I'm Cashed

I am at the end of my blogging rope, which neatly coincides with my departure from Slovakia. After this weekend I will be embarking on a multi-country, credit score-destroying trip for much of June, which should take me to the Primavera Festival and the Trevi Fountain . Maybe I'll even get to meet this guy.

All of this is exciting, but it's hard to leave my new home. I'll miss some things a little, and I'll miss some things a lot.

Things I will Miss a Lot:

The People-
Everyone here in Slovakia has been very welcoming, and I have made many life-long friends who I would bail out of prison, in most countries. I don't want to turn this into an acceptance speech, so rest assured that if I know you, and you lived in Slovakia for any amount of time in the last year, you are one of these friends. Thanks for being so friendly. And I'm very lucky that the friend I would miss the most won't be missing at all.

Another group of people I'm really going to miss are my students. They put up with my lightning-fast slur-mumble, and didn't even groan when I assigned over a hundred pages of reading for one week (although there was some in-mouth vomiting). They're super-smart, ultra-nice, and just all-around excellent. These are just some of my favorite students, there are many others:







I'll miss them a ton, but hopefully they'll keep in touch, maybe with news of their occupying the administration office. That would be cool.

Slavka-
The department secretary, a life-saver, she would go out of her way to speak in little English phrases in order to help me out. She was also an almost limitless supplier of tape, which came in handy. A real trooper, I hope that some day she gets her own department, where people will get tape for her:



Halusky-
So creamy. A friend when you need one. And the little pieces of burnt bacon! I am choking back tears as I write this:



I also must give a "shout-out" to the one thing that really made all of this possible, my camera. I planned on taking a picture of my camera and putting it here, but it proved to be difficult due to our universe's current, and arguably unfair, rules of physics. Nevertheless, you can imagine my camera as a plastic, trustworthy and Japanese companion which went everywhere with me and never let me down. It has many buttons that I don't understand, but that's OK, because we have our whole lives together. God bless you, Sony HSC.

Apart from all of the whining, I enjoyed making this blog, and I now have a photo-diary of my time here. It also gave me a good reason to take pictures of my food, which makes everyone in the restaurant uncomfortable, which I enjoy. Therefore, I plan on possibly continuing this activity, on a different continent and at a different site. I think I will focus solely on things I eat, which means I will probably never actually post anything. But who knows.

For those of you who read this, thanks, it made my year. If you are traveling to the SK, and have any questions, this site will not help you, but feel free to e-mail me. Take care of yourselves, and each other. And your pets.

Dovidenia,
ML

Summer Comes to Presov

After almost eight months of snow, wind, rain, snow, rain, and unpleasantness, the summer has finally arrived. Today it is sunny and mild, which I've been told only lasts for a couple of days before it becomes unbearably hot and humid, so I should be outside right now, but I have a duty to you, the reader (AKA Grandma).

The big symbol of summer's arrival in the east is the opening of the outdoor cafes on the main street:













These cafes are pretty cool, and people just basically sit in them and drink beer from lunchtime until they pass out and are unceremoniously dumped onto the street. I don't know if this ever happens, but it certainly adds to the narrative theme I am trying to fabricate here.

If I had to choose a favorite outdoor cafe, or "terrace" as the locals say, I would go with this one:



This place is really no different than the others except for the fact that its name clearly suggests that it serves some type of food, perhaps even steak, but when you go there during lunch they tell you that they don't serve food, while a group of people eat steak right in front of you. So basically, they offer superior service.

Another seasonal event is the graduation of the high school ("gymnazium") students. When their classes come to an end, before their big exams, they get into suits and dresses and walk around the city center, banging on cowbells and asking people on the street for money. It basically looks like this:



Also, the kids go into different stores and try to get the owners to give them cash. If the store forks it over, they become something like the financial patron saint of the class, and get to put these nifty signs in the window:





I don't actually know if this is what happens, I just pieced a theory together from the observations I made while eating ice cream. If someone wants to write in with a comment correcting my facts and telling me that I'm a lazy internet user, please don't, as it will cripple my e-self esteem.

And of course people are eating lots of ice cream. People of all ages, sexes, races and political orientations eat ice cream here all day, every day, all the time:







I realize that this last lady is clearly not eating ice cream, but I'm trying to illustrate a point, so back up off my proverbial e-grill.

