Why it was easy to make the decision to stay...

decision making...

Seaaa!!!

Todays mission is to get to the sea and see Potcitel, a village on the way recommended by a German Bosnian girl i met about two month ago on the ferry to Brac in Croatia.


After standing in the sun a while, we get a ride from Mostar, with two soldiers from the EUFOR, the European force. They are here to take action if something real unusual or bad happens, in support of local police and military. They are on a long weekend and are going to the Bosnian coast. Barbero and Calbo are Spanish, funny, laughing, smart, helpful, critic, dedicated, pretty cool with good musical tastes. Not exactly the image i had of military :) And i must say they very much rehabilitated the military in my opinion.

As we chat they decide to stop in Potcitel with us and visit this old fort entirely built on a hill side with fortifications along the ridge, a castle somewhere on the top and the river down on the bottom.

Our dedicated drivers

Plocitel castle ans town.

There is a Christian tower and a Mosque but the village is now Muslim. During the walk trough this small village, Barbero explains how complicated the Bosnian situation is. The different ethnic or religious groups / nationalities are spread around in a mixed way and some villages are mixed some not. To this yo can add Italian style family rivalry and you get a little unstable situation.... Globally stable but locally not so easy.

Mosque and old Catholic clock tower.

View from the top of the castle tower.

We then almost pass the boarder without showing out passports... we are in an EUFOR car after all :) Getting in Croatia, it starts raining a little and our kind drivers take a little detour and bring us right to the port were out ferry leaves! Very nice those two! We just have time to walk around the port of what might be Croatia's most ugly city: Ploce and to share a pizza.

Mission accomplished!

Writing up exciting stories.

The ferry then takes us to Trpanje, beautiful small port, small city, not overcrowd as we will experience later in other places of Croatia. We chill at the beach, enjoy the sun that finally came out again and for good. We decide to stay here a bit, rest and do a little lazy beach laying, book reading and swimming. We find an apartment with kitchen, balcony, nice big bed and shower. The whole thing is brand new and clean, Something quite new for me on that trip. Being with Judith changes the standards a bit :)

Trpanje!

Down to Mostar

We leave an other nice pair of friends made in Sarajevo. As Judith says its it is not pleasant to leave people when you just met them and start to know them and like them. But many new exciting adventure are waiting for us in Bosnia and further. Today we want to get to Mostar and eventually further. So we get on the tram to the outskirts of town. Somewhere along the way, three Gypsy kids get up on the back of the tram and a fourth one sits outside, on the piece supposed to connect two carriages. He sits there, looks up laughing and banging at the window once in while then down at the track zooming by beneath him. The reaction of people in the tram are various, most of them are smiling seeing those kids having fun but some are swearing around. As the kid wants to get back on at the red light, forcing his way through the loosen doors, a men blocks the door and pushes him out. He gets back on his outside seat and waits until the next real stop to get on. The kids chat a bit with us and ask we are from, the oldest of them tells me how tall i am and that he is 13. Can t believe it, they are so young, the other ones are 7, 9 and 10... and already so mature. They went to the school of life.



We wait a good hour before a women picks us up, she speaks German, works in a travel agency. I ask her if it is possible to make money doing what i do... don't seem easy... She is driving down to Mostar and will take us all the way.



The drive is beautiful and takes us through some canyons next to a river with crystal clear water. We rapidly arrive in Mostar where she shows us around, being in the traveling business she knows her way around real good :)



Mostar is charming, the weather is finally sweet again, that magnificent bridge, the clear water flowing trough and that cafe‘s terrace with view on the city and it numerous minarets. Since we entered Bosnia, even though it still feels like the same country (people, food, music... ), this is new in the landscape. We decide to sleep over, find a cheap room and go for dinner in one of those nice, well located restaurants. Massive dinner of meat once again. After a nice starter of local cheeses with a good house vine, Judith has a steak, the best in a long time she says, i have a special karadjordjovac. This rolled schnitzel normally filled with kajmak this time has kajmak and smoked ham :) Bon Appetit! Dobar Tek or Prietno as they say.
The local TV shows the old version of Fear and Laughing in Las Vegas... quite different from the one with Johnny Depp, and funny.

