Bosnian border beasts

I'm now into the second day of my baltic tour and its had some ups and downs! We left slovenia yesterday for sarajevo in bosnia. Its a long, 7 hour drive through croatia and into bosnia.

Of all my traveling experiences I'm beginning to hate border patrol the most! It was no problem leaving slovenia our getting into croatia but as soon as we hit bosnia all the trouble started! We were held up at the border for not having the insurance green card with me and forced to pay a ridiculous amount of money for 3 days of insurance. You may not enter without buying this crazy insurance, be wanted people going to bosnia! Its also dreadful because it immediately makes you wonder what they expect to happen to your car while you're in their country! Then while I was waiting for my friend to arrive back from passport control a obviously bored border controller came over and demanded I open the van for him to search and proceeded to point to my bicycle and ask me what it was... Naturally I looked at him like he was an idiot and told him it was a bike. Thankfully ana came back at that point and chat to him probably saving a lot of drama and annoyance. When traveling in the balkans, take a slovenian with you, they're great! And they definitely compensate for your lack of speaking any other language but english!

We arrived under the cover of darkness safely to sarajevo and negotiated the roads (sometimes the same road many times over) until we found ana's friends house. After that things were smooth sailing. We had a lovely meal of burek which is a bosnian pie cooked in a black pan under coals. We followed that with a few beers and a really good night sleep!

Being productive

Today was very productive and surprisingly cheap. I built a new drawer for jerry and it went very well so I'm off to but more materials tomorrow to continue my productive-ness. This is the first bit of diy I've done on my van and its a great feeling of accomplishment! I also learned how to make cord from nettle stems, rather simple but very useful to learn. More details of both to follow tomorrow!

My final italian mountain pass 04/08/2013

Today was pretty uneventful, mostly driving but I did manage to find a place to swim! I'm sleeping next to a dam tonight with a few other campers in an open lot which seems to have been procured by free sleepers. I am finally clean after being able to swim! There was a crazy storm about 30 minutes ago which has now cleared to a lovely sunset, my last sunset on the road for a while. Now that I'm heading back to society I'm a bit sad. Life on the road can be lonely but its beautiful and full of surprises. You never know where you're gonna end up!

Austrian peace 29/07/2013

What an interesting time I've had so far! Last night I tried to get up to a lake to sleep but it seems that the flooding recently washed some of the road away so I stopped where the road stopped, right next to a river surrounded by forest! I'm very proud of jerry for driving so well on those dirt roads. I fell asleep to the sound of a river rushing by and was asleep the instant my head hit the pillow! About 2 hours later I woke up in a panic wondering where all the kids were! I really felt like there should be kids with me and I started panicking about having lost them. I thought I'd fallen also inside and they were forced to sleep outside so I turned on the van lights and started calling for them to come back! It took me around 5 minutes to calm down and realise there were no kids and I was on holiday! Omg! After that I slept so well, until 10!! When some hikers walking passed woke me up. No one disturbed me and it was a cloudy cool day so sleeping in went well! Today I bought a gps for my travels and a new mattress and pillow for my bed in my van! Good night sleep for me tonight. I'm on my way to italy to the dolomites but following the gps got to a point where it told me to get on the ferry! I'm now taking a train across somewhere with my van in front of me! Hopefully I find a good place to sleep tonight! I'm still tired!