Twas the night before xmas....

And I still haven't got my visa!  I went to the Questura at Siracusa this morning, just as my appointment letter told me to, and they said that the package with the actual application hadn't yet arrived.... from the post office 100 m away.  Hmmm.  Well, that's the postal service for you at Christmas.  So now I have a new appointment for 13/1/10.  The question is - will the Italy Immigration people at Catania airport let me back in the country after New Years???

A couple of weekends ago I went to Taormina.  A very pretty town on a very pretty coastline but if the number of tourists there on a chilly day in December was anything to go by, I'm very glad I didn't go in summer.

One of the key attractions is an ancient Greek theatre, strategically located on a cliff with magnificent views of the beautiful harbour on two sides and looming Mt Etna on a third.  Now you know an historic site is truly historic when your guide book laments that it was ruined by more modern construction... ie the Romans.  The Romans had built walls around the theatre because they were less into Greek tradegies and comedies and more into gladiator sports.  Fortunately these walls have crumbled allowing you to see the views as per the original Greek design.

Yesterday I went exploring the Valle dell'Anapo, a beautiful valley with (you guessed it) the Anapo river running through it.  This place was remarkable though for the *truly* ancient Necropolis di Pantalica. 

By truly I mean this site dates from as far back as the 13th century BC.  In this picture you can see (even better if you click on it to open it to full size) many holes in the rock.  These were carved out of the limestone by the civilisation of the day to rest their dead.  Along the whole site there are about 5000.

Here's a close up of one of them.  The door was a bit smaller than me.  This one was a single little (man made) cave, but some of them have multiple chambers, presumably for members of the same family.  Amazing.  Particularly the ones right on the cliff face.  Of course, I suppose the layout of this porous rock was a bit different 15,000 years ago, but still I wouldn't have wanted to be a gravedigger in those days!

Along the valley itself I had a lovely time rock hopping over the water and climbing along the path.  This spot in particular struck me as the perfect swimming hole - I was pretty cold but even so mildly tempted to jump in.  Just like home.  All in all a great day, and I'm definitely going to go back one day and explore further.  Although, my knees hurt a little bit at the end... hang on, I'm way too young for my knees to be giving way!

Speaking of cold though, I am absolutely going to freeze in a few days time when I return to Manchester for Christmas.  It's been snowing and about -6 degrees.  Of course, that's assuming that I get there - many delays at Gatwick airport already.  England's absolutely useless when it comes to snow, a few flakes and everything shuts down.

Brinkmanship

To paraphrase our favourite 1980's commentator, Europes aint europes.  You have of course the continent of Europe, although even that's a bit confusing with some countries (notably Russia and Turkey) spanning across to Asia.  There are 50 sovereign states in Europe.  Although an island, the UK is considered technically part of the European continent.

Then you have the somewhat smaller European Union which currently has 27 members.  The EU is the current form of the club that was started after the second world war to "make make war unthinkable and materially impossible" (surely the most successfully accomplished mission statement EVER).  Switzerland is not a member (those guys take their neutrality verrry seriously), but lots of other countries want to be still so we can expect the EU to continue to expand.  The UK is a member of the EU.

Now we get to the Eurozone.  The euro is the official currency of the EU and there are 16 member countries who have adopted it.  Most of the other EU countries have to adopt but haven't got round to meeting the economic criteria yet.  Some non-EU countries like the Vatican (because changing currency in the middle of Italy would be a right pain) and Montenegro (because when you're a tiny country who finally gets independence out of the mess that was the former Yugoslavia, what else are you going to use) also use the euro.  But because the UK is oohhh soooo special, they got to keep the pound sterling and are thus not a member of the Eurozone.


We also (and now we are starting to get to the point of this blog entry) have the Schengen Zone.  The Schengen zone (I am amused that this key accord was signed in a place that is virtually unpronouncable to the vast majority of Europeans not from Luxembourg) is an area where all of the countries have no internal border controls.  So for a third country citizen (such as an Australian) being in France, for example, is the same (visa wise) as being in Italy.

As you can see from the map to the right, the UK (and Ireland) are the only EU countries that chose to opt out of this convenient arrangement.  Why?  I don't know, they're just "special".  So the UK is not in the Schengen Zone.

