Montenegro was quite an enjoyable experience and it was a really nice change to be outdoors experiencing nature rather than a city or town. With our little taste for the simple life we took it upon ourselves to travel a little deeper to the east and on to Bosnia. Did’s kicked the experience off in fine fashion by first getting clocked speeding by the local constabulary and then running the border crossing between Montenegro and Bosnia! In her defense, the boom gate was open and they were all asleep! But didn’t they all spring to life when she buzzed through doing 40! There really wasn’t a funny side to be seen from their side apparently…..
With relations high between us and the local fuzz, we put the red rocket into overdrive and quickly made our get away. The roads just over the border deteriorated rapidly and one of the first sights we were met by was more police swarming around a truck perched in our way on a tight mountain pass. Told to make our way around we nudged the edge of the road and brushed only just past the truck which we found was parked there to collect the load of another truck which had fallen off the mountain! Good signs! Well the road further on was littered with subsidence’s; some nearly 300mm, where the mountain had just lurched away. The most notable road section though was where the oncoming lane had just fallen off the mountain! Far out!
It was apparent early in the piece that Bosnia was even poorer than Montenegro. We travelled through some pretty and mountainous country side for our final destination of Sarajevo. Entering town you could still see heaps of reminders of the war that devastated the area in the early 1990’s. Many building still displayed scars from where they had been hit by anti aircraft projectiles, mortars and other ordinance. As we headed through Dids pointed out sniper alley and the famous Holiday Inn where all the journalists stayed during the war. Pretty full on I think.
We didn’t much fancy pitching a tent in Sarajevo, you know land mines+ tent pegs = the kind of fireworks our tent isn’t quite used to, so we found a double room to stay at in the old town which was clean and quite. The old town of Sarajevo was built by the Ottoman Turks in the 13 to 15 hundreds and is an amazing place where both Turkish and eastern European traditions mix. Here the food was amazing, the beer was super cheap and the people were friendly. Dids and I took a personalized guided tour of the city lead by a local historian who had lived through the war in Sarajevo. This was amazing! He retold his experiences of the war, of finding blood trails through his house, being shelled and sniped at as well as having his house shot at by a tank! His knowledge of the area and its rich history was just incredible. He escorted us around such sites as the location of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination which was used as the catalyst for world war one in which 22 million people were killed. Now if you’re going to give your city a claim to historical fame, I guess that is a pretty notable one!
The corner on which Franz Ferdinand was killed. The guy who shot him had apparently just grabbed a sandwich from the corner shop before by chance finding Franz Fedinand infront of him. And with a few shots world war 1 was instigated.
With our minds buzzing from our new found wisdom, we left Sarajevo for Mostar. It was our intention to staying the night but after a having a quick look around we decided it better to move on….. We did the touristy thing and photographed the one attraction the town had to offer before high tailing it out.
On the road again, we started to notice a large abundance of Bosnian styled road side diners. These are diners like nothing else! From the road you can see the usual sit down area, but it is the large cooking sheds with up to 5 lambs rotating at tantalizing speeds over a bed of hot coals that changes the game! The best thing about it all is that you can smell the rotating goodness well before you see it. MMMMmmmmmm freaking MMMMMM!!!!!
Making our way down the road of rotating lamb, we somehow got into Split, Croatia. It’s all a little blurry for me….. I soon came too though at the sight of some 200+ riot police all heading out of town looking very serious indeed. Apparently we had arrived at the end of Split’s first ever gay pride parade which was a big hit among the locals….
Split as a town, minus the police and parades was clean and cosmopolitan, much like Dubrovnik but with a better more livable feel about it. There was an awesome old town tucked in between some old Roman fortifications that was nicely kitted out with funky little beer gardens and cafes. Really cool. As with the nature of this trip though, time only allowed us one night there before we were making our way to Zagreb with the aim of eventually being in Budapest.
Before reaching Zagreb, I thought it best to take one last dip in the “Med” before I left it for good. It was greatly appreciated on my behalf when Dids took it upon herself to point out the different types of sea weed that were around while I was swimming. There was the big green sea weed, the small light green sea weed and the toilet paper sea weed……….. Hmmmmm…….Not happy Jan!
Leaving the “Med” behind (notice the pun….) we were promptly off to Zagreb. In Zagreb we camped in the grounds of a local hostel where we took advantage of a decent BBQ area adjacent to the tent to have a big cook up. I love the way that the Croatians, Bosnians and Montenegrins LOVE barbecuing, even more so than Australian. I also love that they do it well! The guy hosting the hostel was about the nicest bloke you would meet and he made us feel very welcome, especially while we barbecued which was brilliant.
After some rain that was not supposed to eventuate overnight eventuated, we packed up our now wet gear and moved on to Budapest. Again we managed to find another hostel to camp at although I would be more correct in saying this was a bit more like a hippie commune than a hostel. My first pass to the kitchen area had me stumbling across some brownies of the more hippie persuasion…..
On our first outing that afternoon Dids managed the wacky idea of buying us tickets to see the Hungarian equivalent of Abba….. Well, that was 3 hours of interesting to say the least! A Hungarian musical with English subtitles, you can chock that down as a first for me. Translation was not needed for the fat guy dancing near the end however, that is simply a universal favourite! The locals were all dressed up to their nines while I was standing around in my boardies and thongs looking like I was just dragged off the street (which I was). Awesome. I could feel their collective appreciation for my attire during the scheduled 20 minute interval…. It was a pretty cool experience however and the crowd seemed to like it because they gave five rounds of applause before we decided enough was enough and left.
The next day we took advantage of some hire bikes and rode all around the town which was just amazing! Best of all was the public thermal baths where we spent the main chunk of our day! Ohhhhh my god they were sooooooooo good! There were 3 really big outside pools, one at 28 degrees C, the other at 32 and the last at 38. In usual fashion it took me no time to be yelled at by the staff. Apparently you need to wear a hair net in the 28 degree pool, but not in the rest? I was yelled at for just jumping in and loafing around. My hat goes off to them though, they didn’t have the usual pause before yelling at me, they just yelled.
Indoors at the complex there was a series of some 16 pools all mixed with different minerals and set between the temperature ranges of 16 and 40 degrees C. Awesome! You could jump between any of these as you pleased for as long as you could care. To top it all off there were a number of saunas ranging from about 50 degrees C up to 100 degrees C! I have never been so steamed and thermalised in my life! (I just made up a word there, guess which one :) ).
With every muscle, bone and whatever else makes up a person relaxed, we were off to continue our ride of the town. Gaps between each bit of peddling were filled with either beer or food. One cool thing we noted about Budapest was that at a night time the public squares in the middle of town would open to impromptu bars where locals would spill out into creating an amazing atmosphere and giving the city a real night life. Plus they had cheap beer…… Awwwww, I loved Budapest!
Mmmmm beers
Not wanting to get sucked into staying in Budapest for longer than we could afford we have decided to make a dash for Vienna with maybe a stopover on the way in Bratislava for lunch…. It is a hard road we travel…..
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