I've eaten more ice cream here than I have in the last ten years, and I don't even like ice cream. Pretend that you lived in a society where everyone walking down the street, at all times, is holding an ice cream cone. First, you don't want to be the only one not holding a cone, which would expose you to public scorn (and a possible trip to the Shame Cage). Also, when everyone is eating ice cream, and most people don't seem to be suffering from morbid obesity, you start to believe that you too can eat ice cream every day, all day, and not end up in the ground at the age of 38.

I've fallen victim to this line of thinking, and am therefore getting very tired of ice cream. I've considered inventing a fake ice cream cone which I could carry on the street, but that would be dishonesty, which is not my policy.

And there are people! People are now everywhere, all the time, in the center. It's like Grand Central Station, but with ice cream and in Slovak. Here's people pictures:











There was even a person who looked exactly like David Cross of "Mr. Show" fame, which was exciting:



And of course, someone kicked in the telephone booth again. 2 Wycked!:



So, typically, once the weather finally starts getting nice, and the fun really begins, I have to leave. I've only got about another week here before I'm basically gone for good, so I will try to post one more thingy, chock-full of sentimentality, with some of it even possibly being sincere. And after that, I will have blogged myself to death, and can rest. Enjoy the weather!

Animals of the Balkans

I thought it would be prudent to take most of the animal pictures and put them in a separate post. This way, you can have a concentrated dose of Balkan critters:

Serbian Horse- Serbia



Dog with Firm Buttocks- Belgrade



Stank Cat- Dubrovnik



Cat Who Wouldn't Just Let People Eat Their Food- Mostar



Small Bird Under the Table When I Was Eating a Salad Due to the Fact that I was Suffering from Indigestion Due to some Questionable Mussels the Previous Evening- Road to Split



Brown Dog from Split- Split



Brown Dog from Split and Enemy/Potential Mate- Split



Plastic Horse Who Is In Fact a Ride: Split



Dead Food- Split



A Slug- Plitvice Lakes National Park



Albino Dog- Dubrovnik



Buddy and Buddy- Dubrovnik



Predator- Dubrovnik



Prey- Dubrovnik



And that pretty much was my Spring Break, Balkans style. If anyone tells you the Balkans are not safe, or no fun, that's bullcrap, so be sure to go before you're dead.

Hungarian is Hard

We spent some time in Pecs, Hungary, and Budapest on the way home. It was great, I love Hungary, but I would like to focus here on how intimidating the Hungarian language is.

Below are some examples of the Hungarian language that I ran into. They are by no means the most insane, but were instead chosen for the fact that they are typical of an average Hungarian statement (I think). As a fun exercise, when you find the time, go down this list and attempt to say the sentences you see. Then pretend that you are very hungry, or about to be thrown into a Hungarian prison, and try harder:















Now for fun, check out this excellent BBC site which can teach you some basic phrases in Hungarian, along with providing in-depth and really cool lessons in Spanish, French, German and Italian.

I don't really have anything else to say about Hungary, ever, except that I really like it. If you ever go, be sure to take me with you.

Croatia Part II- Zagreb and a Bunch of Waterfalls

And then we went to the capital of Croatia, Zagreb.

Zagreb

Zagreb isn't known for being beautiful like the coastal cities of Dubrovnik and Split, but it really isn't Zagreb's fault, as it isn't on a coast.

I think it definitely has its charms, with a very nice city center. However, we didn't stay in the city center, but on the outskirts at the Hotel Omladinski:



The place is a student dorm, with the usual hung-over students aimlessly wandering the halls wearing flip-flops with socks. I can't say I really enjoyed it, but we didn't stay long, as the city center beckoned.

So here is the center:



It's basically a large square with a bunch of outdoor cafes and shops. It was very busy the day we were there, and the weather was nice. The central feature of the square is this statue of an important person on a horse:



This statue is the work of a master, who took the time to render a beautiful and anatomically honest piece of work for the people:



Another statue was the "Old Lady with Cheese on Head", which is placed outside the market where the old ladies sell cheese. I assume this was intentional:



As I had been awake at this point for almost an hour and a half, I started feeling hungry with the kind of hunger that your average Corny Bar (a bar of sugared corn, husks removed) cannot satisfy:



But what to eat? At this point I can recommend the local Zagreb tourist guide book, "Zagreb in your Pocket", which you can pick up for free almost anywhere (well, almost anywhere in Zagreb). This little guide revolutionized the genre by both not taking itself too seriously, and by actually being funny. For instance, check out this review of the Maharadža Indian restaurant, where we ended up:

Maharadža is a place that brings us tears of joy every time we re-discover it, for it's so dam good it feels like the first time every time! With an impressive array of Indian options including a number of superb curries, the cooks know how to satisfy your tummy bored with same old crap. It's well spiced and will have you sweating in no time. The interior gets you into relax mode immediately.

