Yeah, that just about says it all. The hostel in Sarajevo had the worst shower, bar none, in any of the hostels I’ve stayed at. The shower alternated between boiling hot and glacier cold water (air in the pipes, methinks) that made the usually relaxing activity of taking a shower an extremely tense one. In fact, to avoid scalding my more critical parts, I just decided to skip the whole showering business in the last few days and really looking forward to that 2p check in at the hostel here in Zagreb, Croatia.

Anyway. Sarajevo.

I showed up in Sarajevo not knowing what to expect at all. I had no guidebook and had done no pre-reading, although I remember hearing about it in the news when I was younger. All I knew was that the city was torn by a relatively recent war.

To this end, I found what I expected to see. Driving around Sarajevo is both refreshing and shocking. Every structure that was built prior to ‘93 and still stands is scarred with the lasting impressions of war. By this I mean buildings and homes that are pock-marked with the impact of bullets. Abandoned structures which are bombed out shells. You look at all the residents and realize that in their recent lives, they have looked in the face of war. This is a part best told by pictures, which will come soon.

Sarajevo is also the spot of some major history. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand (I hope I’m spelling this right) was assasinated on one of the bridges spanning the river that runs through Sarajevo, the event which started World War I.

While Sarajevo is scarred by war, there’s a lot that’s come up in recent years that superceed it. Sarajevo is absolutely beautiful, flanked by green hills on all sides with homes of red tiled roofs that extend up the hillsides (not too high, of course…there are still mines out there). The center of the “old town” is beautiful, walking streets through small shops and tons of cafes. The areas of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia (which were all have similar roots) have more cafes per square meter than anywhere I’ve ever been. Most of the seating is outside. It’s absolutely fabulous to sit and watch the day go by. Although the site of the ‘84 Olympics and a big tourist destination in it’s hayday is not such a place today. While there are chunks of tourists, most of the tourists head instead to Mostar in the west, so the cafes of Sarajevo’s old town are filled with locals. My favorite. Guys should know that the women in this region of the world have a reputation that preceeds them.

Chess is extremely big in the Balkans. In Sarajevo, there was a spot in the shadow of a building where the ground had a series of alternating tiles that formed a chess board, topped by giant plastic chess pieces. Large groups of old men (sometimes more than 50!) would huddle around and would switch off playing chess all day, oohing and aahing with every move. It was so fun to watch and the players were amazing! Definitely something I need in my future back yard…

About my travel plans…they’re now set in stone. I’m taking a 7000+ mile detour from Paris and heading to Montevideo, Uruguay!

I’m currently in the Mostar, out on a day trip from Sarajevo. After leaving Montenegro on a long and windy bus ride through the hills of Bosnia (I never want to ride on a bus again…) I was rewarded by arriving on my second favorite city after Hong Kong–Sarajevo! The rooted culture of Bosnia is an interesting mix…Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and…Asian? Bosnian coffee is served in what are essentially Chinese tea cups. More on this when I get to Zagreb for the weekend and have some time to sit and write more, but I’ll proudly say I liked the place so much I bought the t-shirt!

From the “Vagabond Gone Crazy” department:

My travel itinerary is soon to out of date. I’ve decided to extend my trip by about three days and stop by an entirely different continent. The very last week of my trip I had planned to spend a week up in Scotland based on the strong recommendations from several people throughout my journey. But when I did the math on how much a week there would cost me and had my figures double-checked by a Brit, I discovered that it would run around $1000! I don’t want to cut my travels off short and I’m not feeling much desire to visit any other parts of Western Europe (I am extremely toasted going to destinations with lots of tourists, particularly Americans) so I’ve decided there’s places I’d rather go that get me more excited than Scotland for the same money or less.

I’ll write back more when it’s set in stone. But I bet some of you can guess already where I’m going.

I’ve put up some photos from around here in Durmitor. Lisa suggested that I take more pictures of people, so I did just that. Hasn’t been hard in the last few days, I’ve been hanging out with groups of great locals.

http://gallery.nanoflux.com/durmitor

Random fact: The guy next to me is playing EA’s NBA 2005 as the Seattle Sonics in my honor.

Update:

I have a bit more time now so I’ve decided to add some more to my post…

I headed out toward Tara Canyon this morning. I was told that it was about 7km out from the town and I should get there in about an hour and a half on foot. No problem! I started at about 10:30am, with moderate wind and clouds.

