EUROPE – PART 6 

Elva and I commandeered the back seat of the bus just like we did 55 years ago when we first started hanging out and going bowling and to high school hockey games together. Our antique bus drove through picturesque hilly country framed on both sides by snow-capped mountains. After a long four-hour trip, we arrived in Ohrid. Taxis to and from the bus stations in Skopje and Ohrid and the bus ride itself set us back the grand sum of $50!

Oh my God, what a beautiful place! Ohrid is the prettiest location I’ve seen on this trip; more beautiful even than Lake Bled. The city, about the size of Charlottetown, lies on the eastern shore of the lake of the same name, with Albania on the western side.

The old town and the lake are listed as a UNESCO Cultural Landscape (as is Grand-Pré) and Ohrid is one of the oldest human settlements in Europe, built mostly between the sixth and nineteenth centuries. The lake contains 200 species of flora and fauna that are found only there. Ruins of Christian basilicas have been found that date from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The streets run along the hillside and are narrow and cobble-stoned, connected vertically by stone stairways. It’s one of those rare places where you feel comfortable walking at any time of day or night, and you can’t wait to see what lies around the next corner.

We checked into our cute, little hotel with a balcony overlooking the lake and took a stroll along the lakeside promenade, thinking it went only a half kilometer or so. And it just kept going… We tried to imagine what Victoria Park would look like if the seawall were built up, the roadway removed, and the boardwalk replaced by something like you see in the photo below: a central promenade with benches and greenery, framed by bike paths on either side. Remember that North Macedonia is a poor country by our standards. We think we’ve got a great thing going with the Charlottetown and Summerside boardwalks, but we could do so much better!

After breakfast, we walked to Samuel’s Fortress, high above the city, to find that it was closed on Mondays. Ah well, many other places to visit, Elva said, so we walked down to the Church of Saints Clement and Pantaleimon. After being pestered by several guides, we wandered around the place and made our way back to where we’d paid our entry fee. I asked the attendant whether the newer buildings surrounding the complex were part of a monastery. “Yes, they are”, he replied, before telling us the whole story of the place without trying to impress us with details we’d never remember anyway.

As with so many other places in Europe, this one has many layers of history, beginning with a massive, football-field-sized early Christian Basilica built there in the late fourth or early fifth century. The ruins were excavated, and large sections of the elaborate floor mosaics have been preserved and are displayed. The Ottomans destroyed everything that looked remotely Christian and built mosques over the ruins in the centuries during which they ruled the area. The young man’s face lit up when we asked what all the new construction was for. “We’re building a university to teach Orthodox Christian theology”. We asked whether he was a student and he told us that he will soon be ordained as a priest, “But first I had to get married!”, he said proudly, flashing his wedding band. What a hell of an idea!

The Church of Saint John the Theologian, a small fifteenth-century Orthodox chapel, is the image you usually see when you Google Ohrid. To get there, we walked past many beautiful houses with panoramic views of the lake. The setting of the church is striking, as it sits high above the lake at the tip of the peninsula. We followed the path that leads from the church, all the way around the base of the hilltop fortress, until we arrived back in the lower town, passing by a Roman-era theatre along the way, beautiful gardens like the one shown below, and the Church of St. Sofija. And, by the way, houses are built right over the streets in the old town. How cool is that?

On our last day in Ohrid, we visited Samuel’s Fortress, so named for Tsar Samoel of Bulgaria who had it built and ruled the area from there in the eleventh century. As with so many other fortifications in this part of the world, it was built atop the ruins of another one, the fortress of Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great, the guy on the enormous statue in Skopje’s main square. A nice young couple from Turkiye took our picture on the fortress wall. Later, we dropped into the local museum which is housed in the palatial former home of the Robevci family. Our guide, an archaeologist, gave us a wonderful tour.

We took one last walk out to the peninsula to see St. John the Theologian “under the lights”. We just sat there and took it all in; just the two of us with no one else around.

We could spend more time in Ohrid. It has everything we look for in a place to park for a month or so: character, cleanliness, value for money, magnificent water views, nice people, and a positive vibe. I’ll check for available apartments should we decide to come back here.

