Hot Days in Bosnia

It's been so hot for the last week that I haven't been able to get up the will to seat myself at a desk and type away on my hot little netbook and update this blog. Yea, I suck.... but I'm not getting paid for this so lay off! No worries.

Sarajevo was a hot and happening place. The hostel that Emily and I had checked into was a pretty busy one high up on a hill overlooking the city below. This meant that any trip into town would conclude with a grueling hike back home. This sort of thing is best tolerated at night since it was a bit humid and in the low 90s during the day. To that end, I tried to go out as little as possible during the day... just to get lunch at some vegan restaurants with Emily or to get a haircut. They did a great job on the hair considering I only had to pay $3.50.

The hostel runs a tour of the city that covers a lot of the history of the recent war here between Serbia and Bosnia but I wasn't up early enough in the day to do the tour and then it wasn't offered again until after I had to leave to go to Mostar. Still, I did get a general feel for what happened. Basically, the city was besieged for several years by Serbia that indiscriminately shelled it from atop a mountain ridge and the city was pretty well terrorized by the snipers too. The Bosnians built a tunnel to bring in food and evacuate people and it worked reasonably well. Today the city is lively with many new buildings and just a few covered in bullet holes.

I got to do some clubbing on the first evening there. I took a Adderall that night since I had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before. Adderall is a very mild amphetamine that's given to people with ADD or some such thing and it really just keeps you awake and gives you the strength to drink beer in great quantity. Other than that you don't really feel it so much but I think that I need it to keep up with these Europeans. It's in their culture to go to bars and clubs at 1 and then dance till 4 or 5 am. I can do it sometimes but they're champions at it. My favorite bar that we went to had a live brass band and played some Bosnian songs that everyone else knew to sing along to.

After a couple days Emily and I left to go to Mostar, close to the Croatian border and theoretically to the sea. It's much lower elevation there and not so many trees grow on those hot and rocky hills. Actually, I found out that it's the hottest (temperature) city in Europe and it did not disappoint. It was at least 100 degrees every day and AC was very difficult to find. We got a hostel called Maida's and naturally that woman ran it. Her brother, Bata, runs a famous tour of the area and there's usually a 4 day waiting list to get onto it so we signed up right away.

They actually run two hostels in town... one of them is in an old apartment building and feels like a college dorm suite with a small common room an kitchen. It's always hot as hell in there and the walls are covered with drawings that backpackers made in praise of the place. After one night there we were moved to their other hostel that's much better. It's more of a house with several rooms and bathrooms connecting to a small open air garden with seating overlooking the river. One of the rooms even has an AC unit that doesn't need a remote to turn on so whenever Maida wasn't there we'd turn it on and relax for a while until that wretched woman would come back and shout at us again. While she wasn't there however I had a very pleasant time reading, watching movies, and practicing a new song for the uke.

There were many backpackers there and I made friends with a good lot of them. Some more memorable ones included Nick from Virginia who's recently retired from a 2 year stint with the Peace Corps in West Africa. I've heard a lot of different accounts of their mission, but he said that ultimately their purpose is to pay Americans to leave the country, to introduce our culture as an example to others, and to learn their lessons and take them home. The day to day activity seems to be volunteer work that some local person could be paid to do otherwise. I guess that it's important to spread our ideals because a lot of them are unique and worth sharing... like ethnic tolerance, women's rights, motivation to work, environmentalism, and population control. Other parts of the world have a lot to teach America on the subjects of respect for elders, generosity to travelers and hitchhikers, pedestrian commutes, cooking, the metric system, and hosteling. All worthy subjects that we suck at.

I also got to hear from a lot of backpackers coming from Croatia about the state of the trail. I was planning on heading that way to get to Hungary but the other travelers said that since it's high season, it's necessary to book everything a week in advance, its very expensive now, and things are generally too busy. It doesn't sound like a place to lay low for a while and the buses there are supposed to be very pricey so I've decided to turn inland and to go to Serbia and then north to Hungary. I'm gonna spend a while in Belgrade soon and I can't wait. Anyways, back to Mostar.