An hour and a half later, I was looking at nothing but more road ahead of me and I decided to consult my map to see if maybe I was heading in the wrong direction. When I opened my map, I saw that there was a road that headed out straight east toward the mouth of the canyon, whereas the canyon viewing point was solidly to the north. There was a road on the edge of town I should have turned onto to head north. I pulled out my compass (never go on a trip without one) and confirmed that I was indeed heading east. Whoops!

I thumbed down the first vehicle that came by and got myself a ride back to Zabljak. One of the two people in the car was an Italian-Serbian/Montenegrin translator/tour guide that knew pretty good English. She told me to try and check out a place called “Snakes Lake” (translated) that’s small but supposedly beautiful.

Got back to town and with the cloud cover growing thicker, I decided I didn’t want to be caught in a downpour or storm 1.5 hours out of town. I took a taxi instead. Good thing! The snow drifts on the side of the road were pretty high and if I didn’t know what to look for I’d have never found the overlook. My cab driver, on the other hand, stopped on a dime right in front of the point. Beautiful view! It’s no Grand Canyon or Tiger Leaping Gorge, but truly no less spectacular. My photos (available on my gallery) don’t do it any sort of justice.

On the way back we tried going to Snakes Lake, but the snow had completely covered the trail. I tried to find it on foot, but the journey was fruitless.

I’m leaving here tomorrow mid-day back to Podgorica, but I’m really going to miss this place. I’ve been introduced to a good chunk of the town and when I’m walking down the street people are constantly calling out my name or saying hi, even if that’s the only thing they can say that I understand. But it’s this warm, small-town mentality that I’ve come to love Montenegro for. After traveling in so many places, it’s great to spend time in a place where people are willing to share with you and welcome you as a visitor instead of preying on your wallet. For instance, the owner of the cafe I’ve been hanging out at was more than happy to give me a couple beers on the house last night despite the fact he knew no English. Everyone is always sharing their snacks with me and refusing anything I pull out in return (maybe I just have bad selections :)).

Ahh–I shall miss it.

I’m currently sitting in the Internet Cafe/Video Rental Shop/Cinema/Gaming Center of Zabljak, a town inside Durmitor National Park in Montenegro (formally part of Yugoslavia). The room is about the size of a generous apartment kitchen and lined with six computers. Only one of them has the ability to connect the the Internet and it doubles as the cinema screen as it’s the only computer with a DVD player. The other five computers are used for multi player gaming between the locals…football (American Soccer) is popular here. There’s also a fair selection of pirated DVD’s to rent and watch.

Since I’ve left Croatia, I’ve felt like a true backpacker. I picked up the 11am bus to Montenegro from Dubrovnik, Croatia, armed only with the information that the bus would take me to the border. I had no guidebook and only scribbles for the places where I was going. I had tried asking a couple of people for more information in the days before I left Dubrovnik…one particular Croatian put it best…

“Do you have any more information?”

“Information? This is information. We used to be at war with these people.”

Despite how that sounds, he wasn’t bitter and was actually half-laughing.

Anyway, I got to the Montenegrin port city of Bar without incident and met some cool college kids along the ride. Got to Bar, was shown where to spend the night by the people I met on the bus, then went to the capital city of Podgorica the next day. Met a taxi driver that knew great English and we ended up sitting at a cafe for about an hour as he told me all about Montenegro and answered my questions. Lucky, the cab driver’s English pronounceable name, is incredibly proud of his country.

Made it up 4750 feet up into the mountains to get to Zabljak the same afternoon and started following the group of people coming off the bus, looking for signs that said, “sobe”, “rooms”, or “apartmani”, which have been commonplace in former Yugoslavia. As I passed through the center of town, I heard the sound of knuckles knocking on a window. I turned to look at the cafe next to me and saw a group of four 20-somethings gesturing to me to come inside. From their friendliness, I thought that they might speak some English, so I went in and joined them.

Nope! Not too much beyond what you can pick up by watching American movies and listening to American music (universal all the world round). We bonded over coffee and snack foods, which everyone produced. But as we ran out of avenues of communcation with limited English, I took a page from Steve Lloyd, the “fields of grass” guy from Tiger Leaping Gorge, who was able to make friends with all the non-English speaking locals by trying to learn some of the local dialect. So we worked with what English we did know and I started to write down Serbian phrases. Not surprisingly, they consist of your basic “hello” but quickly progressed into the local swear words and sexual dialogue. The entertainment for the group of people I’ve been hanging out with in the last couple days has been getting me to repeat Serbian swear words and phrases with my American accent. Maybe I’m making a complete fool of myself…I truly have no clue about most the things I’m saying, but it’s good fun for everyone.

