnia Yesterday was the strangest day of this trip so far. We started in Banja Luka, a town in the north of Bosnia, where the local spomenik (pictured) features a series of bold socialist-realist panels: a pictorial account of the battle between the country's socialist revolutionaries and the occupying Nazi forces, all painstakingly carved in white stone. After that things got weird. Landmines, bears, a plague of dead frogs and the single most unsettling place I've ever visited. I'll be writing about that day in full, soon enough. In the meantime though, we just arrived back in Croatia - where we'll be spending the next few days around the Plitvice Lakes. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Banja Luka)

[darmonrichter]

#BalkanBlitz: Day 4/30 #Užice, #Serbia Last night we stayed in Užice, a really attractive city in western Serbia. Just north of there is the monumental complex pictured here – the ‘Kadinjača Memorial Complex to the Soldiers of the Workers Battalion.’ The structures were raised from 1952 to 1979, built around a tomb holding the remains of local soldiers who fought against Nazi occupation during the Battle of #Kadinjača. Built up high on a hilltop, the place has amazing views and a really tranquil atmosphere. This morning’s visit was a welcome moment of rural calm… before we drove into the noise and chaos of Belgrade just earlier this evening. Photograph by Darmon Richter / The Bohemian Blog (at Kadinjača)