10 random tidbits about Eastern Europe

          I recently returned from a trip to Eastern Europe. It was a whirlwind experience visiting Turkey, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania. Here are 10 random tidbits from that trip.

1) The best meal of the trip was in...Albania - There were a lot of great meals on the trip, but the meal below was the best of the bunch. What's not pictured was some delicious garlic pita bread.  

        One of the differences in restaurants in Europe and in the USA is speed of service. Restaurants in Europe take their time in preparing the food, so it would often take ninety minutes to two hours to complete a meal. The food was invariably good to great, but time was needed to really enjoy.
        Fast food wasn't always easy to find, although McDonalds seems to be thriving in many parts of Eastern Europe. Gas station food in Europe is dramatically worse than the gas station food in the U.S. I would have given anything to find a 7-11 on some days. Most of the gas station food was pre-packaged croissants with chocolate filling. I hit my threshold after two of those.

2) The roads are typically narrow and inefficient and require high alert driving - There were not very many highways from city to city for most of the trip. In fact, most of the roads required going 35-40 MPH on average and going through the middle of towns and villages. This meant that I had to stay on high alert to get my rental car from crashing into anything. I saw a lot of these signs and the subsequent real life version.

3)  Border crossing between countries ranged from lackadaisical to hard core - Some of the border crossings waved me through with just a passing glance, while others wanted to drag out the crossing with a random interview.
          The weirdest exchange I had was at the Albania-Montenegro border. After asking about my job in English and giving a complicated response, the border guard commented "You speak English very well. Have you ever been to America?" He was startled to learn that I live in America and have for many years. It was then that he saw my passport and waved me through.

        When we were leaving Bosnia, the border guard gave me a hard time, because my rental car contract didn't list Bosnia as a country I was permitted to visit. After arguing for a minute or two about it and even getting an interpreter, he realized that the only thing he could do was let us through since we had already visited Bosnia. None of the other border crossings had any issues with my contract.

4) The language barrier was sometimes a problem - There were a lot of attempted conversations in two different languages. I would say something in English and they would say something in their language. After about 45 seconds of that, I would resort to gestures and body languages. At one point at a gas station in Bulgaria, the clerk eventually took out her iphone and asked me to type my question into google translate. That worked pretty well!

5) The costs between countries varied dramatically - Hotel nights varied dramatically depending on the country I was visiting. 4 star hotels in Serbia and Romania were less than $40/night on the low end. A similar hotel in Dubrovnik, Croatia was 3 times more than that. The more expensive countries tended to also have highways and the corresponding tolls to pay for it. Croatia and Slovenia were by far the two most expensive countries. The further east I went the price dropped down.
          My favorite hotel was the Azure Cave Suites next to Cappadocia, which was around $50/night. The rooms were actually caves, but the reason why it was the best was due to the outstanding food and service. Here's a picture for reference.

6) Some things are unforeseeable - One of the evenings we flew back into Istanbul, we came back to a quiet and not very crowded airport. As we got back into our hotel, the security made us go through a medal detector and x-ray machine for our backpacks. We thought this was odd, but didn't think too much more about it. Once we arrived back to our hotel and got on the internet, we realized that there had been a terrorist attack on the other Istanbul Airport at the same time we had landed at the less crowded airport across town. Although I have had other close calls in my travels, this one hit home and made me a little bit anxious and I couldn't sleep. We flew the next morning to Serbia without incident, but it was a reminder that we live in an unpredictable and dangerous world at times. Of course, there was a coup attempt a couple weeks later, so it wasn't even the worst day of the year to be in Turkey.

7) Comparisons - Based on my travels, I've become a bit of a waterfall snob. I would rank Plitvice as a top 10 worldwide waterfall, but it's a 2nd or 3rd tier location compared to Victoria Falls/Iguazu (1st tier). In the U.S., I'd rank Multnomah Falls in Oregon and vicinity and Niagara Falls higher than Plitvice. That being said, it has some unique characteristics and definitely worth a visit if you ever get to Croatia.

Another comparison I made was Belogradchik Rocks as a mini-Southern Utah National Park, but with some fortress walls surrounding a few of them.

The Montenegro coast line is similar to California's, but with cities:

Durmitor National Park in Montenegro reminded me of a national park in the rocky mountains.

This bridge in Bosnia doesn't remind me of anything. It has survives some major wars.

This was my favorite castle in Hunedoara, Romania:

This was a cool spot on an island near Dubrovnik:

To end this post, here were My 3 favorite places:

8) Cappadocia (Turkey) - My day at Cappadocia was my favorite memory of the entire trip. The sunrise hot air balloon ride should be on everyone's bucket list. The geology and rock formations are pretty unique and it was just amazing!

9) Lake Bled and the Julian Alps (Slovenia) - Lake Bled and the vicinity has some of the best scenery in the world. There's a wedding chapel on an island in the middle of the lake and a castle overlooking it. This would be a great honeymoon location. After viewing the lake, the drive through the Julian Alps is jaw dropping.

