Sara-YAY!-vo

[Quick note: This, along with the next three blogs, were all written in the airport in Rome while waiting to come back to America. That will explain the ending, which could be confusing otherwise.]

That was by far the weirdest title I’ve had while on this trip. All the punctuation and capital letters is kind of confusing. The point is Sarajevo was awesome, and a wonderful end to the Pimping all over the World tour.

I have three other blogs I want to tear through tonight before my laptop battery dies, so I’m going to tear through this. Some highlights of the trip:

First off is the usual, the food. It was delicious, and really cheap. Definitely helped counteract the previous weekends in Greece, Spain and Italy, where the food was also delicious, but fairly pricey. I also had my first coffee, ever. It was pretty strong, but not too bad. Some might think it’s crazy that I was in Italy for two and a half months and had no coffee; I feel like it’s perfectly normal.

Two awesome experiences at bars: the first one was going to a bar called “Cheers,” just because it was a bar called “Cheers.” The other occurred at Guiness Pub, where we ran into Kevin McClain, an electrician from South Carolina. More importantly, he was a drunk electrician from S.C. with advice for two youngsters on life. He stressed the importance of knowing a trade, just because “no one can take it away from you.” He was pretty heavily gone, but he made a good point. And, more importantly, he bought a round of beers, so it was very hard to dislike him.



The Cathedral. I'm not being all cocky, that's really what it's called!

Another highlight was all of the sights. Visiting Old Town, and looking at the epic Cathedral, which was a five minute walk from several beautiful Mosques. We climbed up a (pretty steep) hill to an old military base that overlooked the whole city, and got a couple pretty epic pictures there. We walked down to the bridge where World War I started and saw the Eternal Flame. Then we drove out to a tunnel that was used to sneak in supplies during the war in the mid-1990s, but couldn’t go in because it closed 10 minutes earlier, which kind of sucked. But then we went to the Twist Tower and got to go 36 stories up in the air (for free, because we flashed our million dollar smiles at the girls at the desk, so they didn’t charge us the one mark [60ish cents] it cost to go up) and be utterly terrified. You know how the Space Needle has a barrier to keep people from jumping/sneaking/drunkenly falling off? Yeah, the Twist Tower doesn’t have that. It’s a little unsettling. Then we went to the café and I got a lemonade (no idea why) and then the local beer all the while looking at the city from above.



Where World War I started. Doesn't seem like a very war-y spot does it?



At the top of Twist Tower, which was pretty high up.

One sight we didn’t see: Sloga, one of the many epic clubs in Sarajevo. This isn’t because we didn’t try. We got directions from about 124 people, and tried three times to find the place which apparently, is “very easy to find” and “right there!” Well we didn’t see it, but we went to a few other places (including “Hacienda” where I was finally able to score some Spanish food for the first time since Florence!) and had a good time. We also met a couple pretty awesome people in our hostel. There was Josh, the Walmart gun-salesman from St. Louis, three Canadian girls who were on their own epic Eurotrip and a class full of drunk Bosnians that were unbelievably fun to hang around and even knew a little English! Which was wonderful for me.



Looking out over Bosnia from that pretty steep hill.

So, as is painfully obvious, this trip was a blast, and a wonderful end to the trip. We went back to Semir’s town in Bosnia, Bosanski Petrovac for a few more days afterwards to wrap the trip off before we flew back to Rome, where I now sit waiting to go back home. Bosnia is beautiful, and the people are wonderful, and some of the nicest that I’ve met. I had an experience at a Bosnian hospital that I will cherish forever. I was having a hard time adjusting to the elevation (about 600 meters above where I usually hang out) and found myself having a hard time breathing one night. So we walked to the hospital, was ambulanced to a specialist in a town about 40 minutes away. Long story short: two shots in the behind later and I was fantastic and ready to roll. And I tore through Bosnia just fine after that.



One last picture of the two of us.

Not knowing the language was hard, but it was great having Semir there to translate for me, especially at the hospital. I’m not sure how to mime “can’t breathe.” It also helped at restaurants, because it’s always fun to know what you’re going to get after you order it, a luxury I didn’t have in a couple countries I went to.



Much like in Bosanski Petrovac, the sun is setting on our trip (see what I did there?).

This was a perfect, epic end to the trip, and believe it or not, there’s no other place I would’ve rather spent my last 11 days in Europe. Now, it’s time to be Back in the USSA (United Spectacular States of America, which I think the country should consider changing it’s name to…it has a nice ring to it, I’m just saying). America, here I come!