Hotel Palas Banja Luka

... signing Serbian songs, Serbian flags, people who tell me that Kosovo is still part of Serbia. Its hard to communicate with locals in the villages we pass, some talk a bit of German, but no English. But it's great to see people being surprised about a group of international cyclists that pass their mountain village. They are really curious and seem to wonder if we are ...

... issues. The problem is eating healthily. Pizza is not the answer. Fruits and vegetables are. For a hyper-traveler this helps control costs also. My friends rag on me about how I'm such a tightwad, yet at the same time so unusually rich that I can travel all the time and all the world, while they rack up three-figure bills at the sushi bar, wishing they could travel some day, too. Go figure. Do the math. Get a clue. Of course for the true ...

... jaettu kahtia, toisen osan ollessa Bosnia-Hetzegovina ja toisen serbien asuttama Republica Srpska. Banja Luka on serbiosan paakaupunki ja Bosnian lippuja ei siis taalla pahemmin nakynyt. Eika kylla juuri mitaan muutakaan nakemisen arvoista. Vaeltelin hetken kaupungin paakatua mutta aika tylsalta vaikutti. Ravintolaakaan ei loytynyt mistaan. Lopulta palasin rautatieasemalle, jonka vieressa on kahviloita ja ravintolakin onneksi loytyi. Siella tuli sitten odoteltua 22.30 lahtevaa junaa ...

We told a lot of Sarajevo residents our next stop was going to be Banja Luka. A lot of icy stares back. You don't want to go there. Now we understand. Tell a co-worker you are going to spend the next part of your holiday at the Silverwater Sydney Water Effluent Treatment Facility and you will get a similar reaction. Its not ...

... without a guard rail. There was not much in the way of civilization on the way out to this place, and I began to wonder if we were indeed going the right way, and if we would find a place to stay and stuff to eat when we got there. But we finally arrived at the quaint mountain town Zabljak. We promply hooked up with a young girl who let us stay in her house for a measely 7 usd a night. It ...

I woke up this morning at an uncomfortable 6:20am, bleary-eyed and fatigued. As I discovered last night, there aren't a whole lot of buses between Banja Luka and nearby Jajce. Unless I wanted to leave in the afternoon, the only better option than a 7:45 bus was one around 6:30! So much for a good night's sleep. It was nice knowing that the breakfast included with my night's stay in Banja Luka began at 6am though. It was even better to discover that it was a ...

... located amidst lush, forested hills with a raging river running through it. But tangible history is pretty thin on the ground and it's largely a place of bland, socialist-era construction - not really a selling point in this day and age. I've heard that it was once quite lovely, decades before. An earthquake in 1969 apparently made short work of most of the town though, and understandably reconstruction was subject to the unimaginative architectural ...

... system and automobile license plates. On a visual level, Banja Luka looks pretty good. It had an earthquake in 1969 that devastated everything but well built Austro-Hungarian buildings. The former Yugoslav state funded reconstruction and the wars of the nineties never reached Banja Luka in the way that they did in Mostar and Sarajevo. Unlike the last two cities, Banja Luka's inhabitants are Serbian by a vast majority, so it wasn't contested. These days the ...

Destination 47: km54'131 Meine Exkursion nach Bosnien Herzegowina hat mich trotz Warnungen der vielen Landminen im Land mit der nötigen Vorsicht nach Jajce geführt. Sehr schönes Land mit sehr tollen Töffrouten - auch wenn immer wieder zerstörte und/oder mit Einschusslöcher übers ...

... s been great. The countryside is some of the most beautiful we've ever seen, and the contrast of the Mosques, the Churches and the bombed out shells of buildings is pretty intense. We haven't encountered anyone who speaks much English - or rather, anyone who speaks much English and is willing to speak to us. And although we (Vinny) can order two beers, our conversational Bosnian is pretty limited. So for the last 4 days we've only had each other to talk to. It ...