We Do Adventure

Don't miss the nuance of the colon: the video is called Happy, and we didn't film or edit it. Rowan, however, did lend her smiling face and improvisational dance skills to the project. Internet people will probably have heard about Happy, the song from Despicable Me 2 by Pharrell Williams. You can watch the original version on the IamOTHER Youtube channel . If that's not enough for you there is 24 hour version , split into hour-long movies on the same channel. It's a genius way to prove a viral concept doesn't have to be short and sweet. Far from the streets of LA, this dance response comes from the streets of historic Jajce, in Central Bosnia. The project was organised by volunteers at the Omladinski Centar, the local youth centre in town. The video was uploaded yesterday and as I'm writing this has just under two thousand views. That's good going. Judging by the number of people we're seeing share it on Facebook that's just the beginning. Enjoy ...

Today is FIS World Snow Day . Last year we were out on a very patchy piste making the most of some less than ideal conditions at the slope above Jajce. This year there isn't a ski lift working in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina! You can't even say it's been a bad winter, it's barely been winter at all. There was a snow fall in November. A few resorts got enough of a base to open up for a week or two. We managed a trip to Vlašić on 21 st December, the day before World Snowboard Day . It was squeezed into a really busy period of work but the decision to head for the hills when we did looks better and better the longer winter waits to put in a proper appearance. Since the New Year the forecast has been promising snow 'next week'. It's well known that tomorrow never comes; next week has been showing even less intention to turn up. Locals tells us tales of a town virtually besieged by snow during their childhood winters. Even allowing for a little exagge...

New Year has come and gone and we've missed the opportunity to tell some good stories here. Well we have if we enforce a new news policy. However, in the interests of letting you in on the interesting stuff we're going to do a bit of a rewind over the next couple of days. Sometimes there isn't the time to be involved in cool things and blog about them at the same time, so kicking off our retrospective of recent events we'll start with New Year's Eve. Budo, our Novi Most co-worker in Jajce, decided the town needed an open air concert with fireworks to see in the New Year properly. This is not an unusual idea, similar events happen all over the world, but this had never happen here before. Together with the local Omladinski Centar (Youth Centre) he got the idea off the ground, securing the all-important permissions and sponsorship from the town council, local businesses and Novi Most and the Omladinski Centar. Budo plays in one of the main local covers bands. The...

AVNOJ stands for Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije, or Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia. If you were to take a visit to the AVNOJ museum in Jajce – and understand enough of the different languages the information panels are written in – you would come away with the impression that the establishing of Yugoslavia was a very organised affair. I've not come across anything to suggest this wasn't actually the case. That this organisation happened under occupation, while fighting a resistance movement is impressive. It provided the basis for a establishing a country that lasted fifty years, give or take. Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the meeting in Jajce that saw Yugoslavia signed into existence. Today more people will pass through the museum's doors than probably will on any other day of the year. The local news are reporting more than a thousand visitors in town for today's commemorative events. We went out ear...

Pedalo is a word with certain connotations, at least in my mind. At best, I'm imaging a slightly suspect water craft sporting original seventies' styling, the worse for wear as a result of almost four decades providing pleasure trips on a touristy lake or at a tacky beach resort. Truth be told, I know exactly where to find pedalos that answer to this description. However, they are not alone, nor are they the final word in recreational rentals. Tonight we went out with one of their near neighbours and experienced what has to be described as some next-generation pedalo action!

I guess it was iTunes that began the new music Tuesday thing. I'm sure the back in the days when Our Price existed you'd go and buy new singles on a Monday. Times change and Tuesday's it is. While I can have few complains about iTunes' service the Tuesday thing is slightly annoying. Monday's are often a day off – we work most weekends – and therefore an ideal day to go previewing new releases. Obviously, I'm ultimately the winner the way things are as the chance of impulse buying a new release is effectively removed. And for that my wallet is thankful! Throughout this summer Tuesdays are our music day. We didn't want to stop music courses altogether over the holidays so we set aside Tuesdays as the day to teach. This morning I've taught keyboards, guitar and bass guitar. I will be back in this evening for more lessons. All of us on the Novi Most team in Jajce teach music, all of us have students at different levels. Some came to us with a little ...

