Balkan adventures, Part 1

Arriving into Belgrade I first described it as being ‘gritty not pretty’. I’d also booked us into dorms again, and after our experience in Olomouc I was not looking forward to it. And to be honest our first impressions of the hostel weren’t great. We were told the hostel receptionist was currently busy and we could hear someone teaching English online in one of the two dorms. Yeah, that was the hostel receptionist sitting on one of our beds teaching! So before we’d even checked in I mooted the idea of finding somewhere but Joey put his foot down and insisted we stay.

The hostel wasn’t great but it wasn’t THE WORST place we’ve ever stayed either. Yes, there was a bloke in the room who appeared to be living there and just slept all day and disappeared in the evenings and filled the room with his stuff but he did at least open the window and showered so that was a massive improvement on Olomouc. Plus as he wasn’t there most of the night that was one less person to keep me awake with their snoring. Or, as it happened, for me to keep awake with my snoring!

Once we got away from the bus station, Belgrade itself turned out to be utterly charming! There was a large fortress (turns out that there a lot of fortresses in the Balkans) which doubles as a park and has several museums inside (including a military museum) and we spent a lot of time in this park just chilling. Belgrade also has one of the largest orthodox churches in the world, Saint Sava, which has a stunning interior that took our breath away. On one of our evenings there we decided to splash out and take a sunset cruise along the river, which was really enjoyable. We hadn’t been on a sunset river cruise since Phnom Penh on Valentine’s Day 2015. We were catching a night bus from Belgrade to Sarajevo so we took ourselves to the cinema on our ‘homeless’ day. We saw an English version of Super Mario bros which was shown on an imax screen. We walked in just before the start and had the place to ourselves! It was a such a huge screen – you can barely even see Joey!

The nightbus was an experience from start to finish, staring at the bus station. I always like to have a ‘nervous wee’ before going on a long journey (or any journey, or leaving our accommodation for the day) and I had my first encounter with a squat toilet. I always expected to see them along the way but I thought we’d be in Asia before that happened! The bus was full of inconsiderate people who talked really loudly the whole journey, couple that with a 3am border crossing (middle of the night border crossings are not the one, although probably when I most look like my passport photo) and then a unexpected change of bus at 5am and you can see why we didn’t get much sleep. Somehow we do manage to function the next day and just get on with it.

Joey and I grew up hearing the phrases ‘war torn Bosnia’ and ‘war torn Sarajevo’ so it was a surprise to discover how beautiful Sarajevo was. It had a delightful old town and was surrounded by rolling green hills that were often covered in swirling clouds. There are a lot of war scars with buildings covered in pock marks from bullets, and the most sobering details are what are called Sarajevo roses. These are memorials made from a mortar shell and filled with red resin to represent blood, these are dotted all around the city and mark places where more than 3 people died in an attack. There are over 200 of these in the city. We visited the Alifakovac cemetery, a cemetery unlike any other we have been too. Firstly it was Muslim so the gravestones were very different to others we have seen, and secondly the vast majority of those buried there died in the early 90s as a result of the war. It was another stark reminder of atrocities that happened in our lifetime.

Sarajevo is also where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated; that event is what ultimately led to the First World War.

After Sarajevo we headed to Mostar, a town famous for its stone bridge, where during summer you can witness people jumping off it into the river below. There are two ways to reach Mostar, a cheap, incredibly scenic train or a more expensive slightly less scenic bus which takes longer. So which do you think we chose? Yes, the bus! The train only runs twice a day, and for once we didn’t fancy an early start. We thought the bus route was really scenic and we enjoyed it, maybe if we return we’ll take the train.

Mostar was just gorgeous and one of our favourite places, it was timed with some great weather, a lovely apartment complete with washing machine and the King’s coronation! We did have to walk up an incredibly steep hill to get to our place but the views were worth it. We walked through the old town several times and down to the bridge at various times of the day, but our favourite was early one morning when there was a couple of minutes where we had the bridge to ourselves. The original bridge was actually destroyed during the Bosnia war in 1993 and then rebuilt in 2004. My favourite thing about Mostar though was when dusk was falling and we sat outside watching the town lights come on and listening to the Muslim call of prayer, it was so magical. As I say it was the King’s coronation, so we watched that from our apartment and celebrated with a cheap bottle of sparking wine.

From Mostar we took the bus to Dubrovnik. That was an interesting journey which again started at the bus station. I went for my nervous wee and was rather startled to discover that the toilets (which we paid for) DIDN’T HAVE A DOOR! I’m used to some rough toilets but that was a first!