I found this advice to be on the nose. I also liked the review of McDonald's, with it's ode to the fry:

The tram was crowded and a generous scent of unfiltered human body odour pervaded into every crevice. Just then some jerk with a golden-arched to-go bag entered the car. The smell of pure fry immediately overwhelmed the stench and quickly had everyone in the car salivating to the floor-boards. That, dear friends, is the freakish and almost terrifying power of the McDonald's french fry.

So here is the Maharadža:



For those keeping score, I had the chicken:



And off we were, walking around the town for the rest of the afternoon. I saw this guy in the square:



I walked through a nice park:



In which the homeless were being harassed by the fuzz:



I saw an old jeep:



I learned a local law:



And I found a good name for a band:



Zagreb was fun, go if you are within a 20-mile radius. Next, it was waterfall time!

Plitvice Lakes National Park


Plitvice Lakes National Park is an extremely popular tourist destination, where you get the opportunity to walk around a beautiful environment filled with ducks and waterfalls, and then if you are lucky, you can take pictures of the ducks and the waterfalls:
























The trail we took is supposed to take about four hours, but we got it done in five, mainly due to the fact that we got stuck behind a gigantic tour group of retired French people:



Some of my French companions didn't realize that the group was their people (and could speak French), and perhaps due to some cultural attitudes towards such a group, made disparaging and audible comments about their speed.

Then, when the aforementioned companions realized that they had been heard, and were in danger of being beaten by very sensible shoes, they suggested that we run away. We did, but the tour group caught up to us at the boat ride across the lake. Thankfully the retirees were merciful, and only scowled at us, which we deserved:



And then it was back to Hungary, headed towards home. This vacation was quickly coming to an end, and a sad return to my 7-hour work week was looming large...

Croatia Part I- Dubrovnik and Split

Dubrovnik, Croatia



So then we were in Croatia. I thought the bold headings might be helpful, telling these Croatian-beach-castle-fortress-towns apart can be tricky. First we went to the southern town of Dubrovnik, which is really more like a big castle than a town, albeit one filled with all of the tourist fripperies you can cram into a castle. It was also super pretty. Here are some pictures of our "walk around the ramparts". I don't know why I used quotation marks:

























We spent two whole days in Dubrovnik, and had a bucket of fun. We also had many cappucinos. The cappucinos in Croatia were the best I ever had, but I haven't had that many, so take it with a grain of doubt. They exude frothiness, which may be a bad quality for a person (and a potential indicator of rabies), but is ideal for a cappucino:



V-1, who had spent considerable time in D-Town, was our super-tour guide, and was nice enough to work without pay. Here, she took us to a secret, secluded area underneath the town, which was supposedly the home to hundreds of stray cats.



I suggested we go there and photograph the cats, for science. We were disappointed to find that there were no cats around at all. A local man later told us that there had been a veritable stray cat genocide in the last year. Which I guess explains why we couldn't find any of those cats. Well, we did find these, by the dumpster:



And here is the street the dumpster was on, so you can have some perspective:



And on this same street was this red car with the red white power bumper sticker. Maybe the owner of the car just believes that the color white exudes the qualities of being "innocent, pure, optimistic, indecisive":



But they're probably just racist. Boring!

Do you like strong emotions? Then Sexy Night is for you:



Dubrovnik was unfortunately not spared from the horrors of the Balkan War, and underwent a nasty siege . If you like, you can buy an expensive DVD which will tell you more:



Here is the main fountain at the entrance to the Old City. You can drink the water out of this fountain, like the fountain in Rome (I have never been to Rome). It is supposed to be delicious, and it was, with a nice bouquet of sea animals and rust:



We decided to take a boat to a beach which was a half-hour away. We didn't take the glass-bottom boat, but I include this picture for those who would receive pleasure from such innuendo:



Instead we took this boat. It was just us and a bunch of Italian families. Remember that Italy is just across the sea from Croatia, in case you ever find yourself on Hollywood Squares, which I think has, sadly, been cancelled:



We dipped our feet into the harsh but forgiving Adriatic Sea, and I wrote a poem about it. Actually, that was the poem:



And this kid kept following us, who I believe is a member of the Obavještajna agencija:



And then we split. For Split. Go ahead and vomit.

