Or ... Navigation by minaret.
It started, as all adventures do, when one of the travelers has a great idea. This time it was Drew.
Hey we're only 20 minutes from the Bosnian border and it's only one day from the 100th year anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's murder.
Let's go commemorate his death by having a beer in Bosnia. If Franz Ferdinand had lived the entire history of the world would have been different!
And so, like Canadian (very mild mannered) sheep to the slaughter, we piled in the car and headed for the border.
After a little tense giggling at the border where the agents shook theirs heads with an American, 3 Czechs, a Canadian, a former Canadian turned American with a Czech resident visa all in the same vehicle, we made it into Bosnia.
The intensely forested hills dotted with small farms looked strangely similar to parts of Oregon, but much less populated, but the architecture seemed very out of place.
There's a minAret, Drew said. Remember it and we'll know which way to go when we come back.
We traveled the 15 minutes or so into the town of Bihac, Bosnia (bee-ahhh ch) my new favorite expression is life is a Bihac.
It was a fairly large town and in the outskirts there was a lot of new residential construction going on. The homes were much bigger than in Croatia, but without the tourism and with the unstable politics of the area, it just screamed 1991 poor.
The Muslim influence was evident in the number of mosques and.....minarets around the area.
We did the typical tourist stuff. Walked around the center of town , took photos, bought some trinkets, but the bars only took BAM, the local money, so we couldn't get a beer.
On the way out of town we stopped at a market and bought groceries including some local beer and wines. The cost was about 30% cheaper than Croatia.
Then we turned for home. After driving about 20 minutes, Drew said, There's our minaret, and we headed straight for it, 30 minutes later as we passed the minaret we realized it was not "our" minaret and as we had a higher viewpoint we realized that minarets and mosques dotted the hills and valleys below.
Retracing our steps back down the hill, we were able to find where we had made the wrong turn, corrected it and were on our way home.
The moral of this story is never navigate by minaret...unless you are going to prayer.
It started, as all adventures do, when one of the travelers has a great idea. This time it was Drew.
Hey we're only 20 minutes from the Bosnian border and it's only one day from the 100th year anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's murder.
Let's go commemorate his death by having a beer in Bosnia. If Franz Ferdinand had lived the entire history of the world would have been different!
And so, like Canadian (very mild mannered) sheep to the slaughter, we piled in the car and headed for the border.
After a little tense giggling at the border where the agents shook theirs heads with an American, 3 Czechs, a Canadian, a former Canadian turned American with a Czech resident visa all in the same vehicle, we made it into Bosnia.
The intensely forested hills dotted with small farms looked strangely similar to parts of Oregon, but much less populated, but the architecture seemed very out of place.
There's a minAret, Drew said. Remember it and we'll know which way to go when we come back.
We traveled the 15 minutes or so into the town of Bihac, Bosnia (bee-ahhh ch) my new favorite expression is life is a Bihac.
It was a fairly large town and in the outskirts there was a lot of new residential construction going on. The homes were much bigger than in Croatia, but without the tourism and with the unstable politics of the area, it just screamed 1991 poor.
The Muslim influence was evident in the number of mosques and.....minarets around the area.
We did the typical tourist stuff. Walked around the center of town , took photos, bought some trinkets, but the bars only took BAM, the local money, so we couldn't get a beer.
On the way out of town we stopped at a market and bought groceries including some local beer and wines. The cost was about 30% cheaper than Croatia.
Then we turned for home. After driving about 20 minutes, Drew said, There's our minaret, and we headed straight for it, 30 minutes later as we passed the minaret we realized it was not "our" minaret and as we had a higher viewpoint we realized that minarets and mosques dotted the hills and valleys below.
Retracing our steps back down the hill, we were able to find where we had made the wrong turn, corrected it and were on our way home.
The moral of this story is never navigate by minaret...unless you are going to prayer.