May 12, 2023 - Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 Today we got out of the apartment after a pretty glunky, rainy and cool day yesterday.  We took a taxi to the nicest and biggest hardware Home Depot-like store we have ever seen.  The name of the store is Penny plus.  The size and selection was unreal.  It's easy to fall into the stereotypes of thinking this is a backward country and won't have nice stores, but once again, our ethnocentricities proved us wrong!  I needed a few trinkets to better secure the motorcycle side cases, plus it was a good excuse to check out a hardware store - and we're glad we did.  Right next door was a massive grocery store also that Susie enjoyed walking around in.

We grabbed a coffee in the touristy market area called Baščaršija.  We visited here during our trip in 2018 and it seemed more crowded with more vendors.  We walked around, dodging rain, and had lunch.  

We then walked to the War Childhood Museum.  It was pretty sobering and impressive.  It was designed with over 40 objects and related written descriptions by people who were children during the war.  The written pieces were very personal describing what it was like being a kid during the war and the meaning of the item they chose to display in the museum.  The next stop was the Siege of Sarajevo Museum.  It contained displays of very specific items like desks, weapons, clothes and posters related to the war.  I started getting overloaded plus the written descriptions were in English, which was nice, but they were too long and difficult to fully grasp.

Later, we grabbed another coffee in a very high-scale outdoor mall and people-watched.  After the coffee, and probably due to the caffeine, we decided to walk the nearly 1.5 miles back to our apartment. Before heading up to our flat, we stopped at the corner bakery and picked up a few dessert items.  I installed the hardware I bought earlier to secure the side cases and then collapsed in our apartment.

One thing we have observed on this trip, compared with our trip here in 2018, is that the language seems to be more of a barrier. I think this might partly be due to where we are staying.  In 2018 we stayed in a hotel which tends to attract people who speak English plus the staff in the hotels generally speak English.  During this trip, we are staying in an Airbnb located in a working class neighborhood.  All of the people we run into around here, including in the stores, don't speak English, which makes sense.  This tends to make everything take longer and be more frustrating at times.  I am constantly reminding myself that I am a visitor in their country and I should not expect anyone to speak English, if anything, I should speak Bosnian, which I'm afraid is not going to happen.

Susie checking out the Penny plus hardware store.

Entrance to the Sarajevo market, Baščaršija

One of the many shops in the market

I bought a variety package of these Bosnian sweets. The chocolate ones are my favorite.

Trying to get fancy and take a self-portrait in a mirror while Susie checks out the beautiful fabrics and clothes

Our ticket to enter the War Childhood Museum.

It's kind of hard to tell, but this map shows the location of the Serbs in the hills surrounding the mostly Muslim residents of Sarajevo during the war

This is a typical display in the War Childhood Museum with a personal item displayed in front of a personal story written by the person, then child, who contributed the item.

One of the personal stories.  Some of them were heart-wrenching.

A display of food distributed during the war by Western countries, including the infamous Canned Beef.

A very upscale part of town near where Susie and I grabbed a coffee.

Susie tying her shoe on the banks of the fast flowing Miljacka River at high stage due to the rains.

Wednesday, May 10, 2023 - Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sooz and I left Bihac around 9:15 am heading towards Sarajevo.  The weather was in the low 50's and overcast so we put on our electric heated gear, which felt nice.  Roads were mostly decent and the landscape reminded us of North Carolina, except for the street signs, language, currency and vehicles.  Most of the roads were secondary, local roads with speed limits between 30-50 mph.  So, it was slow going until we hit a very modern interstate-like highway with a speed limit of 130 kph, or 81 mph, and we were getting passed while going 81 mph.

We stopped for lunch at a very nice restaurant in Jajce on the Vrbas River.  You can see a picture below of what we had for lunch.  

Traffic in Sarajevo was pretty bad; it took us about 1 hour to go a couple of miles during rush hour.  The City has 275,000 people with the metro area over 500,000 - so, it's a big city.  It was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics. 

Our Airbnb is in a good location near museums, restaurants and lots of coffee shops. The building doesn't look like much from the outside, but the apartment itself is very big, lots of windows with natural light, two porches and is well-equipped including, good wifi.  Plus, we're only paying $40/night.

