The sky was overcast perhaps reflecting our mood of sadness at leaving mixed with pain at being back on the bikes again after a week off. Stopping for a coffee we bumped into two French cyclists only a few weeks from home after ten months on the road from Mongolia to France. They displayed full beards, dusty bikes, eyes seemingly focused on distant horizons and good advice on our route out of Bosnia. They suggested heading due East on a road along a scenic gorge. As the day progressed we cycled into greener landscapes where the road signs switched to Cyrillic alphabet only making us aware of our lack of knowledge of the languages and alphabets ahead of us.

Our last night camping in Bosnia we found a free camp spot that felt miles from anywhere but we awoke next morning to the sounds of dogs and walkers quietly passing our tent no doubt muttering “what are people doing camping here of all places?”. Our downhill descent flew by and as we entered the first tunnel with no lighting, potholes and thundering traffic, the French guys mention of “lots of tunnels” rang in my ears. Twenty or so tunnels later my nerves were frayed and my knuckles were welded to my handlebars as yet another pitch black tunnel loomed ahead. The descent ended at the town of Visegrad where we lunched upon a UNESCO world heritage bridge, a spectacular finale to the set of bridges we would see in Bosnia. After a short ride to the border stopping only to gaze at a bright orange monastery and chat with a Serbian tourist who had never seen mountains before, we crossed the border to Serbia.

Little was visibly different across the border perhaps slightly less rubbish on the roadside and the countryside seemed more forested, although we were in a natural park area so this was to be expected. After a day of 90km and approaching a climb to a 900m pass we stopped to ask permission to camp from an elderly farm woman. Struggling with Serbian language we finally grasped it was not only OK to camp, but we could stay in our own private chalet next to the main house. We were soon invited into the house and fed homemade cheese, butter and bread. The evening passed in a confusing array of discussions about our map, journey, the couple’s (Mica & Sreten) children, shows on the corner TV and some very hot chillies we tried to contribute to a dinner of pasta mixed in your bowl with still warm cows milk and homemade butter. As we drifted off to sleep we were counting our blessings and already feeling very much welcomed to Serbia.

The next few days flew by with some wonderful cycling through a mixture of rolling countryside and high mountains. We visited the edge of an out of season ski field and camped next to train tracks at what turned out to be an impromptu train stop as we made our way towards Belgrade. We had arranged to stay with Aleksander and Millica through Warm Showers, and after a long push of 115km from a hilltop free camp at Krcmar across very poor roads we met Aleksander at Ciganlija lake in Belgrade and followed him to their apartment in Novi Belgrade. We were immediately made to feel at home with bananas, malt drinks, Rakia on offer immediately and conversation late into the evening.

Each of the four days we spent in Belgrade began with the ritual of domestic coffee, breakfast and a discussion of the day ahead that always flowed into politics, art, history or some similar topic and suddenly it was early afternoon and we would hurry out to do or see something usually ending up by the Danube.

One afternoon, while Aleksander gave us a bike tour around old Belgrade, Millica prepared a traditional Serbian dish of stuffed peppers which left us with just enough energy to watch the classic Yugoslavian movie Who Sings Over There before heading out to a music concert featuring a Macedonian guitarist playing some new and some traditional music.

Our last day in Belgrade we were treated to lunch in a restaurant by Aleksander and Millica before strolling alongside the Danube river one last time. Our final night we stayed up talking till 3am aware that we had to cycle on the next day but wanting to continue our exchange of ideas and tales.

• 397 km cycled (longest day 91 km, shortest day 12 km). Bike computers seem to have developed a few glitches so figures don’t quite add up anymore
• 3 nights in campsites, 1 night free camping, 7 nights with roof over head (in Amin’s spare room)
• 18 pieces of Bosnian pie (Burek) consumed
• 7 days off the bikes in Sarajevo (biggest city break to date!)
• 2 days we cycled in 30 degree plus temperatures
• 2 film festival movies watched
• 1 English word taught – “Hospitable”
• 1 major computer melt down (fixed in five hours)
• 1 punctured inner tube with slow leak not fixed before we left Bosnia (Justin’s bike)

Justin will remember: Watching the sunset from a balcony in Sarajevo with an Aussie BBQ smoking in the background and listening to Salmonella Dub.

Emma’s best moment: Realising we would be in Sarajevo for some of the film festival.

This post documents what two well fed and rested cyclists ate in one day in Bosnia.

Breakfast and morning eating

Bread rolls for first breakfast. Bosnia’s best pull apart bread for second breakfast. Nut mixture for morning snack.

Lunch

Cucumber and goats cheese sandwiches. If you squint, the graffiti almost looks like ‘yum’.

Snack

Petit Beurre biscuits and weird milky creamy chocolate.

Dinner

Beef noodle soup from a packet with added mushrooms, pasta and bread. Not quite ripe pears for dessert.

We turned up at Amin’s bike rental shop with a scrap of information about him, having been given his details by someone we had contacted through warm showers who was no longer in the city. Amin and his friend Luka weren’t fazed by our midday arrival, but apologised that they were about to set out on a road trip for the day. So we locked our bikes and possessions in the shop and promised to meet them there later in the afternoon.

