We Do Adventure

It wasn't so long ago that I wrote about a bus ride from Zagreb to Jajce. When I did I would have considered it quite a long trip. No longer. Last week was bookended by two 28 hour bus journeys. Sarajevo to Oldenburg, in northern Germany, and back again. In a little bus. 29 seats, 25 passengers and 3 drivers. As near to non-stop as was possible. Had the bus been able to reach the speed limit on the motorways the trip may have been many hours shorter but the seats did recline a little, the air-conditioning worked and it made no worrying noises! Needless to say this is my new benchmark for long-distance road travel. It was a trip of many firsts, many of them being borders crossed by young people who had never been outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina before. I'll leave comments on their interest in the comparative price of chocolate for another post and instead say something about the reason for such a bus ride. We were attending a international event for teenagers called Teen...

It's a sad fact that most news stories about Bosnia and Herzegovina that make English language news sites tend not to be happy ones. The article from this week's Economist that landed in my Facebook inbox this week would be a good example. While I don't believe you, me or the international community at large should ignore the issues this kind of journalism highlights it is important to offer proof of the positives of this place. As an example of this I present this quote from an article a friend posted on my Facebook wall last night. “ The country described sometimes as the heart between the mouths of two lions, hosts one of the two greatest tracks of primeval forests in Europe, unmatched biodiversity, daunting mountain faces yet to be climbed, deep gorges yet to be traversed, wild rivers with water so pure you can cup your hand to drink, some of the highest concentrations of wildlife, and perhaps the last highland tribes of semi-nomadic peoples on the continent. In ma...

Tuesday afternoon and I climb into the kombi. Our gear is loaded: guitars, amps, effects and Rowan’s bass. We need to get Budo and his drums and head for the old town. I turn the key and as the kombi coughs to life the radio begins cranking out a classic. The Final Countdown! I smile. It’s my view that everyone should be able to appreciate the excesses of the eighties. They don’t have to live off a diet of big hair and tight leather but they should at least be able to see the funny side of it. And the keyboards; let’s hear it for ‘hard rock’ band serving up cheesy-synth-solos. The funny side, see! We park the kombi where we probably shouldn’t – a helpful local warns us we’ll likely have our tyres slashed! – but it’s as close to the venue as we can get. Valve amps get heavy when they’re carried over cobbles for any great distance. We grab a couple of armfuls of gear each and head for the bar. Through the heavy wooden door we are greeted by two things: the denim and leather clad owner sp...

We’ve just got in from a Saturday night out in Mostar. It’s been a night where we’ve been treated to the delights of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Rage Against The Machine served up by a local band performing their first gig. Our connection is our drumming band mate; the drummer in this band is a former student of his. The drummer and bass player had attended our first rehearsal. The venue was an internet cafe. Earplugs mean I can contemplate sleep without a seriously ringing head. Through the noise our drummer shouted something to us about this being a sign of moving towards Europe. Someone connected with the event wanted our opinion on the Irish flag they’d hung across the back of the stage. I don’t know if this was because they feared this might offend us and English people, or whether they thought it was in some way part of our heritage. Whichever I wasn’t offended – and Rowan thought it was Italian and faded!

There are a great many things we are told that are not true. Perhaps it’s harsh to label them all as lies. Certainly some are merely the result of unbalanced perspective. As our road trip headed south into Belgium and then Germany I began to realise there were great untruths I had fallen for. Britain’s roads are overcrowded. Britain’s motorways always have road-works. Britain’s M25 is really a car park in disguise. These statements are not, in and of themselves, wrong. They are just blinkered; they lack a broader context. Britain may wish to lead the world in a great many things but I’m here to burst the bubble on the idea it has the most crowded, congested roads out there. We all know giant centres of population like Delhi get gridlocked but since when did Belgium have so many people! Perhaps it’s just a tribute to the regional bent for bureaucracy that the traffic around Brussels grinds so painfully slowly. Frankfurt was worse. And on through Austria and Slovenia the crowding and ro...

Just a glimpse into the adventure that was our road trip to Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina. Thanks to Boris and Jamie for being part of an unforgettable journey!