I have been busy with my new travel recently and now I am writing from Meknes in Morocco. I don't have much time so I will give more details when I return to Prague. I left to Denmark the last week of October, then I spent some time in Sweden, then I took a flight to Mallorca in Spain, then to Sevilla and I travelled to Cadiz and Gibraltar. I returned to Spain to take a ferry from Tarifa to Tangier and then I visited Fez. I am already tired from this frenetic pace of travelling but I still have 3 weeks before I go back to Prague. I will try to meet my old friends in Morocco, I have already contacted them and they can host me again.

I have been hesitating a lot if I should comment on my negative reference on couchsurfing in my blog, mainly because it happened many years ago, but as I have been very active in CS during those years and I have met hundreds CSers so far I was asked many times what exactly happened and although I was trying to explain it with patience, it gets very annoying to give explanations on the same topic over and over again. Next time if someone asks me to explain the circumstances of my negative reference I will tell him just to read my blog. It happened a very long time ago but I will do my best to explain everything as precisely as possible.

I have already described my travels to France earlier in my blog. I went to France for the first time in summer 2002 when I was 19 and then I travelled there again in spring and summer both in 2003 and 2004. I was initially visiting my IRC friends who I met on the channels #Paris and #france. I joined couchsurfing in June 2004 and I wanted to visit Bretagne for the first time so I contacted a guy called Damien (his profile is easy to find because he uses the same nickname on CS). I still remember that it was Wednesday when I took a train from Lyon to Rennes and while looking to the calendar I believe that it must have been on July 21st 2004. I was initially looking for a place to stay in Rennes and I asked Damien to host me there, but he told me to come to Arzon because it was by the sea and it was a nice place to visit. While I agreed to go there I didn't find out before going to Bretagne where exactly Arzon was and I asked him to meet me in Rennes. I didn't know that these cities were 100 km far away from each other and it wasn't my intention to ask him to meet me so far away, but unfortunately he agreed with the meeting in Rennes and later blamed me for that. 

When we arrived in the camping I was staying in the tent of his friend Tibo who was a very kind guy and a great host. I would have enjoyed my stay in Arzon because it was a wonderful place, but the relations with Damien weren't good. Firstly, I am usually known as an evasive person and people who are too straightforward make me uncomfortable, but the main thing which I didn't like about him was the way he commented on my behaviour. He treated me like a spoiled child which made me feel so bad that I refused to speak with him. I was discussing the situation with my friends on the internet and they were trying to help me to find another accommodation in Bretagne but we didn't succeed. I was supposed to travel to Bordeaux on Friday 30th and I needed a place to stay till then. I got stuck in the camping and I couldn't leave. My friends told me that I was making a mistake to stay in the camping in this situation but I didn't want to listen to them. 

Then Tibo was supposed to have some friends arriving on Tuesday 27th. As I didn't bring my own tent, I discussed with a Spanish guy called Javier what I should do and he offered to lend me his tent. He also told me that nobody was checking tents during the night so I should try to put it there for free and hope that nobody would find out. I thought it was a great idea, but Damien didn't share my enthusiasm and became very angry instead. Tibo's friends didn't arrive that evening and I could stay there two nights longer. Then one of my IRC friends found someone in Nantes who could host me there for one night and I left Arzon on July 29th. 

Overall, I am willing to admit that it was mainly my fault what happened because I was solving the situation in an unfortunate and certainly inappropriate way but I don't believe that this guy is completely blameless either. For example he can say that I was stupid when I hadn't found out before going to Bretagne where Arzon was and how to get there, but he agreed with the meeting in Rennes although he knew it was 100 km far away. And then, if he had explicitly told me that I could stay in the camping for one week he must have counted on the possibility that I wouldn't be able to leave earlier. I was certainly behaving immaturely at the age of 21 but since that time I have already visited 70 people on 4 continents and I hosted 100 CSers and with most of them I managed to have a good conversation and spend pleasant time. 

I had to answer other questions regarding my reference, e.g. why I didn't leave a negative reference to his profile too and why I didn't delete my profile and create a new one when this reference was actually the first one. Initially I left him a negative reference too but when my friend sent him e-mail and asked him to delete the reference from my profile I could clearly understand from his answer that he would never admit sharing any part of fault and in this case I didn't want to fight with him for the rest of my life and I deleted the negative reference from his profile. I didn't delete my profile because I didn't suppose that I would be still hanging on CS 8 years later with 350 friends and now it is too late to think about it. 

It is very unlikely that I would ever manage to correct what I have done because if I tried I could make everything even worse, but although my stay wasn't finished in a good way I am really glad that I had an opportunity to visit Arzon and get to know Tibo and Javier and I will try to meet them again in the future.

I left to Bulgaria on August 12th with my friend Pavel. We bought a 2 week trip from a travel agency and we stayed in a room in the 3 star hotel Yunona in Sunny Beach. Our flight from Prague was very early in the morning, we had to be at the airport at 4am and the departure was at 6am. After arriving in Burgas we took a bus to our hotel and the journey took one hour although it was only 30 km far away. The first day it rained and it was relatively cold, only around 25°C. We had a lunch in the Chinese restaurant which was close to our hotel. The following day we travelled to Burgas and we bought a parasol there, we got it for 8.50 Leva which was advantageous comparing to renting it on the beach every day. We preferred Burgas to Sunny Beach because there were less tourists and the beach wasn't very crowded.

