Given this is our half-way mark, many of you are probably wondering, “how did they get here?” or “what does a typical day look like?”. Allow me to tell you. The description below is what happens on most days but there are variations depending on how far we need to drive that day. We averaged 114km per day in our first half.
We stay in apartments (hardly no hotels) equipped kitchens and washing machines and almost all with aircon. The sample photo below is a studio in Sofia BULGARIA.
John sets his iPhone alarm (George Michael’s “Wake me up before you go-go”) to 6am to get up and run. Paris and Leo then get up an hour after that and get ready for travel. John returns 2hrs after wake-up. We all plan our drive for the day – enter it into John’s iPhone Google Maps and navigation backup and we leave. If John is not running that day, we all get up at 7am and leave at 8am. Every few days we will have a “sleep-in” and wake up at 8am and leave an hour later.
We normally get coffee at a petrol station since they have bigger cups and we can refuel at the same time if required to save time. Most Balkans have espresso or Turkish coffee in tiny cups. We also each have a large plastic cup (that infants use), to hold more coffee we buy at café’s and to avoid spillage since many café cups come with no lid !!! We do not have breakfast but sometimes we will have a BUREK (cheese pastry) if we are especially hungry.
We drive to our destination and make many stops along the way to take photos of impressive landscapes. We will normally see 2-5 attractions along the way that John pre-planned and researched in Sydney and that dictate the route we take. Leo also did research in Sydney on the significance of some of these attractions. If we are crossing a border we will film a dag-dance in front of the speed sign or welcome sign of the new country for the movie.
Once we reach our destination city we will drive to the apartment where we are staying and inspect the kitchen (and also test hot water and aircon). Most dinners consist of hot local dishes sold at specific supermarkets. We will get food after we see apartment so we can get the best selection (early) and relax once and for all when we return to apartment. We will ask our host which supermarkets sell hot food or target big ones on Google. The supermarket hot food is ready to eat and is the same food as in restaurants but half the price and we can eat it in the unit whilst watching a movie. If we cannot find supermarket hot food or we are too tired to look then we eat out.
John showers first so he can get started on photos and blog. Leo is second and Paris only showers in the middle of the night of he cannot sleep or in the morning when John runs. We typically return to apartment around 4pm with food and have dinner between 7-8pm depending on arrival and the number of John photos to clean. John always attends to blog with olives, cheese and wine as is the Golfco Pictures tradition. Leo has orange juice and Paris Coke Zero !!! John will call tomorrow’s accommodation to ensure it is still available since so far, 4 owners have given up our accommodation to others for various excuses but we all know that they have been made higher offers or for longer – these units are not paid up front so we loose nothing – just inconvenience.
Paris does our washing (both dishes and clothes) and Leo attends to the “kitchen” – this is a large tough shopping bag with our dinks and snacks in it – both for the car and when we are relaxing before dinner. Leo puts drinks in fridge on arrival and packs the kitchen bag each morning before we leave.
Most of our stays are overnight and there are several 2-nighters and the capital cities get 3-4 nights when we do washing and have a rest day.
STOP PRESS: Forgot to show you our favourite
brekkie on some days mainly from petrol stations since that is the only place
you can get a bigger coffee cup – THE BUREK (cheese pastry) and KAFE (Latte in
most places). We also show you a typical hot dish dinner from Balkan
supermarkets that do all types of grilled meats, fish, salads and many local
dishes like the equivalent of stuffed veggies, lasagne, lentil soup, bean soup,
eggplant salad and many more which you will see in the film.
The pictures say it all…
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