Sarajevo

Day 3

A cheery farewell to Mostar as we set off for the country’s capital.

Stopped in Poljec, the broken bridge, still remains from the war, just hanging from where it once stood.


Before heading to the country’s only national park.


I love autumn, it just gives parks such a different charm, with scatterings of different colour leaves. It was rather gorgeous driving through it all.


We stopped at what in winter is the best place to Ski, and walked up and had a look at the ski ramp, before having lunch at this quaint little wooden pub at the bottom of the ski runs..

First to come out where the drinks.
Those brave enough to sample Bosnian coffee did so at their own risk… for non coffee drinkers you’d be awake for about a week after just a sip! It was the consistency of mud, that’s how strong it was
Gill managed to clear the table, by spilling hot tea everywhere!

Then we had this cute little Bosnian women come out and ask if we wanted to try some traditional foods…
Of course we did.

So out came these strange donut looking, but Yorkshire pudding tasting things. With a cream cheese/sour cream tasting spread, to put on them. Interesting.


Then came the Burek, the Bosnian version of a meat pie.
Which were extremely oily, but still tasted delicious.

It’s like rolls of pastry with mince meat in them, laid out to fill a pie tray.

I loved the setting, there we were in a little wooden hut, nestled between the colourful trees, with no one but us about.


This is sightseeing at it’s best.

Eventually headed on and into Mustafa’s home town of Sarajevo, where after registering at the hostel agency, we were dropped at the top of the hill, at our accommodation.
Which was rather nice of them, as it would have been a cringe worthy hike up there with all our stuff.

Tash, Yvonne and I decided to see what was on offer at the supermarket, and found lot’s of crazily named items…

Anyone for Slag ice-cream, naked kiddie chips, rice chocolate?


Before heading back to sample them.

The naked kiddie chips was like eating the packaging that we put in boxes back home, almost like Styrofoam, texture and taste.
Rice chocolate was just odd.

Headed down to town to meet up with the others for dinner, after watching the sunset over the town from the fort.

Mustafa had been talking about how Sarajevo just happens to have the best cevapicia in all of Bosnia, because of some secret recipe passed down from generation to generation. so it was only natural to be lead to a restaurant to sample them with our very own taste buds.

All but Tash tried them (chicken!)

They came in 5, 10, or 15 little sausages, and looked like long skinny meat balls, or turds if you want to be exact.


And they came inside half a pita, with onion on the side.. Again very oily, but coming to expect that over here.
I like them.

Edo at work used to bring them in when we had BBQ’s they just perfect little bite sized sausages, way better than mini frankfurts.


Headed to the Sarajesko Brewery at the top of town, to sample some of the citie’ finest ale’s, and walked in and saw a Mafia looking dude, doing a deal with the cops (we’ll that’s what it looked like, and all night he’d come and do deals with different people!)


Was embarrassed beyond belief with the wanderer’s treatment of the waiter, who couldn’t break her large note, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer…

Sometimes I wonder about people like that…

I know that sometimes you say something and it just doesn’t come out right… (it's me, i do it all the time...)

but she was the worst offender and not just once, all day everyday.

I even found it necessary to go up to him later and apologize for her behaviour, I felt that bad.

She got cranky because she’d finished her drink and wanted to leave, and the rest of us were still drinking, and ended up storming off on her own.

I kind of hoped something would happen to her, isn‘t that horrible (I’ve already booked my ticket to the red centre…)


After a stop at the gelato stand (a very common occurrence!) we started to lovely trek back up the hill past the graveyard to the accommodation,

One of the things that Mustafa had mention over dinner was how we should watch out for the guard in the cemetery… thinking him bluffing yet again, we were surprised as we stood scanning the cemetry that we actually spotted him, walking up and down.

Supposedly the first prime minister is buried there, and there is always a guard present watching over the grave, it also has CTV cameras everywhere too, which seems extremely over cautious.

Sat around chatting for awhile before heading to bed.

Day 4.

Up and headed down for breakfast in town, it was free, and it was a case of you get what you’re given… in our case it was a tray with 2 bread rolls, some pomegranate jam and a cup of scalding tea…

Mustafa took us on a mini walking tour of the city, where we kept running into this American tour guide, who must have been following us.

But we kept trying to beat their group places, and avoid them at all costs!

They have artworks (we’ll not really) but where the bombs and bullet holes were in the marble in the streets, some of them have been filled with red cement, as a reminder of the blood shed here not too long ago.

Got picked up by the bus and taken out to the start of the Sarajevo tunnel.

A tunnel that was the sole reason the city survived the war, despite being almost surrounded by Serbs, and others.

It’s a fantastic museum that they’ve set up now, over a section of the tunnel, complete with a video of people actually using the tunnel during the wall.

What was really interesting to find out was that our guide had actually made the treacherous journey with his mother, to pick up a package on the other side during the war itself, it must bring back such an array of memories just being there.

They had a collection of army packs, sent out to the us military, with little tricks and cookies, that Mustafa can still tell you what’s in them jut by the number on the front. they were gold to children at the time.

Got dropped back in town and wandered around a bit.

Wandered into this copper store, and ended up coming out armed with bracelets. The guy was so nice and friendly, and had some really unusual things, as well as giving us the story of the shop.
His great grandfather had started the shop 200 years ago.

Isn’t that amazing to think that the store is older than our country!

Dinner of cevapicia again before heading back up the hill one last time.