Low-brow cheap humour, please

I was recently directed, via facebook post, to a former 'friend's' world of deluded self-important thoughts via her blogosphere. It made me laugh until i realised the 2000 word treatise, complete with subheadings, anecdotes and emotive phrases, was written in a tone akin to Times Journalists, Nobel Laureates and certain astrophysicists who shall not be named.

And then i felt the need to immediately rush to my blog and delete it.

Alas, I have chosen to settle for a blog disclaimer; let's call it a blaimer. So here it is:
**This blog is written for the express purpose of documenting my travels so when i'm 85, living with cats i'm allergic to, doing puzzles and eating pudding (sounds eerily like my life already) i can remember that i once was young and exciting.

**I try, try, try not to be preachy. I will try harder when i travel to places that make me feel something. Maybe save the 'touchy feelies' for another time and another space.

**I think I am funny but understand that not everyone will appreciate my bad punning, stupid joke telling, geeky english teacher humour.

**Please, don't take anything said here seriously. I'm not a serious person, honestly.

Certain friends are allowed to check me if I break my own disclaimer. They have been given permission to cut me off at the knees, slowly, with this:



And on that note, i'm off to eat some chocolate pudding.

Another Anniversary

18 September 2010 marked my four year love-hate relationship with this often-rainy English nation. Four years. Mighty me. So in homage to the homeland of my adult life, may I suggest you try (and fall in love with) the following institutions of Britishness:

**twiglets
**Marks and Spencer
**the almighty local pub (if you can find it)
**cheese and pickle on bread squeezed into a plastic box (i still can't get enough)
**red buses, traffic on red buses and fights in traffic on red buses
**holiday (as opposed to vacation)
**camping in valleys in the rain
**Wellingtons (in polka dot)
**wrong-side of the road i-almost-hit-a-sheep-crossing-the-road driving
**Indian food (oh, the irony)
**class systems and social decorum (unless drunk)
**rain, drizzle, sleet, spit, pour, sunny spells, torrential rain, light snow, heavy snow and the BBC's latest weather phenomenon, 'white cloud'

here's to year four!

Sarajevo (the rest)

so long time, no blog. I'm prepping for yet another exciting journey in a few weeks (Krakow, Poland!) so I need to get on the ball with the rest of my summer (and my half-term french travels in May). I had this brief and fleeting thought about how much money I might have if i chose not to travel. It'd probably be a lot. Then again, I might just have more shoes. And then, instead of being just boring, i'd be really boring with good shoes, and no one wants that.

Anyhoo, here's the rest of Sarajevo. I wish we would've stayed longer, possibly cutting out the Belgradian portion of our journey. But as I've left the blogging of the trip far too long, I'm relying on scant journal notes to relive funnier moments of the trip. Seeing as I couldn't find a journal until Belgrade, it's proving rather difficult to remember anything. Maybe I should stop drinking the cough syrup straight from the bottle and stick to the recommended dose.



the entrance to Begova dzamija (Bey's mosque), central Sarajevo's biggest mosque


fortunately i left my machine gun at home




Across the Latin Bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed, sparking the start of WWI


keeping with tradition, Jen and I frequented 'Hacienda Cantina Mexicana' for the most unauthentic margaritas we've ever had. Which is, of course, part of the fun.


in the maze of pedestrianised streets peddling copper wares, smelly foods and tea


more market


Sebilj, a Turkish style fountain in the middle of 'Pigeon Square'. Suffice to say, we did not spend a whole lot of time anywhere near this place

we had a bit more luck with dinner this time and took Lonely Planet's dining recommedations. The vegetable platter was adorned in actual grilled vegetables, but we unfortunately ran into another issue:


i will have to disagree with this opinion, disguised as a fact.

So, other than the people, the place, the spirit, what did i love about Sarajevo? Ya no se. But I did. It felt like somewhere you could sit, be a fly on the wall and come out with three-hundred interesting observations. I loved the mix of religions, though jen and i had differing opinions on the sound of the call to prayer piped through the city five times a day--me: haunting, her: transfixing. Maybe it also had something to do with the eerily similar to British weather we had during our stay in the city. Is it possible to become used to rain, mist and fog?

We ended it all with a 5am taxi ride to the bus station, followed by an eight-hour bus ride snaking our way through the city's crammed cemetaries, monuments and post-war construction then out onto the open road of rocky precipes, deep valleys and blue, blue lakes. To make the experience truly authentic, we had a Bosnian rest stop, complete with toilets that one must strategically suss out before making a move:



Onto Serbia!

Sarajevo (mini history and first glimpses)

Following an eight-hour bus ride from Mostar, Jen and I arrived at a rather rundown bus/train stop on the derelict outskirts of a city that seemed twenty years behind the rest of the world i've known. Shoeless Roma children accosted us for money, and I felt very out of my depth. But we carried on...because at first glimpse, outer Saraevjo is rather sad--The Holiday Inn right next to the station stands as a monument of the war. It forms the outer curtain of something called 'Sniper Alley', where Serbian snipers incited terror upon the city's denizens for the best part of three years. Nearly 10,000 people were killed or went missing during this time.


In its history, the Sarajevo Holiday Inn also became the home for all foreign journalists and war correspondents from 1992-1995. It was the only working hotel in the city.

Similar to Mostar, the remnants of war were very visible--from pockmarked, shelled buildings to the deliberately bombed Bosnian National Library to the Sarajevo Roses.

A Sarajevo rose - the characteristic pattern of a mortar impact on pavement. Whenever a mortar killed more than three people the scar that the mortar shell left of the ground was filled in with red paint. These scars look like roses, thus the name. The main pedestrian shopping street in town was dotted with these up and down the boulevard.

From a less than auspicious start, we were directed to the tram and its tricky ticket system. If you've never made your way into a city blithely unaware of where you're headed or where you might sleep, let me recommend it to you now. The best adventures start here.

Straight off the tram we made friends with a rather dodgy looking local who offered us accomodation in his friend's private home located 15 minutes up a hill and next to one of the city's smaller mosques. Apparently the backpacks, hats and squinty eyes gave us away as tourists. We were greeted with sludgy cups of Bosnian coffee, a man who communicated with us in broken German and his daughter who spoke English. It was all rather confusing, but i'm still alive to tell the tale so nothing went too wrong.

When Jen was here five years ago, she was greeted by UN Peacekeepers guarding this cathedral:

and jobless, war-scarred men drinking tea near the monument dubbed 'Pigeon Square'. So today, despite any inward bitterness, Sarajevo has moved on, picked itself up and become what I imagine it was well before the war. Host of the 1986 Winter Olympics; haven to a thriving cafe culture and tourist industry; my favourite place in the Balkans; home.

more editing to come...


with the increase of altitude, the weather took a dip for the lower and we wore jumpers for the first (and only) time over the course of four weeks






Trg Oslobodenja, where everyone's an expert. I almost got caught in the fray of old, loud, shouty Bosnian men screaming to the players something that i translated in my head as 'don't move that piece, you stupid oaf, he'll put you in check mate in two moves!'