In 2014 I traveled in the former Yugoslavia. I wrote about my walking tour of Sarajevo with someone who had grown up during the siege there in the 1990s. And I wrote about three of the local people I met in Mostar, people who almost made me forget about the beautiful bridge that is the…
Before I proceed with my regular daily blog post, I want to make a special appeal for those who aren’t on Facebook and didn’t see my appeal there.
Today I remembered why I love to travel. It’s not to see a famous and beautiful bridge and walk the cobbled streets of an “Old Town.” Nor is it to buy the same tacky, made-in-China souvenirs that are sold in shop after shop. It’s not even to eat the local food (although that’s pretty important)…
My first impressions of Sarajevo, arriving in pouring rain and heavy traffic two nights ago after a long day of driving, were not so good. The city seemed dank and crowded and not ready for prime time. Even yesterday, after that wonderful day spent with Amir, I was more enamored of the stories than of the…
I’m going to try something different today. I’m not going to talk about what I saw. And I’m not going to include any of the photos I took. (For one thing, it was raining all day and many of my photos are blurred by raindrops on the lens. Also, my camera got so wet it…
We departed this morning a little before 9:00, anticipating the longest drive of the trip, estimated by Google (and by the folks at JayWay, the tour company that helped create the itinerary) as about five hours. But we didn’t arrive at our apartment in Sarajevo at 17:30, making the total day close to nine hours. We…
i’m ready. There are still two hours before I leave for the airport, but I’m all packed and ready to go. The big pile has been squeezed into my Rick Steves convertible carry-on and my souvenir bag from being a Jeopardy! contestant. Combined weight is 28 pounds, which is more than I’d like to be carrying,…
Hard to believe, but it’s just one week until I leave on my trip. I started packing last night. Well, not really. I made a pile on my floor of some stuff that’s coming with me (including some stuff that most likely won’t make the final cut when I actually do start packing). The pile will…
I love shopping on vacation. It’s not about buying souvenirs. In fact it’s not necessarily about buying anything (though I often do spend my American dollars abroad). Shopping on vacation is about seeing how locals shop, and how the things they buy and the way they buy them are similar to or different from how…
There’s only one artist from the countries I’ll be visiting that I’ve ever heard of: Ivan Meštrović. But I only just figured out why I’ve heard of him. For a while Meštrović taught at Syracuse University, where I (much later) went to college. And a number of his sculptures are displayed on the SU campus.…
Just as two years ago I struggled for the right term to describe Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and Iceland (I settled on “Nordic,” but that wasn’t really right), there isn’t a good term that describes the places I’m visiting on this trip. I use “Balkan” reluctantly, and I acknowledge that it’s not technically accurate, but…
If you do an image search on Mostar, pretty much every photo is of the same thing. And I’m sure I’ll add my own pictures of this bridge when I see it in person. But this, I guess, is Mostar.
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