Last week we were part of a guided walk up one of the mountains that surround Jajce. Like in much of the rest of the country, you don't go for walks in the countryside without consulting local knowledge. Bosnia and Herzegovina still has an unknown number of land mines unaccounted for, despite it creeping closer to two decades since the end of the war here. Some are in marked mine fields; many are, at least assumed to be, still scattered indiscriminately in areas where fighting took place. It's not something you take chances with. As we hiked up in the hot sun we stopped in a bit of shade on the edge of a forest clearing. Here our guide pointed to the shallow hole in the ground that you might be able to make out in the picture. This was part of the frontline in the fighting that went on around Jajce. It was here that two guys who'd sat next to each other at school killed each other; a story horribly reminiscent of lyrics from the song Crazy by Seal. “One of them...

Sunday was the culmination of many months of work for Rowan. Preparations for the Neverland street art day in Jajce had seen here crocheting long into the night for weeks, as our spare bedroom became an Aladdin's cave of inspired creations. There had been workshops in the local cultural centre, giving young people the chance to create, and craft parties for the twenty and thirty-somethings. What all this hard work needed was a good day to show it to the world - or at least the local community. It got it: a day, if anything, too good. Last year's event was interrupted by heavy thunder storms, this year the sun beat down unrelentingly and it was hot. Decorating the town started at 7am, the art intended for people to take was put out about midday. By the time the day finished with an outdoor acoustic concert almost everything was taken.

We've been hearing reports of heavy rainfalls and flooding from around the country. In Jajce we've had rain but have to feel we've escaped lightly. However, today the Pliva was running high through town, turning the weirs into wild white water. By the time the river rushed over the waterfall things were crazy indeed. This view is always dramatic, always worth a photo. Today video was the only way to do it justice.

Today, as if we were being treated to some meteorological April Fool, we woke to a fresh fall of snow. A trip up to the castle on top of the town was already planned so it was a good opportunity to grab the camera and capture the town looking moody. By early evening we had beautiful spring sunshine; we were out at the lakes by then and they were looking lovely. However the camera stayed in its bag, so this April 1st will go down on (video) record as a gray and snowy one.

On Saturday Jajce's Lavovi (Lions) bit back at the BiH Floorball League tournament in Tuzla. At least they did in the first game they played. The last time the Lavovi played Gladijator from Prijedor the game was a 4-4 draw. This time we won by a surprisingly comfortable 6-2 margin. Anyone who read our post about the first tournament will probably have noticed the kit change since then. Out go the 70s-style short-shorts of the hand-me-down outfits and in comes a freshly purchased strip with the team badge on the front and “Floorball Club Lavovi Jajce” in big text on the back between the shoulder blades. Sadly new kit and the feel-good factor of getting a first tournament win wasn't enough to guarantee a result in our second game of the day. I never played enough competitive sport in the UK to speak authoritatively on cultural differences but I was surprised that on a day when the lowest scoring game featured six goals our team's faces clearly showed they thoug...

This is Lavovi Jajce (Jajce Lions) all smiles before our first game in the new BiH Floorball League. That's me second from the left. Saturday was the first of four tournament days we'll compete in this year. Hopefully we'll do better at the competing bit next time. We lost a closely fought first match 3:2, with the winning goal coming in the dying seconds. However, for reasons I won't go into here, we for ourselves 2:0 down in about as many minutes at the start of the second game. Our opponents in this game go by the name Gromovi, which translates as Thunder. There's no thunder without lightning, and although they say this never strikes twice we were on the end of a brutal 12:2 thrashing. In the words of Yazz : the only way is up!

Last night lightning stopped play. This was both disappointing and encouraging; disappointing because I was just hitting my snowboard stride, powering down the powdery slope in ridiculously poor visibility, but encouraging that the local ski centre didn't want to see its customers fried in a freak drag lift accident. Seeing lightning flash through heavy falling snow was a new experience. We know the prevailing wisdom is don't be on high, exposed places at such times so we headed inside for another hot chocolate. Ranč is our local ski centre. We know it's a mountain but it's easy to think of it as the local hill. It was the combination of questions from my brother and getting a G-Shock watch with an altimeter for my birthday that got me interested in finding out how high this “hill” really is. I took a reading on my watch at the top, I cross referenced it with an accurate (higher) figure from the internet. 1463m. For someone more used to measuring mountains in feet (...

