Sarajevo, Bosnia & Hercegovina

Training into the heart of Bosnia, we followed a river valley through the mountains. As we passed through towns nestled along hillsides, the faces of the simple cottages were still riddled with bullet holes, reminding us of the recent, dark history of war here.

Arriving in Sarajevo, we made our way to our hostel, which was run by a lady called Umra. As we exchanged our shoes for slippers at the door, she embraced Peter and kind of lovingly grabbed my face in some version of the "pinch on the cheek" - they were very nice.

There are, according to some reports, over 100 mosques in Sarajevo proper - every time you turn a corner a you see another minaret piercing the sky. We loved the fact that a good portion of the heart of the city was pedestrian only--allowing for the large Turkish markets to spill into the streets with their wares of copper, rugs, and jewelery.

In the afternoon we took a walk to the cemetary, which was a sea of new graves and a silent testament to the town's history.

We ate our best lunch yet at a restaurant called "To Be (or not) To Be" (the 'or not' had been crossed out during the war). The kitchen made us roasted vegetables with blue cheese and we drank the dark Sarajevesko beer, we we voted our favorite beer in Eastern Europe. As dusk fell, we sat on a bench in the street and listened to the evening call to prayer (Sarajevo has a live Mufti who scurries from one mosque to the next, as opposed to a loudspeaker). And then we headed out to the large Sarajevsko brewery on the outskirts of the city - a building grander in scale than our Pearl Street Brewery with bars on each floor, a piano player and eleborately carved wooden railings - to enjoy some more!