BEAMET: Croatia and Bosnia / Herzegovina

Hi all,

Well if you've survived the blog about the bitey things, you may now be interested to see where we've been and what we've been up to.

Since the previous Beamet blog, we have been to the following places; Slovenia - Ljubljana, Postojna caves, Piran; Croatia - Porec, Rohinj, Zagreb; Bosnia / Herzegovina - Jajce, Sarajevo, Mostar; Croatia - Split, Hvar Island (and today we're making our way to Dubrovnik).

It has been an amazing trip so far and we're still only at the start. I have to say for me a real highlight was the Postojna caves, which are just amazing. They are full of stalagmites and stalagtites and the cave system is some 20km long. We only got to see a few kms but it was just incredible, and the acoustics were fabulous. At one point, when we got to the concert hall, I simply couldn't resist, and in true Aussie fashion let out an almighty 'coo-ee' which resounded for about 10 seconds. The Italian girls choir who were giving an impromptu recital were not impressed!

Piran was gorgeous, its a Venetian port on the coast of Slovenia with lots of cute cobbled streets, excellent seafood and a real relaxed vibe. I could've happily stayed there for a few days. And Dad would've loved the harbour with its boats. To be honest, Dad you'd have loved Porec, Rohinj and Split for the same reasons. There are some gorgeous looking boats here.

I really like Croatia, I think it has a good vibe and the people are very friendly and helpful. But I have to say I didn't think that about Bosnia. First of all, you could seriously tell you had moved to a different country the minute you crossed the border, because the first thing you saw was a building scarred by artillery marks, and then a dirty great big Mosque (BiH is mostly muslim). Then there was the state of the cars - everybody drives around in a banged up old jalopy, and no wonder when you see their driving. Seriously, I once read in a Bill Bryson book that 'no one should have shared the secret of the motor car with the Italians' - well that should apply to BiH as well. The highway to Sarajevo, if you could call it a highway, is a single lane, windy road through the mountains (which it must be said are very picturesque and beautiful). The speed limit on these roads, well I don't know what it was, but I couldn't manage more than 60 without having difficulty as each new bend approached, yet we were being overtaken left, right and centre by these flying junkboxes with wheels. And as for driving on the right hand side of the road, well, the number of times we nearly got clipped by motorists approaching from the opposite direction but well and truly on our side of the road was astonishing.

We arrived eventually to Sarajevo after a quick stop in a gorgeous little medieval town (again scarred by war though) called Jajce. This town has a huge waterfall right in the centre, and it was simply stunning. Anyway, Sarajevo. We didn't get into town until quite late, like 10pm or so. Time is quite deceptive here as the sun doesn't set properly until 9pm, so you often find yourself travelling a lot longer in the day than you possibly intended. So we arrive, and we find a couple of guesthouses in the centre of town (they advertise them as hostels but they´re private houses). One has only got 2 beds (we obviously need 3) and the other has got 3. So we go for that one, but its getting very late now, and the guy is trying to be very helpful, but I´ve been driving all day, and I don´t need to hear about every single thing there is to see and do and Sarajevo. Anyway, Agata stays to find out the information whilst Agnieszka and I see the room. We discover a cooker in the room, and seeing as we´ve been lugging bags of pasta around (in the interests of cutting costs), Agnieszka goes and asks if its possible to use the stove. Next thing, the guy gets all in a huff, I don´t know exactly what is said, but the next thing I know he gives us our money back and chucks us out!

So itś 11pm, we have nowhere to go. Fortunately the place that only had 2 beds has now found a 3rd, and we ended up there for the night, but it certainly didn´t give me a positive vibe about Sarajevo.

Next day we did some sightseeing in Sarajevo, which was very hot, but interesting, and by chance at breakfast we were sat next to a Finnish girl who told us about the Tunnel Museum, which is set in the tunnel that the Bosnians built under the airport to smuggle food into and people out of Sarajevo during the Bosnia - Serbia war some 12 years ago. Do you think we could find this museum? We drove everywhere looking for the thing, asked about 6 Bosnians for directions (memo to self: never ask a Bosnian for directions... we were sent so many different ways and none of them were right!). At one stage we encountered a couple of kids actually playing on the highway (go figure!?) Eventually we found it through directions from a taxi driver (but I misunderstood some of the directions and ended going up a dirt track...). It took us nearly 2 hours to find the museum, but once we were there, it was totally worth it. Especially as one of the girls visiting the museum was actually a Bosnian survivor of the war, who as a child had used the tunnel to be smuggled out to the countryside to be reunited with the rest of her family. Her accounts were very moving and made the experience very sobering.

Anyway, after Sarajevo we went to Mostar, which was a couple of hours drive down the road, but was a beautiful Medieval town which has the iconic Stari Most bridge which is the symbol of all Bosnia. This bridge was totally destroyed during the war but they have since rebuilt it, and it is truly beautiful. We had amazing accommodation in this place (even had the luxury of air conditioning! yay! Although we had no hot water for showers... beggars can´t be choosers I guess).

So after Mostar we headed back into Croatia to Split, where we had to return the car. So stay tuned for stories of our experience in Split...