Out of the Balkans

I've been slacking lately-much to some family's dismay. Sorry for the delay...this will be the first of a lot of posts catching up.

Sarajevo, what a wonderful little town. And by little town I mean huge city. A very close friend lived there when she was young, so I had seen pictures and heard stories, but beyond that, I was going off very little. Thankfully, Lauren (one of the girls I'm travelling with) had been a few weeks ago and more or less knew the ropes.

Our bus pulled in to the station, and, as per is normally the case with our luck, it started POURING the second we stepped off. Earlier in the trip, Tatum's suitcase broke (that's what you get for 20 euros in Rome...r.i.p. Tardo), as in the seam ripped, the bottom rod on the frame cracked, and a wheel fell off, so walking and dealing with rain was pretty much last on our list of things we needed. Thankfully, we were getting picked up for free by the hostel and driven into town. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, up rolls a tiny 2 door 1982 lord-knows-what black hatch back with pink and green stripes along the side. Keep in mind we are travelling with all of our luggage since January...The poor little Bosnian man got out of the car and laughed. Ultimately we made two trips: one for our bags and the other for us.

We finally made it to the hostel and were served tea and left to converse with the other guests, one of which was in our last hotel in Mostar and another eccentric South-African man with a big agenda (more to come). We set out for the town to find pie. Sarajevo is known for their pies...our picks for the days we were there were burek (meat filled) and zelajsdhjfkh-ok thats not actually how it's spelled but you get the gist, my serbo-croatian never really reached that point-(spinach filled). We ate pie probably an average of every single day, if not twice a day. Mmm...

That night, as we were coming back to the hostel to settle in for the night, we ran into our South African friend who convinced us to go out with him and some of the others. Our rationale? An excuse to avoid returning to our tiny HOT smelly room and old German businessman room mate with a grizzly bear snore. So out we went. First stop was a little cafe-bar that was showing the Bayern Munchen vs. Inter Milan champion's legue final on a projection screen outside with about 50 people crowded into and outside of the place. I really wish the US liked soccer. Post-game, South African friend said that we just HAD to go to this SWEET bar that played wild Russian pop music. Huge fail. Needless to say, we pretty immediately left and ventured to another little bar down the street as our rating for our new friend steadily dropped. Here, we met a few other people who were also staying near us and talked outside for a while. In the mean time, South African friend goes inside and begins to dance. Alone. And not just sway and listen to the music. He was ready to rage. Aaaaanyhow, we all know I'm certainly not one to judge dancing...so to each his own.

The next day, we saw the sights of Sarajevo, mosques, bridges, fountains, churches, markets, tea, coffee, pie, rain, etc. As huge of a city as Sarajevo is, its really very manageable and has a specific character to it. Very Western but at the same time, not at all. One second youre staring at a war-torn house in a small neighborhood, and the next, you're on a busy shopping street packed with stores, banks, and restaurants. By evening, we were just about sick of terribly greasy, heavy food, and to our delight, discovered...SALAD (AND regular filter coffee!!! Espresso's great, but there's nothing like a cuppa joe every now and again) on the menu of the cafe we had stopped at to get out of the rain. That evening, we were not about to attempt round two with any of our fellow guests, so we called it a night and went home. The next day was spent doing much of the same, although this time in the sunshine. We walked all the way to the National Museum to discover it was closed, and so resorted to finishing our day with the purchase of a new suitcase for Tatum and a very large piece of cake.

Then came May 25th, the day of epic failure. We woke up and decided to just take public transportation to the airport. We were in no hurry because our flight wasn't until 6:45 that evening, but our hostel made us checkout at 11 and wouldn't hold our bags. Plan was to leave them at left luggage in the airport and see the Tunnel of Hope from the war that was built under the runways. So, we lug our grossly overweight bags down to the tram stop and wait. And wait. After about an hour and a half, 3 people telling us that they were broken (fail #1), us being stupidly stubborn and not wanting to take the 10 euro cab to the airport, and deciding on it but trying to find a cab big enough for us AND our bags, a tram came. On we hopped (or fell, as it were). We stood all the way in the back as the tram got more and more crowded, when suddenly a man told Tatum to close her purse. She thanked him, looked inside, and realized her wallet was gone. Fail #2. Luckily, she had moved her cards to a different bag that morning and was only short a bit of cash. From the end of the tram line, we had to take a cab to the airport, a ride that was only supposed to be 2 marks...about a euro. The driver charged us 15 euro. Fail #3. At that point, all we wanted to do was go sit. Screw the tunnel, because there wasn't even a place to leave luggage (fail #4). The Sarajevo International Airport was truly unbelievable. Because we were there a good 4 hours before our flight, we couldn't check in yet, and so sat at the one cafe in the entire airport which didn't serve food. fail #5, and had a perfectly adequate cup of tea for lunch it said the cafe was in terminal "B", but I'm pretty positive there was only one terminal and the " " were dubious. The one godsend of the day was the miracle that I didn't get charged for the 6 kilos over the weight limit that my bag was. Sitting at the gate, we saw the flight crew walking around looking for the door...lost. Fail #6, our own flight crew couldn't find the plane. To make things better, we were all pretty sure it would be physically impossible for our plane to actually come to a stop on landing by the sounds of the breaks during taxi. Get me out of this godforsaken place, please.

On our flight, we were served a sandwich and hummus and salad as we made our way to Turkey. I knew things could only go up from here. Or so I thought...