South to Bosnia & Herzegovina

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We had hoped the showery weather from yesterday might have cleared this morning to give us a day of travel in dry conditions but we weren’t in luck. The cloud was still low over the hills and although the heavier rain that had fallen through the night wasn’t happening there was still a light misty drizzle.

We paid our hostess for the stay and got into conversation about her time in the local area and were surprised to some degree that the area had seen Serbian occupation during the part of the Balkan War that involved battles between Serbia and Croatia when the latter wanted to cecede, as Slovenia had done, from the old Yugoslavia after the fall of communism.

The area around the Plitvice Lakes had been divided between Serbs and Croats generally living in two separate localities. At the time of the Serb dominance most of the Croats including her had moved away from the area and the Serbs had burned all the houses that had been occupied by Croats.

So that explained why many of the houses in the area were new having been built in the last 15 years or so either by the Croats who returned after the war ended or by the Croatian Government to re stimulate tourism back to the previously popular Plitivice Lakes. She said the Serbs had been jealous of what Croatia had by way of tourism but for the period of the war that industry and the source of income had been destroyed.

She was in her late teens when the war forced her family to move away and she went to live in Zagreb and Rijeka returning after the war had ended. She said that she and her family had friends in Vukavar but had disappeared during the war and they have never been able to contact again. One assumes that they were killed and their bodies ever found or identified.

With all that rather sombre conversation we packed up the car and headed on our way to the Bosnian border about 20km away.

Croatia and Bosnia share a border that is approx 1000km long. Unlike some borders of countries where there is a mountain range or river to define one side to the other, at this crossing there is just open land with the road leading up to the border point and the impressive immigration /border buildings the only things that tell you that you are about to leave one country and enter another. We had taken a look at the Google map picture of the area and it was interesting to see that there were neatly ploughed fields that started in Croatia and finished in Bosnia with no break where the line for the border was drawn through the picture.

The border crossing was easy with no queues coming from Croatia. This crossing was a little different from many others we have done where the departure and arrival was all under one roof with just different cubicles for the immigration men to sit. We were done and through in two minutes and on leaving we did note that there were two queues of cars with about 25 in each queue leaving Bosnia. At the moment Bosnians and Croatians need just their photo ID to cross between countries but from July 1^st when Croatia joins the EU that might have to change to comply with EU regulations and perhaps the Croatians were practising their new procedures in readiness resulting in the queues.

There is no real change you can detect in the landscape or in the first town you come to called Isacic in Bosnia of the houses or shops............until you see the minaret. This is a giveaway and says hello you have arrived in Bosnia where Islam is a significant part of the way of life and had been a major reason for the Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing against the Bosniaks during the Balkan War.As we travelled on during the day we noticed at least one or more of the tall spires that give the location of the local mosque away as you enter a town.

The day hadn’t improved much as Vicky took us on a generally south eastern track towards Sarajevo. It had though at least stopped raining but the overcast threatened more rain at some point and outside the car it was in the low teens.

The road was in remarkably good condition and made for easy driving no having to avoid potholes as we did in our last visit here in 2009.The countryside was pleasant enough to look at but not such that you wanted to stop and take a photo.

The kilometres passed by quite quickly with little other traffic to contend with. Perhaps it was because it was Sunday that the opposing drivers didn’t take any risks in overtaking while they were near us or perhaps their driving skills and mentality had improved as the years had passed.

We had passed through Bosanski Petrovac and we had noticed cars coming in the opposite direction had been flashing their headlights. In NZ this would mean traffic police ahead and it turned out to be no different in Bosnia either. We had read that speed is strictly controlled in Bosnia (perhaps they have learnt from a high traffic death rate) but as we weren’t travelling at over the speed limit for the area we thought we would be OK.

However, a policeman with a lollipop stepped out from the police car and waved us down to pull over and stop. Gretchen quickly had the passports and driving licences as well as our ‘green card’ (the essential certificate of insurance which you must carry in the car at all times) at the ready. I opened the driver’s window and half expected the policeman to ask me to step out of the car. But he jabbered away in the local language and when I said to him that I only spoke and understood English he smiled and waved his lollipop indicating for us to continue on our way. We shall never know why he thought we were a target to stop but we were glad he wasn’t going to try and explain.

