We Do Adventure

Five hours and twenty minutes sat on a bus between Zagreb, Croatia, and Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday morning gave me more than enough time to ponder some of the idiosyncrasies this mode of transport offers in this part of the world. I suppose I should confess I'm no expert; the town I grew up in was not big on buses and, baring one memorable overnight coach journey from London to Edinburgh, most of my bus experience involves the top deck of old London Routemasters. That and school trips. The distinction between a bus and a coach that the English language provides is not one that holds up in translation. Everything is a bus here. There are local buses and there are buses that make international journeys. From the bus station in Jajce we could travel to a number of nearby or neighbouring countries but the only trip I've made thus far is the one to and from Zagreb. This latest journey was the first time we've travelled the route through Bihać and Karlovac; ...

You have to be careful what you read in the news. It can give you a very unbalanced perspective on things. Today as I sat in a multi-agency round table meeting to discuss Roma issues in a village school near Jajce I caught myself thinking: I can't imagine this happening in France. I'm aware this is probably very unfair to all the un-xenophobic French whose views are not presented in the British media. However I was struck with the contrast between reading recent stories of deportations and sitting in a room with representatives from the local social services, local government, OSCE, EUFOR and others discussing issues around education with a group of Roma parents. Here were people trying to make life better. That, at least, is the optimistic view. Listening to the realities of the struggles this community faces it's easy to wonder if life will ever change. This evening I read a less than hopeful article about the future of the whole country . With such big problems in need o...

Reading an article about an unpleasant challenge facing British expats in the south of Spain reminded me that I was going to write about the International Living Quality of Life Index. Their website is a mess but dig around long enough and you'll find the 2009 Index. (I've just refound it and it seems to be in a different order than when I last checked.) Undeterred, I will continue as planned because I don't believe the list anyway. internationalliving.com says "to produce this annual Index we consider…nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involves a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few. Once the data is collected, we also take into account what our editors from all over the world have to say about our findings." It's at that point you realise...

It's hard to imagine what moving to another country would have been like in an age before mobile telecommunications and the internet. The distance, the time delays in messages and the chance that you might be somewhere so remote you were completely cut off from the outside world. (People pay good money for that kind of solitude these days.) We've found the adjustments of settling into a new environment much eased by being able to chat to parents and friends on Skype. In fact we've been in contact with friends and family around the world about our move. Then there's this: the blog. Who knows where you're reading it? But for all the wonders of modern technology these electronic communications have a drawback. There's no e-equivalent of walking into a room and refusing to leave until you get what you came for! I have a situation where something borrowed from me before I left the UK was not returned. I've left an answer phone message: no reply. Text message: no ...