Has anyone noticed that I’ve only concentrated on talking about how great the people are here? That’s because that’s exactly how they are! Extremely friendly and welcoming people, with a big café culture (always a plus) that love to mingle with everyone–friends, family, even strangers. As far as communication goes, all the college graduates speak decent or better English. They make up over 75% of the population of Montenegro, so in the big cities it’s really easy to get around.

Anyway, this same group helped me find some accommodation and I have an entire house to myself for 9 euros. Yes…it’s definitely the off-season out here. There’s still a ton of snow on the ground and the temperatures are classic spring time in the mountains, warm in the sun but really cool in the shade and at night. The scenery reminds me of Colorado and today I did some hiking by “Black Lake” which reputedly has water so clean and clear that it looks black from reflecting the sky. Can’t see this for myself yet…it’s all still frozen. Tomorrow I’m going to Tara Canyon, which I’m told is second-largest to the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

Photos another day!

I went yesterday to a photo gallery called “War and Honey: 10 Years of War.” The photos inside were immensely moving…ten photographers that covered the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian conflict (ethnic cleansing) that later resulted in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Something that still in the all-too-recent memory for many of the residents here.

The photos were incredible.

• A four panel frame. The first three panels are two men, forced to lie face down on the sidewalk, being kicked and beaten by anonymous soldiers. A fourth panel is absent of people, just a photo of the sidewalk, marred by still-wet pools of blood in the vague shape of two men.
• Bullet shattered windows after the war, with their occupants standing behind them with blank looks.
• A close-up on the face of a man, terrified, presumably told to kneel down, hands up, facing away from the solder behind him who’s cradling his assault rifle in one hand and palming two handguns in the other.
• The asphalt pavement of a street, with the shape of a person imprinted in white. The imprint was created by ash, for the person was burned…
• A field filled with casualties of a siege.
• Dubrovnik’s marina, an inferno.
• A snowy field, red with blood.
• Scared refugees huddled around a switch next to a rail line.
• A barrack, filled with soldiers sleeping on blankets.
• Men with their skin stretched so tight over their skeletal structures that full-definition of ribs and spine could be seen.
• A unit of the Serbian Tiger Army, posed around the front end of a tank, all wearing black masks, except the commander, standing in the middle, directly below the cannon, holding up a tiger cub by the skin of its head.

Is this the human condition? I certainly hope not. But is the result of war? My only perceptions of war are from movies and mass media, which always glorify the role of the soldier or the greater goal. It generalizes the civilian population, anonymizing them. But when viewed like this…

I’ve looked forward to going to Sarajevo because I’ve never seen a place torn apart by war. I know that Dubrovnik was involved in the aforementioned war, but there’s so much tourism here that it seemed that everything had been well repaired by now.

Then I saw it.

I walked into the Old Town this morning and immediately ran into a German tour group in front of a church.

Maybe he was gesturing, maybe he wasn’t. But his hand drew my eyes to the missing chunks in the otherwise smooth brick facade of the church. Missing chunks that looked like oddly shaped craters…

I wonder how I had missed it before. Perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough, perhaps they naturally blended into the weather-beaten bricks of the Old Town. But now, everywhere I looked, bullet-impact craters marred the walls. Chunks missing here, there. Pockmarks that marred the fountain. Everywhere, spots that had been mortared over and made smooth, but not enough to blend.

I found myself strolling and standing in the open of a former war zone. This may sound odd to some of you, but I started to imagine the place, crossed with gunfire. The wide street would have made for an open killing zone for anyone running across. I wonder if someone had lost their life in the very spot I was standing…

The image, augmented by my imagination filled with the photos from yesterday and Hollywood scenes was not a pretty one.

Of course, this is all very different today. Croatia is a beautiful country, with friendly people, a goregous coastline, and cities that feel like larger versions of Cinque Terre (hills and all). Oddly, hanging around here evokes feelings of being in the US, especially considering the availability of good, clean, bathrooms which are well-stocked with soap and paper towels (treasures after China). Dubrovnik’s Old Town, a walled city right on the coast of the turquoise blue waters of the sea, is quite picturesque.

There’s a huge classical music scene in Croatia. On Hvar I went to a piano recital (gratis!) of Anne-Marie Rouchon from Paris, in the Fransciscan Cloister of Hvar Town. Last night I went to a performance of the highly skilled Dubrovnik String Quartet in a small church, the same one with the cratered facade. I’ve also heard from the street more than a few children practicing their instruments.