As you can see below, there are still bullet holes in our apartment's patios from the seize of Sarajevo. "... after the start of the Yugoslav Wars, the city suffered the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare, for a total of 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996. This was during the Bosnian War and the breakup of Yugoslavia, under nationalist ethnic passions that tore families apart and resulted in genocide and massacres." Wikipedia   Before our last trip here in 2018 we read the book Where Fools Rush In by Bill Carter that gave a ground-level, first-person history of what the war was like in Sarajevo.

This morning we slept late, maybe still feeling the 6-hour time change, drank coffee and headed out around noon.  Our apartment is within easy walking distance of the Miljacka River and several museums and good sight seeing places.  Today we checked out the ICAR Canned Beef Monument first thing.  I did not know its history until this morning.  I wanted to see it because I'm a big fan of SPAM and thought it might be similar.  It is not similar.  It is a monument (see pictures below) installed as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the supplies that were sent by the US and other Western countries.  Large shipments of food were sent to Sarajevo including cases of leftover canned beef from the Vietnam War, 20-years past their expiration date and basically inedible.  The fighters in Sarajevo wanted weapons and instead got expired beef.  The drug cartels from South America supplied Sarajevo with more weapons than the West, and so locals thought they should install a monument to the drug cartels, but instead place the large can of canned beef within eyesight of the UN building.

We then visited the former Holiday Inn, now the Hotel Holiday, that played a big role in the war as a communication and distribution center. We entered the hotel and walked around, feeling like we were being followed and surveilled.  

Next, we had lunch inside a very smoky (people are still allowed to smoke in restaurants) and fast-paced Italian self-serve restaurant and then went to a large and very modern local supermarket.  

We are staying here a week.  It's really nice not feeling rushed or that we have to keep moving to see what we want to see.

Our loaded motorcycle ready to leave Bihac.  You can see why I wanted to beef up the side case mounting - our black dry bags are big and heavy.

My Bosnian coffee from lunch, aka Turkish coffee.  It is very strong.

Our lunch of Srpska salad, bean soup and bread.  

Bullet holes on our porch.

The infamous canned beef monument with the UN building in the background.

The Google-translated inscription on the base of the Canned Beef monument.

This kind of sums up Sarajevo - a WWII jeep next to a well-used playground.

Susie telling me to hurry up in front of the Hotel Holiday.

Me attempting a smile in the museum's botanical garden.

Entrance to the Museum of Natural History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Monday, May 8, 2023 - Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 Today was a fairly domestic day.  We putzed around the apartment doing laundry and sorting things.  I found the insurance office and bought a 1-month motorcycle liability insurance policy for around $12.00 US.  That was my big outing for the day.  I needed to go to a couple of different offices to find the right person.  Luckily, the first office I went to had a person who spoke English and he called the other office to let her know I was coming and what I wanted.  That helped a lot.  

Downtown Bihac was nice, kind of a normal European town with offices, business and workers.  They had blocked of a stretch reserving it for pedestrians so restaurants had outdoor seating, it was a nice open area.

I stopped in an "electronic" store, that sold mostly cell phone accessories, looking for a power converter for our electric items. I wanted to have an extra one.  I had a nice chat in English with the young guy working there.  He has been to Jacksonville several times to visit his uncle.  He likes Florida but it sounds like he had a tough time with one of the local policemen.  His uncle bailed him out and everything was fine.  But he also told me the local police here are not to be messed with, which I had no intention of doing, but good to know.

It looks like a big storm is coming in starting Wednesday and lasting over a week.  So, we chose to go to Sarajevo.  We found an extremely inexpensive Airbnb apartment for a week and will be sitting out the storm there.  We were in Sarajevo in 2019 and liked it but didn't stay very long so this will work out fine. We will be staying right downtown and will be able to walk to most things which beats riding a motorcycle in the rain.

A nice little stretch in downtown Bihac.

This is what a one-month motorcycle liability insurance policy for Bosnia and Herzegovina looks like. They call it Border Insurance.

May 7, 2023 - Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 Today was our day of rest.  We did not ride the motorcycle although I did run a few errands with the father who owns the Airbnb we are staying at.  It was a nice, warm day with no rain.  Tomorrow may get a little wet.