All of this and more is neatly summarised with the picture here... Supranational European Bodies.

Why does any of this matter? Well, I am an Australian. I have an Australian passport (and only an Australian passport). I am not English. My right to live and work in the UK is based on a 5 year "Ancestry Visa", so called because I qualified through my English born grandmother.  So, does this or does this not mean that I have the right to live and work in Italy?

The title of this blog entry refers to how long it took me to answer that question... on day 89 of my time in Schengen zone!  An Australian is allowed 90 days in any 6 month period, and with various holidays I hit that number this weekend.  The majority of the problem was that the local immigration authorities (not the brightest bunch of beaurocrats) thought that my UK working visa wasn't valid because the UK is not part of the Schengen Zone even though Regulation 286/1998 Article 27 1-bis clearly refers to memer states of the EU and not the SZ.   Bof.

Finally, after getting this piece of paper and that piece of paper and contracts between different companies and letters from the union and the passport of the directors of the Italian and UK companies and my entire life story in triplicate and filling out this application and that application and talking to all sorts of lawyers.... I went to the post office on Friday, filled out a form (with an Italian assistant), gave a copy of my passport and received my receipt.  Done.

Well, sort of, I still need to go through some more hoops.  So, if you don't hear from me again you'll know that I've been thrown in gaol as an illegal immigrant!

Making the most of it

Weekend 1….

So far I’ve been lucky enough not to have to work on the weekends. That might change soon though as the job gets towards the pointy end, so I’ve been trying to make the most of being in this beautiful place. Instead of my normal weekend behaviour of sleeping in and procrastinating over boring housework, I’ve been leaping out of bed early on a Saturday morning and getting out and about (ok, not exactly every Saturday morning, but quite a few even so).

To date I’ve made it around Central and South Western Sicila and along the Mediterranean Coast. The first trip still ranks as the best, travelling through the least populated, least touristed region. Here we have a close up of the very long set of steps in Caltagirone, each individually tiled according the traditional style.

Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics. Always a place with high quality clay, when the Arabs took their turn at running Sicily (and believe me, *everybody* has had a go at some point), they brought glazing and a particular blue shade to the table. The result is a beautiful product with a few dedicated individuals and the tourist trade sustaining the traditional industry.

Caltagirone was the first town on my exploration circuit, and I immediately got to put my new driving round tiny streets skills into practice. Here I was following the main road believe it or not! I was looking for the famous stairs, drove round this tightest of corners, over a bit of a bump, looked up to my right and lo and behold there they were! I’d just driven over them.

(I was driving towards the camera as per this photo)

Fortunately my experience in Ortigia has also made me adept at spotting a parking opportunity. Wrong way down a one way street? Other cars and scooters? No problems for the little yellow panda (seen here as clearly not the only car going the wrong way – note the one in front!.

The white van has stopped beside the little corner store and put its hazard lights on – acceptable practice here for random parking manoeuvres… park anywhere as long as your hazard lights are on.

I won’t bore anyone with a detailed description of my travels, suffice to say that this was taken from one of the higher points through the Sicilian Pennines, from a castle founded more years ago that you can imagine. Enna is one of the larger towns in the central region and it’s as beautiful as the others. Perched precariously on top of mountain tops with tiny narrow cobblestone alleys and ancient defences, with amazing cathedrals ringing out on a Sunday morning, surrounded by countryside and the occasional herd of animals crossing the road, this area was just beautiful.

A major highlight of this trip was the Villa Romana del Casele which I will only link to as no photos I could have taken would have done justice to the sheer awesomeness of the 2000 year old mosaics. However another highlight was the Park of Neibrodi, a nature reserve consisting of the largest beech forest in Europe. With my visit perfectly timed in mid Autumn, the 2 hour hike was a feast of spectacular colours.

In the distance in this photo we see the looming Mt Etna. It really is quite difficult to miss! I can see it (from a more southern angle) on my way into work in the morning when I’m not distracted by the crazy Sicilian drivers or my Italian lessons on the CD (or both). Here it is covered in snow, but the fabulously warm weather (November in Sicily is like July in Manchester but with less rain) has melted it all. Hopefully it will come back by the time the Mt Etna region gets onto my weekend itinerary.

