Frenchman, a Cuban, a Bosnian and an American are stranded in a lifeboat fighting to survive after their ship has gone down. They are trying to show bravado in the middle of a bad situation.
The Frenchman pops open a bottle of French wine he’s saved from their sinking sink, takes a few sips and throws the bottle into the sea. “In Paris when we arrive, we’ll find many more!” he says.
A friend of mine visited Sarajevo during her Europe’s tour last year. She stayed at Hostel Haris and wrote a short review about it after much “pressure” from me.
H’s review
The Balkan border is a disputing issue as Slovenia is included on some maps and not on the other, and the part of Romania which belongs to this region is unclear.
Balkan Scissors blogs a short but fairly detailed post describing the Balkan:
Under no circumstance that I want to insult your sense of living. I encourage you to get a life. Sniffing through a long post about language is not a recommended weekend’s pastime. However, this article presents many interesting facts about the language. Hard but good to read.
One characteristic word you’ll hear among Serbs where I come from, even from Serbs who don’t speak their parents’/grandparents’ dialect but rather a more standard language, is “?e” (pronounced like the “je” in Jerry) in place of “gdje” (if you Anglophones can manage it!, with “g” as in goat, “d” as in date, pronounced together in that order in front of the “ye” in yes), meaning where.
Thanks a blog reader for this video link.
In this short clip, Richard Gere promotes his newest movie “The Hunting Party” in which he plays a journalist returning to Bosnia after the war to search for one of the two most wanted war criminal. This movie was released in September 2007.
Dr. Svetlana Broz, grand-daughter of Josip Broz Tito of the former Yugoslavia, will speak at San Jose State University, California. Topics include affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recent developments in the European Union, as well as the future of the Balkans.
A comment from a frequent reader of this blog:
A quite famous Italian rock band wrote, in the 90s, a whole album on the bosnian conflict. They recorded an impressive live concert in a cd entitled “La guerra, la terra” (the war, the earth), and the most touching song is indeed “Cupe vampe” (gloomy flames). I watched them playing it in Banja Luka, but the public was expecting the typical italian melodic pop and were not prepared to this, so it wasn’t that successful. But I still listen to it in the nights spent driving through the Balkans, and sometimes it makes me cry.
I hesitated before hitting the “Publish” button from my blog editor. I don’t like blogging sensational, negative news; but the news regarding one Bosnian living in Austria carrying an Islamic decorated backpack of explosives to the American’s embassy reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine in Bosnia.
When I was in Sarajevo, I lived on a hill behind the U.S. Embassy and walked past it almost every other day. The first thing which struck me was how many guns carried by the guards. I thought Bosnia was still considered a “troubled” region. However, my friend snickered: “We are Muslims and they think we are all terrorists.”
I passed this club almost every single day as it located right in the center of Sarajevo. Let’s see what people say about him.
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Is that on the menu?
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