We sat on our front porch in the sun drinking coffee for almost 2 hours this morning. It felt great.  We ate some bread, cheese and salami we bought at the grocery store yesterday. 

I have been a little concerned that we have overloaded the weight carrying capacity of our side cases when our dry bags are strapped on top of them.  So, I unloaded some straps I brought with me and was fooling around with them in the driveway.  The side without the exhaust pipe will work well by supporting the case to the frame with a nylon tie down strap.  A nylon tie down strap will melt against the exhaust on the other side case so I needed something else I didn't have.  The homeowner, Omer,  notice me working on it and came over.  His English is a little better than my Bosnian but not much.  Through hand signals and Google Translate he offered to take me to the local hardware and see what we could find.  It was a beautiful store resembling a slightly smaller version of Home Depot.  I bought some stainless steel cable, attachment bolts and an extra pair of nylon tie down straps just in case.

The bottom line is that we did good and were able to rig a support system on the exhaust side with the cable, some protective hosing and attachment bolts.  It should work okay until I come up with another brilliant fix.

Sooz and I walked to an ATM for some local cash and then to a local restaurant for dinner.  They had a limited menu due to kitchen construction. They didn't speak any English so we had no idea what we ordered and it kind of showed.  I liked it because it had a lot of sausage, but Sooz could have done with a lighter fare.  We recognized the local salad Sopska which we had enjoyed during our last trip to the Balkans in 2018, but the limited menu did not allow it.  The entire meal for both of us including bottled water came to about $9.00 US.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain a little.  We are going to try to get liability insurance for the bike and then take it easy.  The river across the street is easy to walk to and enjoy, plus, we can hear it in our apartment.

Our dinner menu.  It turned out we each ordered the Desetka u cijeloj.

The Desetka u cijeloj platter with a scoop of mild feta-like cheese, and bottled water.  I enjoyed it.

Our new friend enjoying our motorcycle.  You can also see the nylon tie down on the non-exhaust side case.

The Una River across the street from our Airbnb

Omer and me crossing cultural divides while working on the bike.  Photo by Sooz.

Another shot of our new friend.  Photo by Sooz.

May 6, 2023 - Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 Today we left Austria, passed through Slovenia and Croatia, and arrived at our Airbnb in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was only 137 miles but took us most of the day.  Luckily, it was another great weather day, mid to upper-70s and mostly sunny.

The reason it took so long is that we had to buy a toll road vignette (toll card) for Slovenia and stop to manually pay tolls in Croatia.  Also, when we crossed out of the EU into B&H the crossing guards were not having a good day and did not cooperate in helping us buy motorcycle liability insurance.  Instead, they let us through after a few awkward exchanges in English and Bosnian.  This is very odd because they never checked the insurance, title or registration for the bike. So, now, we have to wait until Monday to buy liability insurance here in Bihac and keep our fingers crossed nothing happens ...  all part of the adventure of adventures. 

I noticed that for some reason the tracker stopped tracking us in Slovenia.  Fear not, we continued on to Bihac in good shape.

We will be staying here in Bihac for 3 nights, leaving Tuesday the 9th.

Our Airbnb. Our apartment is in the lower right with the door open.  

We did not have to buy a separate international plan for our cell phone service.  The plan we have includes international texting and data.

They love their sausage here in B&H.  This is one isle in a local grocery store.

We got this coupon to the restroom when we bought a coffee at a gas stop.  Such a simple idea, we should have these in the US.

Our toll road vignette for Slovenia good for 7 days and cost 7.50 Euros

Susie is allergic to mushrooms and onions so it's important to let servers in restaurants know this when ordering.  But, sometimes it's really difficult to get this communicated.  That's where Google Translate comes in handy, especially with the Bosnian and other Balkan languages that use Cyrillic script.  There is no way we could pronounce the Bosnian translation but this app will play the pronunciation.  This is good AI.

May 5, 2023 - Graz, Austria

 Happy Cinco de Mayo!  That holiday has not made it to Germany or Austria, at least not that we have seen.