A note on the history of Sicily. As far as I can tell, the following people have had a go at it: Byzantine, Greek, Roman, Arab, local tyrants, Norman, German, English, Spanish, Naples and finally, only in the late 1880s, did it become part of the newly formed country known as Italy.

Here we have a bizarrely English looking manor in the countryside – at some point Admiral Nelson did some remarkable service (presumably at sea) for the King of Naples who promptly made him Duke of Bronte (near Mt Etna). This was only officially relinquished by his descendants in the 80s! And so we have Nelson’s manor neatly tucked in next to the 10th century abbey with a “Gothic-Norman portico and a Byzantine icon which, according to the tradition, was painted by St. Luke himself”. So there you go.

Weekend 2…

On another weekend I went travelling along the Mediteranean coast, ie the southern coast of Sicily. Around the awful industrial places like Gela there are some beautiful stretches of coastline, not least of which is this little outcrop, the Scala dei Turchi (Turkish stairs). On my way to the visit the famous Valley of the Temples I stopped here and nearly didn’t get away again! I passed a lovely few hours reading on the rocks….

… almost being tempted by the beautiful clear water (it was warm, but not that warm).

But eventually I did make it to the temples near Agrigento, and, well, WOW. The Greeks built this series of temples around 500 BC (seriously, sometimes Sicily makes London look modern and I don’t just mean because in London there are road rules). Read all about them here for the details, I just wandered around aimlessly imagining life some 2500 years ago.

Finally we have the sunset over the lovely little beach (castle in the background, available for party hire) as I wound my way back home to Ortigia.

I’ll try not to do too many touristy type posts, but really in a place like this it’s hard not to! Next might actually be of Siracusa (where I live) though, as well as the ultra baroque town of Noto. We’ll see if I can get motivated :)

Logo

If you notice a new little logo on this blog, it's because I'm flirting with the idea of calling myself a humanist (although of the small h variety).  This is despite a general reluctance to use such labels.  Humanism explained

My apartment in Sicily

I passed a very sad day a couple of weekends ago. An American lady on holiday in the apartment next to mine had awoken to find that her husband had passed away during the night. So this blog is my lesson on what to do when this happens. I imagine that the process is reasonably similar in any western country, but as I’d never so much as been to a funeral before, I had no idea what to do. I am writing this because I think that anyone travelling should have some idea of what happens so that they can talk to their partner and think ahead in advance.

First, somebody called the ambulance, who then called the police, who then called the coroner. Everything was point on hold waiting for the coroner, who announced that it was death of natural causes, and so the body could be released into the custody of an undertaker. (Otherwise, he would have kept custody until an autopsy was performed). During this time, while the lady was talking to her children, I had a brainwave and called the American Embassy in Rome to ask for help. Unfortunately they didn’t have any travel insurance, otherwise I would have called them as well.

Now comes the tricky part when you are overseas, don’t speak the language and are in shock – finding an undertaker. In this case, the police called a local man who was the most slimy, horrible person I’ve ever met, considering his position of dealing with the (very) recently bereaved. Meanwhile, the American Embassy had called someone that they considered reputable and hence were surprised and suspicious to hear that the body had been given over to someone else.

Lesson number 1 – no one asks for your permission at this point. However, I could have stopped the process if I’d realised what was going on because to complete the paperwork it was necessary to have the address of the final resting place of the body. In this case, I looked up the lady’s home town on the internet and found the local funeral home with their address. (This is where I went wrong – I should have asked for proof that this person was from the company the Embassy had recommended before giving him an address).

So this character followed the ambulance to the hospital where the morgue was located, and no doubt completed some paperwork. At the same time, we went, with the lovely and english speaking owner of the apartment, to the funeral home where it turned out we had to pick a coffin.

Next lesson – in Italy they don’t embalm the body. So when the policeman had come into my apartment to give the lady her husband’s wedding ring, and to ask if she wanted to see him before they took him away (she absolutely did not want to, not having yet passed from the horror stage into grief), it really was the last opportunity she would have had to see her husband.

Because we were so far from the capital of Sicily or any other really big population centre (and it was a Saturday), the deceased’s preferred option of cremation was out of the question (ie no crematoriums in the very Catholic Siracusa). So there we were, not 4 hours after waking up and finding that her husband had died, having to select a coffin and negotiate the price of transferring the body to the USA. A grim experience.

