Suprising Bosnia

Mostar

After a 6 hour bus journey going through many boarder controls we finally made it into Bosnia. Once in Bosnia we had a rest stop but weren't allowed to go to the loo becasue some old woman wanted paying before letting us in, considering we had just come from montenegro which uses euros and coratia which uses kuna we couldnt quite understand how she expected us to pay her!!! she wouldnt accept kuna so we boarded the bus with our leg crossed and hoped the ride wasnt too bumpy for the rest of the way.

After 8 hours going across 3 boarders we made it to Mostar, straight away you could still see the lasting effects of the war and bombing in 1993 by the serbs. Where Croatia had done everything they could to cover up bullet holes here they were as fresh as the day they were put there.

We had pre booked a nice hotel for one night, G desperate for a good nights sleep and not waking up with more bites. So we walked along the old front line to our hotel. Bristol Hotel 95 euros but worth every penny not to be bitted by any blood sucking things!!!!

We had a quick shower and headed out for a quick beer. This invloved us watching the BEST electrical storm ever that lasted all night and came back the next night!!!!

After an amazing nights sleep we ventured to our next accomodation (Dinos Hostel for 22 euros). This hostel was really nice well worth it, so clean!!! Next on the to do list was to venture out to see the sights, Mostar is pretty small so it didn't take long to have a look around and get our barings. Its a beautiful little town, we were both suprised at how lovely it was with its eastern feel, there's a turkish quarter, 16th century mosques and of course the famous Satri Most, which was destroyed in the was and re built in 2000-2004. Here the men jump off the bridge for money, we reckoned a few of Tonys mates would do it just for fun!!! its 21 m high by the way!!!!

Our luck couldnt last forever and the heavens opened with G in her white linine trousers and T in his shorts we had to somehow slowly get back to change into more appropriate gear without getting any nasty flip flop makes on our nice clean summer clothes!!!!


Sarajevo

After two nights in Mostar we headed North to the capital Sarajevo. This too suffered a great deal in the war but seemed to be re-building itself slowly. There are still remenants everywhere of the shelling they took. Once again it was chucking it down. We didn't have a map to our hostel so in hope we followed a bunch of other backpackers who were on our train hoping they were heading the right way. They were, phew, so we arrived at our very cool hostel, Hostel City Centre and checked in for a cool 25 euros. We dumped our bags and headed out aware we only had one day here.

Once again the place astonished us. The old turkish quarter of Bascarsija is amazing with 4 differenty places of prayer for 4 different faiths. We saw sniper alley which was the avenue of death created by the serb snipers in the surrounding hills. We also saw the spot where WW1 started. This is on a bridge called the Latin Bridge, here in 1944 Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinard of Austria which in turn started world war one.

We didn't have time to go to the tunnel museum which we were gutted about but everyone raved about it.

The rest of the evening was spent chilling out in our hostel with a few beers talking to other travellers.

We totally loved Bosnia and would recommend it to anyone, its rough around the edges even more than Croatia and the whole Eastern feel gives it something no other western country we've been too so far.

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Part of trip: London to Sydney Overland

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