We Do Adventure

It's been a bleak day in Mostar; rain non-stop for at least the last twelve hours. We're almost moved so today found us stuck in a half-empty apartment with little to do and even less motivation to do it. After watching a football match I had a passing interest in and falling sleep for the duration of the one I wanted to watch I found myself catching up with some other blogs. It was this that lead me to a Radio 4 documentary: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia by Martin Bell. I like to think of myself as an optimistic person. I have been accused of such in the past, although sometimes when I listen to myself talking I have my doubts. For a foreigner living an adopted country I believe it's important to keep a positive outlook. I find it insulting when other internationals constantly talk about how life is safer, more civilised, or whatever, in their homeland. I'm sure the constant critique must grate on local people even more. The permanently vexed ex-pat has the optio...

I got home last night and picked up Martin Bell's book 'In Harm's Way'. Large parts of the book are his reflections of his time in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 90s. I read it before we moved here. Eighteen months later the place names are no longer historical abstractions but 'the place where so-and-so lives' or 'the place where we turn right to get to so-and-so'. This weekend three things made me remember his book; here are two of them. A Bosnian friend told us how she'd been on a trip in Serbia a few years ago. She'd been put up by a very poor but very hospitable Serbian old lady. At one point the old lady pointed out the damage that still remains from the American bombing of her area. 'Was your town bombed?' she had asked her guest. 'I didn't have the heart to tell her the Serbs bombed our town' our friend told us. As we sat at breakfast yesterday the TV played silently in the corner. Radovan Karadžić was making...