geenance

This trip report may take a while, and I won’t promise that I’ll finish it soon, but if I wait until I have it completely pulled together then it just might never happen! Thank you to all of the wonderful Fodorites who contributed suggestions, tips and lots of background information. Then end result was a fabulous trip!

Setting the stage:

Who: “The Tweesters” - My sister “C” and me. Two (still-able-to-call-ourselves) middle aged sisters, who enjoy traveling together.

When: April 27 – May 10

Travel pace: stay 2 – 4 nights per location -- long enough to get a flavour, but short enough to have a variety of experiences.

Transportation: Public. (planes, trains, buses, ferries)

Travel style: engage with locals (and interesting fellow travelers) to get a feel for the heart of a place. We’re fine if we don’t hit all, or even most, of the “must see” tourist sites, if it means we’re enjoying the food, the streets and the people. (C would add “enjoying the shops, looking for unique artsy finds.”) All in all we keep it very low key and don’t rush around.

What’s with Tito? Clearly Tito is a polarizing figure, but we took a lighthearted view based on a quirky large old framed photo of Tito (aka “Marshall”, aka “Josip”) that C found at an antique shop in Sarajevo. We had them remove the frame so it would fit in the suitcase, so that Tito could travel with us as we experienced his old stomping grounds. I think he enjoyed being with us and posed for photos in each stop on our journey.

Summary itinerary:
 Fly from Toronto to Sarajevo (via Munich).
 4 nights in Sarajevo (Airbnb apartment in Old Town)
 Train to Mostar
 2 nights in Mostar (at the wonderful Pansion Cardak)
 Bus to Split
 4 nights in Split (Airbnb apartment in Diocletian’s Palace)
 Fly to Zagreb; train to Ljubljana
 3 nights in Ljubljana (Airbnb apartment at the south end of the center)
 Fly to Toronto (via Munich)

We checked the weather forecast as we headed out on our trip....and it wasn’t looking particularly good. The call was for lots of rainy weather and unseasonably cool temperatures. Luckily forecasts are often wrong and this turned out to be the case this time! For much of the first week, while we were in BiH, it was a bit on the cool side and generally overcast, however we rarely had to get the umbrella out. The second week was glorious – sunny and high of 23-25 most days.

Looking back on the trip, we’re pretty happy with the mix of places we went and the time we allocated to each place. I don’t think we would have changed anything. (Perhaps we could have squeezed in a bit more time for Slovenia. We loved it but only had 2 full days there.)

Next post: Sarajevo

julia_t

Signing on for the ride, and looking forward to it!

northie

Looking forward to revisiting some of the knows and learning about the unknowns

geenance

Sarajevo

Confession #1 (with a couple more to come later in the trip): I lost my phone within half an hour of arriving in Sarajevo. (I think it slipped out of my jacket pocket in the cab from the airport.) So much for the roaming package and all of the city guides and the google translate Croatian dictionary that I downloaded for my phone! In spite of that we fared just fine.

We found everyone in Sarajevo so friendly and helpful. While not everyone speaks English, it’s usually easy enough to find someone who can. Many signs and some menus are in English. We often asked strangers for assistance and were invariably met with a smile. While the country is struggling with extremely poor economic and political conditions, this didn’t translate to a poor attitude toward strangers. A hat tip to the people at Hotel Europe, who tried to help us with the phone situation and also called a cab to the train station, even though they knew we weren’t hotel guests.

Our Airbnb apartment was perfectly located, on the western edge of Bascarsija (the old ottoman section of town). It was central to any place we wanted to go. There were no bars nearby so it was quiet at night although we were right near the large mosque and could hear the call to prayer early in the morning. I loved it. We felt completely safe in the tourist areas walking around at night. Our host with his daughter (often translating on the phone and communicating with us online) were great. They tried to track down my phone. Our host immediately showed up at the apartment to deal with a couple of minor issues.

In general the city is very clean and easy to navigate by foot. One piece of advice....wear sturdy-soled walking shoes on the cobblestone streets of Bascarsija (and even more important in Mostar). (We called them cobble-boulder streets.) Don’t even think of wearing heels or thin-soled shoes in the old town.