Five minutes after crossing the border from North Macedonia, we saw the first ones: a large one overlooking the main road and ten or so smaller ones. The infamous concrete bunkers built during the reign of Enver Hoxha dot the landscape. This nut ruled the country from 1945 until his death in 1985 according to the Soviet Communist model, only more authoritarian and isolationist. Until it freed itself from the Communists, Albania was the European version of North Korea. By the time the last bunker was built in 1983, 175,000 of them were scattered across the countryside. That’s one for every woman, man, and child living on Prince Edward Island! The country is now on a path towards westernization with ambitions to join all the prestigious international clubs, especially the European Union. Still, Albania is Europe’s poorest country and will likely be for some time to come.

This was not technically our first visit to Albania. While on a Mediterranean cruise in 2013, we took a day tour from the island of Korfu in Greece to Butrint, site of a Roman fortress, in the southern part of the country.

Downtown Tirana, the capital city home to 600,000 of Albania’s 2.8 million residents, is a modern, bustling place. Unlike the other cities we’ve visited so far, it’s less friendly to pedestrians; here, cars rule! Still, there are nice restaurants, upscale stores, and malls. We started by visiting the local tourist information office to get our bearings and advice on what to see and do on an afternoon walking tour. The friendly young woman told us to go to Skanderbeg Square and find, you guessed it, “The man on the horse”, to use as our reference point. We got in our 10,000 steps before the worst of the rain, and I just had to pose beside one of the smaller bunkers in a park on the main drag.

There are two “must-dos” in Tirana, the Dajti Express cable car and Bunk’Art. We figured out how to get to the cable car by city bus and knew that Bunk’Art 1 was located nearby. The gondola took us from the base of the Express in the suburbs up to near the top of Mount Dajti in the national park of the same name. The ride up took almost twenty-five minutes, making it the longest cable car ride we’ve taken. It was a beautiful day and the views from the top were spectacular. We could see all the way to the Adriatic Sea, at least 40 kilometers to the west.

What looked like an abandoned hotel or dormitory up the hill from where we got off the Express piqued my curiosity. I guessed from the bas reliefs at each end showing an adolescent young woman and young man that it must have had something to do with the Communist régime. Sure enough, I learned it was there that party officials sent young Communist Pioneers for a bit of fun and brainwashing in the good old days! Not one of those things you’ll find on the “official” list of things to do, but interesting and thought provoking, nonetheless.

From the base of the cable car, we walked to Bunk’Art 1. This otherworldly monstrosity is a five-level underground bunker, built as a protective measure against nuclear fallout during the Communist régime of the paranoid Enver Hoxha. The bunker has a total area of 32,000 square feet and contains 106 rooms, including an assembly hall. The museum covers the history of Albania dating back to the Italian occupation in the 1930s, the Second World War period, and the Communist era that followed. The exhibits include old photographs and various artifacts. We learned that thousands died digging tunnels and building bunkers all around the country.

We explored the passageways, the areas provided for the meetings of the General Staff of the Army in case of war, the rooms where Enver Hoxha and the former Prime Minister would sleep, and the gigantic hall dedicated to the meetings of the Political Bureau. We couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there! The photos below show Hoxha’s sitting room and the assembly hall.

On our second full day in Tirana, we joined an organized tour. I’d planned to rent a car for the days we were here but thought better of it after reading how hard it is to drive in the city. Having witnessed the chaos with my own eyes, I’m damn glad I did. Our young and fearless guide and driver got us to our destinations and back home in one piece.

The countryside south of Tirana is a scenic patchwork of lakes, olive groves, vineyards, greenhouses, pasture, tilled land, and small farm holdings. It looks far more prosperous than the eastern part of the country we travelled through on our way from Ohrid to Tirana and has a Mediterranean feel to it.

We made a couple of stops during the day but the most interesting one, by far, was Berat Castle, a fortified town that is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Our guide walked us through the town, still inhabited today by a couple of hundred people, and we stopped for a visit to the Iconographic Museum of Onufri. Icons are religious images painted on wood. The collection we saw dates from the mid-1500s and is impressively displayed in the Orthodox Christian Church of Saint Mary. A fellow passenger took this photo of us standing on the castle wall and the second is of a scene in the fortified town of Berat.

