Mint chocolate chip gelato—that’s how you start a city off right, as we did with Dubrovnik, Croatia. Perhaps attributable to being exposed to new and different cuisines, my travel companions and I spent an unhealthy amount of time talking about food and drink during our travels. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? Well, mint chocolate gelato (~$2) definitely hit the spot and counted as “lunch” before wandering around Dubrovnik. Reaching Dubrovnik from Kotor involved a 4 hour bus journey, followed by a toasty wait to shove our way onto a local bus and a perplexing but ultimately successful bus ride to our guesthouse, perched on the hillside overlooking the city and the sea—not bad for 16 Euros (~$24) per person/night. Down, left, down, right, down, down, down we walked until we ended up at the old city. Kaylee, seasoned traveler that she is, had already toured the city so Kerry and I wandered alone on the city walls and Kerry climbed every tower you could because that is the kind of person she is, which I love her for even when I’d rather be sitting at a cafe drinking a cold Coca Cola. As friends and travelers will, we struggled to agree on a restaurant for dinner that met our price requirements (about as cheap as feasible) and tastes. Losing the deciding match of rock-paper-scissors, Kerry’s seafood restaurant it was and I had a passable veggie risotto. The highlight of the day though followed when we bought wine (including accidentally, but shockingly good, a Macedonian wine never before seen by us in the homeland) and we drank it watching the sunset from guesthouse balcony.
Another new day, another new country, another new currency—from Dubrovnik, we carried on into Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), our fourth country and fourth currency (the Konvertible Mark—KM). When Bosnia is mentioned, I think shelling and conflict is what first comes to many people’s minds but the legacy of that time, seeing how the country did and is recovering, was part of what made it so fascinating.
Our first stop was Mostar, a city about 3.5 hours by bus from Dubrovnik, where we stayed at one of the best hostels I’ve ever been to because it’s like a home—you take your shoes off at the door, they welcome you with a slice of cake, and they serve a hot breakfast in the morning. Mostar is small and thus made for wandering. We checked out its famed bridge from many angles but sadly missed the one brave soul that day that plunged from the bridge into the river below. The bridge was shot into pieces and destroyed during the war but rebuilt using stone from the same quarry as the original. On our hostel’s recommendation, we also wandered around a bank that snipers used where there are bullet shells on the floor and documents still strewn around. Enterprisingly enough, in the tourist shops you can buy pens made from shell casings.
Mostar marked the start of THE RAIN, a storm that doggedly tracked us for the remainder of our trip (note the dark clouds in many of the photos here). Really, I’ve never had such a rainy period which, during some storms, reminded me of my visit to Vietnam in the wet season, it was like that. We had a bit of good fortune the next day that it was only cool but not raining for our visit to the Kravice Waterfalls and a village called Pocitelj. These sites were part of a tour offered by the brother of our hostel owner, a tour that came well recommended and should because of the guide’s insane energy. He enthusiastically showed us how because in the BalKANS you CAN, he outfitted the back of his van with a variety of stools to carry more passengers. For me, sadly, the tour did not live up to the hype because we spent 5 hours climbing around waterfalls (and in my opinion a person can swim in many places) and did not go to Medugorje, a site that I’d been hearing about from my Catholic relatives for years where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared. Sorry family, close but no cigar. As referred to in my last entry, this was a need-more-rakija situation for me where it would have been better to have no expectations of the tour at all and thereby not be disappointed when it followed our guide’s whim to spend the day swimming. The village stop in Pocitelj was better, where we played name-that-flavor trying various nectar concoctions made by a villager and sampled in her home. One was like a virgin mojito, it was fantastic. Haha, I can’t believe I used the word “virgin” twice in this paragraph and in two completely different contexts.
Sadly we missed our second breakfast at the hostel to make the most of our overnight stay in Sarajevo. The whole day it rained, but I guess that set the mood for seeing some of the war sites, like a tunnel people dug to get food and other supplies without being subject to sniper fire and divots in the sidewalks from shells that are filled in red and called “Sarajevo roses.” Rainy weather was also a fine excuse for us to spend time at the Sarajevo Brewery drinking rare (at least in Macedonia) dark beer.
Unfortunately Sarajevo marks the point where Kerry came down with some kind of stomach bug, making her relatively miserable for the next few days. She’s a trooper though and we carried on to our next stop in northern BiH, Jajce. The town of Jajce is picturesquely perched over some waterfalls (though admittedly there was some kind of construction marring part of the view during our visit) and it was nice to visit a town that is still being discovered for its tourist potential. Our hostel owners were awesome about letting Kerry rest in our room, even after we’d checked out and they cleaned it, so we left BiH with a good impression about the local people. This nation seemed happy to share its story and show off its resiliency and I’ll admit, BiH won me over as new fan.
No comments:
Post a Comment