Thyra Travels: Chilling and Maxing in BiH

As always, heading where the wind takes me, I arrived in the early afternoon in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH). Thus began two extremely relaxing weeks where I read books, played cards, and made tons of friends.

Mostar

Mostar is a super cute little town, known for their old bridge with a huge arch in the center of the old town. I had booked a hostel that came with a huge balcony, cheap prices, and amazing hosts. The hosts were part of what stood out about the hostel, two local guys that would bring us the local drink, rakija, from their farm, and chat for hours about politics. The other great part of the hostel was the setup, the only common space besides the bedrooms was the outdoor balcony. Every day the hostel guests would congregate and we would pay cards, drink beer, and chat. The low prices of the hostel itself attracted the best kind of travelers and we would often have every single person in the hostel going out for drinks.

One of my favorite spots in the city was the old, abandoned sniper tower. During the war, snipers would set up shop on this tower. History and the recent war is an unavoidable topic whilst in the country and you can’t leave it without visiting at least one of the many museums. The tower is now covered with graffiti, some of it good, some of it not. You can sit on the top, watch the sun go down, and relax.

Sarajevo

To get to Sarajevo, we took a picturesque train ride through the mountains. Luckily for us, the capital was 6 degrees cooler than Mostar – you could finally walk around without passing out! I spent many hours each day exploring the town, walking to viewpoints, and sitting in cafes. A great thing we did is hike to the bobsleigh track in the mountains from the Olympics decades ago. It was a nice hike and walking on the old track covered with graffiti was an interesting experience. Best of all, some fellow travelers gave us their tickets to take the cable car down. Ooooee did we ever feel fancy! In Sarajevo I made some good friends, including a fellow American and a guy from Greece. Together with my friend from Greece we decided to hitchhike to Serbia. As luck would have it, we met two guys from Serbia in our hostel. They offered us a ride….and off we went!

Counting down the days to Barcelona in Belgrade!

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