Split, Croatia










Split is yet another devastatingly beautiful coastal city, filled with incredible history, frothy cappucinos and more European tourists than most people would probably be able to stand without descending into occasional muttered stereotyping, which I of course did not participate in.

It is home to Diocletian's Palace, built in 3rd Century A.D. and still looking great. According to my shockingly worthless "Rough Guide to Europe", which I hope you never purchase, it is #3 on the list of 25 things that you just have to see in Europe during your two week visit to all 30 countries. For some perspective, if my memory serves, French cheese was #9. Here's the Palace:









The city is small but very nice. We took a stroll, and some pictures:













The local ads ran the gamut from disgusting to genital-centric. Here's one which is also popular at drugstores ("Lekarens") in Slovakia. I'm as unlikely to buy a product named "Vichy" as I am to name my kid Adolf, and this poster doesn't help their cause much either:



And I wouldn't buy this bag, because if it has a hole in it for someone's penis then things will clearly fall out of it. I can't believe I'm not in advertising:



This owner of this store was smart enough to realize that people often want cigarettes, foot powder and a doll to mutilate, and don't want to have to go to a bunch of different stores:




As this region is the Dalmatian Coast, numerous knick-knacks are available. This shirt allows you to both tell someone that you have been to such a beautiful and overly-expensive tourist region, and that their Mom sucks:



This was my only purchase, of course in a "Large". I was planning on having it be the prize for some contest for the regular reader, but some things are hard to give away:



And then we went to other places in Croatia. It will take me forever to finish this Spring Break thing, but then again I don't have any responsibilities whatsoever, so why not.

My Trip to Slovenia

I was invited by some colleagues on my program to travel to Slovenia last weekend, and I gladly accepted. As my overpriced and underwhelming "Rough Guide to Europe" puts it

Slovenia is the most stable, prosperous and welcoming of all Europe's erstwhile Communist countries. The landscape is as varied as it is beautiful: along the Austrian border the Julian Alps provide stunning mountain scenery; further south, the brittle karst scenery is riddled with spectacular caves. Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana, is a vital, youthful place, manageably small and cluttered with Baroque and Hapsburg buildings.

Sounds pretty nice, huh? My journey started out well enough, with a six-hour train ride to Bratislava to meet the gang for the trip across the border. Everything was going swimmingly until I was about two hours away from B'lava, when it dawned on me that perhaps I should have brought my passport.

On realizing this, I uttered this word very loudly towards the lady sitting next to me.

I don't know what I was thinking, perhaps it was the fact that Slovakia and Slovenia are almost the same word, and therefore I wouldn't need a passport. The people on the program were very sympathetic, and even took it upon themselves to concoct a series of increasingly more illegal schemes to smuggle me across Austria and into Slovenia. In the end, it didn't seem worth it, and I decided to just spend the day in Bratislava and then head home.

The benefit of this is that I was able to take some nice pictures of Slovak advertisements. Here is one for the "Hot-Cat", which is like a hot dog but has hot mustard instead of ketchup and is made from cat instead of pig:



Here is a woman making a baby out of dough, which I think is supposed to make us hungry. It succeeded, at least with me:



This woman is offering to simulate oral sex on a banana, in an attempt to dislodge her friend from his T-Mobile phone. The message: T-Mobile is addictive:



Last but not clearly not least is this ad for a Czech religious group, the "Universe People":






In case this isn't already common sense to you, the billboard clearly illustrates the structure of our world, neatly proving the connection between the founder of the group Ashtar Sheeran, J. Christ, and Ptaah, the cosmic squadron commander.

The website is superb, offering a number of highly convincing videos showing previous visits to our planet by Ptaah and his people. Also, there is an audio section that offers some great tunes which you can sing in the shower or have played at your wedding/funeral. Have a look, and enjoy your enlightment.