We only planned on a couple of days in Dubrovnik as you pretty much have to go through Croatia to get from Mostar to Montenegro, and go through Croatia we did – twice! Leaving Bosnia we didn’t even need to leave the bus, the bus driver collected our passports and then gave us back to us. Without an exit stamp. Very disappointing. Then we entered into Croatia, with another Schengen stamp, and about 20 minutes later we were at another border leaving Croatia and getting an exit stamp. Then we re-entered Bosnia (no entry or exit stamp) for about 30 minutes (including a 20 minute stop) and re-entered Croatia with another Schengen stamp! Two stamps for the same country on the same day -lucky we got those 48 page passports hey?! I’d previously read a blog about a 6 hour bus journey you can do on the island of a Borneo which will get you 8 stamps and I’d been quite keen to do that but I’ve now changed my mind!

Dubrovnik was gorgeous and well worth the 48 hours we spent there. Those 48 hours absolutely blew our budget, but it was a beautiful city. We felt sick at the prospect of spending €35 each on the city walls, but decided to buy the Dubrovnik pass for the same price – which also got you free public transport and various other museums. That’s our top tip for Dubrovnik! We walked the walls at 8am, as soon as they opened, and we avoided most of the crowds which meant we could really take our time and take about 500 photos each. Although I think we still took less photos than the guy we passed who had set up his tripod and camera and spent A LONG time taking photos of himself posing moodily, never looking at the camera.

After our short stop in Dubrovnik we headed to Montenegro. We decided to base ourselves for the entirety of our stay in Kotor, it was nice to have a base for 5 days. We spent a couple of days exploring Kotor itself. We walked up to the fortress (I think that’s fortress number 3 for the Balkans). You can either pay and climb 1350 steps or you can go the free way and climb what’s called the ladder of Kotor – this is a steep path consisting of 65 switchbacks. We paid. The view was totally worth it, as you climb higher and higher the views of the bay (and the cruise ships docked) get better and better. We descended via the ladder, and to do this you have to climb through a small hole and drop down maybe 6 or 8 feet. There is a small metal spur to help with this but it’s still a drop. There is randomly a cheese shop at the top, but we didn’t buy anything. The walk down was hard on the knees with a lot of loose stones so I was glad we didn’t choose that way for the ascent. Kotor’s old town was gorgeous, full of lovely churches and beautiful buildings. Unfortunately the weather was not good. It was lovely and sunny when we arrived in Kotor and was dry when we visited the fortress, but the rest of the time it rained so heavily! We were going to explore the waterfront on our first evening, but we went about 100 metres when we met this gorgeous dog who decided to follow us, he had this big lolloping tongue and wouldn’t stop following us! We were about to cross a major road and were worried that this dog would get run over so we decided to retrace our footsteps and return him to where we found him and hope he’d leave us alone! Well we got back to where we were and the heavens opened! So we retreated and gave thanks to the weather dog for saving us.

We took a day trip along the coast to Budva, and guess what? It rained. We got caught in a thunderstorm on the way to the bus station and spent a fair bit of our time in Budva taking shelter in various places. Budva also has a fortress which gave nice views of the coast and mountains. The next day we did a day trip to Durmitor National Park with Vuk, who owns the apartment that we rented. This was such a highlight of Montenegro and the trip to this point. Vuk has a history degree and his passion for the subject was clear as we spent the three hour drive chatting about the history of Montenegro, communism and the war. It was so interesting chatting and hearing his views (and those of his dad) and learning more about the Orthodox Church. Communism discourages any religion so when communism fell his parents took their time choosing their religion and opted for Orthodoxism. He told us about the saint day that had been celebrated a few days prior to us arriving and how the priest comes to the house to bless it. We didn’t know an awful lot about Orthodoxism before but had noted the lack of seating in any church we entered and Vuk said that was part of it – it’s meant to be uncomfortable, your back is meant to hurt, your feet are meant to hurt – you’re meant to suffer!

On the way to Durmitor we stopped at Tara river canyon. This is the largest canyon in Europe and was so impressive. The river rushes below you if you have the nerve to peer down! Durmitor is a gorgeous national park with a lake which you can circuit (depending on the weather), it’s a little higher than sea level Kotor and we were surprised to see snow still on the ground in mid-May!

Kotor and Montenegro were definite favourites and I would absolutely return there. Plus they have hedgehogs so if I ever have to go into exile that’s where I’m heading and I’m staying at Vuk’s place! On our day of departure there was the Ocean Lava triathlon happening which meant a lot of roads were closed. Vuk gave us a lift as far as he could but we had to walk the last 2km which we don’t mind (to date we’ve only got one taxi which was in Dubrovnik) but that 2km also happened to be a stretch if the triathlon, so we were walking with our rucksacks alongside these athletes, there was no separation either so we were occasionally yelled at to move when a runner came along!

When I was thinking about the blog in my head I thought one blog would cover the whole of the Balkans. How foolish was I! When I jotted down stories and anecdotes I wanted to share (which incidentally I never do, I never plan, I just write) it became apparent I was going to have to do two blogs! So hopefully another blog will follow shortly!