We Do Adventure

Yesterday we arrived back in Bosnia and Herzegovina after three weeks in England. Most of the people we met during this trip have never seen this country. If they have heard of it their only frame of reference is usually news reports from the early nineties. We tried hard to give them a fair picture of how things are now. This included enthusing about the hospitable people and the beautiful countryside, as well as talking about the segregation ingrained in society and the state of political stalemate that saps all sense of hope from most normal people we meet. Sadly these last two points can be linked to the international intervention the ended the armed conflict. This intervention did stop the killing, of which there had been a lot, but progress towards a fully functioning democracy has not been so quick. At least that's what I used to think. It was the Belgium elections in 2010 that first got me questioning. It went without government for 541 days while political parties fail...

Today the big news from this part of the world is making the headlines around the globe. It's always difficult to know what if anything we should write about such things. If we've learned anything in these past few years it is that war stories are really as simple as most news outlets like to paint them. We were in Croatia last weekend and there were plenty of visible declarations of support for General Ante Gotovina. A UN war crimes tribunal recently sentenced him to 24 years in prison for persecution, murder and other war crimes during the conflict in the 90s, but that doesn't stop him being a hero to many Croats. Likewise, in Bosnia and Herzegovina the arrest of Ratko Mladic will be met with different reactions. It may bring closure for some, reopen old wounds for others. And then there are those who will think he's being falsely accused. Discussing it could prove a conversational minefield; a sad reflection of the physical minefields that still litter the country. ...

It’s been reported today that Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH) Food Safety Agency – based not so far from where I’m typing this – will be testing four thousand food products this year. Naturally this makes encouraging reading. Sort of. There are two sides to every story. The other side to this one contains words like Escherichia coli , staphylococcus and salmonella. But let sanity reign. There is little point in panicking. For one our food purchasing options are fairly limited and secondly those names seem all too familiar from the food scares British tabloids scream about. The article said in 2008, ‘ 4.66% of food items were found noncompliant with safety standards. ’ I guess that means one sausage in twenty will be a bad egg, or something like that! Apparently, that’s about average for the region. And so we’ll focus on the positives tonight. Another step towards aligning legislation with EU norms has to be good for the future of the country. After all, much of the food here tastes ...