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Now, the title of my last entry was the Balkan Adven­ture Part 1, although it didn’t have much to do with the Balkan area at all. But I like to con­sider my Balkan adven­ture the point where from where we left Prague and ended with Croa­tia, so for­give the inac­cu­racy of my title. After we were all fin­ished up in Berlin and Budapest, we took a night train last­ing 14 hours, which is the longest time en route to a des­ti­na­tion I have ever spent. But luck­ily, Sara­jevo was worth the time it took to make it there.

Sara­jevo

Sara­jevo has been a city under the con­stant desire of many empires in recent his­tory. It was most recently desired by the Ser­bians, but due to the alliance of the Croa­t­ians and Bosni­ans, the result of the Bosn­ian War led Sara­jevo to become the cap­i­tal of the newly built Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina. Today, Bosnia is a coun­try that is filled with 45% Mus­lims, 38% Ser­bian ortho­dox, and 7% Croa­t­ian Catholics, and from what I can see, this mul­ti­cul­tural city coex­ists very well together. I haven’t seen such a diverse city since I left Vancouver!

Old town Sarajevo

When we arrived in the city, we were greeted by next to noth­ing, arriv­ing with no hos­tel booked, and no Bosn­ian cur­rency, with no ATM in sight. We ran into a cou­ple back­pack­ers who looked just as con­fused as we were, so we talked to them and decided to head to where they were head­ing. They were a cou­ple of French Cana­di­ans who were tak­ing time off and back­pack­ing East­ern Europe, just as we were. Almost imme­di­ately after we crossed the street, we were greeted by a tall, lanky, Kramer-looking fel­low who offered us beds at his hos­tel for only 10 EURO a night. I’ll admit, the full body jean jacket and the des­per­ate need for den­tal work almost made us reject his offer, but his upbeat friendly atti­tude changed our opin­ion, and we decided to give it a shot. He even showed the other back­pack­ers straight to their hos­tel, and so his exten­sion of help gave us con­fi­dence that we wouldn’t wake up in a cel­lar. But, when we arrived, that con­fi­dence was taken away, mostly due to the fact that every sin­gle closet in the hos­tel was full of some­one elses cloth­ing, which gave us a sink­ing feel­ing in the pit of our stom­ach, but we made a com­mit­ment so we were going to stick to it. One of my biggest dis­ap­point­ments about the hos­tel was that it was only us two, mean­ing again, there wasn’t much oppor­tu­nity to meet other trav­el­ers, but luck­ily the city had so much to do and see, that detail became a minor one.

Our room, 10 EURO each per night with our own per­sonal room, own beds, and a TV

Sara­jevo was one of the most inter­est­ing cities I’ve ever been to, with the old town look­ing extremely old, but still man­ag­ing to not fall apart, and with churches and mosques all over the place, it was a sight to see. The new town area was as mod­ern as any, with a Rob­son type street going through the cen­ter of the city, a large shop­ping cen­ter, and extremely large slices of pizza for under a dol­lar, I was very impressed. Although pizza def­i­nitely wasn’t the high­light food of this trip; that honor goes to Burek, one of the main culi­nary dishes of the Balkan region. Since this city was so sur­pris­ingly cheap, and inter­est­ing, Tighe and I took it upon our­selves to find some sou­venirs, and most of the items for sale were extremely sim­i­lar to the ones in the Grand Bazaars of Istan­bul. Upon our wan­der­ings, we hap­pened to run into the bridge where Franz Fer­di­nand was assas­si­nated, which essen­tially was the loca­tion that marked the start of World War 1. One of the coolest things around the city were the Sara­jevo Roses, which are mark­ings of the loca­tion where the city was flanked, and that peo­ple lost their lives. The holes in the ground were painted with red to remind every­one of the suf­fer­ing that occurred dur­ing the Bosn­ian War.

