Friday morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and piled into 3 vans to go to Bosnia and Herzegovina. (the locals call it Bosna i Hercegovina) The first stop was Međugorje which is a small Catholic town. It was a basically a religious place with lots of Catholic things for sale and a huge church but I didn't know why until I read about the city on Wikipedia. According to the Wikipedia page the city is most famous for apparitions of the Virgin Mary. So there wasn't that much to do in Međugorje, we just walked around and checked the place out and then ate some early lunch. The food was excellent. Leah mentioned something about not ever imagining herself visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina of all places, we all pretty much agreed.
Two hours later we were on the road again and our next stop was Mostar. We unloaded the vans at our hotel, Hotel Mostar. It felt very much like a dorm room, I felt like I was back at RIT freshman year. There was a sink in our shower... I took a video for your enjoyment. I forgot I can take 30 second video clips with my camera until recently. I had trouble remembering the name of the city, kept wanting to call it Monstar.
So then we wondered the streets of Mostar. There was the shells of bombed out buildings next to new buildings, and it was very strange to see the remnants of the Bosnian war still so vivid and real. We walked down to the old town and saw the famous bridge the city was named after, stari most. The old bridge was destroyed in 1993 during the war but was rebuilt to match its original construction and was finished in 2004. When I was looking at the bridge in pictures I thought "that's it? What is so great about it?" Well, seeing it in person is really impressive, it is really unique and walking on it is really an experience. The river it ran over was very green and looked really interesting and unlike anything you'd see in New York. The streets of the old town were all rocky and the entire construction of the city was so unique, like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life. It was so different from anything I've seen in Croatia or Montenegro. Around 5:00 or so everything started to close down and none of us knew why. Later I found out from Denis it was because they found some bodies from the war and they were having a ceremony to honor them. We headed back to the hotel to rest for a while when everything was closing up. I didn't anticipate it, but I fell asleep almost instantly when we got back to the hotel. I was so exhausted when Ian came into my room 3 hours later and asked if I wanted to go back to the old town I said "no, go away, I'm sleeping." I wish I was more awake at that point because I didn't want to spend all day sleeping. I woke up around 10:00 or so and I was really really really really hungry. So hungry I couldn't concentrate on anything except for getting food. Everyone else had already come back to the hotel and ate previously but Tom said there was a place down the street that he got food from. I headed that way hoping there would be suitable food there for me to eat. This was the menu:
Now, I don't know what any of that stuff is except for Ćevapi which is definitely not vegetarian. I asked the lady if there was anything without meat except she didn't know what I was talking about because she didn't speak any English except for the word "hamburger." Tom who went with me said he was pretty sure that "pomfrit" means french fries. After some more failed communication with the lady who worked there, when I said the magic word, pomfrit, she pulled frozen french fries out of the freezer!! Success!!! I was so happy to get food into my system, and the fries were really really good, just wish I had more of them. I noticed that my phone, which has never worked in Croatia, worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had bought a Croatian SIM card for my phone my first week here but it never worked and I couldn't justify buying a new phone for only 3 months so I just went without a phone. I regret this choice in the long run, I wish I bought the new phone, but oh well.In the morning I got up and ate a big breakfast at the hotel. I sat and ate with Denis' wife. Denis is the photography professor from RIT that came along with the photo students. She is a really interesting person. So after that I showered in what felt like the middle of the bathroom and got dressed and we piled back in the vans and said goodbye to Mostar.
Sarajevo, the capital and largest city in Bosnia, was next on our journey. We stopped to eat lamb from a restaurant on the way to Sarajevo, I had an omelet which was ok. I prefer my eggs to be very well cooked and these were runny but I wasn't going to be picky when I was lucky to get anything vegetarian at all so I just flipped the omelet around so I didn't see the runny part. Once again, the people who served us spoke just a bit of English but Leah spoke to her in German which she was able to understand better. We had a hell of a time trying to get water out of the tap that wasn't bottled, but we had success. The view at the place we ate was spectacular. On the way to Sarajevo, Leah, Brad, Kyle and I played a stupid game you play to waste time on car trips. The basis of the game is one person starts with saying "I went to a picnic and brought..." and then names something that starts with A. Person number two says "I went to a picnic and I brought..." and then says the same thing person number one said and then adds a new thing that starts with a B, and then person three does C and so on. We finished the game and we ended up with an awesome picnic so I thought that I'd share.
