Mostar

Jen helped me kick off my month-long summer travels on the 1st of August when we headed to Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro via Zadar, Croatia. Our ten-day jaunt through the Balkans left very little to be desired; I'm officially in love with the region. Mostly Bosnia and Croatia, but I didn't get too far into Serbia to get a lasting impression.

Upon arrival in Zadar, we got picked up by a rather nice family who opened up their apartment to us for the small price of 120KN (£14, roughly). As is trusting area practise, we found accomodation coming off the airport bus. A rather nice man called Josip asked us if we needed a room, we negotiated the price and then hopped into his 1996 fiat, or something like that. It would never work in London, New York or the likes of the rest of the Western World, but somehow in Croatia, all is well.

After a night in Zadar with its lovely, lovely sea organ and pasta with prawns drenched in butter, we made our way to Mostar, Bosnia. On the map the two places look around roughly three inches away from one another. In real time, the bus journey took us roughly eight hours, including one three-hour stopover in Split, one dodgy rest stop and one change in currency (this proved problematic).

We arrived in Mostar around 10pm, struggled to find a place to sleep and then wandered into the Old Town, which all slants down or up depending on the way you walk. We met/stayed with a Canadian woman travelling solo and struggled to find veggie friendly food before I duked it out with HSBC for 25 minutes (and £72 worth of an international phone bill). In the end, they decided to let me take money out of my bank account, and the trip continued in all its splendour.

I left my heart in Bosnia for so many reasons that I'm not sure if I can quite put it into words. I had no expectations, which was probably part of it. The food definitely wasn't a highlight--i wasn't a fan of piled high cabbage masked as a 'Bosnian Salad' or deep fried vegetables with a side of fries, the highly recommended 'Vegetarian Platter'. But the confluence of eastern and western cultures and the pride and kindness of the people we met took me a long way.

In my naive little mind I still struggle to understand the sometimes cruel reality of human nature. The battle scars of war stood as bleak reminders of this all across the city, and the entire nation. My memory of the Bosnian War is limited to scant news reports and stories told by former students. But still, i guess i thought war happened in a vacuum devoid of regular civilians. I was therefore repeatedly humbled by the persistence of human nature.



on the streets of the old town


The City's biggest mosque and home to a sad graveyard, the resting place of hundreds of men who died during the Bosnian war


inside the Koski Mehmed pasa mosque


pretty view. what you cannot see is the pockmarked, shelled buildings, signs mandating 'no entry' with skull and crossbones and derelict outskirts


The Old Bridge (Stari Most)


up the skirt of the Old Bridge

The Old Bridge is actually not that old. It stood for 427 years, until 9 November 1993, when it was destroyed in the Bosnian War. The rebuild took place in 2004.


The Crooked Bridge (old bridge in miniature)


Bosnian Coffee, a local take on Turkish Coffee, and just as delightful


view of the icily cold Neretva River that locals dive into off the Old Bridge


a small reminder of the region's conflict


better than barbed wire?


residents of one of the oldest Turkish style houses in the city

Apologies, I'm feeling rather uninspired at the moment. More about Bosnia in the next entry.

summer 2010 in review

I arrived back to rain sodden London last night after twenty-six days of travel on the trot. The trip was...well, it just was. Highlights and lowlights forthcoming. I've still got photos from a week in France at half term in June to post, but just so I remember my itinerary was as such:

2 August: Mostar, Bosnia
4 August: Sarajevo, Bosnia
5-6 August: Belgrade, Serbia
7 August: Budva, Montenegro
8-9 August: Kotor, Montenegro
9-11 August: Dubrovnik, Croatia
12-13 August: Korcula, Croatia
14-17 August: Hvar, Croatia
18-19 August: Korcula, Croatia
19-21 August: Madrid, Spain
22-24 August: Barcelona, Spain
25-26 August: Santander, Spain

busy, busy.

Montaigne and the Market

but not together. on our last French night and day, we spent copious amounts of time getting to intimately love french cuisine. Not that it took that much convincing. This included a jaunt down to the local restaurant that had two choices on its chalkboard menu, both of which infused garlic into the seams of every ounce of sauce, included a delightful potage and three massive courses all for the delightful price of 15 euro.

I learned how to decapitate dead prawns soaked in garlic. Believe me, I was doing them a favour.

And then we sauntered back to Michele de Montaigne's chateaux and vineyard to take a look at one of chuck's personal heroes. He was underwhelmed, but I was pretty overwhelmed--my knowledge of chateaux relate back to the Charlie Brown days where Snoopy gets adopted (stolen?) by a French girl and Charlie Brown has to trek across the world to save his beloved beagle, falling in deep smit with Frenchy along the way. There was eerie music and dark lighting--the movie put me off big french houses for years!



these people are so my height

And then suddenly it was time to go back to England, put the sunny weather and funny speakers behind us to get on with the last six weeks of the school year. But since nothing is quite straightforward when we travel, we actually had to propel ourselves eight hours in the Peugot northwards to catch a mega early morning ferry. This involved the market...
with its purchases of cheese
olives
wine
and one very french hat


and several twirls around the roundabouts of greater Renne, Nantes, et al. and a late night encounter with the French equivalent to the Super 8 Motel. They played Scrubs dubbed in French in the lobby; Le Super 8 gained my instant approval.

With only minor stress and a much more comfortable cabin this time, we hit the high seas and napped our way across them. And we may have fit in one more bottle of St. Emilion and a salad nicoise for good measure. But who can blame us?

St. Emilion

On one of our last days in France, we wine stumbled into the stunning town of St Emilion. That sounds more drunk than it was. Chuck drove, didn't drink, Natasha and I sipped and gulped our rose and reds with gusto. The memories are scant, mostly because the trip was so long ago now, but it was way beautiful, beautiful.



I think the day and the trip was so perfect because we just closed our eyes, pointed to the map and went. It involved slightly more planning than that, but not that much more.

old roman city walls, i think






Then we sought the elusive chateaux of Michel de Montaigne, the famous, and long-dead french essayist. This involved another map pointing session, some gesticulated conversations and a hunch on the correct road to follow(not mine). We arrived an hour later.
gallic shrug, chuck just practising the ways of the french

It was closed. But on our last french day, it so wasn't.

Aubterre

Somewhere between days three and five of the great french roadtrip, Chuck, Natasha and I got back in the car to explore the lesser known villages 100km east of Bordeaux. In all reality, we were looking for a french restaurant where Chuck once had this amazing meal. Trouble was, he knew the village started with a C or was it an A? So really, our needle-in-a-haystack-expedition turned into two winding day trips through small villages.

We only almost ran entirely out of petrol once. We only crashed one anglo-french wedding taking place in the front of a beautiful restaurant with beautiful salad nicoises. And in the end we came back with beautiful wine from a bordeaux vineyard, blocks of cheese from the mean cheese lady, one hat and a sunburn. Success.





Fran(c)k the dyslexic butcher located in SW france's dodgiest small town
more ridiculously named villages
driving into the sunset

one more day in the pretty french towns.