We Do Adventure

Lest our last post read as some sort of rant against English language music let us redress the balance. Last weekend we got to see the powerful impact some properly performed pop can have on people's imagination. The video below is a short clip of Chip Kendall and DJGalactus Jack encouraging teenagers in Mostar to Solve It On The Dancefloor. It proves that language barriers don't get in the way if the energy is right, and that people from all different backgrounds can put their differences aside and party together. It may be presumptuous to suggest such moments solve deep-seated social issues but they have to help build a better tomorrow. So much of our behaviour, individually and as communities, is governed by emotional reactions to events; positive emotions from a shared experience have to be a good thing. It was a night they won't forget. The young people we know are asking for copies of this music which shows the moment may well live on for a long time yet.

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 ...

By some happy coincidence we ending up being in Mostar this weekend as the city's new Mepas Mall opened. When we lived in Mostar we watched the old hospital buildings where it now stands being demolished. We witnessed the digging of an enormous hole and watched as a giant concrete structure began to appear. Then we moved to Jajce. Almost two years on the construction is complete and it's open for business. Business on the opening weekend was busier than we've ever seen in a shopping centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Shoppers and sight-seers were out in force, but we saw enough people parading fresh purchases to guess the shops won't be disappointed by early trade. The first night queues in McDonalds – only the country's third, and its first outside Sarajevo – were huge. We waited over half an hour to get served; so not exactly fast food, although you can't blame the staff for that. The next day security guards had been stationed to manage the melee. While t...

Earlier this summer I saw an “article” on The Telegraph website which consisted of little more than a string of Lily Allen tweets, linked by some poor prose, masquerading as an attempt at celebrity gossip. It was the kind of sub-journalism that one hopes resulted in someone being relieved of their writing duties! I don't blame Twitter for this. The micro-blogging site delivers the weird and wonderful with surprising ease. Try searching its feeds for mentions of 'Bosnia'. You'll quickly discover there are plenty of Bosnian Beliebers desperate for Justin to visit the country. Today, however, I saw something genuinely interesting: a link to a UWC Facebook page. While we were in Mostar we knew several United World College students in the college there. We heard a lot about the UWC philosophy and we saw the opportunities it opened up for them. I was intrigued to read that a student from one of the world's more closed countries is about to enter that world. At the risk of...

Saturday was a very satisfying day. Sometimes in youth work it can be hard to see progress, or any kind of positives, from all your efforts; it was not one of those days. Instead it was day when I could choose which of many encouraging outcomes to reflect on. The uni hockey match in Mostar brought together young people from a mixture of ethnic and social backgrounds, although the teams were not defined by these factors. The teams, from Mostar and Jajce, were both mixed. It was exciting to see that after a hard fought game, that lacked nothing in passion and intensity, the teams were happy to hang out and mix together. Perhaps this was because the players are unified by an involvement in a sport almost unknown in this part of the world. I'd like to think the accepting atmosphere the coaches from both teams have created had something to do with it too. For my part it was nice to know I haven't been forgotten by the young people from Klub Novi Most in Mostar, and it was fun to sho...

Mostar was looking lovely today. I was down for the day as our uni hockey team from Jajce were playing against the team from Klub Novi Most in Mostar. I'll save any comment on the game until I can post the highlights video. Instead, enjoy the view from the Stari Most. It was ideal weather for taking in the delights of the Stari Grad, which we did before hitting the road back to Jajce. Warm, t-shirt weather in the low twenties is much more suited for strolling around in the sunshine than the mid-fourties heat of high summer. What you won't see is all the photo opportunities I passed up on the way there and back in the interests of driving responsibly. Blue skies, sunshine and snow-topped mountains still take a lot of beating in my book. In fact my concern to drive safely almost backfired when I slowed dramatically on a mountain road to let a cat with no sense of urgency saunter out of my path; I was being tail-gated by an impatient local at the time. In retrospect, full speed ah...

