This morning we went to the “Stari Most” Old Bridge in Mostar, explored some other parts of the town returned to our hotel and checked-out.

my handstand

We took the bus in Mostar at 11:00 am. We arrived in Sarajevo at 2 o’clock and checked-in our motel. The room is nice but there’s something strange. The toilet is in the shower. We made a lot of fun about that already, let’s see how we are going to handle that in the morning.

We went out for lunch and I tried a new dish. It’s called GRA. A soup with beans, smoked beef and vegies. It’s said to be traditional but tasted like normal bean soup. Because a soup didn’t make me full at all I ordered a speciality from Sarajevo called Sarajanska. It tasted really good as well.

After that we went to the mall and I helped Emina to look for some new clothes.

We will stay here for two days and our plan is to go sight-seeing and shopping in Sarajevo.

Last morning we got our bus at 7:15 after saying goodbye to the family and thanking them for hosting us for three nights. Our destination was Mostar, the city where the famous bridge is located. When we arrived there after 6 hours watching that no one steals our bags or values we checked-in in our lovely hotel room. It’s called the Muslibegovic hotel and is one part of a museum. It’s a quite interesting history behind it. We booked a whole suite just for the two of us. A bit of luxury for two nights.

In Mostar we met the aunt of Emina. She was a really nice woman who lives in Croatia in Makarska next to the beach. She invited me and Emina to come to visit her next year. We had a great day with her got to meet her new husband who was an police officer and is now retired. After having a coffee with them and going to the biggest mall in whole Balkan we continued our way through Mostar alone. We went into the restaurant called Sadvar. After taking a picture with a girl in the traditional clothes of Mostar, we decided to go to another restaurant. This one was really expensive. So we did.

Today we started at 6:45 from Zavidovici with a bus to Tuzzla (2 hours bus ride). On the way we drove through nice cities and villages some looked really ruined others quite modern. In most cases the population which got on the bus was quite poor. We decided to take a local bus to get a cheap trip. All in all the landscape sorrounding us was just beautiful. A lot of forests with different kind of trees, the Bosna running next to us and the clouds covering the peaks  of the mountains.

When we arrived in Tuzzla we went first to a cofee and drank a wake-up-coffee. After that we started browsing around and got to know the center of Tuzzla.

It’s a small town where a lot of different religions live in peace together. That’s quite rare in Bosnia. They have memorials from the war all around the city in some buildings you could even see the bulletholes from the machineguns.

During our expedition through the city, I found a really nice fashion-store for men. We went in and a lady asked me what kind of clothes I am looking for. I answered in English but my German look was noticed quite fast and she started talking fluently German to me. It was really impressive because she talked with Emina in Bosnian and with me in German. She told us that she studied both languages for a long time and that one of her daughters is acutally living in Ulm. We had a good talk and in the end I bought two really nice shirts for 79,95 KM.

We spent the rest of the day in a restaurant drinking and talking.

Dangerous busride

We took the bus back home at 18:20. On the bus ride I saw a gipsy child entering the bus and said to Emina that she has to be careful of her bags. During the bus ride Emina almost fall a sleep and just in that moment the gipsy child who kept staring at us moved one seat in front of me. Emina sat up straight away and we both watched the kid. It pretendet to play and I would believe so but Emina told me later that she saw him trying to reach my bag with a hook. The thiefs are really tricky in Bosnia, they use children to steal. This time the kid didn’t have luck because Emina and me knew what he would try to do. So his (partner/mother/grandmother) came up and tried to distract us by talking to him. She failed because we were just focussing the boy and her plan didn’t get along. They stopped and changed seats. Emina and me saw from the back that the kid took the seat behind a man who was asleep. One stop the watch was gone, one stop the necklace of the woman next to him. The whole crime happened as fast as and the couple didn’t even notice. We wanted to get up and tell the bus driver but Emina told me that sometimes in Bosnia it’s organized crime. She was right, when the gipsys got off the bus the bus driver talked to them and th kid handed them some money and a silver shining thing(watch) before he continued to drive the bus. The busdriver was really creapy becaue he kept staring at us and got us on different bus stations to pay people and get plastic coppers. In the end we were alone in the bus (two tourist blond hair alone in a local bus with a creapy drug selling busdriver).  I would say we saw the best organized crime by a busdriver but i am not sure about this. Because the bus driver was that creapy we called Eminas relatives to pick us up from the bus station ( it was totally dark). When we arrived at 21 o’clock at the station we saw Jenna and were totally happy because we were still alive.

