Slovenia (‘s Got Soul)
Croatia (Land of beautiful coasts)
Bosnia (Culture at its finest)
Serbia (Demands a second look)
Since I have entered the Balkans, I haven’t been able to finish a single entry. Originally, I was going to make an individual post for each country, but the deeper I got into this region, the more I realized that it needed to be written about all together,(though I didn’t get a chance to see ALL of the Balkans this time) after I had experienced it all. Each country is a distinctively different culture and each is beautiful. Each also have bad blood with each other that stretches beyond the average Soccer rivalry. Each while separated are more civilized than Italy by far 
Slovenia (the New Prague)
Slovenia had an eerie glow to it as the sun set. I was talking to a gal in the train who pointed me in the direction of an obvious hostel. When I arrived, I found that it was a converted prison. Tick that one off the list. Libiana was such a cool city that, the entire time, I felt like I was already missing it. I town has soul. It was just what I needed to see after staying in Italy, the biggest tourist trap in Europe.
Slovenia is THE MOST underrated if not completely Unrated country in Europe. People rave about Bosnia, Turkey, Czech Republic all the time, but no one EVER talks about Slovenia. Here I go. It is artful, refined, laid back, soulful, resilient, quiet and beautiful. The people all speak wonderful English and the town is clean, yet beautifully littered with meaningful graffiti.
Slovenia is the land of 4000 caves and I was able to visit one of them which was so elaborate, it looked like it belonged in an Indiana Jones movie. Hundreds of feel high and over a mile long, this cave was something to be experienced first hand.
Croatia (Quiet in the Off Season)
Croatia is actually a rival to Slovenia. To my limited knowledge, the dispute is over the limited coastline that Slovenia has. As my Slovenian friend says “Why do they want our tiny cost anyway? They have hundreds of miles of coast that is much nicer.” I am assuming that the Slovenian coast line was at one point in history in possession by Croatia.
Croatia has beautiful coasts with arid mountains that push up to the turquoise sea. The people here are friendly, but the country is very definitely already discovered by tourists. Slovenia, for me, felt like my personal place.
Things are a lot cheaper in Croatia than I expected.
Bosnia
To start, Bosnia is a beautiful country of both arid and lush mountains. This is the first Eastern European Country that has men as hansom as the women are beautiful. Our bus driver to get here looked like a cross between the main character in the TV show “Mad Men” and George Cloonie.
I think since the war, people (including myself) cary a stigma about this country being unsafe or uncivilised. You want to talk about uncivilised, talk about Germany charging 1 Euro to use a bathroom. Bosnia, is free (and the toilets are spotless). The many of the people here look like they are your neighbor (in white America). There is no “ethnic” look here So if you are visually racist and still want to travel, go to Bosnia !
Our hostel owner was a young man who lived through the war when he was 6 years old. He was charming, laid back, and accommodating. He offered us some grapes that were picked off of the vine in his back yard as we went to check in. He runs daily tours of the city, chalked full of history, through his very own eyes. Not some removed tour guide who read about the events, a young man, who grew up in the history.
Sarajevo is situated in the mountains. It is a cryptic place with bullet holes in one building and state of the art architecture in the next. There are some buildings that are riddled with holes the size of oranges and even grapefruits. This is the single freshest war zone I have ever been to. It is captivating. I wanted to give Slovenia my must see gold metal, but Bosnia takes the cake on intrigue. If you are not afraid of a little adventure, go to Bosnia. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with how civilized this place is. But if you are looking for a no risk, undiscovered gem of a country in Europe, go to Slovenia.
Anywhere who has been through a war so recently has a resilience that you can taste. The people spring up to help you, or are quick to find someone else to help you on the street. This is helpful when the bus drops you off 2 miles outside of the city center when the sun is setting.
The other travelers you find here are top caliber. I am sharing a hostel with a Spanish 24 year old guy who is hitch hiking from Barcelona to Istanbul. He has hitched over 100 cars already and has some incredible stories to tell. He is a classic adventure packer in it’s purest. As I try and explain how his form of travel is superior to beer packing he predictably says “But if that is what makes someone happy, then they should do it. Who should say that what I am doing is any better. I just do what my heart tells me.” Always humble
I feel safe here. I can feel the beating hearts of this country. They aren’t happy about how the country is after the war. “It used to be safer. Our lives used to be better before the war.” Now there are semi-frequent demonstrations in the street. I had to walk from the bus stop to the city center because there was a demonstration in the street that purposefully blocked the tram. We hitched a walking ride with and American from Alabama who had been doing construction for the last 8 months here in Sarajevo. He is an electrician on a contract to help build the new American Embassy here. As he walked us into town we passed by the demonstration. It was about 200 college students standing in front of the main tram intersection. Not even raising their voices, the place was silent and stagnant.