Albania is a country just now emerging from a very dark period. We asked the young concierge at our hotel how many years it’s been since his parents, both near sixty, have felt free. “Since the late 1990s”, he replied. Twenty-five years is not long to get a country back on its feet and, there’s no question, they have a very long way to go. Tirana is a city on the move, but it has many challenges to overcome, traffic congestion being one of the main ones.

Elva and I have developed a very simple yardstick for measuring a country’s state of development. We look at three things: garbage, graffiti, and public transit. The first two are everywhere in the countries we’ve visited with the notable exceptions of Slovenia, parts of Croatia, and the city of Ohrid. And it’s ironic that the poorest country, Albania, has the biggest car congestion problem in its capital city and a very poor public transit system. It was the same story in Sarajevo. We’re hoping these places will look and feel better in another generation and can only hope that these good people will enjoy the stable government needed to get them there.

A travel day is a travel day. We boarded our bus in Tirana at 8:00 and left for Kotor, Montenegro, expecting a smooth six-hour ride. After leaving Podgorica, we climbed into the mountains and started meeting cars with snow on them. “Oh shit”, I thought. The further we drove the worse it got. By the time we reached the highest point, the traffic had slowed to a standstill, cars were in the ditch and splayed across the road, and big trucks were spinning on the spot, unable to move. It was obvious that our bus driver had driven through such conditions before. He was calm, patient, and very careful.

We were relieved to finally drive out of the snow and into the rain as we came down the other side of the mountain and approached the Adriatic Sea. We’d called into Kotor in the fall of 2013 on our very first cruise and loved the place. We checked into our hotel, the Monte Cristo, in the old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and saw this when we looked out our window!

 

EUROPE – PART 5

After we’d settled into our comfortable hotel in midtown Belgrade, the very friendly staff at the reception desk gave us a map and detailed instructions on what to see and where to eat. Although I was tired from the long drive from Sarajevo and the struggles of finding the car rental drop-off at Nicola Tesla Airport, we set out on foot for the old town which lies close to the mouth of the Sava River where it empties into the Danube. As with every other city we’ve visited on this European adventure, it’s a pedestrian-only zone. Hint! Hint! Charlottetown! The morning rain had stopped by the time we got there, and the place was abuzz with young people and Saturday shoppers.

Serbia has a population of 7 million and Belgrade is its largest city at 1.3 million. It ranks 67^th among the 192 countries listed by the International Monetary Fund in terms of GDP, slightly below Montenegro but significantly higher than Bosnia-Hercegovina. Its economy is growing at a steady pace and the country should be accepted for European Union membership by 2030 if it can keep peace within its borders and get over its obsession with regaining the lost territory of Kosovo. Serbia has a history of trying to gain control over areas where Serbs live, regardless of national borders, and eliminating all non-Serbs who happen to live there. It’s a dangerous obsession and one that will surely exclude them from membership in many of the desirable international “clubs”.

Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia, a country that existed from 1918 to 1992, first as a monarchy, then, from 1945 onwards, as a Communist state. Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia (now called North Macedonia) were the first of the former Yugoslav republics to declare their independence in 1991. Bosnia-Hercegovina followed in 1992. Serbia and Montenegro formed an alliance in 1992 but, in 2006, Montenegro became an independent nation. Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008 and, while it is not yet a member of the United Nations, it is recognized as a sovereign state by most European countries as well as Canada and the United States. C’est compliqué!

We walked, city map in hand, past several of Belgrade’s attractions on our first full day there on a beautiful sunny morning, beginning with the National Assembly and the Old Palace, residence of the Emperor in the days of the monarchy. The farther we walked, the better we liked this city. It has beautifully manicured parks, wide open spaces, and broad sidewalks. But whether using an old-fashioned map or Google Maps on my iPhone, the challenge was the same. Not only did I not understand the language, but the alphabet is Cyrillic and not Roman.

