August 1, 2007
I’ve done a LOT of traveling in the past few days. First I made it over to Brac (the island where the Arnerich family comes from!), which is about a 50-minute ferry from Split. There is another 40-minute bus to the town of Bol where the beach is. I think this beach was one of the top three most gorgeous places I have ever been. It’s not a sand beach but it’s made up of small stones and the entire stretch is covered in beach chairs and umbrellas. The land stretches out in a long skinny peninsula and on one side it’s calm water and perfect for laying in the sun, while on the other it’s windy and wavy. There are a ton of wind surfers out there jumping almost 30 feet in the air and I got a lot of great photos. Along the beach were casual little restaurants and small hotels with tons of vacationers from all over the world. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but the ocean everywhere along the Croatian coast is completely crystal clear. It’s bright blue and you can see straight to the bottom where it’s shallow. The temperature is great too, cold enough to cool you off from the hot, hot sun but not as freezing as the ocean at home.
After coming back from Brac I had a trip planned with a few other people from the program to go to Sarajevo for the weekend. We booked a bus ride that took about 9 hours from Split to Sarajevo. I have heard a lot about the city, especially while studying the war in Bosnia and I was really interested to see what it looks like now. The bus ride was long and hot, but I have gotten used to being hot and sweaty pretty much all day long in this heat wave. The Bosnian countryside was absolutely beautiful. Everything was really green and there were small lakes and rivers all over the place. We didn’t see a single big city the whole time but lots of small villages and towns along the lakes. When we started pulling into the outskirts of Sarajevo we were all a little nervous because it looked really run down and dirty, but as we got closer to the center it looked more and more like a regular city. We stayed in a hostel in the Turkish area of town that was cheap and very nice, it was good that we had two of the foreigners from the program with us who speak the language so they could help us find our way around.
One of the girls from Northwestern had a professor who was living in Sarajevo so he met us at the hostel to take us to a dinner place that he recommended. We took cabs up and around the windy roads until we made it to a small outdoor restaurant with wooden tables that had the most incredible view of the city. You could literally see for miles and miles and from this height we could really appreciate what an interesting and beautiful city Sarajevo really is. The town is built in a valley between hills on every side and houses are completely packed into every available space. We watched the sun go down as the professor told us all about the history, culture, and architectural changes within the different time periods and influences over the city. As the sun finally set we heard the Muslim call to prayer, which happens five times a day, one of them being right at sun set. The call to prayer is like a long low series of sounds that are echoed all over the city and makes you feel like you are in a surround sound theater. That was an amazing moment to be able to see the full spectrum of the city and hear the call to prayer so loud and clearly.
We sat down to eat and the native speakers ordered a lot of great food for us. We started off with bread and cheese but the bread they served was really unusual and delicious. It was halfway between a doughnut and a roll but not too sweet. We were starving so we ate every last one and then they brought out salads (lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes with oil and vinegar) and platters full of meat. The girl on the program from Zagreb mentioned that they served brain and everyone was grossed out but I said “my mom puts that in ravioli” which they all thought was disgusting. So she ordered us some fried brain along with a bunch of other meats. There was sausage, something called “cevapcici”, which are like sausages made of hamburger but with more flavor, potatoes and of course, fried brains. Everything was really good, but after a few full bites of brain I got a little grossed out by the brainy texture. Since I didn’t turn down trying snake in Vietnam I figured brain in Bosnia was something I had to try.
The view of the city at night was even more spectacular. There were thousands of lights filling the entire valley. We finished eating and started to walk down toward the center of town. It was actually cold at night in Sarajevo and I think this was the first time on this entire trip I have actually been cold. The professor took us to the center of town along the river and showed us exactly where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. He had us stand in the place where he said there used to be markings of where the assassin’s feet were at the time. This was the event that set off the war between Austria and Serbia and started World War One (I am learning some interesting stuff over here). After he gave us some more historical information he took us to where the nightlife of the town was. There were a lot more westerners than I had expected in Sarajevo. I heard a lot of English and I think there were more Americans there than in any other place I have been on this trip. We stayed out for a while to have a few drinks because it was Cambrey’s 20th birthday.
The next morning we walked around town a little and Jeffrey and I decided we really wanted to make it to Hvar (another island off of Croatia’s coast) so we took the 2:30 bus back to Split. The rest of the group stayed another night and left at 10am the next day. Our bus was a little faster going back and not quite as hot since it started later in the day. We had to cross the Serbian border again and give our passports to the driver to show to the border patrol. On the way to Sarajevo the bus was really full, and I think we were the only foreigners. When the driver came back on he started calling out names to give back passports or ID cards. We were laughing because literally every single name ended in “ich”. He called out maybe 25 of them, all ending the same and then stopped for a second and in a heavy accent said “Simpson?”, and the whole bus started cracking up. I guess Simonson is hard to pronounce over here.
We got back into Split around 9pm and had dinner, then got to bed so we could wake up and take the 8:30am ferry to Hvar. This ferry was almost two hours and then we took a 20-minute bus ride to the town of Hvar where all of the hotels, shops, and beaches are. The town of Hvar is gorgeous and perfect for anyone who owns a yacht. There were tons of giant boats lined up along the marina with restaurants and bars on the other side. The water was gorgeous as it is all over the coast and the people in Hvar were young and mostly very attractive. Jeffrey and I walked around the entire town trying to figure out where to stay so we could put our stuff down and go to the beach. We walked into one of the hotels in the center of town just to see what the price range on the island was. The cheapest room in that hotel was 350 Euros a night…about $500 a night. This was definitely much ritzier than the island of Vis where there was only one hotel in the town of Komiza. We found a place to stay that wasn’t too expensive and had a great view and spent the two days there sitting in the sun and relaxing. The nightlife in Hvar is supposed to be the best of the islands. There were groups of people dancing and drinking on the boats and lit up bars and restaurants all along the marina. The people-watching was great but the drinks were ridiculously expensive. After two days of getting sunburned and enjoying the atmosphere we took a late ferry back to Split.
Only one more day of class and then the final and I’ll be traveling for a few days in Venice before I get home Tuesday night!
