Bosna i Hercegovina

Take a deep breath. Long post. (And remember, my latest pictures can always be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/bmh625/BradAbroad.)

Last weekend was the much anticipated three day trip to Bosnia & Herzegovina. All fourteen students, Zoran, the photo professor and his wife, some people from the ACMT and two drivers filled two vans and a car and departed from in front of the Hilton just after eight on Friday morning.

Mostar was the first key destination, although we did stop somewhere along the way for a couple of hours to stretch and have lunch. Upon arriving in Mostar, we checked into the hotel and unloaded our things. It was mid-afternoon by that time if I recall, and most of us walked to the Old Town-ish area for some coffee and sightseeing. The rest of the evening was spent checking out the area around our hotel, having a few drinks, etc. It was an early night on the whole; driving really takes it out of you.

The next morning we left Mostar and headed for Sarajevo, the second key destination. Again, we stopped along the way to have lunch. Sarajevo is a larger city than Mostar, and I rather enjoyed driving into the city down a three or four lane highway for the first time in three months. When we arrived at the hotel, we were first treated to a drink on the house. It was a schnapps of some kind that had the color of antifreeze and probably tasted about as good, but it was a nice gesture all the same. Just as in Mostar, we then walked to Sarajevo's Old Town-ish area for sightseeing and food.

Later, I found myself experiencing a bit of hunger, and I decided to start walking in search of a bakery. Bakeries are everywhere around here so it wasn't much of a hunt. There was a small street not ten minutes from the hotel where I found two bakeries and a produce stand among some other less important establishments. At one of the bakeries I got some burek which is basically cardiac arrest in a pastry. It was delicious, and I followed it with a banana from the produce stand.

We mobilized around noon the next morning and started driving back to Dubrovnik. The return route was different and appeared to be a great deal more mountainous and curving. The CS group was in one van, and there existed some friendly competition between our driver (whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell) and Zoran (who was driving the car). Have you ever been in a nine person van and proceeded to overtake both a car and a tour bus in one shot around a curving mountain road in Bosnia? Well, we have. Who needs Six Flags?

We made it to the border a solid ten or fifteen minutes before the car and the other van. Crossing out of Bosnia couldn't have been more uneventful. One guy sitting in a lawn chair by the side of the road just waived us straight through. Coming back into Croatia a short distance farther, an officer briefly checked our passports and let us pass.

Back in Dubrovnik as I switched out my Euro and Convertible Marks for Kuna, I got the feeling I was home again. Funny how that works.