Blogs Archives - Page 15 of 17 - Josef Samuel Wedding and Portrait Photography

Running the Mad Dash in Belgrade, Serbia

It was a lovely spring day in Belgrade. I found Belgrade to be so quiet, calm, and peaceful. And very clean and beautiful. Also had all these intriguing soviet vestiges. One thing I did notice here though were all the refugees sleeping in parks. When I first got off the train and was walking trying to find the hostel, I was walking through a park and noticed all these blankets strewn about everywhere.

On a second look, I realized that people were sleeping in them. I wasn’t expecting it so I was a little surprised but it took a second to see that these folks were all refugees and I almost felt a little rude walking through the park as I didn’t want to disturb them. Below is a photo of one of the parks. Near the station there were a few parks and the other ones were even more full.

By Josef Samuel|2021-05-06T15:28:01-04:00March 7, 2020|World Stories Journal|

Exploring Sofia, Bulgaria

Sofia was a nice, peaceful place. Very Soviet and a lot of eastern orthodox elements there. Compared to Istanbul, Sofia seemed nearly deserted as the population of Istanbul rivals places like Delhi, India or some big cities in China. Lots of people there, so Sofia was very laid back, chill and relaxed. It was a breath of fresh air :)

I took an overnight train/bus from Istanbul (bus to the Bulgarian border then train to Sofia) and I didn’t get much sleep at all because I was talking with the other passengers. We had some really interesting guys from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, a guy from Romania, and some others. It was just us and at like 2am we were all sitting in one train car right after we crossed the border. The lights were on and the train wasn’t moving. Maybe the conductor was still sleeping or something because we had

By Josef Samuel|2021-05-06T15:28:31-04:00March 7, 2020|World Stories Journal|

Surviving a Suicide Bombing Attack

It was early Saturday morning in Istanbul when a blast went through the air. We were out by the popular Sultanahmet square which is at the center of the historic part of Istanbul. I was with friends from Croatia and my good Turkish friend Ozzy (Uzman). Ozzy worked at the hostel we were staying at and we were giving a tour to our friends from Croatia. I had been in Instanbul for weeks and after getting familiar with all the sights, I would go with Ozzy and show Istanbul to the new friends that would arrive at the hostel. Below, here we are with the Croatian group around the same time that the explosion happened with Ozzy on the far left.

It was a cloudy morning but I knew something was very wrong when Ozzy got a call. It was a suicide bombing on a popular tourist spot. In fact, we had

By Josef Samuel|2021-05-06T15:28:46-04:00March 7, 2020|World Stories Journal|