Before you ask, no, of course Jajce doesn't have a real Hard Rock Cafe. Unlike Mostar, it doesn't even have a place pretending to be one. As someone who has visited Hard Rock Cafes in London, New York and LA – yes, the original one is in London – I know it takes more than a few guitars and a Jimi Hendrix poster on the walls to qualify as rock'n'roll's finest eatery. Nevertheless I share the photo because it makes me smile. Who wouldn't want a bright orange (fake) Hard Rock T-shirt was a birthday present! That not the real reason though. As we head into the week that should see our first public rock'n'roll performance in our new town I thought is was a great way to get back in the live music mood. Moving has meant we've gone a few months without practising altogether. We're either in for a pleasant surprise or a horrible shock when we crank it up for rehearsals over the next couple of days!

I should start by saying that we enjoyed living in Mostar for two years. Hopefully that's come through on this blog. But it was time to move on and we are now living in Jajce, in central Bosnia, preparing to start a new youth work project for Novi Most International there. We finally moved just over a week ago. Over the past month we'd been gradually moving things to our new apartment. Last Monday we were preparing to pack our final kombi van full of stuff and head north. Then we discovered we needed a paper that I had safely stowed in Jajce to sign out with Mostar's police. It was also apparent we had more then one van full of things still needing to make the move. So Tuesday we drove to Jajce with most of what remained. We got up early to head back to Mostar, pick up the rest, sign out with the police and hand back our keys to our, now, ex-landlord. If there is one downside to life in Mostar it is the extreme rain it gets. It rained on Tuesday night. Heavily. Very heavily...

I've been thinking about writing this post since I snapped the photo on the left about a month back. I wanted to craft something thoughtful, perhaps even a little profound, to accompany this image. As I sit typing now I get no sense that I'm going to achieve my aim this evening. Nevertheless, like a fine impressionist painting, I hope these words go some way to conveying the picture in my mind. I loved cars as a kid. Either my ninth or tenth birthday outing was to the Motor Fair at Earls Court, London. (Whichever it wasn't was a trip to London Zoo!) I can still remember the cars I got my photo taken with that day: the then new Toyota MR2 , the MG Metro 6R4 and behind the wheel of a BMW 628 CSi – the 635 CSi was my favourite but there wasn't one of those on display. There were plenty of other super-cars roped off where you couldn't get your sticky little fingers on them. These where the days when the Lamborghini Countach was cool! Yes, these were the Thatc...

A couple of days ago we mentioned some demolition work had started not far from where we live. Today I shot this short bit of video as we strolled by. After making this video I spotted the sign that said the site is going to house some new government buildings in Mostar. If they go up as fast as these ones came down then they'll be practically finished by the end of next week!

Just less than two years since we arrived in Mostar we have worked our last evening at Klub Novi Most. I don't think it's quite sunk in yet. The summer's been a busy time – perhaps evidence by the very sporadic blog posting! - so although we've known for a while that we'll be moving on to a new project with Novi Most in the autumn we've not had the down-time to let leaving really sink in. There were a few tears tonight as me, Rowan and Budo (all pictured on the leaving cake on the left!) were given a very fitting send off by the young people and our other team members in Klub. Two years have flown by or at least it feels like that tonight. I might have said different if you'd asked me in the middle of Mostar's long, rainy winter! We've seen a lot and been part of a lot. Hopefully we've help a bit along the way. Time will tell. A couple of years from now perhaps we'll be able to look back with greater perspective and see how our positive c...

Yesterday was a day for stirring the grey matter. It started with Rowan discovering The Guardian had a front page article about Mostar - online at least. It charted the story of War Child and mentioned the establishing of the Pavarotti Centar here in Mostar. Rowan visited the Centar a week or so back to see about getting help repairing a violin. The story she heard there was not a happy one; no money, few young people involved making music. You didn't get this side of the story from the article. Coins have but two sides; stories, it seems, can be as multi-faceted as a well cut diamond. I don't know if this adds to their beauty. The longer we live in Bosnia Herzegovina the more we learn to see every new bit of information as just another aspect of a big picture we'll never fully understand. Anyone claiming to have a handle on exactly what went on and why probably has some agenda they're trying to push. From our perspective, parts of The Guardian's article were cl...