We saw the St. Sava Temple long before we reached it. It’s massive, and one of the biggest Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Unlike many religious buildings we’ve visited, this one is rather new, having been completed only in 2004. The interior is as beautiful as any we’ve seen.

From St. Sava, we wandered down toward the lower part of Belgrade in the direction of the Sava River. We soon picked up a stray dog, one of many in the city, who walked beside us for at least twenty minutes. We’re still not sure whether he was following us or whether we were following him. He finally gave up on us at the bus station. As is often the case, it’s the little things that make a day interesting.

The waterfront promenade is a relatively new addition to Belgrade and, as with others we’ve seen, it has become very popular. From there, we wandered up to the park that surrounds the Belgrade Fortress and booked a sunset river cruise. The pedestrian zone was packed with Sunday strollers, may of them young families out to take in the fresh air. The cruise itself was lovely. We started by sailing to the mouth of the Sava River, then turned into the Danube for a short distance before cruising up the Sava past New Belgrade, an impressive residential and commercial development begun in 1948 and dominated by the soon-to-be-completed Belgrade Tower seen in the photo below. The sun sets early here, at 4:15, so we got a nice view of the cityscape from the boat.

We liked almost everything about Belgrade, except what is shown in the middle of almost every table in every restaurant we visited. People smoke here. A lot!! And it takes some getting used to…

We took the early bus from Belgrade to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, the most southerly of the former Yugoslav republics. The country remained at peace during the wars of the 1990s and its only significant dispute in recent years has been with Greece over, of all things, its name. Greece considers that the name “Macedonia” should refer only to the northern part of its territory but, in 2019, it finally accepted that its neighbour to the north be called “The Republic of North Macedonia”. North Macedonia is a stable country politically and, although it contains two main ethnic groups, Macedonians (Eastern Orthodox Christian) and Albanians (Muslim), they seem to have found a way to live together in peace.

It was a long bus journey, but I was content to have someone else at the wheel. Even with Google Maps as a guide, getting in and out of cities in this part of the world can be quite a challenge. Drivers are impatient and aggressive, and streets are narrow and winding. We’d planned to use Skopje as a break in our trip, time to rest and, for me, to get some work done. Also, rather than attempt a long return train trip and an overnight stay overnight in Kosovo, we arranged a day trip there from Skopje.

Skopje has a population of about 600,000 and straddles the Vardar River. The 1963 earthquake destroyed 60% of the city and it was rebuilt in a modernist style. The new urban project, Skopje 2014, was adopted by the municipal authorities to give the city a more monumental and historical aspect, and to transform it into a proper national capital. Several neoclassical buildings destroyed in the 1963 earthquake were rebuilt, including the national theatre, and streets and squares were refurbished. Many other elements were also built, including fountains, statues, hotels, government buildings, and bridges.

We began our four-day visit by walking through Macedonia Square. It features a massive statue of the national hero, Alexander the Great, another man on a horse responsible for much death and destruction. Everywhere you look, there are statues. They might or might not have been important people. It’s hard to tell since all the inscriptions are in Cyrillic! 

The city center is quite compact, and everything is within easy walking distance. There seems to be a nice photo wherever you look. Skopje is the capital city of a developing nation. Some things they’ve done to heighten the city’s profile have worked and others are, well, let’s just say, works in progress. Wander away from the highlights and you soon come across dark alleyways, garbage, and traffic chaos. But it’s not fair to judge a place that’s only been at peace for thirty years, and it’s clear from all the new construction that investors and developers believe there’s a bright future here.

The bazaar is across the river from the main square and is typical of what you see in predominately Muslim communities. It’s much nicer than many we’ve seen. The fortress that overlooks the city is rather neglected; a nice place to walk around, but not much to see.

Our next stop was the Mother Teresa Memorial House located very close to our hotel. She was born in Skopje in 1910 and lived here until she entered a convent at the age of eighteen. The memorial house is built on the site of the former Catholic church where she was baptized and contains cultural exhibits and a photo gallery. Critics have called it a “tactless and tasteless homage to Mother Teresa”. That may be a little harsh and I can understand why some may find the place a bit kitschy. But the fact remains that Mother Teresa is a significant and recognizable figure and one that Skopje has every right to be proud of. Not every city can claim to be the birthplace of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and she certainly is a worthy contrast to all the macho men on horses who carry swords meant to kill people.

