Attempting to Play Catch-Up

So it turns out that I am kind of a failure at this whole blogging thing... but I am going to try and make up for some of that now.  I guess I should go back to where I left off, although quite a lot has happened since.  First up, my trip to Serbia and Bosnia from March 17-20th:

For those of you who don't know, last fall turned me into a big of a Balkan dork, as it were.  I took one class on Balkan Politics and became completely hooked on the region.  Therefore, visiting the Balkans was at the top of my list for my semester in Central Europe.  Luckily, I found some like-minded and equally adventurous friends who were willing and eagre to make the trek with me, so off we went to make all of my dreams come true!

We started our journey by flying from Prague to Belgrade after classes on the 17th, with an unnecessarily long layover in Munich on the way.  I have never been so overwhelmed as when I passed through the gates in the Belgrade airport and was completely surrounded by taxi drivers yelling in broken English attempting to get our fare.  Luckily, we found a taxi stand with someone behind it who looked mildly official, and she helped us to procure a cab to our hostel at a reasonable rate.  Unfortunately, our cabby didn't speak any English, so we had to just trust that he was in fact taking us to our hostel in Belgrade.  Note to self: never ever book a flight to a strange country that gets in at 11pm.  Things look much scarrier at this time of night.  Thankfully, we made it to our hostel in one piece, and our hostel, which turned out to be extra rooms in someone's apartment, was actually amazing.



St. Patricks Day in Belgrade: Baileys and Socialist Monopoly

The next morning, we headed out to explore Belgrade.  I am not sure what I was expected after studying the history of the country and life under Milosevic, but my expectations were definitely wrong.  The city itself is absolutely beautiful.  The people are so nice and friendly, and everything is so modern. 

Becca and I at lunch in the Bohemian Quarter

Despite that, we could still see the remnants of the war that had occured not too long ago.  There were still some bombed out buildings and other reminders all over the city.

One of the many buildings that bears the scars of the war

Becca had family friends that are currently living in Belgrade, and they were gracious enough to invite us over for dinner that night.   We hopped on public transportation out to Nove Beograd, or the outskirts of the city that were errected during communist times.  The block flats and shanty towns made me feel just like I was back in Prague.  We had a delicious dinner of vegetable lasagna, salad and wine prepared by Becca's friends Holly and Ruth.  Talking to them about life in Belgrade was one of my favorite parts of the trip.  The family had been living there during the NATO bombings and under Milosevic, and hearing their insights was really really interseting.  After dinner, they gave us a ride to their cafe, where we had some delicious Serbian vodka, tirimisu and coffee while waiting for it to be late enough for us to catch our overnight bus to Sarajevo.

It would be a lie if we said that we weren't at least a little bit nervous about the prospect of taking an overnight bus through the Serbian countryside and over the border into Bosnia.  We were reassured by Ruth that the bus would be quite safe, and she was definitely right. 

In the bus station, I encountered my first Turkish toilet. 
Needless to say, I was perplexed.

The bus itself was just like any American Megabus, and after 7 restless but uneventful hours, we disembarked in the outskirts of Sarajevo at the early hour of 6am.  Unfortunately, we decided to wait until 8am, when the ticket was supposed to open, to buy our tickets back to Belgrade for that night.  Here, we had our first lesson in the workings of Sarajevo.  Namely, the ticket window didn't actually open until closer to 9:30, and the man spoke 0 words of English.  Despite our best attempts at charades, after 20 minutes we were forced to rely on google translate in order to purchase our tickets. 

Tickets safely procured, we then headed into Sarajevo proper to explore.  Our first stop was the Latin Bridge, which is the place where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated and WWI effectively began.  That was pretty awesome.  We then ducked into a cafe, where we had our first taste of Bosnian coffee:




Heaven in a cup.

 We explored Old Town Sarajevo for a while, which was really beautiful.  Unfortunately, it was raining pretty steadily for the entire day, and we were not quite prepared clothes wise.  We explored the modern end of Sarajevo for a while where we saw many many buildings that had been razed by bombs and other buildings still riddled with bullett holes.  The remnants of the 1995 war were definitely plentiful.  Unfortunately, the rain ended up getting the best of us, and at about 3pm we headed out to the bus station to catch an earlier bus back to Belgrade.  This ended up being an awesome idea, because we got to see some of the beautiful Bosnian countryside by daylight.

View of the hills surrounding Sarajevo from the bus

When we got back to Belgrade, we promptly checked into our new hostel (props to CiCi for finding the closest hostel to the bus station!) and passed out.  The next morning, it was still drizzling in Belgrade but we decided to try and see a few more of the sights before we had to fly back to Prague.  We go to see the state house where Milosevic was outsted during a massive public protest, which was pretty much the best thing ever. 

Me geeking out in front of the state house in Serbia!

We also attempted to get some lunch, which was quite the experience in and of itself.  After wandering around in the rain for about 1/2 an hour looking for a restaurant that was reccomended by the hostel, we finally found it only to discover it was closed.  We ducked into the nearest pub we could find and attempted to order food there for lunch.  No shebang.  No matter what we pointed at on the menu, the answer was simply 'ne' or no.  Thwarted, we finished our beers and headed for the closest place we cound find that we knew would have food:  McDonalds.  After our lunch, we hopped on a bus out to the airport and headed back to Prague.

Next up:  an epic post about our 10 day traveling seminar to Krakow, Brno, Mikulov and Vienna!