Things we brought to the picnic:
apples
banana nut muffins
children
ding dongs
elephants
fudgesicles
grapefruit
heads
ice for the fudgesicles
Jesus
Klingons
Lufthansa employees
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
nice people
odorous people
procrastinators
Quake
Reading Rainbow
Snakes on the Lufthansa plane
Toblerone
underwear
vegetable soup
Wegmans
XPath expressions
yo-yos
Zach Braff
We tried to get our van driver to play also but he didn't want to. He was the same guy who drove us to Montenegro. After the game was over we were just about in Sarajevo. We drove around for what seemed like forever once we were actually in Sarajevo and eventually came to our hotel. When we got out instead of being shown to our rooms, we were seated at some tables at the front of the hotel and we were brought a large shot of... something very alcoholic as a welcome. So we drank it and sat for a couple of minutes. The hotel staff showed us to our rooms, ladies first. So all 6 of us women followed the staff out the back door and across the street to a separate building that looked like someone's house, and up the stairs, where there was 3 rooms and a bathroom for us. The guys got normal hotel rooms in the hotel. The rooms were super nice and the sink was not in the shower.
We set our stuff down and then all 14 of us study abroad students preceded to wonder the streets of Sarajevo. We were looking for the downtown area but we were clearly lost. We split up into two groups eventually and Zoran the photo student kept asking people for directions in Croatian. We stopped for coffee on the way. There was your bombed out buildings in Sarajevo too, and TONS of graffiti everywhere. There was also a lot of large buildings and business. Ian and photo student Zoran took picture of a building but it was next to the construction site of the new US embassy so the guy was waving his hands at them not to take pictures and started to follow us. The new embassy site was fenced off and barbed wires prevented people from entering. We also passed the statue of Tito that our mentor Zoran showed us in class:
Eventually we got to the downtown area. Downtown was really pretty cool, it was crowded and there was lots of stores and things going on. We walked around and saw the city and sat down to eat. I asked Zoran if there was anything on the menu that was vegetarian, since it isn't like in Dubrovnik where the menus are in English as well, and he said the only thing was yogurt so I got some of that. It was drinkable yogurt. I saw a market next door so while others were enjoying their food I stopped there and picked up some fig newton-like snacks and some pudding for my dinner. We were talking about Snickers on the ride to Sarajevo so when I saw one at the market I had to get it, even though it was a bit much. We took a cab back to the hotel and then I was super tired from the day's activities and took a nap. When I woke up, Anna, Lori, and Kayla were returning. We sat up and talked for what seemed like forever but we were all in bed before midnight.
We got up at about 7am and ate breakfast at the hotel then we went back downtown to check it out again. We walked around and saw a store where people make crafts to sell. Chris bought a super-awesome chessboard the guy made and then he engraved it for him for free. We sat down and ate some burek which I was told was really good in Bosnia. I had burek in Croatia before, but the Bosnian burek was very different and they had more flavors and it was so very good. I got potato burek but we tried out each other's. Then it was time for Turkish coffee, which is like the only kind they serve in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was good, but a bit much. We took a cab back to the hotel and then sat around for an hour before the vans took us home. The ride home was miserable because it was all windy mountain roads and it made me so very carsick. When we got back to Croatia, ACMT was having a BBQ at the beach for their students. I went but there was nothing vegetarian except the bread. I ate some bread and sat on the beach for a while. I helped Ian collect sea glass and put my feet in the water and Kyle showed me how to skip stones. I had an awesome time in Bosnia but it was so nice to be home again. The sun was shinning and it was a beautiful day to be outside on the beach. I was happy. :)
I know I'm so behind on posting pictures, I'm sorry about that... more eventually from Montenegro and Bosnia eventually.
One week left...
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