Kosovo lies to the north of North Macedonia and is recognized as a sovereign state by 102 of the 193 members of the United Nations. Its population is about 1.8 million and its capital city, Pristina, is home to some 200,000 inhabitants. Most of the population identifies as ethnic Albanian (Muslim) and this helps explain why Kosovo broke away from Serbia (Orthodox Christian) in 2008.

Our Visit Macedonia guide, Sofija, and driver, Stefan, picked us up at the hotel at 8:30 sharp. We crossed the border into Kosovo and drove to our first stop, the Gracanica Monastery in the town of the same name, a Serbian enclave near Pristina. The monastery was built in 1321 and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. It contains some of the finest frescos we’ve seen but, since we weren’t allowed to take photos inside, I’ve copied one from the web. Remember that the frescoes are 700 years old!

From Gracanica, it was a short drive to Pristina where we parked and walked around the city center, starting with a view of the National Library, as unusual a building as I’ve seen in my travels, built in 1982 during the Communist régime of Yugoslavia. The roof is made of 99 domes of different sizes and the entire structure is covered in what can only be described as a metal fish net. As with other unusual buildings, you either love it or hate it.

The new part of Pristina is rather dull architecturally, consisting of a few new government buildings and many of the ugly multi-storey concrete residential blocks typical of the Eastern European Communist era. But the pedestrian zone has a nice café-culture style to it. The second photo shows Mother Teresa Boulevard with the tall National Assembly building in the top left.

From Pristina, we drove to Prizren, Kosovo’s second-largest city. Along the way, we drove past impressive residential and commercial developments. When I asked where the cash was coming from, the answer was that Kosovo is an easy place to launder dirty money, and a quick internet search seems to support that explanation. I suppose when you’re a developing country, dirty money is better than no money at all!

The old part of Prizren is very charming. What city isn’t with a river running through its center! We had lunch there and spent a couple of hours just wandering around and people watching. Our guide and driver were both excellent and did two things right: Sofija didn’t spend every minute we were together trying to fill our heads with facts we’ll never remember and, in each place we visited, we were given ample time to wander on our own.

Kosovo turned out to be a pleasant surprise. We’d expected to see a poor country, struggling to come into its own after a messy separation from Serbia and a nasty civil war between the majority Kosovars (Muslim) and their Serbian (Orthodox) neighbours. The visit proved to us yet again that the only way to get to know a country is to go there and draw your own conclusions. And we can’t say enough good things about Stefan and Sofija. Because we visited near the end of the tourist season, we were their only guests and so were treated to a private tour. What a day!

On our last day in Skopje, we rented a car and headed out early into the countryside, looking for the Matka Canyon Trail. The canyon, flooded by a hydroelectric dam, looks more like a fjord. The trail leads from the parking lot to the reservoir above the dam where you can take a boat ride or simply follow the path. It’s rough in places but offers lovely views of the artificial lake and the surrounding mountains, and a good trail walk is a great way to start the day.

From Matka, we drove through several villages in the hills above the city until we arrived at the church and monastery of St. Panteleimon, the patron saint of physicians. The church was built in 1164, making it more than a century and a half older than the Gracanica Monastery in Kosovo. Since the door was open, we walked in and admired the interior structure, including the well-preserved frescoes. No one was there to tell us not to take photos, so we did and the view of the city from the terrace below the church was magnificent.

We had hoped to make it to the Millenium Cross at the top of Mount Vodno but the road and gondola were closed, probably because of high winds. We really enjoyed our visit to Skopje, a relaxing four days that gave us time to recharge our batteries and for me to get some work done and get a haircut. Tomorrow, we’ll take the bus to Ohrid, a city on the lake of the same name that lies three hours to the west.

