We Do Adventure

We have a floorball team here in Jajce. That is unusual. Although I'd never heard of the sport until I arrived in this country it's not one of the main sports here. Football undoubtedly claims that prize, although handball, basketball and volleyball would all give it a good run for its money. While floorball may be largely undiscovered here, as it is in the UK, it's huge in Finland. The couple of times I've been there it was the only sport I saw kids playing in the streets, unless you count cycling, which they do a lot of too. When I heard our team had been drawn against a Finnish side in an international floorball tournament hosted in Banja Luka this weekend I was a little concerned. Concerned that we would be on the receiving end of a lesson that our young team might take a little too harshly. There is, after all, no shame in being beaten by people who may have been playing the game longer than some of our team have been alive! I made sure I mentioned this per...

Our summer activities are over; our summer holiday is just a little way ahead, around the corner. For the young people we've been working with this summer, yesterday's highlight was probably the water slide at Aquana, in Banja Luka. Either that or the opportunity to tease me, a Spurs supporter, about Dzeko's four goals for Manchester City at the weekend. In the interests of impartiality I left a bit of both in the video. We now have a month before we resume Novi Most courses and activities here in Jajce. I probably don't need to point out that is not the same as a month's holiday but, there, I did anyway! Our holiday is booked for later in the month. My only concern is that although the sunshine and the temperature yesterday spoke clearly of summer still being here the trees on the drive back had definitely decided autumn is on its way. Give it a couple of weeks and who know where we'll be. Well, we know where we'll be; we just hope the good weather w...

We were standing in the kitchen this morning when I heard a Police siren outside the window. In our experience here that can mean only one thing: dignitaries being ferried about the country in a high speed convoy. Rowan had seen on Facebook that Ivo Josipovic, the Croatian President was dropping in on Jajce today. Sure enough, half a dozen blacked-out people carriers, a few others vehicles whose description I can't remember, and a couple of ubiquitous white Volkswagen Golf Police cars were snaking their way down the valley from the direction of Banja Luka. I can't claim to have seen the President but if he was looking out of the window he may well have seen our house, if not us gawping out of the window! I've just received an email from Balkan Insight that contained a link to an article explaining why he was in the area. As it was a promising piece politically I thought I'd couple some of the stand out sections here in the hope you'll click the link to read the...

After being involved in youth work for more than fifteen years you've heard lots of reasons, and occasionally excuses, as to why people didn't show up when you were expecting them too. Today I heard one I'd never heard before. Rowan and I used to do a lot of youth work out of a school youth centre in a rural part of Sussex. Even there this never cropped up. Jajce is more rural still, as this picture indicates. It was produced by one of the young people who did make it to our first Novi Most session in Jajce. He was one of almost twenty who responded to the invitation and came to see what opportunities could open up with Novi Most now working in the town. It was a very positive couple of hours. We'll run a similar introduction session next weekend for those unable to be there today. Some of them were at a school event happening in town, which is familiar territory; others, however, had to go to a village and slaughter some pigs, which is definitely a new one for me! In ...

I'm aware that over the past few weeks I've posted a number of photographs of the beautiful scenery here in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I'm also aware that we're here to work with people not to sit back and soak up the surroundings. And so today I offer this picture as some small way of redressing the balance. This is Budo (the other Novi Most team member with Rowan and me in Jajce) on Banja Luka's main shopping street. He's pointing a camera at me, Dina (who runs the uni hockey team I help out with in Jajce) and eleven young people who we'd taken to play against a club in Banja Luka this morning. Our team lost: 21-16 was the final score. They have previously done well in competitions so are unused to being on the wrong end of what, while not exactly a hammering, was certainly one of life's learning experiences. Other than the scoreline, though, it was a great day out.

Before today we had been to most of the major cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now we've been to Banja Luka we can say we've seen them all. Obviously we know Mostar the best, after two years of living there. A few times we've surprised friends from Mostar with how well we know Sarajevo, but then we've been pretty regular visitors. Tuzla I've only visited a couple of times, and never spent long exploring the city; Zenica we saw but briefly before Bosnia and Herzegovina's disappointing defeat but Portugal in their World Cup playoff game. Banja Luka is now our nearest major city so will be getting to know it better in the months ahead. The road from Jajce clings to the banks of the Vrbas, at times almost impossibly so; definitely calling for a cautious first drive. There were a couple of emergency stops courtesy of big trucks trying to negotiate the low rocky overhangs but the real danger was the distraction of new views to take in. The snap-shot show the 'sto...