Daytrip to the old Turkish seat
Trip Start
Apr 08, 2007
1
64
144
Trip End
Oct 01, 2007
Travnik,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
I had to get up fairly early in order to catch a convenient bus out (at 9:15).
01: Old houses in the hills over Travnik
That worked out pretty well as it gave me a good four hours plus to see the town. Travnik's a pretty small place - really no bigger than Jajce in area and number of sights (and smaller in population, I believe). I wound up meeting another American girl on the way out who was heading the same direction. In one of the weirdest occasions of crazy coincidence, she just finished a semester studying at the University of Economic Sciences, on the exact same CIEE program that I did back in 1998. Same director, same study structure. That gave us a fair bit to talk about on the bus ride in, so the two hour ride went by very quickly.Funnily enough though, once we got into town, we ended up losing track of each other for a couple hours. I went around the corner and along a main road to snap some pics, and when I came back down, she was nowhere to be found. I figured she had gone up to the castle, but didn't wind up locating her there either after hiking up. Oh well. The castle itself was apparently erected to defend against a Turkish incursion into the territory and is still largely intact. Ironically, it never saw a battle as the Bosnian kingdom had already collapsed by the time it was finished. Located on the top of a hill in the middle of the old Turkish area, it offers breathtaking views over the surrounding hills and the town below. The perfect place to sit down and relax, which I made sure to do so I could catch up on my travel journal
02: Street in the historic Turkish quarter
.I passed about half an hour winding through the old backstreets around the castle and then descended back to the river and town center. Just across from the Turkish quarter sits one of the city's more famous sights: the uniquely-decorated Sarena (Many-Colored) Mosque. The outer wall designs have faded considerably with time, but it's still among the most unique Muslim buildings I've seen in the country. After that I thought I'd track down the one remaining main sight - the commemorative museum house of Ivo Andrić. What do you know . . . I run into my morning's travel companion on the way! Apparently she got confused after not being able to find me and then went in to check out a medressa in the area. Some guy tried to direct her to where he'd seen me, but she wasn't able to track me down from there. Obviously I must have walked right past her on the way back through after taking a picture. Heh . . . oops.
We ended up swinging by the Ivo Andrić Museum together from then and having a look at the assorted paraphernelia there. It's a humble, historic place, but the personal effects, collection of his books and shots from his Nobel Prize ceremony in the 60s were interesting. With that done, we'd basically seen the whole of Travnik - not exactly a town heavy on specific sights
03: Medressa on the edge of the town
! In other words, an ideal daytrip. I had to grab some lunch before going back though, so we swung by a local cevabdzinica. Yup, another lunch of ćevapi and yogurt. I'm definitely getting my meat, bread and dairy quota here (falling behind on the fruit and vegetables though). From there it was back to the bus station to get a ticket for the return trip. The bus back turned out to be excruciatingly uncomfortable, with poor ventilation and no AC. The trip was actually shorter this time at just over an hour and a half, but it felt twice as long (even with me catching some shut-eye for a chunk of it). Man, do I ever miss trains!It's onward to the final destination in Bosnia tomorrow - the celebrated historic city of Mostar and its famed (now-reconstructed) bridge. After that it's back to Croatia for a spell and then southwards to newly-independent Montenegro.
