Croatia - Albania

We then passed by Dubrovnik (a very nice town but very busy with tourists and raining again) and started with one of the more adventurous drives of our journey to Iran: Passing Montenegro and Albania. Montenegro was not bad at all, we were surprised to actually find it very nice with a beautiful though quite stormy coastline and nice, friendly shaped mountains and hills in the inland. Albania thought, was another story. Here, the streets were very bad – even what was marked in the cards as being a highway did not even have any plaster on it and was full of holes! So it took us more than fourteen hours for less than 400 kilometers! We spent the night - or what was left of it after a very late arrival - in a small hotel that apparently had beend closed during winter. It was very cold and after drawing the curtain we saw why: The window was broken. We fell to bed, completely exhausted. However, after about two hours' sleep we woke up again, freezing. We took all our clothes on that we had with us in our overnight bag. However after another hour freezing cold, we decided to leave and get some warmth in the car, driving towards Greece.

Here, it was nice and warm again. We wanted to take the opportunity to visit Meteora and so we drove straight into the center of the country and to Kalambaka with its famous monasteries and fantastic landscape. Here, sandstone rocks rise from the ground: continuous weathering by water, wind and earthquakes and extremes of temperature turned them into huge rock pillars, were orthodox monasteries are built upon. Very spectacular and beautiful! After Meteora, we continued towards Turkey, where we intended to visit the ruins of the Hethit capital of Hattusha and the Unesco heritage of Goereme. Hmm, Hattusha was a bit cold again and so we sat in a very cold region in a very cold hotel room with a heater in front of us on full power and listened to the rain outside. The next day was even worse - when we got up and looked out of the window, I could not believe what I saw: Snow again!! So the impressing ruins were covered with snow and the hills around were hidden behind thick, grey clouds. So we continued towards Goereme national Park. This is a waste region of very special rock formations. Here, people used to carve their places directly into the rocks. Among Goereme's very interesting and beautiful sites are the richly decorated Tokali Kilise, the Apple Church, and a number of homes and pigeon houses carved straight into the bizarre formations. We really enjoyed the days – the more as it was sunny weather again!