Last year we broke from tradition and took a shorter August trip, spending a week in Africa rather than visiting Europe. But this year we were heading back, aiming to visit some of the Eastern European countries that have more challenging transport links and infrastructure. It took a lot more planning to pull off this trip, which will become apparent as you read along.
Following tradition we had dinner at Piccini, a little semi-Italian restaurant near our house on the night before we left. We don’t want to cook and leave trash in the house for two weeks, so we usually hit Piccini and get ourselves in the mood of European travel a little bit.
Saturday morning we were able to sleep in a bit but woke to a very hot day. Temperatures were hitting 35 degrees Celsius and we had no choice but to walk through the heat and sun to get to Okubo station and start the trip. We arrived in Sannomiya and had lunch there, at a sort of modern Chinese/Japanese place called Mononoke. They’ve got some pretty good lamb skewers and a few different dim sum options. The restaurant was starting to fill up with people getting the lunch buffet special, but we stuck with ordering just what we liked.
We caught the airport bus then, and it was a slightly different route (apparently a concert by J-pop group “Key to Lit” was causing traffic on the regular route). At KIX we were able to drop off our bag immediately, and then being hands-free it was easy to go through security. However when it was time for me to go through immigration, I found the lines for non-Japanese residents to be full of people. Most were from Vietnam or the Philippines, a result of the recent increase in workers to support certain industries. Usually there are very few people in these lines, so it is a point that I’ll have to keep in mind in the future.
We bypassed the overpriced restaurants (targeting foreign visitors with more powerful currencies) and instead went directly to the convenience store at the far edge of the terminal. In the center of the terminal a draft beer (or highball) costs a standard 1100 yen, the same drink in a can costs 500 yen, but that same can at the distant convenience store is only 200 yen. Worth the walk for us! We had some Jagarico and two tall highballs, feeling the buzz of the alcohol and impending vacation.
We caught our flight on Singapore airlines to Changi airport, sitting near a group of young Japanese students who may have been on their first flight ever. They were curious about everything, asking their teacher questions, and one boy even took a barf bag as a souvenir. The woman sitting next to me had some kind of irregular shaped hands with shorter fingers and fewer joints, and it was fascinating to me to watch her handle everyday tasks that I normally take for granted. I was trying to watch but not look like I was watching, not sure if I succeeded.
It was six hours to Changi airport, and by the time we arrived we weren’t so hungry so we had a ginger honey flavored tea at the food court, but I wish I had the stomach space for their dry noodles – they looked so good. Walking around the airport we saw lots of great looking restaurants, and I had to explain to Kuniko why I laughed out loud at the restaurant called “Heavenly Wang” – plenty of joke material there.
The next flight was the longer leg, again on Singapore airlines for a 12 hour flight to Istanbul. We sat in a row of three seats in the back of the plane, and we blocked in an Indian guy who was able to make it through almost the whole flight without using the restroom – impressive. Near the end he made a run for it, I think his hands were shaking with the effort of holding his bladder. Across from us a Japanese guy requested the flight attendant serving meals to open up both options and show him so he could decide visually – that was a first time to see that happen. A few seats in front of us a young Japanese couple were traveling, and Kuniko said it reminded her of her youth, when we first started traveling together. We slept for about six hours on this flight, which made it much easier to get through.
Arriving at Istanbul airport we actually entered the country this time, since we were using a different airline for our connection to Sarajevo. That meant that we had to grab our suitcase and roll it with us to check in for our next flight. While rolling we noticed that one of the wheels was pretty damaged. These wheels are actually skateboard wheels – really tough and we subject them to a lot of rough situations when we travel – and about 30% of the material had been ripped off somehow, maybe in some machinery in one of the airports. Luckily it still rolled but it was a situation that I would have to keep an eye on for the next two weeks.
The line to check in for our short flight to Sarajevo on Turkish Airlines was quite long – I was glad that we had enough time to make the connection. Once checked in we stopped at Jackie’s bar at one end of the terminal, and Kuniko bought us a couple glasses of prosecco and two cocktails – my daiquiri was not great, Kuniko’s cosmopolitan was better. Drinking at Istanbul airport is wildly expensive (those four drinks cost us approximately the same as what we pay for two weeks of groceries back home), but we were happy to be kicking off another European trip.
We still had time to kill before our flight, so we sat around fiddling with our phones near a random gate (I played a lot of Angry Birds this trip). Suddenly the gate staff closed off the area and we were sort of default going to Medina, Saudi Arabia. We didn’t have tickets to that destination but now we were sitting in a pre-sorted area – kind of weird situation. To leave we had to push through a huge crowd of Muslim visitors eager to board.
Once we boarded our plane to Sarajevo we noticed that the plane had a surprising number of people who seemed to be not used to air travel. People kept swapping seats with family members and blocking others from boarding, but the staff were amazingly patient with them and we got off the ground on time. Our flight was only 80 minutes but we got a lunch out of it – a sandwich with melted cheese and roasted veggies that was so good we were still talking about it at the end of our trip. I guess we had low expectations but in this case Turkish Airlines over-delivered.