Dotted along the E761 every so often were small memorials on the roadside some with pictures of people and we initially thought they may have been of victims of the war but as the day progressed we decided they had been road accidents as the war dead were in cemeteries in the towns usually with a large memorial indicating their presence.

We made Jajce by the time we were starting to get hungry for some lunch and we had cut out the distance from the border in much quicker time than we had anticipated.

The town has a walled old city part to it up on a hill above the main road and we had thought of taking a break here and doing a short walk. But the temperature was only 11C and light rain was falling so we thought better of it and dove onto the outskirts stopping besides a lake to have lunch inside the car.

Travnik was next and from here the traffic volumes picked up and we had the feeling that we were getting back to civilisation after the sparsely occupied countryside.

One couldn’t say that the rural towns of Bosnia on the E761 were attractive and Travnik was probably the most unattractive with its mix of socialist style apartment blocks and aged houses. Mind you under grey, overcast skies it was always going to struggle to look pretty.

Shortly after at Kaonik Vicky wanted to take us off the E761 and onto the SS5.The distance looked shorter but the time to Sarajevo was longer than staying on the E761.By this time we had felt that reaching our destination was better if it took less time and so we overruled Vicky and stayed with the E761.This was going to be to our detriment as we were to shortly find out as the road opened out to a two lane in each direction highway.

Then into sight came the toll gate!

Now had we been able to change some of our Euros or USD into Bosnian Marks earlier in the day we would have paid the toll and opted for the quicker route. However, it was Sunday and we hadn’t seen any currency exchange places in the towns we had driven through and it had been too cold to get out in one or two of them to check amongst the shops in the main streets.

So with the point of no return looming, Gretchen noticed a break in traffic in the opposing direction and quickly executed a 180deg turn and we headed back to where Vicky wanted to take us before. We had, as usual, instructed her to avoid toll routes!

We don’t know if they would have accepted Euros for the toll and we weren’t game to find out!

The SS5 had been the main road, we think, many years ago as it passed through sizeable towns where businesses looked like they had closed down, probably because the traffic now used the toll route as it was quicker. The road was having work done on it but there didn’t appear to be any hurry to finish the culverts being dug across the road and bridges replaced and we bounced our way at very slow speed behind a milk tanker for about 20km, a third of the distance to Sarajevo before we cleared the road works.

Eventually Sarajevo came into sight. We were fairly sure that although we hadn’t been able to find the street name of where the accommodation was, we had been able to put the street it ran off from into the GPS and that because it appeared to be the main road into the city that the accommodation should still be easy to find. We had also checked Google maps before we left this morning and got a bird’s eye view of what we thought was the camping ground we were headed for.

However none of this worked out in our favour and we ended up going into a flash looking hotel and asking if they knew where the Hotel Settlement Oaza was. One thing we have found in Bosnia after a few hours and also in Croatia for that matter is that their command of the English language is much better than in Italy. And with instructions we were able to re programme the GPS again. What we hadn’t got right was that Sarajevo is split into districts and in each district there are obviously streets with the same name as in other districts.

We were soon at the camping ground(we aren’t sure how it got the name ‘hotel’) and on checking in bumped into a couple of Aussies who were doing something to similar to us except they were sleeping in the back of their Renault while parking up in camping grounds. After a chat with them about all the best places they had been and a swap of notes of what to watch out for we unpacked ourselves and headed out to find a Mother’s Day dinner.

We found a restaurant in the town area of the suburb and had a delicious meal of stream trout for Gretchen and I had ‘The Miracle of Meat ‘which turned out to be grilled veal and very tasty too. Both meals came with fries and salad and with a couple of half litre beers we thought we had done very well for BM49 or €25 for the two of us.

It had been a long day and with the problem of finding the camping ground at the end of the journey we were exhausted and sleep didn’t take long to come.

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Comments

[Chris]

Border crossing into Croatia
Obviously the Croatians aren't that particular about who leaves their country, it's all about who is coming in. We spent about 30 minutes in the queue to enter Croatia at the Bihac crossing and a further 20 minutes at the passport control while they examined our wonderful multi-ligual pasport. We believe that once they had differentiated between English and Maori they got the computer working and we were through. The same happened at the Croatian-Hungarian border. This time the Hungarians had a problem. Best crossing was the Slovenian-Croatian crossing heading for Rijeka. We were welcomed with open arms - "Ah Kiwis, Welcome, enjoy your stay".