The gentleman in question had been a fairly large man, and so the selection of coffins was limited. Knowing him, the lady was sure that he would have wanted a plain coffin, and being a protestant meant that carvings of the Virgin Mary were particularly unwelcome. However the only plain coffins that were large enough were much more expensive. Fixing a price was also problematic because the undertaker would only know the final cost once the body and coffin were weighed at the airport. I wanted to find away to pay a deposit then only settle once the final price was known as I’m sure this undertaker would be padding the price to be sure. But that turned out to be too difficult…

Because finally there was the matter of payment, as the undertaker would not take credit card and bank transfers from the US would have taken quite a long time (presumably he would have wanted to keep the body until the transfer had come through). Personally my credit card limit wouldn’t have been enough anyway. I think that this might have been where the travel insurance would have come in – hopefully they could have arranged the payment of the €7700 thus avoiding the pain. Fortunately in our case the lady had a friend in Rome who was able to arrange the transfer. My goal had rapidly become to get her the hell out of that awful place with the loud arguing in Italian (our friend the apartment owner was absolutely invaluable here) at just about any price.

The final hurdle was in determining whether the lady was free to go home to her family. There’s a bit of an Italian trait to just say no, or we need more information, or you have to wait for someone else to approve if they don’t know the answer to the question. However the helpful Embassy said that they couldn’t think of any reason why not, so we booked her a flight the next morning home. Another lesson – just go, they can’t stop you. If something goes wrong you’ll be better placed to deal with it from home.

The body did make it home as well after what I suspect was a lengthy chain of custody process involving much paper (somewhere along the line the Embassy in Rome had to issue a special “passport” – another reason to have got them involved as early as possible).

So there you go. Tell your travelling friends and family – be prepared.

But here's my apartment:

You walk into the lounge (which has a little bathroom)…

… then through to the kitchen, where…

…you can go out to the terrace and catch glimpses of the harbour.

Time for bed, so upstairs to the little mezzanine level under the eaves…

…where there is another little bathroom.

In the morning it’s time to go and find my little yellow panda (a Fiat car)…

… in the carpark (a very nice way to greet the day).

But now this car is really cool… (a site vehicle for the maintenance team with their tools)

Cellars and Sicily

The name of this blog has temporarily changed from Jos City (reflecting the lesser known Manchester football team). Ok, Mt Jos-na is a pretty poor effort, but it got stuck in my head. But flying into Sicily for the first time on a rather cloudy day, I looked out of the window and saw a sea of white with one ominous black peak looming over the plane. Mt Etna is a mere few hundred kilometres north of where I am now, and it certainly dominates the surrounding landscape. I’m looking forward to visiting it. Although with the sudden spate of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and dust storms around the world, I’ll pick a clear day!

Sometimes there’s a long time between blog entries because nothing much is happening in my life. Sometimes it’s the reverse. Before heading off on holiday in Eastern Europe, I blithely said “sure, why not” when someone at work asked me if they could send my CV off for an assignment in Sicily, not expecting anything to come of it (ha!). As previously mentioned, I had also got cracking, finally, on my cellar.

My house consists of 4 storeys, like all the others in my row of terraces. People in my village say “I can’t believe you live in that massive house all by yourself!” to which I typically respond “But it’s ONE ROOM wide! That is NOT a big house!!!”. Still, if you add up all of the available floor space, it does come to a reasonable amount. I’ll finally take some proper photos next weekend (ironically, just as I’m leaving for a while). But up until now the cellar has been fairly damp, so I didn’t really count it except as somewhere to store my treadmill.

Now however, the cellar has been tanked. (I’ve learnt more about building in the last few weeks than I ever would have thought possible… I know now what caulk is for example.) Picture a cellar, with water leaking in through the walls from the surrounding earth and up through the floor. Now picture a “tank” around the walls and floor – and you have a nice dry cellar. The whole process was very interesting and involved turning my kitchen and front room into a construction site, not to mention all the rubble outside the front door.

I’m looking forward to going home and seeing the final result. However that will be a flying visit to pack some more things before moving permanently to Sicily for 6 months or so, work permit processes permitting (something of a worry – the Italian bureaucracy is not renowned for its speed as you can see here http://www.lifeinitaly.com/flash/default.asp). And just in time, as Manchester’s first autumn tree appeared on my last day at work in the office there. Autumn itself is very brief this far north, and the dreary leaf-less winter seems to drag on forever. Sure, it’s pretty when it snows, but those days are few and far between.