I wouldn’t go to Sarajevo for the food. The menus are very meat-heavy, with lots and lots of veal on offer, a bit less beef and a bit less chicken. Vegetables are available, but you had to seek them out. Where salads were available though, they were very fresh and served with a light, fresh oil and vinegar dressing. Food presentation clearly doesn’t rank high as a goal for the restaurants there. Most places slapped a large piece of meat on the plate with a tomato slice beside it. A couple of restaurants we enjoyed were To Be (or not) To Be (nice home style meal; tasty food; cute little restaurant), and Dzenita (great regional cuisine). We also went to Bosanska Kuca Steakhouse right on the main tourist drag. Yes, it was touristy, and while the food wasn’t fine cuisine, we found some dishes that we enjoyed. As well, the staff were very helpful and friendly (in contrast to some of the TA reviews for the restaurant….good thing we didn’t read them beforehand). When we asked where we could find/buy a corkscrew, they scurried around to nearby restaurants to see if they could track one down.

One night we wandered uphill a bit to a hole in the wall bakery that sold pizza. We strolled through the nearby cemetery just below the Yellow Bastion. We grabbed our pizza and headed back to our apartment. It was a lovely, simple and cheap evening.

Highlights of our stay in Sarajevo:

Trying cevapcici. (cheh-VAP-chee=chee) O.k., it’s not exactly high cuisine, but if you’re in Sarajevo, well, you just have to try their equivalent of a hamburger. It’s definitely not diet material.

Visit to the Goldfish Bar (Zlatna Ribica) – such a cool funky bar. And yes, we did go to the toilet there, as everyone suggests! The place has such a cool, quirky Moulin Rouge feel to it. We had lovely chat with a young Slovenian couple.

People watching. Whether from one of the cevapi places in old town or at a cafe on pedestrian-only Ferhadija street in the Austro-Hungarian section, you were never rushed and could simply enjoy the vibe.

Seige tour. We hired Sarajevo Funky Tours for the tour. Dado was our guide and we peppered him with questions. The tour was a great way for us to get a sense of Balkan war and get to some of the sites that weren’t easily reached on foot.

Meeting Parviz. We almost missed it, but on our final afternoon in Sarajevo we stumbled across Morica Han, and old Ottoman traveler’s inn. There is a lovely courtyard to eat in and a few Turkish type shops off the courtyard. It was in the latter that we met Parviz, who was the owner of the shops. After poking around for a few minutes, we wandered toward a room (shop?) at the back. We asked if we could go in. The owner showed up to show us around and answer our questions. Looking at the stacks of Persian carpets I thought we were about to get the big sales pitch. But no...we were shown beautiful artistic pieces, including camel packs, etc. One sac caught our eye and we were told the meaning of the mirrors on it. When we asked the price we were told it was not for sale as it was antique and they were difficult to find. These back rooms were more of a museum/personal collection. We had a long discussion about art and the enjoyment of it. We were all enjoying our chat so much that Parviz (an Iranian archeologist/art historian/business entrepreneur, wearing an Indiana Jones style hat) invited us to join him for caj (tea) and snacks. We sat down at the back of his shop/office where he served us refreshments and brought out various musical percussive instruments. He encouraged us to try them out and perform together (I’m using the term “perform” very loosely here!!) and we all had a great laugh. Finally, as we were leaving, he gave us each a small ceramic shoe, made in his original home village in Iran. After parting ways, we rushed over to our apartment and came back with a gift from our country...maple syrup. What a wonderful chance meeting. (A side note: we weren’t sure how Parviz ever made money! He was torn between collecting and his sales business. Perhaps the business was more of an excuse for him to add to his collection. In any case he has a number of shops, including one in Mostar.)

Watching the men play chess in the park. While watching a woman from Seattle struck up a conversation with us. She was originally from Sarajevo and was in crowd the first day of the war when the shots were fired into the crowd. She was surprised to recognize the chess player wearing the cowboy hat, as she had a crush on him when she used to watch him play when she was a kid. We had an interesting and varied conversation.

Meeting Tito. Of course I’m referring to finding the photo, however I’m also alluding to the willingness of locals to talk about their history, giving us a much better understanding of the city and its people.

Next up.....off to Mostar

Andrew

I know the pizza place you mean - I saw it (but didn't eat there) on the way down the hill from the viewpoint above the cemetery. There's like a take-out window at the front of the place. It seems a popular pizza place for locals, not tourists; I noticed a lot of people carrying a pizza up to the viewpoint to enjoy as a kind of picnic up there.

I just got home today. I'll save most of my thoughts on our similar trips for my own trip report instead of stepping all over yours. I will say that the thing I hated about Sarajevo was the number of stray dogs around - it really bothered me. It's a well known problem there. I loved the history in Sarajevo, but I can't say I fell in love with the city and can't imagine going back. I was surprised at how touristy the old town was.

geenance

HI Andrew,
I'm glad you ended up going ahead with your trip. I presume that the weather was good enough to allow you to take some reasonable photos...particularly if you are just getting back now.