We arrived late in Sarajevo, got a taxi and drove to our hotel. It was called hotel Italia and was built in a really nice old italian style. We went straight to bed. The next morning we got up, had breakfast and went to the trainstation. There we met Ermina and her boyfriend. Ermina is a Bosnian friend from Emina. She actually lives in Sarajevo but her family in Zavidovici. We took with them the train to Zavidovici (4 hours ride). It was a really old train (Lokomotive) and the landscape we crossed during our trip was just amazing. There were a lot of beautiful rivers and so beautiful nature, looked like it’s out of another world. We had a good talk with the other couple and arrived in Zavidovici around 2 o’clock. We walked with Ermina to the families flat and explored the town. At the supermarket we bought groceries for our daytrips and finally exchanged our money. 50€ is around 99 KMs (Konvertible Mark).

We had a great time with the family of Ermina. The mother liked me a lot but she couldn’t speak English, it was really hard but I tried my best and learned a bit Bosnian basics. I can count to ten now.

The next day we got to know the father he didn’t live in the house with the family, he lived up the mountain in his own house. We got a cab up there. His house was situated really nice. From his balkony you could see all of Zavidovici. He was a funny man who couldn’t speak English so Emina had to translate. During the time at his place we played chess, walked into the forest and watched hornets.

All this people the family included are really poor. It’s really hard for them to afford the costs of living. Emina and me went out for dinner, lunch and breakfast everyday. One meal costs around 1-5 KM. I tried Chivape the traditional Bosnian meal. It’s sasauges made of ground beef covered in spices and served with a lapina and onions. It tasted quite good. I tried one of the national beers (Sarajevsko) as well and figured out that it tasted like Königs Pilsener so not too bad.

Our alarm kicked us out of bed at 6:00 so we woke up, ate breakfast with her sister (Erna) and started to walk to the train which would get us to Vienna (Center) where all the sights are located. Our first stop was Palace Schönbrunn. We spent there one hour walking through the park and taking pictures of each other.

I was really faszinated by the old architecture which looked like we are back in Gothic. Huge windows, creative windows frames and really big clocks on the top of the roofs.

We decided to walk to our next stop. It was the Stephansdom. A really big cathedral at the Stephansplatz in Vienna.

After that we had a coffee at Sarbucks.

During our walk through the city of Vienna we saw another really nice building called the Spanische Hofreitschule. Infront of it there were a lot of carriages and drivers which looked like back in the days.

For lunch we went to Vapiano and in the end to the Parlament and Schloss Belvedere. It was a really nice city tour and her sister a really good tour guide.

doing my favourite handstand in Vienna in front of the Parlament

At 20:15 we continued our trip to Bosnia and flew to Sarajevo.

We arrived yesterday at 22:40 in Vienna. We took one flighti later because the flight in Hamburg was overbooked. We got 125 Euros for that and flew with Air Berlin 20 minutes later. When we arrived in Vienna we had to take the train and go to Floridsdorf to meet Eminas sister whos currently living in Austria.

During our train ride Emina fell asleep and I had to take care that we didn’t miss our station. When we arrived there after one hour, the sister of Emina was waiting at the train station. She walked with us to her flat and served as real bosnian Gulasch. It tasted really good. So she showed us the beds and we instantly went to bed.

It was an exhausting day for both of us.