Mostar is famous for being hot, and it's also famous for it's very scenic old bridge in the middle of downtown. The bridge was built in the 15th century by the Turks when they conquered the area shortly after taking Istanbul from the Byzantines. Actually, the bridge was blown up by the Croatians in the 90s when they had a war with Bosnia but the locals have since rebuilt it in the classical style that they've always known. The war between Bosnia and Croatia was a really nasty one... they always are in the Balkans since every ethnicity is always bent on murdering all the others at the first chance. Sick people.

A lot of the buildings in Mostar are still shelled out wrecks and the tallest building in the city is a vacant wreck called the Sniper's Nest. It's located right on the street that divided the Bosnian and Croatian forces and is now a place for backpackers to climb around on and for people to steal scrap metal from. The rest of the downtown area is pretty cute and all made of rough cut stone with slippery cobblestone roads. The stones are all several inches apart which makes them pretty awkward and painful to traverse on sandals but they're also supposed to prevent your feet from getting too hot. Ive never needed a foot rub more in my life than after a few days here.

I took the hostel's tour of the area with this crazy guy named Bata who lived in Sweden during the war as a refugee and speaks pretty good English. He's a lively guy and a very entertaining guide though a very dangerous driver. The first place we went was to was a burek store that makes them in the traditional way. Burek is basically a spanakopita (a Greek thing) or a pastry make of thin layers of dough, filled with meat or cheese, and then baked in a dutch oven. They're really damn good and about the cheapest food you can get since you can fill up on $1. We also got a good driving tour of town in Bata's pimped out van. Half the people sit on unsteady Ikea stools and he disabled the AC to make the trip more 'extreme'. He also has a disco ball, colored lights, and a huge stereo to abuse us with.

The next stop was some waterfalls for a little swimming, which is a great idea when you're dying of heat exhaustion. The waterfalls were huge and covered a wide area like Niagara though more manageable. He led us through various caves under them, made us swim under the falling water, and jump from various high places. It was quite extreme and a little dangerous, honestly. There were also rope swings and finally a 8 meter jump into the river off a cliff. I did it, but only a couple others in our group of 14 had it in them. Oh well.

After this we visited an old Turkish fort overlooking another river and guarding an important trade route. The fort was super pretty and we stopped in at the home of an old lady who gave us various strange homemade refreshments (elderflower, mintflower, and pomegranate extract sodas) and Bosnian coffee which is just like every other awful coffee in this part of the world but you're supposed to slurp it to be polite. The rest of the tour wasn't so interesting but we got back at midnight and were each handed a 2 liter bottle of cold beer. I was too tired to drink it so I just went to bed... wimpy.

The next day it was time to go. I'd been hanging out at the hostel for 4 days... swimming in the cold river and the heating up in the baking sun, but I wanted to escape the hear by going to the mountains in Northern Bosnia. This was my way of heading East towards Serbia since I wasn't going to Croatia anymore. I got a very delayed bus up there and checked into a small hotel since the tiny town has no hostels.

The town is called Jajce (pronounced ee-ah-say sort of) and it was once a very important castle town that the Bosnian kings would go to get crowned at. Today it's a town of 30k, though more likely 15k since the entire population evacuated during the war and most never returned. I spent the night and the next morning set about exploring the castle. It's pretty small and not so noteworthy. The town also has some old crypts, a renovated classic house, and a small roman shrine to visit but you have to find the person with the keys to each one of them. That part took some time, but cooling off in the crypts from the warm day was a welcome treat.

Nothing really happened in town that night since it's clearly designed to be a local tourist attraction with no tourists in sight, save me. Also things were quite because the day before a local woman died the night of her wedding and the town was in mourning. So sad.

I also went to the town of Travnik the next day. It's supposed to have a spooky castle but I found it to be really small, not so spooky, though fun to climb around. I also explored the city streets at night when the sun wasn't bothering me any longer. This was all getting very dull so I was determined to get back to Sarajevo so that I could get on with the trip out to Belgrade asap which is about 10 hours away by bus. Sounds like a blast.

So, today I made it back to Sarajevo though I didn't get a good hostel since there's a film festival in town and lots of people are staying for the end when Morgan Freeman is going to talk about his movie, Invictus. It is a Friday night though so maybe I'll go out and then hit the road the next day... or the day after. I'm not so good at getting things done as you can tell by the diminishing frequency of my blog posts.