Bosnia

The meal at our Bosnian hosts was amazing the lady of this home (which was down right palatial in comparison to others we had seen) gathered some food from the store cupboard. The meal proved to be the most amazing flavoured pork and salami I have ever eaten. We sat and where served a meal fit for Bosnian kings! It was great a lot of fun and laughs I managed to paint two paintings in the youngsters rooms to show our appreciation for their hospitality and before we went to bed launched one of Jonnys sky wish lanterns just to top the evening off one I think both we and them will remember for a long time….

The next day started with a decision on to Sofia or down to Sarajevo, Bosnia or Bulgaria I think after a few coin tosses and some wavering choices we plumped for previously war torn Sarajevo… this is one of the most intriguing landscapes I have ever travelled through.

The houses here where much the same as Croatian and Slovakian homes. Apart from the odd bullet-hole and shell shrapnel blast decorating the unpainted plaster. Nestled in autumn valleys and looking pretty lonely in the landscape you could imagine groups of soldiers moving from home to home as they travelled further along their routes to destructive destinations. Really brought home and eerie reality to this recent event… so It is possible that this imagining layered a veil over Sarajevo for me it was the unhappiest city we have travelled through, the buildings and people still show a uncomfortable something like I said maybe it was me?…

Another thing I will never forget as we drove into the city where two beggar children running along side the cars. As I lent out to hand them a marble of with a map of the world in some vague hope that it may make them smile I felt this little boys hands and they felt like the hands of many fifty year old builders I have worked with in the past rough and worn… as we moved along further we pulled up to his partner in money searching and I looked face to face with a tiny girl who had slept many night rough and dirty… our cars moved on and I saw in our wing mirror the two of them comparing their unusual gifts for the day…

We drove through the centre after stopping briefly at a hotel for wireless updates of the web site and saw building which had been shaken to the core with mortars then the landscape transformed in to ravine and similar housing but nestled in untouchable cliffs and obviously this had been a place that the warring may have found hard to reach… we drove on through this into the night and toward the boarder….

We came here across our first bit of paper work complications and had to detour to buy our green card a third party insurance for Serbia and then back to the border with the good roads…… after an extra 2hr we made it through and drove up and over a snowy windy road… it always seems that as we have gone through these boarders there has always been a change in landscape and weather… strange but true…

Love it…..