 

EUROPE – PART 4 

It took us nine long hours to drive 660 km from Ljubljana, Slovenia, to Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina, on a combination of modern divided highways and twisty mountain roads. By the time we pulled into our hotel, we were pretty well bushed. Google Maps said it would take us six and a half hours to get here but it hadn’t accounted for a major highway closure that forced us to detour inland and drive through the middle of nowhere.

Bosnia-Hercegovina is a developing country. Its economy ranks far below that of its neighbour, Croatia, placing it 82^nd out of the 192 countries tracked by the International Monetary Fund. Although we saw evidence of new investment in factories and commercial establishments on our drive to Mostar, we also saw signs of poverty and of the war that racked the country in the early 1990s.

I don’t know much about the Bosnian War, but its impact seems still very fresh here. You see it in unfinished, abandoned buildings, and on exterior walls riddled with bullet holes. You see it in the faces of those of a certain age who no doubt suffered terribly. And, sadly, you see it in the faces of young people who just want to leave and get away from the never-ending tension. This bullet-riddled façade was less than a block from our downtown hotel.

According to some sources, Bosnia-Hercegovina has been experiencing intensified political and ethnic tensions of late which could potentially break the country apart and slide it back into war once again. Much of this is related to religion and ethnicity. The country is made up of three main ethnic groups: Bosniaks (Muslim), Croats (Roman Catholic), and Serbs (Orthodox Christian). It’s one of those multicultural melting pots that’s never cooled down, and probably never will.

The weather forecast for our one full day in Mostar was not very promising, so we headed out on foot as early as we could to see the famous Old Bridge, Stari Most, and the area surrounding it on both sides of the Neretva River. It being the end of the tourist season and early morning, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The street and buildings have a Turkish feel to them and the many shops along the narrow streets reminded us of Jerusalem. The mosque is said to be the country’s most important.

We heard the tell-tale sound of someone tap-tapping a pattern on copperware and walked into a shop operated by the same family since 1918. The man in the photo spoke perfect French and told us all about his trade. Elva bought some very nice jewelry from him at a very reasonable price.

The area near the old bridge is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and well worth a visit. The bridge had stood for over 500 years until the Bosnian War. Though the area had no strategic military value, the bridge and the old town were destroyed for, as my mother used to say, “pure devilry”. The UNESCO web page says this about the reconstruction: “The reconstructed Old Bridge and Old City of Mostar are symbols of reconciliation, international cooperation and the coexistence of diverse cultural, ethnic and religious communities.” We can only hope it will survive for at least another five centuries.

Our next stop was Blagaj Tekke, a short drive from Mostar. Here, the Buna River flows right out of a massive cliff. As with the Old Bridge in Mostar, we had the place almost to ourselves. A tekke or tekiya is a dervish monastery (the men with the white skirts and felt hats who twirl as part of their meditation) and the one at Blagaj serves as a place for them to gather for prayer. The dervish orders believe that the surrounding environment is part of the overall worship, not just the buildings themselves. It’s a spectacular location and we just sat there for awhile taking it all in.

From Blagaj, we drove to the Kravica waterfall complex south of Mostar. Again, except for three angry-looking Turkish soldiers who are part of a 600-member European Union peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Hercegovina, we were the only ones there. The falls are horseshoe-shaped and 25 meters high, and they offer a spectacular sensory experience of sound, sight, and mist. In the warmer months, people come to swim in the large pool below the falls. We arrived back at our hotel mid-afternoon, just before the skies opened.

The drive from Mostar to Sarajevo took us three hours. The first half of the route follows the Neretva River through a very mountainous region framed by steep cliffs on both sides. It reminded us of Tajikistan, a country we visited four years ago. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina, is a city of some 300,000 people and is the country’s political, financial, social, and cultural center. Due to its long history of religious and cultural diversity, Sarajevo is sometimes called the Jerusalem of Europe. It is one of just a few major European cities to have a mosque, Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, and synagogue within the same neighborhood.

After checking into our modern and comfortable boutique hotel, we wandered down to the nearby old town. Sarajevo is not a world-class city by any measure, but it does have a similar café culture to what we saw in Ljubljana. People seem to love to meet one another in the square and hang around the cafés just passing the time. As with so many cities we’ve visited, the city-center pedestrian-only zone is the key to making this happen.

