Restoran Pod Lipom – Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ćevapi - a Bosnian specialty
A moment if I may, to share with you some of the trials and tribulations of blogging while on this trip. I am constantly on the move and my primary focus is of course to travel. So my days are filled with working out what to see, where I will go next, how I will get there and where I will stay. So I grab the odd moment when I can to write, whether it be waiting at an airport or on a bus (although the motion of the bus makes this rather difficult), etc. I then have to find an internet connection to upload my post as well as my pictures. Some of the places I stayed at were equipped with wi-fi, some weren’t. There’s been the odd café, and on one occasion I found an unsecured line (naughty I know) in a town square somewhere. And for my sins, as I was sitting under a tree blogging, a pigeon did a huge number two all over my laptop screen. There really was nothing else to say in these circumstances other than `sh*t!’, albeit I said in the context of an expletive rather than as an acknowledge of the sad state of affairs.
My next stop after Croatia was Sarajevo (and this was after whizzing through the extremely picturesque Montenegro). Nowadays, Sarajevo is anything but war-torn, although the scars of the Serbian Siege of 1992-1995 still remain for the city has not been completed restored. It’s not an exceptionally beautiful place, but it’s incredibly fascinating. An eclectic mix of East meets West – Turkish-styled bazaars sitting alongside Western European-inspired architecture – this was also the place where on 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia, leading to the outbreak of WW1. I love this sort of stuff – XX marks the spot where XX happened, to forever cement a moment in time that will alter the course of history.
Plaque to mark the spot where the assassination took place