retiredmartin

October 2023. Sarajevo. Bosnia Herzegovina.

One last Balkan post before I return to exciting posts from (checks photos) Wakefield and Wem.

In a sense we left the best till last. The famous Winter Olympics bobsleigh and luge track is Sarajevo’s equivalent of London’s disused Olympic stadium that a minor football team plays at, or the crumbling stadium in Tallinn now home to craft bars.

The walk from the craft bar takes you past churches,

chess players,

and the car in which World War I.

Didn’t stop Franz Ferdinand inflicting musical atrocities on us a century later.

I urged Mrs RM to walk up the hill to the bobsleigh site, but the sparkling new cable car was only £6 return,

and my initial assessment that it was “no bigger than the Heights of Abraham” proved a complete lie as we entered a fifth minute of vertical ascent.

Yeah, yeah, you can see for miles, but what you want is the luge. We spent 10 minutes arguing over what the word was.

Oops, caught you two.

Mrs RM spent ages admiring the paintings of bottoms, and then had to perform a most unladylike dismount to get off the crumbling track back on to the path (footage only available to Patronised readers).

Essential to any fans of crumbling wrecks, and that was our week done,

bar Mrs RM sending me into the night for a late supper.

In the morning we decided to skip the official airport bus (£2) for the local one that dumped you a mile out (60p), which meant that at the airport, after counting our coins (thrice),

We had JUST enough for a large bottle of beer and a cheese croissant.

Appropriately, the beer was better than the pastries.

Well, not actually true. I’ve a 10 marka coin if anyone wants it. 4p to you.