We were overall satisfied with the quality of our hotel and the cleaning service, but I didn't enjoy the breakfast which was included in the price of our trip. We were served the same food every day and the quality was mediocre, although several times the sausages were burned to the extent that they were inedible. We used to go to the restaurants for a dinner, they were usually not expensive and the food was tasty, but very oily. We went once to the restaurant Djanny which was probably the most popular because in the evening there were long queues and we went several times to the restaurant Troya. I enjoyed fruit cocktails in Sunny Beach, the price was around 5 Leva and I tried many of them, for example Sex on the beach, Tequila Sunrise or Pina Colada.
Before arriving in Bulgaria we planned visiting Istanbul because it was nearby, only 200 km far from Burgas, but when buying a ticket from the company Metro we were told that the journey would take 7 hours. My friend Pavel decided that he didn't want to join me during the trip and he stayed in Sunny Beach and I left to Istanbul alone on August 17th. The journey was long, we waited around one hour at the border and in Istanbul we got stuck in a traffic jam close to the bus station Esenler. Then I had to continue by metro and tram and finally I took a ferry to Uskudar where I arrived around 10.30pm. I met my host and we went for a dinner to a restaurant. My host had a very nice flat in a skyscraper in the modern part of Istanbul called Atesehir on the Asian side. The following day we visited the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia and Basilica Cistern.

We had a lunch in a local fast food. On Sunday my host was busy and I met a couchsurfer who I had met already in Prague weeks ago, we went to the Topkapi Palace and in the evening to Taksim where I ate some spicy mussels on the street and then we went to a bar where we met my host and later we joined him at a disco. We stayed out late and we got to a bed around 5am. The last day we took a ferry to the island close to Istanbul in the Marmara sea, there were no cars but many carriages. We had to pay 10 Liras to enter the beach, we took some photos and then in the evening we ordered home some Turkish pizza and watched the Koran movie Oldboy. In the morning I went to Esenler where I took a bus to Burgas. I went to a beach there and in the evening I returned to Sunny Beach and I went for a dinner with Pavel to a restaurant. During the remaining time in Bulgaria we visited Varna, Nessebar and Burgas again. There were not many things to visit in Varna but Nessebar was picturesque. We swam in the sea there and the waves were big. The last day in Sunny Beach we also swam in the sea and in the afternoon we took a bus to Burgas and finally we returned in Prague around 6pm on Sunday 26th August.

After the return from my African trip I spent a month in Prague. I hosted two couchsurfers during that time and I met many others but otherwise nothing interesting happened. I had to travel to Slovakia for the funeral of my great aunt who died on May 19th at the age of 88 and I got stuck there for 6 weeks because my grandmother broke her left arm during her trip to Poland. I hosted three couchsurfers in my father's flat and we had a good time. One of them was a Finnish girl travelling to Hungary with her dog Chart Polski for a competition which he won and he became an European champion. The second one was an Indian guy living in Australia and the third one was a Japanese guy cycling Europe by bike. We discovered a restaurant in Presov called La Cucaracha with tortillas for 4 Eur and I went there several times to order a vegetarian tortilla (but the chicken one was not bad either). Although it was cold at the end of May and the beginning of June the weather then became extremely hot for Slovakia, the temperature 35-37°C lasted several weeks. I met a couchsurfer from Presov and we used to go together to swim in the dam called Sigord.
I returned in Prague in July and I hosted six couchsurfers here since that time. I am planning to go to Turkey and Bulgaria next month. I haven't decided yet what I am going to do after, there are many possibilities under consideration.

I took a flight from Casablanca to Paris with Easyjet on April 4th. It costed only 80 Eur and the flight took around 3 hours. I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport in the evening and I had to take RER to the city center. I met my host at Porte d'Orléans. He had a nice flat furnished in a colorful African style. I spent 6 days in Paris and the weather wasn't good, most of the time it was cold and rainy. The day after my arrival we visited the Victor Hugo's house at Place des Vosges and on Friday we travelled to Etretat in Haute Normandie (Upper Normandy in English) where we took many photos of the wonderful white cliffs. 

The weather was better than in Paris, the sun was shining. Then we went to a restaurant where we ordered mussels, each of us got a full pot. I couldn't finish eating it although I put a lot of effort. 

On Saturday we went to Haute Normandie again, this time we visited Claude Monet's house and the Japanese garden in Giverny. I met my old IRC friends on Sunday near Bastille and we went to a bar and a restaurant. It was raining a lot during my last day in Paris I went to a tea room with my host and we were walking around Notre Dame and the Eiffel tower. 

