bih_friend

Ljubav je

Mon, 04 May 2009 09:14:45 GMT

Participation - Jasmila Žbanić

Mon, 04 May 2009 08:55:19 GMT

Meme: my first one!!

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:46:52 GMT

Comment on this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

I was given the following:

Tourism, travel writing, making a home in Germany, the Balkans, and wondering about your wife's thoughts on all the moving around. I know that last one is a bit wordy, but that's what I associate with your writing.

Tourism

First, I need to make a plug for a favorite destination:

Actually, I have a love / hate relationship with tourism. I love to travel to interesting places and discover new people, places and cultures. On the other hand, tourism carries with it such a herd mentality. When my wife and I are abroad, we like to sneer at the other Germans we find amongst us.

Travel Writing

My writing about travel - at least in this space - focuses for the most part on Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are several reasons for that:
1. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a beautiful place with a lot to write about.
2. I often have thought about what can be done to generate commerce in Bosnia and Herzegovina to improve quality of life for its citizens. Having been an industrial buyer for years, I get depressed at the thought about Bosnia perhaps becoming another low cost manufacturing country ... and I don't really see a future in that for this country. But the tourism industry, that seems to me to be the best fit solution. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a wonderful and unique combination of nature, culture, history and adventure.
3. I long to be the one who puts Bosnia and Herzegovina on the map as one of Europe's best tourism destinations. But in that, an individual tourism destination, not a grazing field for the herd.

Making a home in Germany

As of this spring, I will have been in Germany for ten years!!! Something to celebrate. The seed of my move here began something on the order of 26 years ago, when my partents took us on a skiing vacation to Austria. Then I didn't know the difference between Austria and Australia ... and was afraid that mom was taking us to someplace where it wouldn't even be winter in February. Two weeks in Europe began with a week and a half in Kitzbühel and then continued with a trip through Germany to meet friends that my mom knew since she worked for Kodak in Stuttgart in the 60's. I was dreading this leg of the trip, spending afternoons sitting in someon's parlor with coffee and cake while my mom and our host ramble on in some language that I don't understand. That pretty much fit the description of the trip until our last stay, in Dornau. There we spent the night with a family with three kids, including a son a bit older than me, a daughter just a tad bit younger than me and another younger son. I have remained close friends with this family ever since.

After that trip, I stopped taking French and started learning German. Sixteen years after that, I would move to Germany, meet my wife and stay.

The Balkans

My experience in The Balkans is overwhelmingly dominated by my time and travels in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other places that I have been to or through include Slovenia (if you indluce sleeping on train platform in Ljubjana and being questioned on the Austrian boarder if I was carrying Hashish as qualifying to say that I have been there), Croatia (a little bit of travel in Zagreb where I stayed with a Jesuit priest that I know from Sarajevo, an overnight stay in Plitvice Lakes National Park, an overnight stay in Glina with a group of Jesuit European Volunteers - which was my ticket to Sarajevo -, Split, and a weekend trip to a small coastal town not far from Split).

I am still uncertain if Romania really counts as really being part of the Balkans (reference this link), but I have been there, too. Once, I traveled to a wedding not far from Bacau. During my year in Sarajevo, the group I lived with included a young man from Dresden and a woman from Romania. They fell in love and got married in Romania and lived in Dresden. They since have had two kids and later split up when he felt the calling to become an Orthodox monk. She is back in Romania living in some kind of mother / child convent, the last I knew. Go figure. My other travel to Romania was on business, which took me to Timisoara.

wondering about your wife's thoughts on all the moving around

Hmmm, it is interesting that I left that impression, considering that we really have not moved around that much since we have been togetehr. But, I do give a lot of consideration to my wife's thoughts. A happy wife is an important component to a happy life together. As far as moving around goes, we are now in our third flat together. Not long after we met, my wife successively moved into my flat on Wilhelm Dahl Str. 15 in Würzburg. A two room, 56 m² flat with a walk through living room was a bit too cozy for the two of us, so we moved to Semmelstr. Then, after I had been in Würzburg for around eight years, and my wife had been there for over 17 years, work moved us to Nürnberg, where we now live. Our brand new street is still not listed on Google maps.

Bilja

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:30:28 GMT

Here is a You Tube clip of a Film from Jasmila Zbanic about "Bilja." Bilja, Zbanic narrates, was the first victim of the war that she knew personally. The film is an interesting combination of past and present. The narration is in German (the original ran on Arte), and includes interviews in Bosnian.