Regarding the dogs, I had read about the problem before we left and I was concerned that my sister, who is the ultimate dog softy (she can't walk by a dog without saying "awwwwwww"), would be very upset, so I gave her a heads up to manage her expectations. I have to say that I was expecting it to be worse than it was. Perhaps it was because the dog problem seemed worse when we visited Santiago Chile last year.

I would agree that I was surprised (not in a good way) with how touristy the old town was too. Rows of mediocre eating establishments and kitschy gift shops. What helped offset it for me was that the people didn't come across as jaded and the streets were very clean and tidy. (Not saying that the locals weren't jaded, but possibly kept their thoughts internal.) I still enjoyed the old town, but just not quite as much as my high expectations may have allowed. There were pockets of less kitschy spots and there were many young locals strolling around simply enjoying themselves. There clearly weren't that many Western European tourists, let alone North American tourists, there for the season yet. Interestingly enough, there were quite a number of Korean (and other Asian?) tour groups.

Once you wandered outside of the pedestrian Ottoman area, the city lost its touristy glare and I enjoyed the people watching even more.

I truly did love the people though. I have some general thoughts about Bosnia that I will post after my Mostar post.

geenance

Now that I read my post above, I should clarify that I have been to many places that have much more in the way of cheap tourist gift fare than Sarajevo does. My comments more reflect my surprise that they had so much tourist fare. So many other places on the tourist circuit have T-shirts, ungodly mugs, silly little dolls, etc. Sarajevo doesn't have a lot of this. Most of what they sell is jewelry, scarves and coppersmith products (little pots, etc.). I bought a couple of anti-aircraft shell casing pens (carved design on it) for my sons, and they were a hit. The problem is that there are so many multiple stores selling the same tourist stuff. So in the grand scheme of things, the tourist fare is a bit different and not as schlockey as many other tourist centers.

Andrew

Yes, the weather was OK on my trip - not great but not bad. At least it didn't rain the whole time! But on days when I visited some extraordinary beautiful places - e.g. Bay of Kotor, hill towns in Istria - the sky was kind of blah even though technically the sun was out. That is, the pictures from those dates are OK but not that nice. Of course, rain the whole time would have been awful, so I should be grateful the weather was as good as it was.

I found Sarajevo the least photogenic place I visited - and ironically, most of the three days I was there, the weather was perfect. I was totally uninspired to take pictures there; I took them anyway, and my pictures from Sarajevo are mostly average or worse. But before visiting Sarajevo I had been touring some incredibly scenic places on the coast, so Sarajevo was a bit of a come-down from that. I wasn't surprised, though; I chose to visit Sarajevo for the history, not for the scenery.

geenance

Mostar

We got up and at ‘em in the morning to catch the 7:00 train to Mostar. We were told there was no need to get there early as the train was never full. Of course now we know that that doesn’t apply to May 1, Labour Day in Bosnia. Luckily we got just in time to get a couple of seats together in a compartment. Many people had to stand in the hallways for most of the trip. We took the train, rather than the bus, so that we could see the views, move around and take photos. Unfortunately these plans were crimped a bit in light of the full train.

Having said that, we still enjoyed the train ride and it did tend to empty out a bit as people began to get off at various towns along the way so we got to take in more of the lovely scenery. We shared the compartment with a teenage couple and a couple of older women. The teenage boy was quite a character and he translated for the group of us. When we said we were from Canada, the immediate reply from the girlfriend was “JUSTIN!!!” <<sigh>> To think that that is the first thing that girls think of when they think about our country....it’s a bit depressing.

We had a wonderful 2-night stay at Pansion Cardak in Mostar (Highly recommend!) and the husband, Nedzad, was there to meet us at the train station. Somehow he easily picked us out in the crowd. (I guess we did stand out as tourists ) Before we arrived in the country we had watched the documentary about Nedzad’s videotaping of the destruction of Mostar’s bridge so we knew some of what he might have experienced. (When we asked Nedzad how he got the bridge video to Sarajevo during the war he told us he had to travel by horse and had to avoid the roads and towns.) He and his wife Suzana are absolute gems. They were incredibly warm and welcoming. Their pansion is beautiful, fresh and clean and in a perfect location, not far from the Crooked Bridge and Stari Most.