Tea and salad

After a too short night we are woken up by the sun. I hear Micheal moving around next doors and go check for him, it is 10 am and i slept mere 4 hours... But feel incredibly good, must be the Garlic :) We start chatting and go out for coffee, just 50 meters from the old center we find a cafe filled with older man, reminding the men drinking tea and playing checkers in Turkey. The price is 4 times lower the in the old town. We then check out the room and go for lunch, Cevap, Sarajevo style. They are supposed to be the best worldwide and for sure are the best for me so far. We then join Micheal for some tea in a back yard chicha cafe.


This man amaze me, he has been around so much and still is amazed by any new information, even or person. We dig the young girl who comes to ask for some change. Pola marka, pola marka (half a mark)... He plays with her and his umbrella, she wants to exchange here worn out umbrella for his new one. She finally gets her pola marka and then wants the 2 marks of the bill... she goes of, sorta chased away by the cafe owner. Our neighbors offer us the end of their chicha, and by lifting it by the top, the bottom glass part loosens off and brakes... The owner comes out, smoking his cigarette, casual like... and charges them 50 Euros... I go around to check out the pries of chichas in the tourist shops... you get new chichas, complet, for 60 euro, turist price. We all agree she should fight for it and not pay it... Who ever payed his broken glass in a bar?? As Micheal says, you are a tourist, they want to get every last dime out of you and you have to resist. This is most important in India and you learn it very fast Michael tells us :)

Finally a little clear sky if you can call this clear...

Posers

Sarajevo old center.

We head up the hills, using the clear sky for the first time today to have a small pick nick with the rests of the vegetables we got in Cacak. Tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, little hot peppers and olive oil. The excellent local bread makes the whole thing just delicious. We then have to say goodbye to Micheal heading for Ljubljana and then Bologna where he wants to settle down a bit. Sad one, once again, this was a great encounter.

We go to sleep our last night at Zlatko and Bilja‘s were we have a quiet night, drinking tea, and beer :) and watching Guca the movie by Emir Kusturica to prepare for the real festival.

View on Sarajevo from their balcony.

The war cemetery, there are buried all the people who died during the occupation.

Our happy hosts.

They have been so nice and welcoming. Made us tast the special Bosnian caned food, showed us movies, played us music, hosted us and most important shared a great time with us. They were a real life enjoying compagny and i can still remember all those hysterical laughter with Zlatko!

A day in Sarajevo

We walk around the center again, the weather remains gray and a little wet. We meet Micheal (Jackson!! yeaaa but not the real one) whom we came across last night at the reception and go for a coffee and breakfast with him. I try to find a couchsurfing host for one or two more night in Sarajevo but everyone is overbooked... Welcome to August, the busiest times of traveling. We decide to go for the room next to Michaels one, more central, nicer, friendlier and cheaper...

Backpacking ants around the city :)

Micheal is a crazy traveler who still gets amazed by things after 3 years of travels through 37 countries. He comes back from 6 month in Egypt making pictures and video for an archaeological excavations in the heat of the desert. Unlike us, he is quite happy to feel the rain on his face :) We go for a nice lunch and then head for a bit of culture at the national museum.

Rainy days...

As i ask the direction for the museum at the tram station to two young locals, they get all curious about where we are from and whats happening with my toe... yes i forgot to say that since we went to Tara, the nail on my big toe did not get better and after walking with wet shoes for some hours it is all infected and red and swollen. So i took care of it, got the pus out and now only walk with flip flops in order not to irritate it any more.

Zlatko and Bilja help us out and get of with us at the museum and suggest to have coffee at Tito‘s, a famous cafe in Sarajevo. Micheal goes strait for the museum we will meet him again later. Zlatko and Bilja are roommates, he just finished law and she is finishing her studies. They are both fun loving party goers so we arrange to go for a drink later ad join Michal in the museum before it closes.