Here are the links to parts 2, 3 and 4

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auTXmsQH_r8

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln4LxU7MUvY

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tANLw3RLMOg

Faith Akin Interview at Sarajevo Film Festival

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:19:27 GMT

Castles and Clock Towers in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 21:35:10 GMT

At long last, I have posted some of the pictures from our trip this year. Some (inlcuding the picture above) are from our trip last year. I put together a collection of pictures titled "Castles and Clock Towers in Bosnia and Herzegovina." You can find the set here.

These pictures were taken in:

Vranduk
Počitelj
Bobobac
Travnik
Jajce
Banja Luka
Doboj
Gradačac
Srebrenik

CNN Untold Stories: Children of War

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:49:01 GMT

CNN International is running a program tonight at 20:00 CET about the policy of systematic rape during the Bosnian War. The description of their program is reminiscent of Jasmila Zbanic's movie Grbavica.

The story is also decribed on CNN.com, with links to video clips of the story.

You can find that here.

---

I just watched the two segments, but found that the links from the story (linked above) didn't work properly. Here are direct links to the two video segments:

Part 1

Part 2

Grbavica Cake Shop back in business

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:21:01 GMT

Scotsman.com printed this report that the pastry shop Jadranka just reopened for business in Grbavica.

Tourism Destination Bosnia and Herzegovina

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:16:19 GMT

BiH is starting to get noticed even more as a tourism destination. It just confirms what I have been saying for years: what a beautiful country.

Watching CNN International, I see that the "Enjoy Life" advertisements are back on air. They are now being sponsored by "FIPA" (Foreign Investment Promotion Agency) and BH Telecom
The New Economic Times has published an article titled "Bosnia bets big on tourism" (25 July 07)
Scoop - Independent News has published an article titled "Bosnia Makes World Travel Market Debut" (25 Jul 07)

I love to spend my leisure time there, and I would love to see Bosnia and Herzegovina benefit from some sustainable growth through a targeted approach to tourism. The only thing is that it would be a shame if some of our favorite places become overrun with tourists. What are you going to do?

Where am I? -Forth in a series

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:29:58 GMT

Hi Friends, I am back again. It has been like ... forever ... since I have made an LJ post as bih_friend . That is really ironic, considering that I created this LJ identity to write down my thoughts about Bosnia and Herzegovina and I have lots of stuff to write about. Not all that long ago, my wife and I were there on vacation, where we also met pure_pain and spaceoctopus , and generally had a wonderful time. We took over 1000 pictures, and there are lots of stories to tell:

Great places and new (to us) discoveries in Sarajevo
Sutjeska National Park ... mysteriously hidden by fog ... perhaps we will see Mt. Maglić next time
Our day trip to Lukomir Village, the higest village in Bosnia that is still inhabited. As a break from our independent traveling style, we took a guided tour with the organization "Green Visions."
Traveling to Zenica to meet a young man who is one of the authors in "Ein Hund läuft durch die Republik"
Traveling to Travnik, the home of Ivo Andrić [which happened to be closed on the Wednesday that we wanted to visit it]. But, it also has an interesting fortress, two clock towers, an interesting city center with a beutiful, colorful Mosque and is situated in a picturesque valley. Ivo Andrić won the Nobel Prize for his book "The Bridge on the Drina" [amazon.com] [Wikipdedia]. Andrić also wrote "Travnik Chronicles" about this beautiful town.
Discovering how much beauty is in Jajce. Until our day trip there, all I knew about Jajce was the bus station and this factory billowing out smoke. I had never seen the beautiful waterfalls, or the old walled in city just full of beautiful historical monuments, an old fortress and lots of different religious monuments.
Our continuing travels to Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina and capitol of Republika Srpska, the Serb part of BiH. It is certainly a nice city, but we noticed that we were getting a bit weary of traveling, so we were less thourough about finding what Banja Luka had to offer.
Our search of the tourist festival in Doboj. We did see a number of the preparations for the tourism festival and we also visited the fortress there, but decided that Doboj was not interesting enough to spend the night, as we had planned.
Our next stop in Tuzla, where we spent two nights instead of the originally planned one.
Our fortress tour north of Tuzla, to Gradačac and Srebrenik, two beautiful historical monuments, and well worth the trip.
Our attempt to visit a series of caves on our return trip from Tuzla to Sarajevo, only to find out that the caves don't open until June 15th. We will have to go back there and try that again.
My thoughts about returning in September to go to this conference.

There is so much more to tell ... and I will seriously have to spend more time writting about it. But for now, I will leave you with another picture from our travels this year, and instead of telling you where it is, leave that as a question for you (hint, it is one of the places described above).