I left Paris on Tuesday April 10th when I took a train to Luxembourg. When my host was taking me to a train station we got stuck in a traffic jam so I had to take the metro and I almost missed my train.The journey took 2 hours. I arrived in Luxembourg in the afternoon and I walked around the city and took photos. The city center is small so I saw all the important things within a few hours. 

My host was a Chinese PhD. student but he was not available to meet me until the late evening. It was around 11pm when we met at the train station and we took a train to Esch-sur-Alzette where he lived. I was tired after my trip so I didn't do much during the following 2 days, I just went for a walk in the afternoon. I met a Senegalese guy on Wednesday and we had a drink and shared my experiences about my African trip. On Thursday evening I watched an old Italian horror movie with my host and on Friday I left Esch in the afternoon and I took a train to Luxembourg. I left my luggage at the train station and I went to the Chocolate house where I bought a chocolate on a stick and hot milk. The chocolate melted in the milk and I drank it, it costed 4 Eur 10 cents. Luxembourg is a very expensive country. In the evening I took a Student Agency bus to Prague, the bus didn't arrive on time but it was quite empty so I had two seats for myself and I could sleep a bit during the night. I returned to Prague on April 14th around 6am after having spent 10 weeks on the road. 

I left Saint Louis on March 29th when I took a shared car to Rosso. This time the border crossing wasn't so peaceful as on the way to Senegal. Immediately after I got off the car in Rosso I was surrounded by the crowd of people who made me get in the taxi which took me to the border. There was a Senegalese guy travelling to Nouakchott who joined me and took care of my luggage because the people were very obtrusive. When we got in the room to get a stamp out of Senegal they held us in the room and released us only when I screamed at them and hit someone. Then we took a boat on the other side of the river where we found a shared car to Nouakchott.

We agreed with the driver that we would give him 4000 Ouguiya per person and he would take us home in Nouakchott, but when we arrived there he insisted that we should get out just when we entered Nouakchott or give him 300 Ouguiya more. While I was willing to pay him my friend refused and the driver took us to the police station where we spent around 20 minutes arguing which was quite ridiculous because 300 Ouguiya is equal to 75 Eurocents. Then we came to a settlement and paid him. I didn't have time to eat all day and I was weak but we went to my friend's house and we ate scrambled eggs there. In the evening I found a taxi which took me to Maison des artistes where I met Ridiaw and Papis and spent the last night in Nouakchott. 

The next day I found a truck driver who was going to Dakhla and we left Nouakchott in the evening. The journey took an entire day and we arrived in Dakhla on Saturday evening. I spent one night there and then I took a bus to Agadir on Sunday evening and I arrived there on Monday afternoon. I had a new host there because I didn't manage to reach the previous one. I was very exhausted after the journey but my host Nourry took me to the beach. It was so windy that day that it was impossible to swim. In the evening we went to a night club but we stayed there only an hour. On Tuesday I travelled to Casablanca where I stayed with Younes and on Wednesday April 4th I took a flight to Paris. 

I left Nouakchott on March 22nd early in the morning. A driver of the shared car came to pick me up at Maison des artistes at 5am and we travelled to Rosso. It took around 3 hours to get there. When we were arriving in the south of Mauritania the landscape started to change and it was no more a scorched desert but savannah with a lot of vegetation. I didn't see any baobab tree in Mauritania but in Senegal there were many of them.
When we arrived in Rosso it was surprisingly cold in the morning. I wore my jacket but I was shivering. We found a boat which took us on the other side of the river. The border was calm, I didn't experience any problem while crossing from Mauritania to Senegal (but when I was going back to Mauritania it was completely different, I will mention it later). I had my yellow fever vaccination but nobody wanted to see it, it was required only after I returned from Senegal to Mauritania. I found a shared car to Saint Louis and we had to wait until it was full. The journey took 3 or 4 hours although it was not far away. I called my host and his cousin came to pick me up. My host had a motorbike accident before I came and he spent most of the time lying in a bed but his cousin showed me around.

We took a taxi (which was literally a wreck) in the evening to the beach, but the taxi punctured a tyre immediately and we had to wait for another one. We watched a sunset on the beach and then we returned home. In the morning we took a bus together to Dakar where I met my other hosts. Daly was my CS host and Zinor was his a cousin of his wife. I spent the first day with Zinor, we took a boat to the Ngor island which is a paradise. 

There was a strong wind blowing in Dakar but the beach in Ngor was shielded. I swam in the sea which looked much better than in Mauritania, there were many fishes and urchins. Then we went to the Renaissance Monument. On Saturday I moved to Daly's family house and he showed me around and then we took a boat to Ile de Goree where we visited the House of slaves and I bought some souvenirs. 

Daly bought me a dried baobab fruit but it didn't taste well and it got stuck to the teeth very much. The other day it was the presidential election and we decided it wasn't safe to stay in Dakar so we went to visit the Pink Lake. I enjoyed bathing there a lot, it was like floating in the Dead sea. On Monday we went to a beach and on Tuesday I moved to Zinor and we visited the Pink Lake again. We didn't go to Gambia because we decided it wasn't worth for one day. On Wednesday I returned to Saint Louis where I stayed with my former host for one night.