Here they are, this year's graduating students from the United World College in Mostar. We've got to know a few them over the last couple of years so it was great to get an invite to go along to the Graduation Ceremony today. As one might expect, it was quite an emotional affair. These young people have been family for the past two year, making home often a very long way from home. Now they're heading off in separate directions. While I won't claim to have got all the in-jokes the speeches, nevertheless, were inspiring and you have ponder the miracle of the opportunities afforded these students. So much possibility, such a sense many of them will actually make something of it. When they do let's hope they remember the place that got them started, particularly the local students. This country can ill afford its potential movers and shakers moving elsewhere never to return.

I was reading, I think it was in the LA Times, that some celebrity chefs are becoming increasingly annoyed at diners documenting their every mouthful with their digital cameras. It seems flashing the cash, and not your camera, is much more befitting to the aura of a fancy restaurant. This is not a food blog (I'm not a fan of flash photography either!) but I have noticed we've had a sizeable number of hits that have come through searches for Little Mexico, Mostar's mexican bar/restaurant. We were there again the other day. It was a warm afternoon and we were sitting outside so I had no qualms about snapping the appetising sight in front of me. Behold the chimichanga!

I was going to get on my bike yesterday afternoon and head out into the countryside. I didn't. My excuse was the weather, that and trying to finish off some work. However, I did ride the Friday before, my first ride of 2010. Naturally, I wiped out my camera to commemorate the moment.

We're just home for a quick break - the chance to eat and check Facebook! - before our gig tonight. In a hour we'll be wandering back to Mostar's Stari Grad to make music or noise, depending on what your view on alternative punk rock is! I took this picture after our soundcheck. It's our backdrop to rock: the view over our little mixer, out of the window and up towards the mountains. It's by no means a great photo but in reality it's a great view. Not that it'll be n show tonight as it'll be dark at least an hour before we kick into our first song. This is Gilgal's third gig in this bar and we're experimenting with a third way of squeezing us and all our equipment into a tiny corner. Hopefully we've chosen well, although I'm aware I run the risk of getting a clip round the ear from a Musicman headstock if I step out of line!

We were driving off to a rehearsal late this morning. (First Gilgal gig of 2010 happens Thursday night!) At one end of Mostar's Bulevar our progress was hindered by a guy trying to pull off a reversing-off-the-pavement-into-traffic manoeuvre. His move was a little ill-timed but we stopped anyway. The car coming the other way sort-of did too, but not completely. It kept trying to squeeze through the ever-decreasing gap between the opposite curb and the rear light cluster of an Opel Zafira. Having nudged himself suitability back into the face of the oncoming traffic the driver of the blue Opel turned his face towards us, pulling a blame-it-on-the-other-guy face, with accompanying shrug and hand gesture. I turned to Rowan: “I know that person, aren't they an actor?” She thought for a moment before nailing it in one. Alex Baldwin. Put politely, the real Alex Baldwin carries more weight but the likeness was uncanny. For this we forgive the driver his impatient exit from his paveme...

It's a video. About the weather. Need I say more?!

It’s funny how some things can be so familiar to some yet so foreign to others. We were dropping a friend and co-worker home today after a morning of workshops when they started shouting and pointing: look at that weird German car! We looked, immediately realising someone was in need of a little education. Objectively, yes, it is a weird car but is not a weirdness that should be blamed on the Germans. That they can be blamed for all the Mercedes, Audis and BMWs that clutter Mostar’s streets says more about their ability to churn out desirable status symbols rather than weirdness on wheels. The idiosyncrasy on show here was the proud preserve of the Black Cab, the taxi that is, or certainly used to be, ubiquitous in the frantic ferrying of busy people about Britain’s capital. Why this one came to be parked somewhere up a back street in Bosnia and Herzegovina is anybody’s guess. But running British licence plates and sporting a still-valid-for-another-month tax disc we have to assume tha...

Just a very visual reminder of a well known phrase...