Obviously Mostar is beautiful and well worth a visit. It’s a little more ‘polished’ for the tourists than Sarajevo is. The old town is relatively small though, although we did enjoy checking out all the little laneways, etc, before and after the large tour group crowds descended. I would like the town a bit more, if there weren’t quite so many souvenir shops.
We did find a nice copper art shop, Art Studio Pandur, that stood out from the other kitsch. The artists (a father and son) make beautiful designs, that are reflective of the region but retain their original feel. A bought several smaller items as gifts.
We ate dinner at Hindin Han, right by our pansion. We sat on the balcony, enjoying the view. We also ate at Sadrvan. Both of these are popular and regularly recommended restaurants. The food is consistent and good with reasonable prices for the quality you get. We enjoyed having tasty omelettes for breakfast on the terrace of Behar 2 (we got a discount there from our pansion), high above the little rushing creek. Service was quick and friendly. From that position we spied the shaded terrace of Stari Mlin, far below, down at creek level. We went there for an afternoon snack of olives and cheese, to go along with our local pivo. It was a lovely, peaceful setting. We could see people on the bridge far above, trying to figure out how to get down there.
On our first day in Mostar we just meandered around the town.

On the second day we went on a day tour with Herceg Day Tours. I will describe that tour in the next post.

Andrew

I drove through Mostar (didn't stop, saw it in 2009) to Sarajevo about a week after you came the other way. The scenery was amazing. I could see the train tracks much of the way, so I could tell you would have seen much of what I saw. I love train travel and still kind of regret not being able to take that train like you did. It's a shame about the full train, though. At least you had seats!

Did you get out to the Blagaj tekija / dervish house while in Mostar? I stopped this time while passing through and thought it was pretty cool.

Andrew

Did you get to see anyone jump off the old bridge (a recreational tradition) in Mostar? I didn't see anyone do it when I visited.

geenance

We did manage to see some of the scenery in the latter part of the trip once the train started to empty. Here's a shot I took from the train....using my sister's cell phone, of course. :/


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-v...501_092811.jpg

We did go to Blagaj....that will be in my next trip report post.

Vttraveler

I am glad your trip was so successful and am enjoying your report. It brings back memories of the two wonderful trips we took to BiH and Croatia.

Re footwear and cobblestones--I was amazed at how many
women in Sarajevo wore high heels. I know that the city has high heel races sometimes but am not sure whether these are run in the area with cobblestones.

geenance

Day trip into the Herzegovina countryside - Spectacular views, lamb’s brain and a wedding winery

Suzana at Pansion Cardak arranged for us to do a private day tour with Camil at Herzeg Day Tours. We asked for the tour to include Blagaj, Pocitelj and a visit to a local winery. We agreed that we would want to stop for lunch a one of the many restaurants enroute that specialized in roast lamb.

Camil was responsive, kind, attentive and answered our many questions about the region, including his personal experiences. He had participated in the war (as most pretty much had to...or else be killed) and had been a professional diver. He still dives occasionally from the Mostar bridge. He is an avid outdoorsman and would make an excellent guide for mountain hiking, etc. (I believe his beloved, trusty dog goes along on many of his adventures. We highly recommend him.

We stopped by Blagaj, toured through the Dervish house, with Camil explaining the various rooms. We then crossed the river to follow a path to a great spot of photo ops. As it was spring, the river was running quite high, and you could see various lower terraces out front of the restaurants were under water. (I think this is normal at this time of year.)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-F...502_130835.jpg


Our next stop was Počitelj, a popular pit stop for tour buses, etc. What a cute vertical stone town. It’s now an artists’ colony and I can see why. We did the gradual ascent up through to town to the fortress. The views over the town and the river valley were marvellous. High up in the village we stopped in terraced yard of a woman who made various syrups/juices, all made from fruits and flowers from the immediate area. We tried pomegranate, elderberry, mint, sage(?) flower, etc. They were all lovely. We purchased a bottle of the pomegranate juice to take with us and we were on our way. (BTW, this woman was in the process of building a couple of small apartments/cottages on her property. It looks like they would be very peaceful, with incredible views.)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Y...502_141237.jpg


We had a brief stop in the Čapljina area to see Megorjelo, the ruins of a large old roman villa. I wouldn’t make a special point of stopping there, but the spot is pleasant. Next up was our lamb roast lunch at Restoran Udovice, on the road between Citluk and Mostar. Camil told us that he loved the lamb’s head and so it arrived on our platter with the rest of the meat. He showed us how he eats the various parts of the head and we did venture to try some lamb brain, lamb cheeks and lamb tongue. We drew the line at the eyeballs!....although Camil was happy to eat them!

