Palas Hotel Sarajevo

... ones. Again, c’est la vie.

The first thing you notice when entering Bosnia, perched on a hill 200 metres passed the Croatian border is Restaurant Most. Most what? This half finished sentence restaurant irked me, but there wasn’t any time for a resolution as we zoomed passed, bound for Sarajevo. The second thing you notice in Bosnia is the bullet holes predominately featured in most, if not all buildings that are still standing 15 years after the ...

... are stunning, oh so stunning and the small shopfronts along the cobbled walkways amidst the pine forests in the background makes me feel like i have stepped back through time.
I rdered a local delicacy of sausage, turkish bread, onions and butter curds yesterday evening and was pleasantly surprised allbeit slightly overwhelmed by the proportion of meat. I tried some local pivo (beer) and took a stroll around, perhaps it's just the ...

... will whilst its supplies diminished. To survive, the Bosnians dug a tunnel that let under the city airport's runway, behind Serb forces and into the basement of a Bosnian family living outside the siege. The tunnel carried arms, food, medicine, and even an oil pipe (!!) to keep Sarajevo alive.    The family in question's house is now a museum. Being outside the city it was slightly difficult to get to - we took a tram to the end of the ...

... with a great common room, a fun kitchen, and free pasta and cornflakes! The only problem, as with all hostels at this time of the season, was that it was almost empty, except for a few people. Some Aussie girls where leaving the next day, a chinese guy was staying two more nights and some other people were leaving as I got in. Nothing like scaring them out. I showered up quickly, to put me in the mood to explore. I hate being dirty and walking around ...

... people to pray during the day. In Sarajevo, we could see and hear the men singing from the minaret (not over a loud speaker) since there were "local" mosques everywhere in town, at one point Layton counted 16 that he could see from one location, which we had never seen before...pretty unique and traditional way to call people to prayer. After dinner, we headed to the Sarajevo Brewery to have a few beers which ended a great day in this wonderful city. Our second day we did get ...

... have even built a theater where they show visitors a 10 minute homemade video taken during the construction of the tunnel. I wonder if they realized that they would have a nice little business for tourists after the war? Later that day I braved the 97 degree heat and walked around the Bascarsija area of Sarajevo. I walked down to the Latin Bridge (the site of the assassination in 1914) and visited the City Museum ...

... the agricultural museum. Had a nice meal that night at pizza hut, actually a fairly classy place here serving soup with the pizza. On our second day we headed over the danube river into Buda (on the other side of the river) and up the hill to the castle complex. This had amazing views over the whole city, particularly from Fishermans Bastion which was an amazing almost turkish looking wall which you could walk along the top of. This hill was the touristy area and made ...

... probably tainted by our accommodations, which were by far the worst of the trip so far (maybe even including the ferry from Montenegro to Italy - see future entry). We have mostly stayed in private accommodations (i.e., people's houses) while in the former Yugoslavia, and except for Sarajevo this has worked out great. For example, when we were boarding the bus from Dubrovnik to Mostar, a woman approached us and said that her friend had a room available if we were interested ...

... were hauling all of our fairly hefty bags, it was decided that Dan would leave the bags with Gabrielle and go looking for the hostel, which we assumed was somewhere in the immediate vicinity. Time passed. Dan reappeared occasionally before disappearing in another direction with some vague comment along the lines of 'I really think it might be up here...' We eventually did find the place, which turned out to be lovely, and checked in before heading out ...

... yelling "Okay, Policija! Policija!". At some point two other surly looking guys joined in and were crowded around us, speaking in threatening serbo-croatian and gesturing wildly. After five minutes it was clear that these guys were not going to let us off easily, and so we shelled out the 26 marks each (about 18 dollars) and slinked off. Welcome to Sarajevo. But the rough start didn't last long. Somewhere west of the center, past the Lateiner bridge ...