After landing at Sarajevo airport in the afternoon I was surprised to see how small it was. We were able to deplane from the back as well as the front and walk into the terminal. Immigration was simple (no stamps – seems like passport stamps will soon be a thing of the past). One guy in front of us in line did get asked a lot of questions, and I was sure it was rubber hose time but eventually they let him through. The airport’s luggage carousel system was pretty cheesy – it held new luggage back until there was space available on the carousel, but the luggage seemed spaced in such a way that new stuff appeared only occasionally – it took a long time to get our bag.
Outside we met our driver, and I had my first experience with an ATM on this trip to withdraw Bosnian convertible marks (with is shortened to a much more fun “BAM”). One new (to us) upgrade to modern ATMs is that you can touch your bank card to the pad instead of having to insert the card into the machine (which always seemed risky – especially in a foreign country). Here I tapped and got my 200 BAM and was ready to go.
We had to wait a few minutes for the driver to pay for parking. That gave us time to look around the outside of the airport. The weather was really hot – even in the shade – but at least it wasn’t humid. We had booked a driver because we had heard bad things about airport taxi drivers here, and at least visually they lived up to our expectations. These guys all looked shady and it seemed like everyone was smoking. Later we learned that smoking was huge in every city we visited – not the healthiest countries in that respect.
Our driver was really nice but didn’t speak much English, so we were left to our own observations as we drove into the center of Sarajevo. Speaking for myself I didn’t get a great impression – buildings had a lot of graffiti and damage to them, most houses had high security fences and the trash collection areas were piled high with, well, trash. Not many people walking around. Honestly I started to get a little worried about our trip – if the other cities and countries we were visiting look liked this it was going to be a long two weeks.
Our driver dropped us off right near our hotel in the center of Old Town Sarajevo. We paid him the agreed on 25 Euros (our hotel said we couldn’t pay in BAM). Later we found that the price was about double the normal price, but I guess that is because the guy had to stand around waiting for our plane to land. We walked through more burning sunshine to get to Hotel Eleven, our first hotel of the trip.
The hotel was sort of a boutique, artistic hotel built into the first floor of an older building. The ceilings were very high throughout, and our bedroom had an interesting art exhibit of what looked like planets on the wall above our bed – which lit up with LED lights on a switch. Cool! We turned on the AC and even though we really wanted to sleep we forced ourselves to go out and look around to try to get our internal clocks working on local time.
Outside the sun felt super intense on our skin – it was essential to find the shade wherever it was and walk to our destinations there. This was a theme throughout the trip – summer this time felt more painful than before. We walked towards the heart of Old Town, and there were plenty of people on the streets with us. They seemed like a younger crowd, mostly European visitors. I think Kuniko was the only Asian visitor I saw during our stay in the city.
We managed to find a cool keychain to convert to an ornament for our Christmas tree, but the shop staff was missing. So we had to leave it hanging there and hope to come back later. We found a convenience store that was open but it was absolutely slammed with customers – we found some drinkable yogurt and some waters but we couldn’t find the end of the line to pay. Eventually we figured it out, but it was a chaotic scene. We took the water and yogurt back to our room so we could regroup and rest – the heat was already taking a toll on our already tired bodies.
Despite the temptation to crash out we decided to make one more journey out to get an early dinner. We walked a little southeast of our hotel to the river running through town, although when we crossed it was merely a trickle of water. We crossed over a simple bridge (this bridge would become more important later) and then walked riverside to a restaurant I had picked called Inat Kuca (“House of Spite”). The restaurant is riverside and is named because the owner refused to sell to developers and forced the city to expand around his quaint little house. The house was now a restaurant, and the restaurant was popular even at this early hour. We stood in the baking sun while the staff looked for a table for us, and after a few minutes of heat exposure we were led to a table for two under the covered balcony overlooking the riverbed. Being out of the direct sun made a big difference – and the cold beer I ordered next also helped a lot.
Rather strange Bosnian music was playing on the speaker just over our heads (it reminded us of our visit to Georgia). While I had the beer Kuniko had some local white wine by the glass, and later we both had some red – both wines were pretty good. Our waiter spoke English and was very friendly – that made for a good experience. For dinner we had shopska salad (one of our favorites from our visit to Belgrade), klepe (ravioli with garlic and yogurt), and Sarjevski sahan (“Sarajevo Platter)” of beef, rice and stuffed vegetables. Both dishes were really good – and just on food alone we were happy we made the visit.
With some cold drinks and delicious food, being out of the sun, things were looking up in Bosnia for us. Around us people came and went, most of them smoking. Some customers ordered a huge (bigger than you are imagining right now) platter to share amongst them, and it looked like an interesting way of eating with a group. We got a big bowl of free bread, too – people have big appetites here.
We walked around a bit more in a wide circle towards our hotel. We walked through part of the Old Town that was dedicated to Turkish shops and restaurants – a Turkeytown if you will. It was a really big area, flooded with smoke from the grilled meats and more than a few mosques. Our last few days of this trip will bring us back to Istanbul to spend some slow time, so we reluctantly avoided all the delicious looking restaurants in this area to save ourselves for later.
Our last stop on the way back to our room was to buy a keychain from another shop – this one had a kind shopkeeper who spoke English fluently. Since I didn’t have small bills in BAM I bought it with Euros – not sure to whose advantage that was. Finally it was back to hotel after a very long day of travel. Our journey is underway!
