Belgrade to Sarajevo

chez Vlad

I spent my five days in Belgrade mostly lazing in Vladimir's welcoming apartment. But they were also punctuated by trips sightseeing and to the bakery for what I think of as Turkish food, beers and Bristol chat with Jack, football matches and another memorable mixed grill this time with Serbian socialites, surgeons, stylists and TV personalities. Best of all was on my first night finally becoming uncle to little Elias; happy and healthy along with his mum. I left on Monday in noon sun and my new straw hat; the crowning of many, petty wardrobe-indignities. My anxieties about surviving extrication from Belgrade's choked and tangled highways were calmed and rendered ultimately vain by Vladimir's carefully zoomed and cropped internet maps. But my elated exhaustion after the fact led to such a series of logistical and topographical errors that by Tuesday morning I found myself camped desperately and very obviously without permission in an orchard of green plums, lost, with only three inches of water and no food or currency. I left promptly, stopping shortly in a garden apiary to trouble a man for water and directions. At length they were provided but not before the obligatory rakia spirit, coffee and entire bowl of clear honey were throbbing as hard in my veins as the bee sting in my temple. Do not underestimate the occasional brutality of Serbian hospitality! At about 9am I escaped unsteadily into the days rising heat to cheers of "strong leg! strong leg!". Indeed there was something fortifying to that narcotic breakfast formula because it seemed no time at all until I was crossing the Bosnian border at Loznica, where I took cash, lunch and crucial shade.

Serb suburb

crossing the Sava after Belgrade

Serb country

 

a breakfast kidnapping

And then came the Bosnian mountains. Not so bad in retrospect; but enough at the time, crawling in the heat unable even to outrun the swarm of flies after my sweat, to make me doubt the whole endeavor. But you stop and rest and regroup and swat some flies and then after too long you reach the top of the pass for goulash and pivo; tighten the chain and loosen the hamstrings. After that, impossibly, its downhill again; plain sailing for 40 miles with a string orchestra in headphoned ears, a visual feast of buttercup mountains all around, the sun perfectly pleasant hours beneath its intolerable apex, a nephew safely born, all roads behind and before and suddenly you're in Sarajevo knowing beyond doubt that these highs and lows are exactly why you came; exactly why you left.

I'll stop here the weekend, then back into the hills; West towards a beach holiday.

Bosnian beehives

first look at Sarajevo