But you don’t have to go far beyond the touristy areas to see poverty and evidence of war in Sarajevo. The city was hit very hard by the Bosnian War. Its people suffered through the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare, 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996. Thousands lost their lives during the siege to constant bombing and sniper fire from Serbian troops. One of our more interesting visits was to the local library where we watched excerpts from For the Love of Books, a movie about how the librarian enlisted help from friends to save ancient books and manuscripts from fires that were destroying cultural treasures all around. The group braved snipers and thieves to carry the treasures to safety in cardboard boxes.

As with everywhere we’ve visited in our travels, there is beauty, sometimes in the simplest things, like this young girl surrounded by hungry pigeons in the aptly named Pigeon Square at the entrance to the old city. The other photos are of men playing chess in the park and of the imposing Eastern Orthodox church.

There’s only one road into Lukomir, the highest and most remote village in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The last thirteen kilometers are unpaved and fit only for trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles, so we weren’t sure whether our poor little Ford Fiesta would be tough enough to make it there and back. As it turned out, she passed with flying colours! “How did we end up there?”, you may ask. Well, because Jean-Paul likes going off the beaten track and getting away from the crowd!

Elva and I spend a lot of time looking at YouTube videos of the places we plan to visit. When we saw what little there was to do in Sarajevo, we figured we’d better find a day trip or two, and we stumbled onto the village of Lukomir. After a long and bumpy drive, we pulled up to a house that contained a small restaurant. The nice man told us we could park there, and off we headed to the viewpoint that overlooks the village. The view below was of one of the deepest canyons in Europe. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the air was crisp and pure. It was magical and bucket-list-worthy!

Back at the restaurant, as we drank our coffee and tea, the owner told us that the village is home to about fifty souls; they have electricity and internet (In the middle of nowhere!); and they live there only during the months when the road is passable. Residents either live off the tourist trade or herd sheep. We were thankful that we arrived early because we passed more than twenty cars on our way back to the paved road, many of them containing people who’d paid dearly for the road trip. On these photos, you can see the village laid out behind us and the very rough road, with some intimidating water holes and a shepherd’s cabin in the background.

I remember watching the 1984 Winter Olympics held in Sarajevo. On our way to Lukomir, we drove past the site of the downhill ski events, today an impressive winter resort. What really struck all Canadians that year was the record-setting performance of Gaétan Boucher. After winning bronze in the 500-meter long-track speed skating event, he won gold in the 1,000 and 1,500 meter events, the first Canadian man to win gold in an individual Winter Olympic event.

The war destroyed many of the Olympic facilities in and around the city. Others were simply abandoned and lie in ruins. The long-track speed skating oval where Boucher won his medals is now a cemetery for soldiers killed in the War. 

The abandoned bobsled-luge track has been reincarnated as a tourist attraction. We went there on our third day in Sarajevo. The place has a post-apocalyptic feel. We walked down the two-kilometer track and back up again. You can imagine that, in another thirty years, Mother Nature will have reclaimed more of it than she already has. 

As we went around curve after curve, I couldn’t help thinking how thrilling it must have been for our two Olympic bobsled champions, Heather Moyse and Dave “Eli” MacEachern. Myself, I’d have been exercising some serious sphincter control rocketing down there in one of those flimsy sleds, you can be sure of that!

We really enjoyed our stay in Sarajevo. While there wasn’t that much to do in the city itself, we did find a couple of adventures nearby that were well worth the drive. We learned more about the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics by walking up and down the bobsled run than we would have at a museum and got in a good workout in the process.

We dropped off the Ford Fiesta at Belgrade airport after a slow trip through northern Bosnia-Hercegovina where we drove through heavy rain and had our first taste of snow. It took us five hours to travel 250 kilometers, including crossing the border into Serbia. We’ve settled into our hotel and are ready to spend two days getting to know Belgrade, the capital. After that, we’ll be travelling by bus through four more countries, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro. Stay tuned!