Visiting relatives in Bosnia

We picked the hire car in Dubrovnik at 8am on Sunday morning and with not too much trouble Jess sorted out the Nav Girl (Navvie) and we drove back to the Hotel Lero to collect Ves and Dylan for the start of our road trip through Bosnia and Croatia.

The first stop is Zenica, Ves home city and birthplace. Its about 70kms north of Sarajevo in central Bosnia, we had calculated about 6-7hours including stops.

We will be visiting Vesna's aunty Delfa, her Dad's sister and her family, daughter Diana and her daughter Anja (8 or 9), and Ves's cousin Miro, his wife Milica and their son Sandro (22).

The drive went pretty well. We drove through Trebinje which was the recommended route of the local taxi driver as it only involved one border check, rather than 6 if you take the coast road, and they can cost you time waiting in line for passport checks.

The mountain drive was very nice and Jess and Dylan were very excited about meeting their Bosnian family.

Navvie only sent us on one wrong turn on, at the top of the mountain and sent us down a narrow road that gradually deteriorated until it actually came to a dead end. We reversed out and Ves asked some local bee keepers for some directions. We were certainly going to rely on Ves language skills in Bosnia and Croatia and so far she had been quite impressive.

We have had an interesting and emotional week in Bosnia and Croatia visiting Ves’s birthplace and meeting her lovely family.

I have not been 100% having come down with the flu and have coughed and spluttered my way through the past week, but we are now in Venice and I am feeling a lot better. Hence the blog has suffered a bit. I am sitting here now in Venice in the lounge of our hotel.

It was a hectic pace visiting Zenica, Djakovo and Drenje and finally Zagreb with early morning starts and lots of eating and drinking until late at night.

We have enjoyed it and especially Jess and Dylan who have been smiling from ear to ear. They have loved meeting the children especially, and Ves has been under a little pressure as most of the conversation has been through her, but we are very proud of her language skills and she has been able to communicate well with everyone. Thankfully some of her cousins also speak English so it has not been all one way and even though I cannot put a sentence together I can understand a lot of words.

Dylan has 3 favourite words. Pivo, rakia and cevapceci.

We went for a walk through the town and had a nice dinner at the restaurant in the hotel Dubrovnik.

On Monday morning we met up with Miro after breakfast at Teta Delfas flat and we had coffee with her before we drove off to a little town to visit an ethnic village where we had coffee and then on to a town called Travnik, where Miro got me lost in the narrow winding streets and I had to do three about turns in the narrowest of places to get back to the parking area we were trying to find. We made it and then caught up with Militza, Ves, Diana and Anja at a local cevapceci restaurant. Miro had said it was the best cevaps in the area and he was right. I had 10, Dylan had 16 and even little Anja was able to eat 5.

 

On the way back from Travnik we bought some flowers and candles and visited the cemetery and the grave of Ves’s Grandmother and grandfather and uncle. It was very emotional but we glad that we went to pay our respects.

Later that evening we cough up with Miro and Dianna and went to a local restaurant. We also met Miros son Sandro who had just returned from a singing engagement in Hvar. He is part of accapella group.