We Do Adventure

“Bosnia’s top international representative has imposed an interim resolution on squabbling Mostar political factions, establishing the basis for the temporary financing of public services and sanctioning city councillors.” So begins an article I saw tonight on BalkanInsight.com. I think this is a good news story. I start like that because we’re talking about the dangerous and divided world of politics and I’m not out to play political point scoring but any move that means that municipal workers will receive a pay check again after four months is good in my book. I don’t suppose the squabbling politicians have been struggling to keep food on the table our save their electricity from being cut off. Sadly many whose interests they are supposed to be working to protect are not so fortunate. But if the article is to be believed it seems the High Representative has taken the view that it is unfair that those who have been working haven’t been paid while those who haven’t been working have. C...

I saw this encouraging graphic this morning. I think it speaks for itself!

443 is the number of friends I currently have on Facebook. It is also the number of diving festivals held at Mostar’s Stari Most. The latter is without doubt the far more impressive figure. Given that it’s an annual event that’s quite some heritage. Does anyone know of a longer sporting tradition? We spent a gorgeous, hot sunny afternoon today watching some very brave people doing things I wouldn’t even like to dream of doing. Here’s a photo to prove it. If you’re not sure what’s special about the image just look a little closer at the sky under the bridge, just to the left of the tall tree!

Actually my mother never said what I’m about to say. We never had a computer at home when I was growing up. Even if we had it wouldn’t have been online as that didn’t exist (at least not in the lives of normal people) back then. The maternal advice in question is, of course, don’t meet up with people you’ve meet online. It’s not bad advice. As a youth worker I’ve given it , in all seriousness, to several young people who were about to do the sort of stupid things lead to teenage girls making headlines for all the wrong reasons. However, as an online video maker I’ve broken it on several occasions . (Although the first time my parents were loitering nearby; could have been caution or curiosity!) Today, on a brief visit to Sarajevo, Rowan and I met with someone who, until now, has only been an online contact - ‘the other British blogger in Bosnia’ . (In truth, I’m probably ‘the other’ as they were here first!) At four o’clock Rowan and I were sitting on a park bench across the river from...

The High Representative was in Mostar today to bash some heads together (metaphorically one assumes) over the inexcusable stalemate local politicians seem happy to maintain. The OHR issued a press release on Tuesday. This extract will give you a flavour of the problems the city is engulfed in. “Since the local elections more than nine months ago, the leaders of these parties have failed to hold any serious talks aimed at overcoming the situation in Mostar, despite the fact city council has yet to elect a mayor and adopt a city budget. Instead of pursuing political dialogue, the parties have sought to deflect blame from themselves and direct it towards each other and the OHR.” We heard that if the meeting today did not produce any resolution then protestors would blockade the road to Sarajevo for the next couple of days. There is but one main north/south road so this would be a fairly crippling action. However, the situation should never have been allowed to get to this point. As I writ...

For the past couple of days I’ve been introducing young people to the joys of vector graphics. That may mean nothing to you; it didn’t mean much to them at the beginning either. If you’re thinking of Paint or Photoshop then you’re metaphorically barking up the wrong tree – they are both bitmap packages, admittedly with a sizable capability gulf between them. Illustrator is a vector program, as is CorelDraw. I’m sure either could be purchased here for next to nothing. I haven’t check but I do know a young person with a copy of Photoshop CS on his memory stick that is doubtless of dubious origin. Novi Most doesn’t have the budget to start equipping our computers with expensive (legitimate) design software so I opted to install Inkscape. It’s an open source equivalent of Illustrator. It more than does the job of introducing young people to a different way of using computers. Using eDCC, Rowan has been running courses in Words and Excel for a few months now. These have been really popular....

Thoughts of winter seem a long way away. For the past couple of weeks the daytime temperature has been comfortably above 30 and it’ll climb to a lot nearer 40 by the end of this week. However over some late-night pancakes tonight we were telling tales of mouldy walls and three jumpers (sweaters!) indoors to a couple of visitors. As much as I find myself acclimatising to the increasing heat we now have to wonder if that will make the inevitable winter cold so much the colder. Last year we only had a dismal British summer to reference against. This year we have a poor Bosnian one; it’s come late, with rain lasting into July. However it’d still be a grind-to-a-standstill heat wave in the UK. And last week Mostar had its hottest night for about a century, with the temperature barely falling below 30 all night. Once used to such warmth I can start to see how temperatures in the teens will feel chilly.