Where am I? -Third in a series

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:51:47 GMT

We visited a whole series of fortresses during our trip. This one was probably the smallest, most remote and least commercial one we visited. It was also the most interesting.

Any ideas where we found this gem?

I will post more information later!

UPDATE: An anonymous responder correctly identified this fortress as the one in Srebrenik, northern Bosnia. I will post more pictures of this fortress and the others that we visited in upcoming posts and to our FLickr site.

The path of our trip to BiH this spring

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:49:28 GMT

Here is a map tracing our travels through Bosnia and Herzegvoina this spring.

Click once on the image for a larger view, a second time for the original size.

As with last year, our home base was in Sarajevo. Here is a rough outline of our trip:

First Stop: Sutjeska National Park, two nights in Tjentište
Second Stop: Zenica - visit with one of the authors of "Ein Hund läuft durch die Republik" (publisher's website, Amazon.de)
Third Stop: Two nights in Travnik.
Forth Stop: Day visit to Jajce.
Fifth Stop: One night in Banja Luka
Sixth Stop: Day visit to Doboj (decided against an overnight stay and continued on)
Seventh Stop: Two nights in Tuzla, including day trips to Gradačac and Srebrenik

I will be posting updates in the coming days with pictures and stories from each destination.

Where am I? -Second in a series

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:10:50 GMT

One of the recurring themes of our trip this year were the clock towers. We were a bit sad to see the Baščaršija clock tower in a cage of scaffolding this year ... but the good news is that they are doing preservation work on it so we can enjoy it next year and in the years to come. It wasn't until our trip this year that we noticed how central these clock towers are in the urban landscapes of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Tell me if you know where this one is!

Night Photography in Sarajevo

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:24:49 GMT

Our trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina was a great chance to break in my new digital camera: a Fujifilm FinePix F31fd . One of the aspects that I have been looking forward to trying out was the camera's ability to take pictures in low light conditions.

I have posted my first night shots of Sarajevo here .

Videos from our trip to BiH!

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 17:40:18 GMT

This time around, we did a little experimenting with shooting short video clips on our digital cameras. I still have not really got into the mindset of using this medium, but here are the few clips that we shot:

Here is the call to worship in Bascarsija:

Here is the reason that we did not get to see Maglić mountain:

Where am I? -First in a series

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 05:50:30 GMT

My wife and I returned from Bosnia a few days ago. We have lots of stories to tell and pictures to share. No, I won't post all of the more than 1600 pictures we took. I will sort out the boring and the blurry and keep a few pictures private to protect the innocent, the shy and those who didn't give concent to have their image published in cyberspace. Most of the photos won't be posted here but to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bih-friend/ ... but they are not there yet either. I'll let you know when I do that.

For starters, I thought I would have some fun with some of the pictures that we took. Beginning now, I will post a series of pictures of different landmarks that we encountered during our trip. Let me know if you can tell me where they were taken. I will post an update with the solution later.

Baščaršija at night

Mon, 28 May 2007 07:59:05 GMT

Here is my first attempt at night photgraphy. I will post some more pictures when I get home.

Grafitti for Space Octopus

Mon, 21 May 2007 20:12:04 GMT

Here is a posting especially for spaceoctopus. See this entry to find out more.

Volim BiH

Mon, 21 May 2007 20:09:53 GMT

I just love Bosnian Grafitti! Well, some of it anyways. Actually, I am less than thrilled to see that a grafitti culture seems to be developing in Sarajevo. When I was here in 1997-98, most of the grafitti was political in nature, depressing enough in and of itself. Now I am seeing more of what some would call "grafitti art," which I would say is a debatable term. The new generation of grafitti is multi colored with 3d effect of the sort that you would see in larger cities all over. In parts of Grbavica, gang related grafitti seems to becoming more common. My wife compared it to dogs marking their teritory ... that seems to fit. I just hope that the stuff here is coming from a bunch of wannabees, and they have not taken on the other characteristics of their counterparts in south central LA ... a place that I only know of through television.

But this example seems to be in a class of its own, and even the misspelling was endearing to me. It captured my mood quite well. This was plastered on a gray concrete wall outside one of the University Faculties and faces the main thoroughfare into Sarajevo ... aka Snipers Alley. For me, it was a sign of welcome.

Tomorrow at this time ...

Wed, 16 May 2007 15:26:58 GMT

We will be at the Frankfurt airport waiting around for someone to show up and check us in ... or we will be eating something decidedly unhealthy. I don't know how often I will check into LJ while in BiH, but I am sure to come back with lots of storries and pictures.

Bosnian Soldiers Demining in Iraq.