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...502_165040.jpg


Our final stop was at what we now refer to as “the wedding winery”. I’ll explain. It was now very late in the afternoon and Camil called to see if the winery could still have us visit. After some discussion on the phone the verdict was yes. We pulled up to a commercial type building in the countryside. One wing of it had display windows, with wedding gowns on display. What the heck? Perhaps the winery was around back, out of sight? We walked toward the main part of the building and entered...dum dum dum...a wedding banquet hall. The hall was all set up for a large imminent dinner event and the DJ was checking his equipment. We were greeted by a woman (the daughter in law of the vintner) and led to a nearby table where she offered us a glass of ‘award winning’ white wine to taste. It was indeed very good (and we bought a bottle), but that was basically our winery visit! Not exactly what we had expected. Before our trip I had tried to track down a winery to visit and, although they have defined ‘wine routes’in Herzegovina, it didn’t seem to me that they were really set up for visitors/tourists. Our experience supports this view!

All in all we had a fabulous day with Camil. The afternoon tour was much longer than scheduled as Camil wanted to show us as much as he could. We learned a lot about the Hercegovina region, about the economy, about professional diving, and we saw the wonderful Herzegovina countryside.




The next morning we were off to catch a bus to Split for the next stage of our journey.

Andrew

Nice report, keep it going. That's a nice shot from the train. I had sunshine when I was driving up but didn't get the reflections in the river like that.

geenance

@Vtt: They race in heels? I'm going to guess it's not on the "cobbleboulder" streets. There were many other streets that were smooth, if somewhat slippery, stone. I could see wearing heels on those.

The other thing that really surprised me was that the famous Mostar bridge was steep and slippery. I wonder how all of those tour groups of older people deal with it??

@Andrew: So, we didn't see any divers actually dive off the bridge. We simply didn't hang around the bridge long enough. They were priming the crowd for donations while we were there so I'm guessing that they were diving. Guys were walking in bathing suits along the edge of the bridge, over the rail. I did see one guy climbing out of the water in a wetsuit. I would think you would have to wear one at this time of year. Camil told us that the river is cold ALL year long though. After all, the river is fed by streams coming down from the mountains. He also told us that they wait until they collect 25 euros before they will dive. So when can I see your trip photos?? We were just doing casual photos from a cell and know nothing about photography. I can't wait to hear about your trip.

Adelaidean

What a lovely trip. So glad you included some photos. I would never have considered these destinations before.

geenance

@Adelaidean - Thanks! I'm only half way through my trip report and it is safe to say that we had a wonderful time and would highly recommend the region. I understand that you wouldn't have considered these places before. Whenever people asked us where we were going for our vacation, we got a puzzled look when we said the Balkans. Here in North America, the only news we ever got about the Balkans was the war. All that people have to relate to is landmines and violence. That war was 20 years ago now and the region is beautiful. the people are lovely. If only the media would follow up on these places...but I guess that isn't news.

I will try to post more photos so that everyone can see what a lovely region it is! And to think that I haven't hit my favourite place yet!

Thanks for reading my somewhat lengthy diatribe.

Andrew

Yeah, those are nice pictures. You don't need to be a professional photographer to take nice shots, even with a cell phone. I think Ansel Adams said that the most important thing in taking a scenic photo is where you are standing; I took pictures from the same spot at the Dervish house as you did.

I just updated my original thread with a brief summary of what I did, but I won't be done processing my pictures for a while and won't post a real trip report until then. You can email me (or Facebook me) if you want to see some pictures sooner - I already posted a number of raw shots on Facebook.

geenance

Some final thoughts on Bosnia and Hercegovina, recognizing that we only visited part of the country and only for a short time...

Everyone, to a person (yes, I know that’s redundant), that we spoke to in Bosnia was concerned about the future of the country. They all said that the government was completely ineffective and very corrupt and that all of the parties in power (they have multiple parallel governments) were simply focusing on power by playing the nationalistic card for their respective “ethnic” groups. Since the same politicians were recently voted in again, the citizens feel condemned to another number of years with no positive change in sight. Unemployment in Bosnia is around 45%, with youth unemployment at a staggering 65%. To get a job against such long odds, people are forced to pay (aka bribe?) to get a job. We heard the figure of 10,000 marks quoted by more than one person. For the servers, if they don’t want to work 7 days a week and they want a day off, well too bad, as there would be others in line to take their place. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, the Bosnian people are very welcoming of tourists. They are clearly not jaded like the big tourist meccas like Rome and Paris. I hope the country can find a way forward that doesn’t end up involving further conflict. It’s an absolutely stunning country.

The other point I wanted to make was that BiH has so much more it could offer to tourists than it does. Tourism is in its infancy, compared to other European countries. During a long stopover at the Munich airport on our trip home, we met a woman from California who does some work with the Bosnian tourism folks. She said that they just don’t have the right "know how" yet to leverage what they have. We talked about the wineries as an example and she laughed knowingly. That is just one small example of something that could be so much better positioned for tourists. It’s difficult in light of the ineffectual political structure though.