We had a good day today, fine weather (70s and mostly sunny), good roads and a nice hotel room at Hotel Jufa here in Graz, Austria.  We rode 271 miles and crossed from Germany to Austria.  Because we were taking toll roads in Austria we had to stop at the border and buy a 10-day toll road pass for about $7 US.  That's not bad at all.  We opted for the digital check which means their cameras verify the bike's tag/license plate number which I registered to get the pass.  So far, so good.  Because both countries are in the EU the border crossing was seamless, no customs or immigration. 

This is the second day we have had traffic backup due to construction and the large number of trucks.  The nice thing is that all trucks are required to stay in the right lane, except when passing.  When traffic backed up, all of the trucks were jammed up in the right lane and cars were able to mostly keep moving in the left lane, but at a slow speed.

The photos in this post were taken by Sooz from the back of the bike.  She's really good at doing that, plus it allows me to stay focused on the road.

Tomorrow, we are heading to Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is outside the Schengen area.  It looks like a nice town and we will stay there 3 or 4 days to rest up and take a breather.  We also noticed that B & H has a tiny strip of Adriatic coastline, including the town of Neum, which I think we will check out after Bihac.  Sooz found a little apartment on the coast for $66 per night.  The Balkans are much less expensive than northern Europe.

This is our route we travelled yesterday and today.  

Susie got a kick out of seeing real phone booths on the side of the road.  They were located on both sides of tunnels.

As we approached the lower Alps we started going through lots of tunnels, we lost count of how many.  This sign lets you know we are approaching Tunnel Klaus - not sure if it is named after Santa.

Riding through Tunnel Klaus.  All of the tunnels were in excellent condition and very clean. In this photo you can see my phone with Google Maps and behind that is the GPS - it's nice to have backup.

A lot of people want to know about the price of gas in Europe - here is my receipt for gas I got today in Austria.  I bought 14.81 liters of premium (95 octane) low ethanol (5%) gas for 26.42 Euros. That's 3.9 gallons for $29.31 at the exchange rate using my Visa credit card.  That works out to $7.51 per gallon, or about double what we last paid in Gainesville.  Included was 20% tax which seems high but I think gas taxes in the US are at least that much.

May 4, 2023 - Neumarkt in der, Oberpfalz, Germany

 Sooz and I had a good flight on Singapore Airlines from NYC JFK airport to Frankfurt, no problems, turbulence or lost luggage, everything went well. We left NYC around 9 pm eastern, Tuesday, May 2 and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 11 am local the following morning - the flight was around 8 hours long with the 6-hour time change.

Chris Knopf is Stefan Knopf's son and they both work at Knopf Tours.  They handled shipping the bike and we also stayed there Wednesday night May 3. Of course the first thing I had to do was check on the bike and make sure it made it safe and sound, which it did.  I reinstalled the windshield, mirrors, side-cases and it started right up. It's really convenient and affordable to stay on-site at Stefan's which is also where the bike was delivered.

Today, May 4, 2023 we packed up and hit the road around 11 am riding around 150 miles today.  It was a good day with no issues.  Some of the road signs are different and take a little getting used to but we did good.  We started out on local roads and then hit the highway.  They fly on the highways in the left lane - of course, I had to try it; we were cruising at 105 mph until my passenger rightly suggested I slow down, which I did, to 80-85 mph.  It was fun.  Germans are excellent drivers, always following speed limits and slowing for construction zones - I'm serious, the drive very well, just fast.

It's 9 pm here and time to sign off.  Tomorrow we will see how we feel.  Our short-term destination in Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  It is the nearest town outside of the Schengen area. We can only stay a total of 90 our of 180 days in the Schengen area so we are dividing our time up so we don't go over 90 days.  We heard a story today that a guy's wife could not re-enter Germany because she had spent 92 days in Schengen, so she had to stay outside the area for awhile before being able to enter.  We don't want that to happen to us.

The Schengen Area

Our 2018 BMW R1200GS Rallye at Stefan's and ready to go

Stefan Knopf wearing a Florida State University hoodie, I knew I liked that guy!

For lunch today we splurged and had a nice meal. This is my plate of salmon, fresh locally-grown asparagus, potatoes and hollandaise sauce. Susie had a mixed green salad.  Tonight for dinner we went to the local grocery store and picked up a few things.

An example of some of the German traffic signs

The little German town of Öhringen where we had lunch