Just one of the many Sara­jevo Roses scat­tered across the city

Burek

Con­sid­er­ing how small the city is, I didn’t have a very high expec­ta­tion of the nightlife, but Sara­jevo con­tin­ued to sur­prise me. We had been told that the City Pub was the most lively of all the pubs in Sara­jevo, and since we found it dur­ing the day, it was our first des­ti­na­tion of the night. We were served by a man who wasn’t too impressed that we only spoke Eng­lish, but served us a “Sara­jevsko” beer any­ways. Since we were there quite early (around 9ish), we fig­ured the pub might be more lively later on. The next pub we found was an Irish pub that wasn’t too lively, but we chilled on a cou­ple of beers and went to our next des­ti­na­tion, “The Club”. Appar­ently this is the best night­club in town, but not on Fri­days, only on Sat­ur­days, so we talked had a cou­ple of beers with some Croa­t­ian guys inside, and headed to a loca­tion rec­om­mended by them after­words. He gave us no direc­tions, he only pointed to a giant sign, and said the place was right below there, so we decided to give it a shot. When we arrived, we saw hun­dreds of peo­ple in a lineup, and of course, we got in there with them. When we got in, we real­ized it was a rave, full of teenage kids and over­priced beer. It was a cool venue, but raves aren’t exactly my scene these days, and Tighe def­i­nitely didn’t digg (pun intended for all you comp sci out there) it, so we decided to try our luck at our first loca­tion, The Pub. Upon enter­ing loaded with sev­eral beers, and the the peo­ple loaded up with the same deli­cious bev­er­age, the sec­ond expe­ri­ence here was much more enter­tain­ing then the first. I met two Bosn­ian girls, and Tighe met two girls from the Nether­lands. Tighe left to go to another club with those girls, and the ones I was with asked me to go with them to a club as well, a club which both Tighe and I hap­pened to reunite. It was a great night in Sara­jevo, and because of it we decided to take it easy the next night, so I never got to find out if “The Club” was really the place to be on Sat­ur­day nights, maybe I’ll find out someday.

Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t bring my cam­era out at night, but this is a pic­ture of the city at night, credit Wikipedia.

So, the next day, we fig­ured we would do some­thing that didn’t involve drink­ing or eat­ing. One of the things that makes Sara­jevo so beau­ti­ful is the moun­tains sur­round­ing it, and so we fig­ured we would take an epic hike through the hills. Con­sid­er­ing Tighes exten­sive his­tory knowl­edge, we should have real­ized from the get-go that the idea wasn’t the smartest one. The walk was amaz­ing, we walked by kids play­ing soc­cer, a women herd­ing goats, and we man­aged to get high enough for an amaz­ing view. But then, we decided to go even higher.

Epic view from the moun­tains of Sarajevo

So, another small his­tory les­son for you all; when Sara­jevo was under siege, the city was sur­rounded by land­mines so that none of the inhab­i­tants could escape, and those land­mines to this day are being con­stantly sought out by the gov­ern­ment. When we walked towards the top of the hill, we first saw some sus­pi­cious blue tape, but being the fear­less trav­el­ers that we are, we decided to trek onwards. As we got far­ther up, we saw a cir­cu­lar patch of dirt that was sur­rounded by yel­low cau­tion tape that said MINE. We both fig­ured it was the buried entrance to a mine­shaft. As we con­tin­ued on, we saw a big red sign that had a skull and cross­bones on it, and it said MINE as well. We both dis­cussed whether or not to con­tinue, but also won­dered why there would be such an intense sign for a mine shaft. Tighe was about to walk over to this sign in the dis­tance and get me to take a pic­ture of him beside it. As he walked a few steps, it clicked in both our heads as we simul­ta­ne­ously yelled, “LANDMINE!”, and pro­ceeded to run as fast as we could out of there. The funny thing is, our biggest con­cern going for­ward was cougars, but that would have been the least of our wor­ries if we con­tin­ued on.

We should have seen this and instantly ran back. We didn’t.

But this did the trick

Over­all Sara­jevo was an amaz­ing city. It was the most mul­ti­cul­tural city I’ve ever been to, it had gor­geous land­scapes, plenty beau­ti­ful women, a fun nightlife, amaz­ing land­marks; there is sim­ply some­thing for every­one in Sarajevo.

Bel­grade

On our way to Ser­bia, we had one of the most ran­dom encoun­ters of our trip. We took a daily 5am bus from Sara­jevo to Bel­grade on a Tues­day morn­ing, set­tled into our seats, and waited for our 8 hour bus ride to begin. But, as I’m sit­ting there, I see some­one I rec­og­nized walk­ing up the stairs, I couldn’t remem­ber his name at first, but he was a friend from the Kolej (our dorms) from Prague. He gave me a look, I gave him a look back, and we both real­ized it was who we were both think­ing of. What are the chances of meet­ing some­one who you knew from Prague in a ran­dom city like Sara­jevo? His name was Nick, and Adam from the dorms was with him as well, so we spent most of the time catch­ing up with these guys, and they headed with us to the hos­tel we booked, “The Black Catz”.