Our first impressions of Sarajevo old town without the cumbersomeness of wheeling touring bikes around was agreeable enough. The streets were alive with throngs of people dressed casually cool, you could see Turkish influences up against western culture, there were chess games being played, the call of prayer coming from the many mosques and cultural events advertised everywhere. I got a new haircut, we ate lunch outside a church watching children playing a ball game, ate ice cream and then returned to the shop. While waiting on the step outside we were joined by Sumuja, a friend of Luka’s. She jokingly cursed both Amin and Luka for never being open, but stopped for an hour or so to keep us company. The first Bosnian we had a chance to have a lengthy chat with, she was a human rights law student and Flight of the Concords fan and the first of many Sarajevo residents who spent some time with us.

Amin had a spare space in his apartment block which had been fitted out for retail, giving us an enormous space to work on bicycles, dry out the tent and making our sleeping mats look comically miniscule. We also had his and hers sinks and toilets. Upstairs in his studio apartment he had a tiny kitten called Tiger who we played with endlessly, watched sleep and carried to and from the shop across town. We intended to see more of the city but our computer broke, chores took longer than expected and we found it as fulfilling sitting outside the shop talking to those passing by as wandering the city itself. The one exhibition we made a point of seeing was called “Sarajevo under Siege” which added background to the stories of war time which we heard from some of the people that we met.

Amin introduced us to his friends which included a large English speaking community. We went to a traditional music evening full of people our age drinking and discussing, to an expat Australian’s house party, and spent evenings in watching movies and trading YouTube clips at Amin’s flat. We were lucky to be in town during the Sarajevo Film festival where beds are scarce and managed to watch two festival movies before we left. The whole time we felt like we had been reintroduced to society after a long period of withdrawal.

One morning we all struggled out of bed early and Amin took us for a bike ride up into the hills around the town where we looked back towards the city, riding alongside the river before heading up into the steep hills. Amin told us he used to do a similar ride before university lectures every day. On our last afternoon we walked up into the hills again, to watch a downtown downhill bike race which traced the edge of several graveyards filled with war casualties. The people we were walking with explained that there were old graves that these graveyards were built over. They also pointed out the new houses, saying it was a shame that they were allowed to build modern buildings which they thought ruined the view. Despite all of this we thought it was an amazing city to look down at.

On our last evening in Sarajevo we walked around the city in a light drizzle, ending up at the fountain in Sebilj square. It is believed that if you drink the water from this fountain you will return.  It had been a freezing cold day which felt like winter was drawing in already. With thoughts of a return visit, we drank.

After asking for stamps at the Bosnian border to avoid any issues when later crossing to Serbia (and to prove we reached it by bicycle), we began cycling under unforgiving 40 degree sunshine towards Medugorje (some gas stations reported temperatures as high as 48 degrees – surely broken). We had picked Medugorje for our first night as it had a campsite and seemed a little touristic due to being the location of a recent sighting of the Virgin Mary by local residents. Arriving in the town we found endless rows of religious “artefacts” for sale, a huge cathedral with outdoor seating for thousands with multi-lingual confessions under way and a campground filled with campervans and surfaced entirely in gravel. We gritted our teeth, camped near the fence with a glimpse of grass beyond and bought our cheapest beers to date (40 pence for a pint)… not all bad then.

Our second day we headed North towards the town of Mostar dreading the fact that it too might be filled with touristic stalls. The riding on the previous day had seen the landscape change only slightly from the rockiness of Croatia but travelling into Mostar we saw a return to rolling farmland and steep tree covered mountains.  Mostar old town was a small jumble of old-style shops rebuilt after the town was heavily bombed in the early 1990s, including destruction of the bridge itself. The attraction here is to pay young men to dive into the river below, however all we saw was much posturing by potential divers and dousing themselves under a hose to give the impression they had recently dived. The Mostar bridge was the first of many Bosnian bridges we were to see and did impress with its sweeping curves across the river gorge. Emma located the Mostar Inn for lunch where we had our first (and still best) Bosnian Pie (Burek), while watching locals dash in and out for takeaways.

We cycled out of town in the late afternoon headed north towards Sarajevo along a wind filled gorge with many potential free camp spots, but none that quite hit the mark. After passing a town where our map indicated a campsite and finding nothing there, we asked for assistance (between swatting hordes of flies from our sweaty faces) and were directed to a fishing camp. Us on bicycles were a novelty to the campsite residents, as was drifting off to sleep in the tent listening to drunken fishermen through the night for us.

Day three in Bosnia we were up early (hoping to escape the flies of the previous day – they were up earlier though) and on the road. Stopping for coffee in Konjic we were surprised at the number of German soldiers around until we discovered that this town’s main bridge had been rebuilt with assistance from the German army with work being completed just last year.

After Konjic the road climbed steeply for 13km to a tunnel and beyond this was a welcoming spit roast restaurant where we stopped for a well deserved meal. Our afternoon ride was sedate until the outskirts of Sarajevo where it swiftly became a four lane motorway. Spotting a sign for a campsite we tried to follow it only to discover the road was closed due to a broken bridge. Luckily a passing horse and cart driver directed us to a foot bridge and our first proper campsite in Bosnia. Soft ground, hot showers and plenty of shade from trees.