The Sleepy Old Capitals of Bosnia

A drive through central Bosnia passes through dark forested hills and mountains, farm villages and cold water streams. We watched the scenery pass by through the steaming windows of our crowded taxi. This was the hottest day of the summer heat wave in Bosnia and the four of us in the back seat could only tell the air-conditioning was running from the labored groaning sounds it made.

Arriving in the old Ottoman capital of Travnik, now just a quiet mountain town surrounded by forests, I expected to feel a fresh breeze stepping out of the taxi, but instead it was even hotter outside.

In the past three years of travel, I have become such a google map guy that I can’t even really remember what it was like to find a place without google. This time the address for our apartment booking appeared on the map as a bar rather than a guesthouse. Sure enough, we followed the directions and it led us to a bar, jazz echoing out into the street and lit cigarettes smoldering in ash trays at the high tables out front. The taxi driver looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

I walked into the bar and asked the bartender if he knew anything about an apartment. “Of course,” he said. “You must be Luke.”

He came outside and helped carry our bags up to the room directly above the bar and explained to us how to get to the white waters where we could find good restaurants. Still drenched in sweat from the hot taxi ride, I asked if we could swim there and he shook his head and said it was too cold. That sounded perfect to me, so we left our stuff and walked over.

The white waters flow out of the mountain under a medieval castle on the hill above town and restaurants surround both banks of the cold water stream. We sat down and felt the effects of a cool mist coming off the water that appeared like steam drifting over the fast flow. Each restaurant held a closed off portion of the stream where their trout swam and their soft drinks cans were submerged to keep them cool.

The white water, cold as it may have been, was not suitable for swimming as I imagine neither the restaurants nor their guests would appreciate us splashing around in their shallow trout pools.

A cold beer would provide an adequate alternative to a cold swim on this hot day, but upon ordering we found that although our waiter was a professed fan of beer, the restaurant did not serve alcohol as its owner was a religious Muslim. This was a first for me in Eastern Europe. It almost seemed to be a sacrilege in a region where you could find beer anywhere.

Lunch was enjoyable, but I found that water with sausages was not quite the same as beer with sausages. And being denied beer made me thirstier for beer than I have ever been.

Fortunately, I remembered, our room was above a bar so we returned there for a cold one. The owner of the bar was proud to show us the framed photos on the wall of Princess Diana visiting his bar in 1997. This region was heavily mined during the war in the 1990s and she visited here during her campaign to ban land mines. Perhaps it was a hot day then and, like us, she decided to stop in for a cold drink.

After a few hot days in Travnik, I made sure to book a room with air conditioning at the next town. But like magic, storm clouds began to gather as soon as we rolled into town and the temperature dropped twenty degrees so that we never really used the air conditioning that we so desperately needed just a couple days earlier.

Jajce is maybe the prettiest town we have seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina. An old town winds around the sides of a castle-topped hill that sits above a bend in the river and a cascade of little falls lead to a big waterfall right underneath the town.

The town is rich in history with an ancient temple to the sun god Mithra as well as Roman and medieval ruins. It is also no stranger to war. As the capital of the medieval Kingdom of Bosnia, Jajce was besieged by the Ottomans who captured and executed the last of the Bosnian kings here. Jajce changed hands many times over the next centuries as the Hungarian and Ottoman Empires fought for dominance over the region.

Jajce was one of the hardest hit towns of the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Early in the war the Orthodox Serbs of Jajce fled or were forced out of town and the Orthodox church was demolished. The army of the Orthodox Serbian Republic of Bosnia returned to bombard the town so heavily that the subsequent fleeing of tens of thousands of refugees is considered the largest single exodus of the war. Upon capturing the town, they retaliated by destroying the mosques and Catholic churches. The town later changed hands again, becoming part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it never really recovered from the war. It’s population today is half of what it was thirty years ago and evidence of the destruction still remains with numerous bombed out ruins around town.

In Jajce we decided to walk upriver and the scenery became more beautiful with each step. We followed the river through steep green hills and numerous cascades until stopping for lunch at a restaurant located right on the water by a series of falls. Shaded by tall trees growing out of islands in the river, I couldn’t imagine a nicer spot to relax. However, continuing our walk after lunch, the scenery became even more beautiful with shady lagoons, perfect swimming spots and waterfall after waterfall.

This was the best swimming spot I’ve seen since leaving Montenegro, but we were unfortunately fully dressed and in hiking shoes so it would have to wait for another day.

The next day, our last in Jajce, NG and I both came to breakfast in our swim suits ready to return to that perfect swimming spot. But then, taking a sip of coffee, I heard the slow roll of thunder and decided to take a look at the sky.

It was a dark, rainy day and I am still regretting missing out on the perfect swimming spot. Instead, we dodged the rain by ducking into a sweet shop and enjoyed a perfect pancake, another specialty of Jajce.