Music from América Latina is also big here. More than a couple bars play Latin Music and the big club here is called “Latino Club.” I’m going tonight. Can’t wait.

Heading to Montenegro tomorrow to spend a couple days at Dumitor National Park!

New photos up, including some catch up from Italy.

• Siena, Italy
• Burano, an island off Venice, Italy
• Hvar, Croatia
• Dubrovnik, Croatia

Wanted to quickly say that I’ve made it to Dubrovnik on a beautiful 7 hour ferry from Hvar through the islands of Croatia.

And now to unveil my upcoming travel plans, which I’ve just decided to do, for sure, today…I’m going to either Sarajevo and/or Dumitor National Park in Montenegro next. Yes, Sarajevo is in Bosnia, which I understand to be quite safe (and tourist free!) these days.

I will definitely go to Sarajevo and on there to Belgrade in Serbia, so the only question mark is making it to the supposedly incredible Tara Cannyon in Montenegro.

I’m currently on the island of Hvar off the coast of Croatia near Split. It’s beautiful out here, with sparkling clean torquoise blue waters of the Adriatic sea. Unfortunately, like Cinque Terre and Santorini before it, all the dive shops are closed because it’s the off-season.

Let me tell you that traveling in Croatia is easier than most European countries…English is widely spoken here, to the point that the bookstores all carry a large selection of well-priced English books.

Heading to the infamous city of Dubrovnik tomorrow for a few days and from there… =)

My email inbox is empty. So if you sent me mail and didn’t get a reply, I probably didn’t get it.

Currently in Ancona, IT, waiting to catch a ferry to Split, Croatia.

I’ve gotten some emails asking if I’ve dropped on the face of the Earth, so I started thinking that maybe I should take the time to update my blog.

I’m currently in Cinque Terre, IT. It’s the one spot that I really wanted to go to that we missed on the Italià Bionic Tour of 2004. For those of you that haven’t heard of Cinque Terre before, it’s a series of five towns built on the steep hillsides along the west coast of Italy, right on the Mediterranean . I do mean this literally…the towns are actually built on the hills. As a result, the colorful buildings making up each town are actually tiered up the hillside and strech all the way right to the water. Absolutely gorgeous. There’s a hiking trail that links the five towns I did yesterday, which was a good challenge but a pleasure to be out in nature again…I’ve been having withdrawls since Tiger Leaping Gorge. There was even a naturalist beach off the trail that we hiked down tofor a refreshing swim in the (cold) Med. Perfect for a hard hike on a warm day.

Shortly after my last post, I moved out from Siena to Venetzia (Venice) for three nights. There I started encountering some of the worst weather of my trip, with low temeratures, cold rain, and a stiff wind. Maybe Italià is sad that Elf left?

It was my second time in Venice and I didn’t have too much desire to spend much time in the grossly expensive canal town (especially with the weather), but I stayed there because of it’s vicinity to Verona, an hour away. From April 7th to 11th was Vinitaly, the largest and most important wine exposition in Italy and perhaps all of Europe (the only contender is the French equivelant). I went only on Saturday and it was nuts! Vinitaly took place at the Verona Fiere, a exposition complex. Halls and halls filled with winemakers from every region of Italy and even some from Hungary, Slovenia, France, Argentina, and more! Each booth was incredibly elaborate, some of them two stories tall, and all of them had free wine flowing from each to try. Woo! Considering the elegance of the booths, the high admission price of 35EUR/day, and the importance of the expo, I can’t even phantom what it costs to have a booth there. As such, I imagine that only the best vineyards can afford to showcase their wines there and the quality of the vino certainly reflected it. An absolutely amazing day.

I’ve got some new photos up today, so check ‘em out!

• Greece
• Vinitaly 2005
• Cinque Terre

Let me reiterate again that life is nothing if not full of surprises.

Elf got a call this morning from her dad telling her that her Grandmother is dying. She was told to find the her way to Buffalo, NY ASAP.

Well, I did the research for her this morning and we got tickets booked. She’s flying out of Rome tomorrow morning and may return in two weeks…or maybe not at all!

Nonetheless, I’m vagabonding solo after a few more hours, so things are bound to get a little interesting. I’m sitting in Siena, my favorite city from the Italia Bionic Tour 2004, and it’s still absolutely beautiful. I can’t think of a better place to start off a new chapter of my travels.

I’ll write more about what’s been happening on my trip another day–I’ve got five minutes left!