Contrast that if you will with this photo – taken as I lazed on the beach in the burning sun, casually dipping in and out of the water… Although to be honest, the beach (in the middle of a nature reserve) was full of rubbish which was a bit disappointing. Still, it was a lovely day, my first (of hopefully many) exploring Sicily.

By the way, they're not rocks on the beach, they are what I can only describe as fur balls. Little balls of rolled up dried seaweed. Funny.

One thing I noticed coming out of the airport at Catania (north of Siracusa where I will be living) was the number of gum trees everywhere (this picture was taking at the nature reserve). So I should feel right at home here. It’s been amusing to see the locals all getting their jackets out when the temperature dropped below about 25 °C, a balmy summer’s day in Manchester of course. Unfortunately I’ve missed the nice hot weather, but I’m sure winter will be relatively mild compared to what I’ve experienced the last few years.

The work itself is on a power station inside an oil refinery – hardly the most picturesque of work locations. Still, I’ll have this to come home to. This is a sunset over the port from the island of Ortigia, the old part of Siracusa. Of course, I might be living on the east side of the island in which case I’ll be seeing sun rises over the sea! That’s today’s task - flat hunting

soccer can be ok...

I've heard it said, from citizens of those very few countries in the world that don't think football = soccer, that soccer is boring.  Well, I challenge you to watch a traditional Manchester United - Manchester City derby in a crowded pub full of rabid fans with the score at 3 all into injury time when one team scores the deciding goal.  Wow.

Later, I went and watched the line dancing in Manchester's gay and lesbian quarter.  That was a) great and b) kind of funny when you remember that line dancing originated from America's ahem "country" (read redneck) regions.

Cellar renovations are proceeding a pace.  The team has expanded, and evenings in the local pub now sound like an episode of Home Improvement.

Holiday snaps part 2

Back again to Eastern Europe.

I don’t have any decent photos really of Montenegro because my little phone camera’s no good at capturing the Best Sunsets Ever. Because that’s we watched each night, sitting on the tiny pebbly “beach” that we’d found, sipping on a cold, cheap beer in the balmy evening.

At first I was disappointed – this was meant to be the beach part of the holiday after mountains and cities, castles and museums. The newest country in the world (remember it only just split from Serbia), surely we could escape the crowds? Nope. No chance. Plus, the mountains plunging into the turquoise water of the Adriatic was spectacular, but not beach forming. Every tiny patch had a ridiculous number of people, and the whole thing just caused my Australian heart to shudder in horror (when you grew up within an hour of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts… well).

But after a fortuitous detour to look at an old monastery on a cliff, we noticed a monstrosity of a hotel being built down below. When it’s finished, there will probably be about 20 rooms per square meter of pebbly beach, but for now it was our own little heaven with a perfectly reasonable number of people having discovered it.

When we left Montenegro and the lovely lady who had rent us a room in her house with whom we had several conversations in sign language, we headed (sadly) north (and towards home). First stop, the famed Dubrovnik. Once again I defer to the excellent article and photos here at the ever-wonderful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik.

After Dubrovnik, we headed north along the coast to land at a little town called Biograd. Lots of reportedly wonderful places like Split were missed along the way, something for another day. Biograd was one of those lucky strikes you get sometimes when travelling randomly. I was using the Eastern Europe Lonely Planet book, as before going we weren’t even sure which countries we were going to, so the details on Croatia were limited to the major locations. Biograd was just big enough to be shown on the map; it looked around the right distance and so that’s what went into the GPS.


The next day we went out on the boat around some islands (Kornat), where I swam for the first time in a super salt lake – 5 x saltier than the ocean. It was like swimming in soup! The density was so high you couldn’t have sunk if you’d tried. Otherwise it was just a lovely day out on the sparkling water

Then there was Plitvice. A supremely beautiful national park full of waterfalls and lakes, which due to some sort of geological thingy are constantly changing. The waters were a clear turquoise. Take for example this idyllic scene…

Of course, pan out a little bit and you see what it was really like. Add this one to the list of places to see but not in August.