The history of Bosnia Herzegovina is exposed in two floors, the first dedicated to history since somewhere around 10th century, the second to the war in the nineties, with a focus on the life in Sarajevo. The visit brings the answers to some questions about Yugoslavian history. It also reminded me how difficult it most have been living in Sarajavo in those days. Constant bombings and snipping, low food supplies, problems with electricity, water and communications... Besides that i particularly remember one picture, that of a father in sorrow at a tomb, presumably that of his child. I have seen this picture before. It was in the tempory exposition about controversy in photography at the Elyse museum in Lausanne. The controversy about it was that the men in the picture had nothing to do with the buried body he was moaning. If i had internet right now i would check this out along some other facts. Like taht during the year 99 their were more bombs dropped then during the whole second world war or that the snipers shooting into the peace rally that year were actually mercenaries, engaged by who?

tramway, is th best way in the rain...

But its still cold waiting for it, me and Michael do some exercise!

We leave the museum (which by the way still wear the scars of the war) get for some rest and then join Zlatko and Bilja for a couple beers. We get hungry and around midnight go for some pizza, U2 pizza, the best in town, with an excellent garlic sauce. And i have to say it IS the BEST pizza ever since that on pizza i had in south of France at age 11 or so. The Provancale, sold in some pizza truck by the beach. I can't remember where it was exactly and maybe mom or dad can help here but it marked my memory for ever. And so did this one. Simple recipe, Garlic, lots of it, olive oil, parsley and a touch of balsamic vinegar. mmmmh.

Sarajevo church

Sarajevo mosque

Sarajevo Library

Sarajevo wall... CPR ??? no i cheated, cut of the first part..

Welcom to Sarajevo!

Warning, long post today, but plenty of pictures too...

We head off after no breakfast, last nights dinner is still being digested... Saying goodbye to our nice cute little guest‘s couple is as always not easy... We walk a bit through the nice nature, fortunately it is not raining but only mystically cloudy. the nature is beautiful around here, too bad the weather is not better, i would have been happy to walk a bit around those fields and mountains. Getting back down to the main road is much easier, the owner of the first home which could not host us last night drives us a couple kilometers to the hotel. From there a Bosnian couple drives us from there down to the main road. Sweet rides :)

Nice rides, but still bad weather :(

mm what a poser

Down on the main road it is once again a great success, a mixed couple, Serbian and Polish, with their young child take us along in their tiny car. After rearranging stuff inside it turns out like often small cars offer a lot of space, some times more practical than big cars. They are both English teachers in Poland and the ride is one of the most pleasant, easy going. They are going for lunch in Mokra Gora, the rainy mountains (quite adequate name...), just the place we are going to to visit Kusturica‘s Village. Mokra Gora is a real sweet little village with its old mini train station. The rails are narrow, the locomotives and carriages are real old school and i walk around the old Steam Locos fascinated by all the machinery.

ai ai captain!

We then walk up to the village which is a big disappointment. Entrance fee, into a fenced village, we expected a typical film setting somewhat like in a Kusturica‘s movie but we found a Souvenir shop, Jacuzzis, restaurants, a small cinema we could not visit because we just missed the start of a projection, an art gallery displaying very tasteless paintings and numerous houses which are actually hotel rooms... in the end we felt like paying for access to visit a Hilton like hotel...

The greenes green in Serbia...

My car?? fast an furious.

Bruce Lee street.

View on the Village.

Back on the road after delicious Prebranac we hope to get to Sarajevo today, it is some 200kms away and it is already pat 4pm... Luckily we get ride after ride. One past the boarder with a agriculture mechanics salesman to Visegrad, one with a crazy driving Bosnian a bit further and one with an Italian speaking couple coming back from their holiday house. 6 easy rides today, finally Judith experiences a nice hitchhiking day and gets to speak with the driver (in Italian). After 2-3 days of failure, endless waiting, and rain we smoothly get to Sarajevo.

Visegrad bridge, read the bridge over the Drina, good book about this regions history.

The entry into the Sarajevo from the north is very impressive, coming out of a tunnel in the middle of some hills we suddenly are facing the old library which is not restaurant yet and still carries the scars of war, it is full of bullet holes and shell impacts. After checking the center out quickly, we head for the hotel recommended by our last driver. 65 Euro scares us out of this place and we finally find a comfy, not to expensive private dorm 10 min walk from the center. We have one of those Balkans best Bureks and tea and we go to sleep.