I saw this picture posted on a friend's Facebook wall earlier today. My first thought was: spot the flippin' foreigner! Yes, it was me who missed the memo about only sporting subdued hues before I left the house this morning. Today the new structure that protects the ruins of Jajce's Mithras Temple was being officially opened. As this is but a ten second stroll from where much of our work happens it would have been rude to miss it. And so we braved the biting cold to watch the ribbon cut,  capture it on video  and add a spot of colour to a photograph.

On Sunday afternoon we drove just over two hours to Prijedor to play floorball against the team there. Our team, Lavovi Jajce – or Jajce Lions, had comfortably beaten the Prijedor side that visited us earlier this year. We felt the return trip would not be so easy. And so it proved. The game was played with a level of physicality well above anything we reach in our training sessions. Our team are teenagers; Dina, who trains the side is, like me, in her thirties. The Prijedor side seemed to be all late-teens and twenties. For all the fact it was hard fought, it was a fair fight and 4-4 was probably the right result.   Rowan came along for the ride. Standing on the sidelines snapping photos with two cameras she was more often than not winching as one heavy challenge followed another. Floorball is a high-intensity, end-to-end game with rolling substitutions. The three twenty-minute 'thirds' that make up a match equal a lot of running around. Some of our team have yet to gr...

It only seems appropriate after our previous post to upload this video. This is proper pedalo action from Jajce's Plivsko jezero. Well, I say proper but I'm not sure whether a duck shaped pedalo can properly be described as proper. Nevertheless, it proved a worthy lake-going craft, even if it did list a little to port. We wondered if this was due to my superior weight advantage but we noticed every vessel out this evening was leaning one way or the other. Perhaps not then, but if it was then an hour's energetic pedalling will have done something to help in that department!

In the last couple of weeks we've had a couple of great watery experiences. Together with the Novi Most team we went on a canoe safari on the Trebižat river, near Čapljina. Surviving three hours on the water in the hot and sun without getting burned was something of a triumph - it was up around 40C that day - and our canoe skill were almost impressive, up until the point we capsized! I took photos but they didn't do the scenery justice. Neither does this video . Instead here's a picture from our latest adventure. We have two friends visiting this week - the one who is less into being in photographs took this one for us! Last last we decided to spend an hour out on the lakes in Jajce in a rental boat. These boats have very quiet, battery powered motors that are very cool if the battery has enough power. Unfortunately for us, about twenty-five minutes out from our start point I began to suspect ours was not going to last the duration. A quick check around the boat reveale...

There are good surprises and there are bad surprises. Today we had a bit of both. We had a floorball game arranged for the team I'm involved in training, Lavovi Jajce, against a team from Prijedor, a town about an hour and a half north of us. The bad surprise was the size and age of their team. Bigger and older than ours. Significantly. I wasn't expecting to play, seeing as our team are all teenagers, but they wanted someone to drag the average age up so I was called into action. The pre-match team talk made it clear what Dina, our coach, thought of our chances: "I want you to keep playing, keep trying, even if you are losing fifteen nil!" The good surprise began with going a goal up shortly after the game started. I was playing in what could be described as a right-back kind of role. I was just waiting for some undefendable attack on our goal. It never came. At least it didn't while I was on the pitch. Floorball is one of those rolling-subs games. The three g...

This video is about one of the hot topics of the last week here in Jajce. As I say in the video, I'm not claiming to be an expert on the issues or have all the facts at my finger-tips. But as I was cycling past Brana today I thought I'd stop to film incase there's someone out there on the internet who'd be interested in this news who hasn't heard it already. As for what will actually happen to this beautiful little part of central Bosnia: time will tell. And when it does I'll be sure to make a video about it!

You'll spot maybe half a dozen umbrellas in this video, if you watch closely enough. What you won't see is any footage of the two enormous thunder storms that sought to disrupt last Thursday afternoon's performances. The first of these storms was freakishly heavy, with a healthy dose of hail mixed in with the torrential rain. It came on so hard and fast that, despite being under cover, our PA desk looked like it had just take a shower. The area where you see people dancing was a lake just half an hour before some of this footage was filmed. What this video does show is young people getting up to perform in front of their peers and their community, a few of them for the very first time. (All the musicians attend Novi Most music courses with me or Budo.) You'll also see some of the organisers, and the Director of Novi Most, enjoying a moment of madness as rain-stopped-play once again. The final performances happened inside, although in the rush of re-rigging the PA...