Nick from Prague, and Tighe on the left

When we arrived in Bel­grade, we had no idea where to go, so the first thing we did was take out some Ser­bian cur­rency, find a map in a hotel, and look for where we needed to go. Tak­ing a taxi was sim­ply not an option for us trav­el­ers. After an hour or so of search­ing, we couldn’t find the hos­tel, although we knew we were in the right area. For­tu­nately for us, a friendly Serb noticed we were lost, asked us where we were going and knew exactly where it was, so he tooks us there. So far, our impres­sion of Ser­bians was pretty good. When we got there, the build­ing was under com­plete recon­struc­tion; we had to climb over debris, cover our mouths from poten­tial espes­tus, and finally, had to walk four flights of stairs due to the ele­va­tor not being oper­a­tional. When we arrived, we were greeted by a man whom we call “Hos­tel Man”, since we never actu­ally man­aged to catch his real name. The Three Black Catz hos­tel was a smaller hos­tel, but that’s not a bad thing. I think they’re bet­ter due to the fact that its a lot more per­sonal, and a lot eas­ier to talk to trav­ellers (as opposed to say, a hos­tel that has hun­dreds of beds). A quote from the mind of Kevin Tighe: “Hos­tel man didn’t seem to give a shit about life except for liv­ing it. The guy was at least 6–3 and com­bined with a stern look and a thick Ser­bian accent, he was quite intim­i­dat­ing. His unique sar­casm had us ques­tion­ing his opin­ion of us all night long,  but never the less he took us out to sev­eral bars and was more than happy to share his home­made plum brandy”. The bars he took us to were inter­est­ing, although there wasn’t many for­eign­ers too be found, and con­sid­er­ing it was a week­day and it was rain­ing, there wasn’t much Ser­bians to be found in gen­eral. Some­one recently told me that Bel­grade is famous for its par­ties on the beach, so if you go to Bel­grade, I’d def­i­nitely check that out.

Com­mon room in the Three Black Catz. Nick, Adam, and Tighe

Bel­grade was def­i­nitely an inter­est­ing city, although the archi­tec­tural choice of gray was very rem­i­nis­cent of SFU for me. Dur­ing the day, we walked around and tried to do as much touristy activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble, despite it not being a very pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion (for those who don’t speak Ser­bian any­ways); we watched a Red Bull Motor­cy­cle rally that took place in front of the Par­lia­ment build­ing, checked out the sights, and headed back due to the dis­ap­point­ing amount of rain. But first, we went search­ing for food; I had a mas­sive ham­burger that was almost too big for my shrunken trav­el­ers stom­ach, but I man­aged to fin­ish it off. Every­thing in the city was extremely cheap, rival­ing the prices of the Czech Repub­lic and other for­mer com­mu­nist coun­tries. The next day, we went and checked out the big his­tory museum in the main park, but unfor­tu­nately it was closed. Luck­ily, the fortress sur­round­ing the museum was very cool as well, which had var­i­ous tanks from pre­vi­ous wars scat­tered across its landscape.

Fortress in Belgrade

Over­all, Bel­grade was a pretty cool city, although I’d like to go there again and spend more then only two days there, and hope­fully with some sun as well. The hos­tel made it a really great expe­ri­ence, it was a lot of fun to sit­ting around a table with your friends, some trav­el­ers, and locals shar­ing sto­ries and drink­ing home­made plum brandy. We met an Ital­ian man from Bari who was there for a ten­nis tour­na­ment, a cou­ple girls from Lon­don, a bunch of local girls Ser­bians who worked for, or knew hos­tel man, and a lot of oth­ers that made the hos­tel a great des­ti­na­tion. If any­one is plan­ning on going to Bel­grade, look no fur­ther then The Black Catz.

Us at a Ser­bian bar, brought by the one and only Hos­tel Man

The plan was to go straight to Greece, and Bel­grade was only a des­ti­na­tion because we couldn’t make it there from Sara­jevo. But plans change, and instead, we headed to Sofia in Bulgaria.