Ostrag Monastery & Budva days 9-11 (July 6 - July 8) Leaving Sarajevo we took a bus to our next destination, Ostrag Monastery. The road from Sarajevo through the nearby mountains was very narrow with some lovely sheer drops, but this of course meant great views. Especially initially we were on a narrow country road with not much passing room for the oncoming traffic. You can see why this area is spoken of in the same breath as Switzerland. We were met at the roadside stop by a local mini-bus for the rest of our journey. If we thought the previous [View Full Entry]

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well,if you think im going to do a usual blog about 9 days worth of stuff then you are very much incorrect. so here is the last 9 days, in neat bullet point form. i shall expand on bits and pieces, and leave some tantalizing cliffhangers. im being very antisocial to write this by the way, so appreciate it. - mostar was awesome and i fell in love with it pretty sharpish. on the first night i met a girl called casey and a guy called eric, we went for drinks and it was all good. - we did batta's tour, [View Full Entry]

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At the crack of dawn (8 AM in lazy-ass-student speak), Steve pokes his head into my room and announces that we're going to Budva today. Budva. My head still busy extricating itself from the realm of sleep, I could've sworn he told me that we're going to see the all mighty Buddha today. I don't care how many millions of Asians worship him -- I need my eight hours at all costs. Kaput. I squinted at him, hoping my serious case of bedhead would be sufficient enough to scare him away. It didn't. Man, what I wouldn't give for a few [View Full Entry]

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The taxi driver in Tirana have family in Boston and have visited 3 times before so we had a good conversation about life in his country and how he still have no ambition to live with his parents in America, he hopes Obama wins. The Shkodra bus took a good 2 hours including delays due to bad traffic accident. When I arrived in Shkodra, taxi drivers immediately took notice of me and offering to take me to Ulcinj in Montenegro from 20 to 30 Euros, I pretended to be sight seeing and said will be back i have to think it [View Full Entry]

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Rachel ( my friend from Seattle) had suggested I go to Montenegro. I was so glad I did. As you can see its amazing. I stayed at Sammy's Guesthouse. Sammy and his family are amazing. They will cook special meals for you, take you on tours around the island by boat, and offer you unlimited glasses of their homemade grappa. Beware its strong. Sammy had lived in Germany and opted for a more simpler life. He had numerous stories about how escaped the rat race. He was inspirational. He was originally from Yugoslavia and had fled to Germany during the [View Full Entry]

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The next country on our journey was Montenegro, which is one of the newest contries in the world after it recently gained independence from Serbia. We were headed for Budva for 2 nights; Budva is the main tourist destination in Montengro and the Dalmatian coasts version of Ibiza. On the way we took a scenic drive along the Kotor Fiord and stopped for lunch in aptly named Kotor. Kotor was an unexpected highlight. It is a tiny little walled town set into the base of a steep cliff and on the shores of the fiord. It also has a mini version [View Full Entry]

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We got through the border with no problem and immediately saw the economical differences between Albania and Montenegro, Montenegro reminding me more of the Algarve in Portugal, there were far more "real" buildings than there were in Albania and a damn sight more shiny cars. We were dumped on the side of the road and after counting up our left over euros from italy (7.70) we hopped into a taxi to take us to our hostel as we had no idea where we were.... ... apparently the taxi driver didn't either as he left us, up the right road, and said [View Full Entry]

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