Julian Alps:

10) Pamukkale (Turkey) - I hadn't heard much about Pamukkale until a few years ago, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations. The entrance requires you to go barefoot walking up travertine where there are a lot of pools you can wade into. It was a unique and interesting place to visit.

Why the law of specificity is so important

         One of my biggest goals in high school was to run a really fast mile as a member of the track team. As a junior, I was one of the top two milers on the team and I had lofty ambitions to improve dramatically on my PR as a senior. Unfortunately, I completely whiffed on my off season strategy because I did not follow or understand the law of specificity. In my defense, I had also never heard of the law of specificity.

       To provide more backstory, I had a reasonably successful cross country season improving my 5K time almost 90 seconds from my junior year. After the season ended, it was basically winter in Minnesota and the team practices disbanded until track season. My very poor strategy I planned without consultation was to run 40 miles per week on average. Almost all my runs were both alone and at a much slower pace than what I wanted to run the mile in. Fast forward to spring and I wasn't any faster than the year before...I was actually slower. It was very frustrating to work so hard and then regress. I gave myself a gold star for effort;)

 

      What is the law of specificity? It means that you should be mimicking what you would do in a performance in your training. The more you can replicate performance conditions, the better. What did my training do for my mile time? Not much. My training method was long and low intensity running wearing different shoes on a different surface than my future races. In retrospect, I would give myself an A+ for dedication and effort and an F for training strategy.

      

        To apply the law of specificity, I should have been wearing the exact same spikes as race day, running high intensity intervals on a track surface that would have acclimated my body to race pace. The A+ strategy would have been doing speed training on a track 2-3 times per week at race pace and faster. Mixing in base runs would have been OK, but the improvement would have happened primarily through the anaerobic workouts. The mile requires at least 25% of your training to be anaerobic. In the 800 meters, it's closer to a 50/50 split of aerobic to anaerobic workouts.

        Fortunately, I didn't let the first few weeks of track running slower times dictate my whole season. At some point, my father reached out to the BYU track coach who gave him the advice that speed training was what I needed to turn the season around. Once I applied the law of specificity, I improved dramatically in a different event: the 800 meters. My last race of the year put me in the top 20 all-time 800 meter performances in school history, which still stands today.

       How does this law work in other arenas? I believe that standardized test taking requires replicating test conditions in practice. I've also learned that rather than looking up the answers before figuring them out, you should struggle with the question first. Your retention rate is much higher after you struggle and then learn the proper strategy.

 

       I would think it would work in public speaking, playing musical instruments, giving presentations, etc. You are generally more prepared if you have already replicated the conditions of the performance in advance. If you are prepared, you shall not fear is a good rule of thumb.

  

Denver Broncos story

         Most of my friends know that I am a big sports fan, especially of college football. Despite my affinity for college football, I do not follow the NFL very closely at all. For whatever reason, the NFL never had the same appeal to me as college football.
         One of the best players to ever play for my alma mater was Steve Young. Once he graduated from BYU in the early 1980s, he bounced around from a defunct football league called the USFL, then went to a terrible Tampa Bay Buccaneers team before eventually being traded to the San Francisco 49ers. In a lot of ways back then, the 49ers were a model franchise with a great team overall.
         Steve Young became Joe Montana's backup quarterback and eventually took over for him and had a hall of fame career. Since Steve Young was so successful, many people from Utah where BYU is located adopted the 49ers as their team. Consequently, the 49ers apparel was being sold all over the sporting good stores in Utah.

       Of course, Steve Young ended up retiring eventually. Correspondingly, the level of interest from the State of Utah fans waned and the apparel sales seemed to suffer as a result. I don't know if all the stores got the memo right away that Steve Young was the sole reason that people from Utah were wearing 49er apparel.
        This is where I re-enter the story. It was a couple years after Steve Young retired and I was shopping in Utah where I found a very nice 49ers Starter brand jacket that are normally very expensive for about 90% off. Despite the fact that I didn't follow the 49ers, I snagged the jacket and put it into my wardrobe. I didn't really need it for a few years while I lived in Florida.
        Fast forward a few years later to 2006 when I had moved to Denver for graduate school where it is very cold in the winter. I would wear my 49ers jacket here and there and nobody ever commented on it. It was warm and it looked it looked something like this:

         That's not me in case anyone is wondering;)
          One particular day I wore my 49ers jacket was on New Year's Eve in 2006. I was traveling that day and had just come back from the airport. There were numerous people giving me dirty looks in the terminal and especially on the parking shuttle. Finally, one of the persons staring at me spoke up and told me about an NFL game between the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers that had just ended. The 49ers were double digit underdogs with a losing record and the Broncos only needed to win to make the playoffs. The game apparently went into overtime with the 49ers ended up winning the game in a heartbreaker. The Broncos got knocked out of the playoffs. That was the source of everyone's ire! I knew nothing about any of this until just then.
       This is the game recap: http://espn.go.com/nfl/recap?gameId=261231007
       I stopped wearing that jacket for the rest of the Denver winter. The irony was 6 months later, I had landed a job in the bay area and the 49ers jacket fit right in. That's life.