We Do Adventure

It's been just over two years since we moved from Mostar to Jajce. Mostar is not short of internationals living there; there are governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies and the United World College that between them draw people from the four corners of the globe. Jajce is different. There are very few foreigners who live in the town and while many of the young people we work with seem to have cousins or aunts or uncles scattered across Europe, or in the States, we found ourselves with a lot of explaining to do. “Where are you from?” “England.” What's that?” is, believe it or not, an accurate translation of an early conversation. At least one young person was convinced London and America were basically the same thing. Another stated categorically that soon the US would be part of Europe, because eventually everyone was going to be part of Europe. This had to be true: their teacher had told them! But all this happened before One Direction. In the last year they hav...

Back when we were living in the UK there was a time we were proud owners of a new new MINI. It was yellow. It was also a great car; the sort of car you could get back into after a day at a motor show and be completely satisfied with, even though it cost a fraction of the price of some of the cars you'd sat in during the day. It was during on of these motor show trips that I paid a tenner for a ride in a Caterham 7. Because if the MINI had a reputation for go-kart like handling the Caterham represents a whole other level of raw motoring. And so it was that I had the wildest five minutes I've experienced on four wheels. Apart from the few seconds after pulling away the car never travelled in a straight line. It slipped and slid, squealed and spun its way around the little test track. All hot exhausts and burning rubber. The definition of a blast. These days I don't drive a MINI, or a Caterham; I drive a Volkwagen Transporter. It's not a car but in my experience it...

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...

There can be little debate that a camp that doesn't involve tents or sleeping bags, dodgy toilets or cold showers is no camp real camp at all. Be that as it may, last week's camp we organised in Jajce had a lot of other ingredients that go into making a memorable summer experience: sunshine, swimming, sports and surprisingly good food. That everyone got to sleep in real beds, in respectable bungalows was, in my opinion, simply something of a bonus! The picture shows everyone but me - I was holding the camera. Just over thirty young people and youth leaders, representing six towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was also responsible for putting together short highlight videos of each day's activities. These got played out as part of the evening programme. They're now hidden away on YouTube but if you'd like a glimpse into some of what we got up to you can find them by clicking on one of the following days: Tuesday , Wednesday or Thursday .  

This is this evening out by the lakes in Jajce. What you can see around the the top of the mountain in the middle of the photograph are not clouds but smoke from fires that have been burning up there for the past two weeks. We spent last week 'camping' out by the lakes: the inverted commas indicate that I understand staying in a bungalow doesn't equate to real camping; but neither I or any of the young people involved seemed to be complaining about that. Almost every day was cloudless but every day we saw smoke. A few days before our camp started I had read about similar fires on a mountain outside Sarajevo. The article said no one was able to attempt to put them out because the area still had so many landmines it was too dangerous. According to a guy working on the rental boats we went out on, no one has attempted to put out these fires because there is no agreement over who the land that is burning belongs to, so no one feels the need to take responsibility.

It only seems appropriate after our previous post to upload this video. This is proper pedalo action from Jajce's Plivsko jezero. Well, I say proper but I'm not sure whether a duck shaped pedalo can properly be described as proper. Nevertheless, it proved a worthy lake-going craft, even if it did list a little to port. We wondered if this was due to my superior weight advantage but we noticed every vessel out this evening was leaning one way or the other. Perhaps not then, but if it was then an hour's energetic pedalling will have done something to help in that department!

In the last couple of weeks we've had a couple of great watery experiences. Together with the Novi Most team we went on a canoe safari on the Trebižat river, near Čapljina. Surviving three hours on the water in the hot and sun without getting burned was something of a triumph - it was up around 40C that day - and our canoe skill were almost impressive, up until the point we capsized! I took photos but they didn't do the scenery justice. Neither does this video . Instead here's a picture from our latest adventure. We have two friends visiting this week - the one who is less into being in photographs took this one for us! Last last we decided to spend an hour out on the lakes in Jajce in a rental boat. These boats have very quiet, battery powered motors that are very cool if the battery has enough power. Unfortunately for us, about twenty-five minutes out from our start point I began to suspect ours was not going to last the duration. A quick check around the boat reveale...