It was a truly peaceful protest against some sort of current economic issue. These people made other protesters look like barbarians. No need for bull horns, marching, or chanting. The silence was loud enough to get the local news camera’s attention. They got their point across. The police were present and relaxed as if cut from the same cloth. They all survived the same crisis together just a few years ago. They were brothers who didn’t take that gift for granted. This made my heart soar to see. This is culture at it’s finest.
They were a nation who had learned from a terrible thing. The last thing they wanted was to relive the violence. But the violence lives among them all throughout the city. The walls are riddled with thousands of bullet holes; the streets still have some potholes from the mortar shells. But the people here are beautifully optimistic. They have emasculated the scars of war by filling them in with red pavement and calling them Roses. They have transformed icons of hatred into icons of love. They have even planted soil and seeds inside of some of the bullet holes to give birth to living flowers. They have brought to life the profound defiance of violence by making a flower come out of a gun.
These are a people that everyone must experience. This is why they are culture at its finest. Though the city is littered with cemeteries, it is still thriving today. This is a city with such significance. Today I casually walked by the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, which started World War One, which subsequently set the wheels into motion for World War Two and then the Cold War. In the same half hour I walked down the section of town know as “Sniper Alley.” Where the buildings still look like swiss cheese to this day.
You can feel this cities heart beat. You can feel the people together here.
Serbia:
Coming from Bosnia, I wanted to slap Serbia in the face when I arrived. I wanted to rub their noses in the bullet holes and say “How dare you terrorize those lovely people!” I also carried the biggest fear of traveling to Serbia. I have heard plenty of recent stories of first hand accounts of robbery in Serbia. “Don’t go on the night trains there, the conductors are in on it. They will fill the cabin with ether and take you for everything you’ve got. Its called being gassed.” I actually met 3 different parties who this has happened to in the last few months.
Upon first arrival, Belgrade is distinctively tacky. There are dozens of individual air-conditioner units hanging out of the windows of the government buildings. There are satellite dishes and TV antennas on the roofs of some of the court houses. It’s dirty and crowded. The women are beautiful and the men are back to Eastern European lows. There are a ton of people moving around at all times. I felt a little sketched out.
We couldn’t find a hostel after walking through neighborhoods that had been bombed and not repaired in over a decade. The sun had set. And then we met Alex, an early thirties Serbian man who approached us and asked us if we needed any help. He agreed to walk us into the center of the popular part of town where there were many hostels. He grew up during the war and the embargo against Serbia. He talked about how the Serbs had to adjust to have a normal quality of life. “The black market thrived. We figured out a way to get everything from movies to computer software, all pirated. We had no choice.”
I didn’t want to get into politics with Alex (I was afraid to pry), but luckily he brought it up. “You know that war was the stupidest war I have ever seen. It was all over money. The media tried to play it off as something over religion, but it was all about money. The stupidest thing about it is that there is no such thing as a Bosnian. They are not a nationality. Everyone living in “BOSNIA” is either Serbian or Croatian. It makes no sense at all.”
For those of you who are a little rusty on the history, here is a real simple run down: As the Yugoslavian empire fell (essentially the Balkan states of today) Bosnia took the opportunity to try and declare itself its own autonomous country. Serbia had the same idea that our friend Alex has and decided to take Bosnia back. It was the longest siege in modern history. The Serbians killed over 10,000 Bosnians, pelting Sarajevo with mortars, machine gun fire, and sniper assaults. They perched up in the hills and picked off civilians with snipers for years. NATO stepped in and stired things up a bit and now Bosnia is an autonomous country recognized by the international community.
That is a really simplified (probably to the level of semi-inaccurate) version.
I came into Serbia with this knowledge and prejudged them as a bunch of bullies. But in my experience, they are lovely people. They will go way, way out of their way to make sure you are enjoying yourself. I can understand why they were interested in Sarajevo considering it and the rest of Bosnia is beautiful mountain country and Serbia is as flat and boring as Kansas.
Serbia, and the rest of the Balkans, are a complicated region to understand. This region is a perfect personification of life’s gray areas (which is pretty much all of it.) It is the Martin Luther King Jr that had a mistress. It is the George Washington that had slaves. It is cruel painful bite of a fallen hero when you realize that they just as imperfect as the you. This region is a thousand times more authentic and relevant than the Western European countries, but if you never went to those tourist traps, you would never be able to draw that conclusion.
I already find myself making plans to stay in this region for months next time instead of days. Next time I will be much better caught up on the history (as it goes in books). I hope to speak to many more people and get a better understanding of this intricately intriguing land.