Blogs from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Europe - page 13

What I've always referred to as Bosnia is technically called Bosna i Hercegovina although I never did figure out just where exactly Hercegovina is located. To make matters more confusing there are portions of BiH that consider themselves a separate territory called the Serb Republic making it easy to understand the derivation of the term "balkanized." $US ≈ 1.5 Bosnian convertible marks (KM) although I'm not entirely sure if they can be converted into any other currency outside of Bosnia which is why I burned my last stash on petrol before crossing back into Croatia. Sarajevo Very pleasant, easily managed city clearly still recovering from the war as evidenced by numerous restoration projects and buildings in major need of restoration. Still enjoyable. Accommodation and food I was very fortunate to reserve 2 nights at Hotel Telal ... read more

As soon as we pulled away from the hostel, the Serbian turbo-folk started blaring - repeating a phrase that sounded very much like “a cup of tea!” - from prominently placed speakers and the van started hopping up and down and jigging to the side, tossing the fifteen tour group members around like dice in a jar. There was a look of vague terror in everyone’s eyes. What had we gotten ourselves into? And for TWELVE hours? I had thoughts of tossing myself out the door whenever we started to slow down…. Welcome to the wild ride that is Bata’s tour of Mostar and Herzegovina! When I booked a dorm bed at Hostel Magdas in Mostar, I knew that they ran a popular tour of the surrounding area. There were hints that it was unusual (“Did ... read more

Our trip to Bosnia almost turned into a non trip at the border when an official expressed his disimay at our lack of 'official' looking vehicle ownership documents and didn't understand how we managed to gt all the way from the UK to Bosnia without these. We tried explaining that we had only bought the van recently and the complete V5 hadn't arrived in time before we left but we had the back section. He seemed to think that a slip of green paper was a joke despite it having matching car details on. After several trips to his superior he said we would have to buy a Green card to enter, (we'd expected to have to anyway as our vehichle insurance didn't cover Bosnia). After being directed to a random office somewhere we found a ... read more

Bosnia - 3 Weeks I went to Bosnia at this time, as I had signed up for the volunteer program with the 'Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation' http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/index_files/volunteers.html The program lasted 2 weeks and I had a few days cycling either side. It took me a couple of days to get from the Montenegrin border to Visoko, where I stayed for the 2 weeks, then 3 days cycling from Bosnia in to Croatia and Split. I crossed in to the country and followed rivers both up and down, all the way until I arrived in Visoko, the cycling was nice as roads that follow rivers tend to have gentle gradients and they went through canyons and lush green forests. I arrived a day early and went to the hotel where the volunteers were offered ... read more

Howdy peoples, Well Taryn is correct in that my blog wasn’t going to take a whopping 1 month to write! Although, we’ve got some catching up to do as I’m starting this on a train in Romania from Arad to Sibiu, finishing it in Brasov, and a lot has happened since, including cutting our travels shorter than originally expected. Taryn left off in Spain and that’s where I will pick it up. It was a random decision to fly from Spain to Croatia. Basically, we knew we’d seen enough of Spain (although we loved it and could of spent heaps more time we did want to see other places on this trip) and didn’t know where to head next. We would of liked to have gone to Italia before Croatia but the timing meant that tourists ... read more