One slightly bizarre night in a town called Bizet (the “Town of Truffles” with its fabulous Stari Grad perched on a hilltop where we got a taste of Croatia outside of peak season – come early if you want dinner!) and then it was back into Slovenia.

The Scojcan caves were certainly impressive, although more for their size and depth than the stalagmite formations. The picture, taken on the way up and out of the caves, is me exploring my vertical panorama capabilities

And here we see a lifelong dream – I was really meant to be working on a Lipizzaner stud farm not tripping the world fixing power stations…

Then it was time to say goodbye to Slovenia and head back west again, this time through Italy. We stopped for the night at Fair Verona, saw Juliet’s balcony and many other marvellous things, before going on to Milan where I was to fly out.

Now I didn’t particularly rate Milan. But they did do a pretty mean cathedral. Of course, I had to spend €5 on a scarf thingy to get past the “shoulder police”. No, literally – the police were checking bags and shoulders…


Inside was spectacular but the only picture I talk was of the confessional below because it tickled my sense of humour. You might have to click on the photo to make it bigger and spot the sign saying this priest has lots of languages. You see similar signs all over the place, but normally in restaurants or tourist shops!








The following series of photos represents each corner of the main plazza in what is clearly the poshest shopping district in Milanao. See if you can spot the anomaly....

Finally, a picture from our stay in beautiful Innsbruck, Austria.

By the way, this blog might need a new title before too long...

Joining the August madness

On Friday I got home from a two week holiday. Europe does (to my Australian eyes) strange things with holidays. It seems to me that the entire continent just picks itself up and goes somewhere else over July and August. Many people will take almost their full year’s allowance of holidays in one hit. Sure the weather’s nice, but I don’t really understand why they don’t spread themselves out a bit more, particularly those without kids on school holidays. One possibility is that they have a use it or lose it system for annual leave, unlike in Australia where you can usually roll it over.

Whatever the reason, it’s kind of hellish around all the best spots. But despite that, we had a lovely time. The itinerary was:

• Fly into Geneva
• Drive through Switzerland and Austria
• See Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro
• Drive back through Italy
• Fly out of Milano

I had barely heard of Slovenia before going there, but it was probably one of my favourite places on the trip. And the road from Innsbruck in Austria over the Dolomites was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever taken, absolutely stunning. I think one of the themes of this blog entry is going to have to be: “the photo doesn’t do it justice”.




Bled was the first destination in “Eastern Europe”. That by the way is more of a political designation than geographical, as Greece is certainly further east than Slovenia. My Lonely Planet described Bled as appearing to have been created by some god of tourism, with its magnificent lake, the monastery on the little island in the middle, the imposing mountains all around (one with an imposing castle)… It must be spectacular in winter covered in snow and removed of so many tourists!



We stayed this time in a private room. Lots of local people have converted spare space in their houses into hotel-like rooms. This was definitely one of the cheapest options around, plus you got to see where people lived, enhancing the travelling experience. It was mainly feasible in the touristy places. Away from Bled, we found charming little mountain top dairy villages, more stunning scenery, just everything you want from the Julian Alps really (named after Julius Caesar himself – I had plenty of driving time to read the history sections in the Lonely Planet).

Next up was Ljubljana (Eastern Europe has a general inadequacy of vowels in my opinion – it gets worse). This was a super funky little town. Sure, there was the obligatorily gorgeous cathedral, a castle on the hill, the lovely river dividing the capital with lots of fine architecture. But mainly there were bars. Lots of bars. And restaurants. All different, some, old and cute, some super modern and artsy, some local and all inviting.

I wouldn’t want to inflict the awful rampaging English buck’s party phenomenon on any city but if I was organising one, this is where’d I’d go.

I liked the way they’d combined modern architecture with that from the time of the Austria-Hungarian Empire.

Rico however wasn’t terribly happy with Ljubljana as he got his wheel clamped (largely due to an inability to read the sign in Slovenian). We followed the instructions to pay the bill to a very patient and polite gentleman who appreciated that I found his sign very amusing (look closely at the picture of the car - you might have to click to make it bigger).

