A New Adventure Brews . . .

With our travel benefits on hand, Nicole and I find ourselves trying to venture to more unique places that are off the typical tourist path. Starting this week, we are off to the Balkans countries, or the former Yugoslavia. It's a part of the world people don't really think about, particularly due to its turbulent past. These countries were under a brutal dictatorship for decades and when Tito finally died, these nations found themselves fighting amongst each other.

This was a fairly recent event that culminated in U.S.-led airstrikes and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic and others convicted of war crimes. Most Americans didn't really understand why we were all of a sudden bombing targets in the Balkans, or perhaps didn't care because the 24 hour news cycle had favored the juicier topic of Bill Clinton's affair with an intern. I took a human geography class in college, and we were still discussing Bosnia as a failed state, yet that and other countries involved in the war are all part of our upcoming Balkans road trip.

It was not an easy trip to plan for numerous reasons. For one, border crossings are not as straightforward or streamlined like their EU counterparts. Second, most rental car companies aren't keen on their cars being taken into neighboring states. Third, there's a problem with infrastructure. I spent over 30 mins on the phone with AutoEurope trying to circumvent the one-way rental car fee and the guy was telling me I could take a train from Tirana in Albania all the way to Croatia. This all seemed fine until I researched it more and found that this particular train route has been spotty since 2015. Sometimes it doesn't run for months at a time. I didn't want to depend on the Albanian rail system, so we ended up renting from a small company in Croatia and doing a loop and dropping it off in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Nothing is easy.

Things were further complicated by Nicole being a finalist at a screenwriting competition in the Nashville Film Festival, so we will be traveling to the Balkans from . . . Nashville. But that gives us a chance to see the Parthenon, an icon of the Balkans southern neighbor, Greece, but reconstructed for some reason in Nashville. It will no doubt be a trip of differing viewpoints, cultures, and ideals. Wish us luck.