Bosnia AND Herzegovina!

-
We live in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Too often I have been guilty of dropping the ‘and’, which I guess is the same grammatical error as saying ‘Bang Olufsen’ or ‘Proctor Gamble’. We live in Mostar, which is the capital of Herzegovina. Zoster, a local band, wrote a song whose chorus goes “Herz-e-gov-ina...Cali-forn-ia”, drawing the comparison between the mountains and the sea and the very agreeable climate common to both places. We went to California once. I have to confess a lot of LA reminded me of grubby bits of the south of Spain but I don’t want to take anything away from the sentiment of the song!

Last weekend we were in Jajce, which was once the capital of the kingdom of Bosnia. I don’t know if one of its local bands has written a song praising its beauty. If one has I would bet on it heavily featuring the word ‘green’, or an appropriate metaphor. I thought Mostar had been looking green this spring but Jajce was something else. Thick forested hills, or more probably mountains, ring the old town that is dominated by a six-hundred year-old hill fort. We once visited a very dramatic Swiss castle town set on a massive rocky outcrop on a flat plain. That was slightly more fairytale but Jajce has an authentic charm to it.

As for the missing ‘and’, I must not deny it its role of holding these two together. After all, this is a country in need of no more divisions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God doesn't want religion but restoration

-
I was walking back home with some freshly baked burek when a bit from the Bible drifted to mind. It was something about restoring streets with dwellings. Having pumped what I could remember into BibleGateway.com something very exciting is coming into focus. The words I was thinking of come from a book called Isaiah. He was an Old Testament prophet, someone who told people what God was saying. They come from a chapter which starts off contrasting the religious performances we can be tempted to put on with the true acts of faith God is looking for. “loose the chains of injustice...set the oppressed free...share your food with the hungry...provide the poor wanderer with shelter...when you see the naked, clothe him...do not turn away from your own flesh and blood” The street I was walking down, the one where we live, is an interesting place. Many of its buildings are just bombed-out concrete skeletons housing unplanned assortments of trees and shrubbery. There are the semi-restored proper
Read more

Anyone for Battenberg?

-
It was the reminder of yet another iconic food item not available – at least to my knowledge – to those of us living in the Balkans. A friend messaged me on Facebook to say he thought it was time the resurrect ‘The Battenberg Effect’. Now that’ll mean nothing to some of you, while other readers will be thinking of pink and yellow fluffy sponge squares glued together with jam and wrapped in marzipan! The Gutenberg Effect – or thegutenbergeffect – is a blog I started a couple of years ago. It was a ‘tech blog’ of sorts. Drawing from my experience in communications and creative development, as a writer, project manager and mentor, I wanted to add my two pennies to the understanding of trends in technology and the social impact of these changes. I hadn’t posted on the site since before our move to Bosnia and Herzegovina...until today. His message made me realise I still have something to say on the subjects I used to riff around, but from the new perspective of our new environment. For ex
Read more

10 things we learned in 10 years of adventure

-
Image
As we write this it is less than a month to the ten year anniversary of us climbing into a Transit van to drive across Europe to start our adventure in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A lot has happened since then. So much we could write a book about it. We haven't written a book but we did push the boat out and make a booklet highlighting ten key things we've learned over the last decades. While supplies of the physical booklet are limited you can grab as many copies of the pdf version as you like! Click here for 10 things we learned in 10 years of adventure Click here for 10 things we learned in 10 years of adventure (+support forms)
Read more