I Love My Landlord

My landlord, Valerie, is the nicest landlord in the world. Not only does she do my laundry (for a modest fee) and clean my place (for an additional modest fee), but she also works hard to make me feel at home in this gigantic 1970's Soviet-style concrete slab.

For instance, soon after I moved in, she put this on the wall across the hall from my front door:



Some people have speculated that it is meant to signal to the other tenants that "The American lives on this floor, do not anger him or he will shoot you in the face with his chest-high gun." However, I think she put it there as a way to say to me "Have a nice day, American cowboy person, and please don't shoot me!" every time I leave my apartment.

Valerie will often change the plants in the apartment, which doesn't really do much for me because I didn't even notice there were any plants in the apartment until a couple of months ago when they all started to die. She also changes the magnets on the fridge, and rotates in a series of pictures of Key West. All of her efforts really make the place more pleasant, which is a significant factor in her being my all-time favorite landlord.

But the coup de grâce, the thing that put her over the top, was when I noticed that she had put this on the big potted plant in the living room:



I don't know how long it's been there, but after closer inspection I knew exactly what it was:



God I miss Alf.

Great Moments in Education

In my Conversational English "class" I require that each of my students give a 5-10 minute presentation, using only a note card, about some facet of U.S. culture that interests them.

I love my 3rd-years, along with all of my students, and they seem to be the most energetic group even though their class starts at 6:30. However, most of their presentation topics have been incredibly banal (in fairness, I didn't say that the topics had to interest me). So far I have heard about Coca-Cola (did you know Fanta was made by Nazis?), Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney (who was presented as a saint, ask me sometime about the "dude ranch" story), Elvis, "Friends", Madonna, the amazing coincidences between the $20 bill and 9/11 and Mount Rushmore. One girl did talk about Japanese comic books, which was thought-provoking, but now that I think about it had nothing to do with the U.S.

Yesterday, one of my 3rd-year students gave the most notable presentation yet. For almost forty minutes she discussed "Sex and the City". Her way of presenting the topic was by going through each character that had any role whatsoever and telling us everything that had happened to them during the six seasons the show aired. It was hypnotic, and I almost chewed clear through my pen without realizing it. The money quote had to be about Miranda, which I offer you verbatim, "After Steve suffered through the loss of testicle, she showed her sensitivity by preparing him a night of sexual pleasures."

I'm gonna miss this job.

Soon, Croatia pictures, if I can get my darn internet working!

Bosnia

After Serbia, we went to Bosnia, another former piece of old Yugoslavia. I loved Bosnia in a major way. It really has more natural beauty than almost any country I have been to, and I've been to like 10 of them. It reminded me of Tennessee, if Tennessee was a Muslim country.



Bosnia is the first "Muslim" country I have ever been to, and it was very interesting. But not particularly "foreign" in any way. If you took West Virginia, changed the churches to mosques, got rid of the banjos and the baseball caps and threw a few veils on random women, you would have Bosnia.

To enter Bosnia we crossed a very old bridge. The border guard on the Bosnian side was very nice, and to celebrate we decided to have some lunch.

We ate at a place overlooking the river. I ordered this local Bosnian beer:



This was one of the worst beers I've ever had, and I can't really remember why. I would recommend the "Sarajevsko" beer if you're in the area, but otherwise you could maybe partake in some juice.

I also ordered the "mixed grill". Does anyone actually care what I ate? I'm just going to pretend that you do:



It was very meaty, but you might notice on the upper-left part of the plate (to the left of the lettuce)(click to zoom-in!) a piece of liver. I bit into this without thinking, and almost hacked it onto the four guys sitting at the table in front of me who looked to be clearly involved in local leg-breaking. I hate liver, but I realize that it's very healthy, so please don't let me influence you kids out there. Eat that liver!

After the pit-stop it was back in the car, for the three-hour drive to Sarajevo. Here's some pics from the road, which give a hint of the massive amounts of prettiness in Bosnia:


















There was also quite a bit of unfortunate un-prettiness, much of it due to recent history:



The E.U. is working to fix this, or so this sign said:



We finally drove into Sarajevo at night. Sarajevo is set into the mountains, nicely laid out and stunningly beautiful. It hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, and was where Franz Ferdinand (the guy, not the band) was assassinated, which sparked WW1 (which, historians agree, sucked). Sarajevo is more recently famous for having been under siege during the Balkan war, which I implore you to read about here. According to one of my fellow travelers, it's a miracle that Sarajevo still exists, and I'm glad it does because it's one of my favorite cities.