Next night was in Zagreb, capital of Croatia. An interesting city, not really geared up for tourists yet but obviously doing pretty well for itself. Lots of beautiful buildings from various periods in history, markets with great looking fresh food if you ignore the swarming bees (that were everywhere we went), lots of shopping if you’re into that sort of thing. Eg ugg boots! (The local hero on the horse didn’t seem to mind).

After dining in Geneva, Innsbruck and Bled, we had rather got used to the outside dining concept. Lots of places in Europe close to traffic at night (I assume just in the summer) and the tables and chairs come out and everyone dines in the plazas and terraces. It’s absolutely lovely, and at first glance Zagreb was no different with outside dining everywhere. Except at a second glance it turns out that everyone was just drinking! Clearly this is another potential party town.

We did eventually dine magnificently (and pretty cheaply) here.

Next up was Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a photo of the border crossing, the only evidence that I was ever there because they forgot to stamp my passport. I was a bit nervous for a while, with visions of being stopped on the way out and having all sorts of bureaucratic nightmares. That didn’t happen however - borders have obviously changed a lot in this part of town since the former Yugoslavia broke down. We often just got waved through, sometimes we got stamps, sometimes not. There’s clearly some complex system that escapes me.

Of course, that was on the main tourist routes (absolutely chockers with cars from the EU, Italy and Germany were the best represented). This is the road the GPS thought would be the quickest way from Croatia back into Bosnia (check out a map, down on the coast near Montenegro the borders do some rather bizarre things). Luckily it was quite scenic, as the two gentlemen at the top of the hill, one Croatian and one Bosnian, both of the rare, non-English speaking variety, managed to explain that they really weren’t set up for strange foreigners, as their little border crossing (two huts with about 50 m of the usual no man’s land between) was for locals only! That was pretty funny. So back to the highway along the magnificent, awe inspiringly beautiful Adriatic coastline.

But I’m getting well ahead of myself. Bosnia of course hasn’t long recovered from the war between the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats. I must say, of all the ridiculous wars this one seems particularly stupid. As far as I can tell, Serbs and Croats are ethnically the same, speak the same language and have roughly the same history. The only thing is, one bunch goes to a Roman Catholic church and the other to a Christian Orthodox church. The other group in the country are the Muslims (same ethnicity, same language, they just happened to find it expedient to convert during the Turkish Ottoman Empire days). Lots of chaos all round.

The first thing we noticed on the way south from the border was the number of unfinished houses. Large, two and three story buildings had been constructed but never finished. However people were obviously living in them (you could see rows of washing for example, and pot plants). I think that after the war, people were donated money for building materials but then the money ran out.

Our first stop was at Jajce (pronounced yitsé). This was a lovely old town with its own waterfall and masses of history. So much so that when a nice little hotel (dining room shown in the photo) was being built, they discovered some original Turkish baths, now shown off under a glass panel in the floor.

We had a great time here, and fell in with a local woman explaining in alternate Spanish and English the architectural history of her home town to the crowd she ended up attracting. Catacombs, ramparts, ancient mosques turned into churches and a large modern memorial to those that died in 1992. And of course, plenty of other reminders of the war.

The next day was Sarajevo. If I remember correctly, they called this the first televised war. That would be because of all the international journalists who got trapped during the bombing in this Holiday Inn, located on “sniper alley”.

Sarajevo has obviously been rebuilt a lot, and I really liked the relaxed, holiday atmosphere. Again, there were plenty of reminders of the war still, but also lots of things going on, not least of which was the Sarajevo film festival! The old town (every self respecting European city has an “old town” or Stari Grad in Croatian, Vielle Ville in French, etc) was so cute it almost seemed contrived, invoking memories of a Turkish past.

I was tickled by the tourist t-shirts, in English, that said “I’m Muslim, don’t panic”. But of course, the bombing in Sarajevo wasn’t the only modern history in this place. Oh no, for this is the town of History with a capital H. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where it all started – the bridge where a Bosnian Serb shot Franz Ferdinand, the even that kicked off WWI and the rest of the 20th century.

Next up was Mostar. Again my camera failed to produce the required quality images of this amazing place, so I direct the interested to the images at the bottom of this site (I know, slack, but hey this blog entry is probably already too long!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar.

All I can say is that there was a bar in a cave. In a cave! Why doesn’t every cave have a bar? This was too perfect.

Next time: the road west and north and then west some more.