Bosnia I Herzegovina

I meet up with Vic again after doing another part of a beautiful road, since he waited a bit for me to catch up with him before we would enter Bosnia together and continue together for the journey. We arrive at a bordercrossing between Croatia and Bosnia but the Croat wouldn’t let us pass… we need to go to a bigger bordercrossing where they have a computer to check us out… So we do this. When we arrive, it takes like not even 5 minutes and I’m in! But there’s a problem with Vic. He needs to put his back aside and follow the police inside. After waiting 15 minutes I’m getting curious about the problem and ask what is wrong. Apparently Vic’s passport is flagged by interpol… The story is as follows: he lost his pasport went to the police, they flagged it, he got a new one, he found his old one back, didn’t report it to the police and got all his visa’s in it without a problem… ?! Now in this place with just a container and interpol access, he’s really taken aside, as they confiscate his passport and he just gets a letter that we don’t understand and he needs te get back home for a new one… bye bye of months of planning his adventure, as he would have gone all the way to Bangkok. So Vic is turning around, going back to Luxemburg and I will continue by myself… as the original plan was. I really feel sorry for him, it’s one of the most disgusting ways I think to have to stop your travelplans.

Some pics from Croatia still:

The border where we couldn’t pass and the one where I got in:

From there on I continue to Mostar, ell known for it’s bridge and the destroying of it during the YU war. Also here in Bosnia, still a lot of place with damage that hasn’t been repaired. I am amazed at this, furthermore because there is a lot of empty housing and buildings everywhere. I don’t even understand why I bother to go to a ho(s)tel since I could have a huge factory plant all for myself…

Somewhere between Mostar and Sarajevo I find this old bridge that is still there as it was when it got blown up in 1943:

It’s terribly hot there, I get 40° and I need to stop way too much to drink. And I’m not drinking, I’m just swallowing whole bottles of water at once. Two months ago I had snow on the bike with -5 and now I have +40… Is a man ever happy anyways about the weather?  From there on to Sarajevo! You also need to know that my GPS is worthless in Bosnia, no maps at all and I can’t seem to find a good decent roadmap here, so I just memorize googlemaps and make little drawings where the major cities/places are to try and find my way around. I always wanted to go to sarajevo. Maybe because of everything that happened in the past? Maybe because I just like the name of the city? Well in the end I get there and at first I am a bit disappointed. I’m thinking “what the hell this place sucks!” But then I find this really cool hostel, get a shower talk to the guy who runs it. He looked at me and just said plain in my face: do you work some kind of security or are you a policeman? For a second I just don’t know what to say or how to react. How the hell does he knows that? Well, I just take off for a saturday night walk in Sarajevo on my own. Ok, honestly, this is the BEST place in the world for a drink on a saturday night! I am baffled about the atmosphere here, unbelievable! Amidst buildings that are still not even renovated or anything from the war comes this loud european tunes and vibes, women are njam-njam and way to much macho men walking the street. And in between all these muslims. And then the mosques starts singing for prayer time. So you have the Imam shouting through his mic and then you have tunes from Beyoncé or I don’t know who interfering with this. Crazy. I love it! Next morning I go for a quick walk to see it in daylight and yes, I must say that I really like the old town of Sarajevo. I will be back one day…

Next is through the mountains and the really really small roads and gravelroads and offroad to Montenegro. But first I pass this sign:

I need to think really really hard… but nothing comes to my mind. What the hell is the Republic of Srpska? Basically it is (again-I seem to encounter these frequently) a region that is in Bosnia, but is not really Bosnian… Look it up in google or wikipedia if you’re interested in knowing this. But afterwards I understand why they have different flags than the Bosnian one, they are Serbs living in Bosnia and they still don’t really like eachother. The good thing about traveling without the GPS is that you need a map. You also need people to tell you where to go as in most places I’ve been in Bosnia there are no signs. All these people even point me to more interesting roads that are not on a map. Cool, but it takes forever to get rid of these really nice and talkative guys (even if I don’t understand what they are talking about) but also to get anywhere for that matter. But then these pictures were certainly worth it! And yes, since you can see these, I am ok and nothing happened…