We stayed in a nice hostel owned by a local Bosniak (this is the actual nickname). Here is a bad shot of the room:



In the morning he made us Turkish coffee. I like Turkish coffee, but it's an acquired taste. I personally acquired it when I worked at a middle-eastern restaurant in college, where the owner and most of the kitchen staff claimed to be ex-PLO members. Those were the days:



Sarajevo is a vibrant town, with lots of tourists. Here's some pictures of the old city:















This seems like as good a place as any to continue my analysis of Balkan advertisements. Bosnia had some real winners. For instance:

Code Cigarettes: There were hundreds of ads for Code cigarettes around Bosnia, with most of them being a variation on the one below. It's sorta hard to see here, but this guy appears to be staring at his fingers. In a different ad, which I sadly was unable to get a picture of, he can be clearly seen sniffing the very same fingers. For some reason, this made me want to buy cigarettes:



ADSL Internet: This is a picture of a turtle windsurfing on concrete while checking his watch. After spending about eight minutes staring at the poster and concentrating, I realized the hidden message: ADSL Internet is fast, like a turtle windsurfing on a highway:



Club Bill Gates: Go figure.



Hot Pink: The girl from the ad in Belgrade appeared again, this time shilling things that are hot pink. I admire this woman, as she has clearly been slathered with hundreds of tablespoons of butter in order to get that "slathered with sexiness" look:



Of course we had to have lunch, so we went with a local delicacy, Burek:





As Wikipedia will tell you, if you clicked the link, Burek is "a dish originating in Turkish cuisine, but very popular in many countries in the Balkan region (especially in Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina), probably spread during the Ottoman Empire." It was tasty, like a meat baklava, if you need a point of reference. You can order it by the kilo, which we did. But only one kilo.

Finally we decided to take off for our next destination, Mostar. On the way out of town you can see many hastily made and extremely full graveyards, which are a sad reminder of the incredible devastation that occurred in the area so recently. Sorry to be a bummer:







On the way to Mostar, we stopped at the gas station where I decided to use the little boy's room. This gave me a great opportunity to take a picture of the following, commonly known as a " Turkish Toilet":




As I was traveling with Europeans, my criticisms of the Turkish Toilet were met with hostility. They claimed that the Turkish Toilet was more sanitary, as you had nothing to sit on, and that it was also more natural. I countered with the facts that A. I couldn't get any reading done and B. I am not a dog. A mild culture war ensued, and a stalemate was reached, and I waited until we got to the next toilet. Here's some insightful articles on European toilet issues, if you find yourself with a wealth of free time.

I also bought some "Snips" which tasted like peanut cheese-puffs. We composed a song about Snips, which is just the Chipsy song with the word "Snips" substituted for "Chipsy":




That afternoon we got to Mostar and took a walk around the city. It was the sight of heavy fighting between the Bosnians and the Croatians, and is still occupied by NATO forces. Here's some buildings that were shot up, to use poor English:







Mostar is most known for it's Old Bridge, which was completely destroyed during the war and then rebuilt:




The bridge and the area around it are a UNESCO World Heritage site, unlike my apartment here in Slovakia:



From what I have heard the people on the two sides of the bridge are still very pissed, and the NATO forces may have to stay for quite some time because if they leave the violence will break out again. Remind you of anywhere? I saw this on the Bosnian side of the bridge:




Here are some shots of Mostar, it really is comely (needed a synonym of beautiful, got this from the online dictionary, hope you liked it!):









We stopped on the Croatian side at a cafe, and I had an Orangina. I love Orangina, which is hard to find in the U.S. I wanted to link this to an Orangina fan site, but I couldn't find one after searching for 2 seconds. That makes me sad, this drink deserves more credit:



While we were enjoying our beverages, this youngster stood on the bridge, preparing to jump. During the summer many people jump from the bridge into the river, but the water must have been cold in April, and the guy eventually seemed to chicken out. I don't blame him:



In summation, Bosnia is great, with some of the best natural scenery in all of Europe. Check it out if you are in the neighborhood. After this, we were onto Croatia and the sea. I sure needed some fish...