Wed, 16 May 2007 11:25:03 GMT

Here is an interesting piece in B92 News. The three member Bosnian presidency is on its first foreign trip since taking office in October, to Baghdad.

What was really interesting to me was the fact that 36 solders are doing demining activities in Iraq. On the one hand, I thought that it was a hopeful and symbolic act of solidarity that Bosnia is providing help in a troubled part of the world. That was underlined by the fact that members of all ethnic groups are part of the demining activity.

On the other hand, those deminers will certainly be missed at home. I wish them a safe return!

Wall Street Journal article about conducting business in BiH

Wed, 16 May 2007 09:03:04 GMT

Here is an interesting artricle in the Wall Street Journal Online. It compares the conditions for doing business between the RS and Federation, and strikes a tone similar to statements from AID and OHR. Facit: RS is more business friendly, with a more streamlined buerocracy and lower taxes. Perhaps such stories will help prod the Federation to reform its business environment.

Hmmm... I was able to access this article doing a google search. When I use the link I inserted here, I get a message that it is only available to subscribers.

Middle East Times: Safe Drivers in Bosnia get music CDs

Tue, 15 May 2007 08:08:15 GMT

This Just in from the Middle East Times:

An earful for drivers

SARAJEVO: Motorists in Bosnia were surprised at the weekend when they were pulled over by police only to be presented with music CDs for good driving, a Sarajevo daily said Monday.

Police in the eastern town of Gorazde handed out CDs with popular local music to conscientious drivers for obeying rules such as speed limits and using seat belts, said the Dnevni Avaz newspaper. The operation - labeled "Scrupulous Driver" - is financed by the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia.

Bad driving habits and poor roads make driving in Bosnia one of the most dangerous experiences in Europe.

This is great! Maybe we will get a CD while traveling in Bosnia during the next few weeks!

Frustration, then success ... finding a hotel in Sutjeska National Park

Sun, 13 May 2007 17:09:06 GMT

The first destination that we want to travel to outside Sarajevo is Sutjeska National Park. One hotel that is mentioned in two different guides is "Hotel Mladost" in Tjentište. I tried calling the two phone numbers there (++38758520118 and ++38758572566) and neither one works. In fact, it seems like no number that begins with ++387-58-520 ... works.

So, I found the website for Sutjeska National park: http://www.npsutjeska.srbinje.net and again found the same number for the hotel, plus an information number. The number for information does work, but no one answers. That is probably a bit too much to ask for Sunday evening. They do have two e-mail addresses, so I sent a short message in English, German and in short form in the local language that we are looking for a room there.

So, I got frustrated, and started searching in google ... and did a picture search. First, Hotel Mladost. I find that the name comes up in connection with hotels in other countries, but not Bosnia. OK, then I searched for Sutjeska National Park and get a picture of Sebilj, the fountain in Baščaršija ... SARAJEVO, not Sutjeska National Park. I decide to look anyway, and find that I am now in the local language version of www.bhtourism.ba . Hmmm, what do they have for Sutjeska National Park? There is nothing that I can find about a Hotel Mladost as such, but if you want general information about Sutjeska National Park, call the reception desk at Hotel Mladost ... ++387-58-233-118. BINGO. The number works ... and someone answers.

I quickly shifted into my best rendition of "do you speak German or English?" using the local language to the best of my ability. Twice, I got a friendly voice asking me to call back in five minutes. The third time I got ready to make the reservation in the local language, but the guy answered who also speaks English. I felt like I struck gold. Enthusiasm, friendliness, offers of further service. He said that he would be happy to take care of organizing tours if we wanted (the guide books explain that you can only go hiking with a guide). I explained that this would be our first trip to Sutjeska National Park. He responded that our second and third visits are certain to follow.

I can’t think of a better spirit to start our vacation.

For German Speakers: Bosnienführer Mal anders

Fri, 11 May 2007 08:25:48 GMT

Juli Zeh, a young German author born in 1974, has a special affinity for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to a number of her books which I have mentioned previously (see keyword: Juli Zeh), she also has created a website that documents what she has discovered while traveling through Bosnia and Herzegovina.

http://www.stille-ist-geraeusch.de/

I have been looking at her site again because she has information about Jajce, Travnik and Tuzla, which are part of our central Bosnia tour in the coming weeks. She also presents Sarajevo, Mostar, Fojnica, Medugorje, Trebinje, Srebrenica and Bihac.

I like the site because it not only gives useful and interesting information, but also a different perspective. Her website has all the functionality of a tour guide, but it gives a more candid look than a commercial source can. It also shows her attachment to and admiration for BiH, which I share.

At this time next week, we will have our first full day in Sarajevo.