Wednesday, 2013/09/11

We got up early today and ask at the reception for a breakfast place. The next one is not far away, which is good, because it is raining quite heavily.

The breakfast this morning turns into a small anecdote (title could be: "The women of Foča") and we is a quite a nice entertainment during breakfast. The restaurant is opening, it is 8 o'clock in the morning. It is located in a small street. I ask the waitress who's just unlocking the door, if we can get breakfast here. She does not understand me and I do not understand her, but nevertheless we enter. Two women enter the restaurant together after us, sitting down at a neighboring table.

The communication with the waitress does not work at all and the menu is only available in the local language, in an alphabet not decipherable for us, which does not really help us any further. So again plan B: One of the women who has entered the restaurant with us, speaks a little English and so it works with the order then. Later a younger waiter comes in, who also speaks a little bit English. This way, we get ordered a breakfast and the baked dumplings, which we enjoy with jam and the Turkish coffee, is not bad.

While we wait for our breakfast, another young woman enters the restaurant, stands beside our table and addresses me. No idea what she says, even our "interpreter" gives us no interpretation. When the young woman realizes that we do not understand anything, she turns away and sits down at a table that is still free. Gradually, several young women come into the restaurant and sit down at several tables together. Also, one or two couples come in, but the female surplus is really evident. For a few short unsettled moments we don't know, whether we are right here, what's going on here. Do all the young women in Foča have breakfast here in the morning? Or is it some agency office that we may not want to know exactly what is being conveyed?

The riddle dissolves when, after about half an hour, two gentlemen in suits come in and gather the presumptuous female candidates at a large table, where they have a conversation with the young ladies.

Well, at least the rain stopped after the extended breakfast. The hotel receptionist tells my fellow rider that he has dried our benches. Nice service, for which he of course gets a tip.

The ride from Foča to Sarajevo is very nice again. It follows along river valleys, narrow gorges, we passing a few rock tunnels, then again we have nice mountain views. Well, in the last few days we had already had enough of spectacular landscapes.

It's good to arrive in a bigger city again. However, Sarajevo does not look nice in the suburbs.

We ride directly to the center and find a hostel with tourist information and ask there for a private room, if possible with a parking for the motorcycles. The host and agent for private accommodations offers a room within 5 minutes walking distance and we can park the motorcycles in the courtyard of the hostel. I walke with the host to have a look at the room. It is located in a 3-room apartment of an elderly lady who does not speak any foreign languages ​​and rents two of her rooms to overnight guests.

The room and the bathroom are very basic, but it only 15 euros per person/night. The location is very good, just 5 minutes walk from the center. We want to stay 2 nights in Sarajevo.

We first ride our motorcycles to the apartment and bring our luggage up to the first floor to Hana, that's the name of our host. Then we park our bikes in the courtyard of the hostel. An Italian young couple on one motorcycle has arrived. We help with the communication with the hostel boss and convey the second room at Hana, which offers a double bed and fits for the two. We help them bring their stuff to their room and show them everything they need to know. Finally my fellow rider can speak some Italian again. I was afraid he would have forgotten his Italian since he always speaks German with me.

We pick up some more money and I leave some laundry at the reception of the hostel for washing. The smelly socks and underpants as well as the undershirt for the ride need some washing.

In the courtyard of the hostel there is WIFI and therefore the young traveling people from all over the world are gathering there. For the first time since a few days I hear German native speakers.

We find the restaurant "To be or not to be" for lunch, for which an elderly lady is responsible on this day. She also speaks a little bit German. She handles everything alone in the kitchen and is also the waitress and we eat absolutely excellent at this place. The Rizotto negro, which  I order, is pefect. At the next table we get some Italian neighbors. My fellow rider has arrived back in Italian after such a linguistic superiority of German and English, even though he does not reveal himself as an Italian until we leave the restaurant.

We wander around the city and look at the historically significant Latin bridge (assassination in Sarajevo), the main pedestrian street, houses with bullet holes, churches, synagogues and of course mosques. At some point we take a Turkish coffee, nothing that I really need to have again, but the ambience is special. In the neighbourhood of the café, there is another establishment where you can get hookahs. Even some young women, smart and partly in the Islamic clothing style, smoke their water pipes there.

After a short break in the evening (my fellow rider in the room, me in the hostel because of the WIFI) we go out for a walk to the streets of the old town again. It look quite oriental here, not only in the bazaar area.

Everywhere are neat young women in Islamic clothing style, but also many casually dressed. You can observe an elegantly dressed Islamic businesswoman entering the courtyard of a mosque, getting out her appointment planner and then doing her phone calls on the mobile phone in front of the mosque. Sarajevo is a cultural melting pot. Here cultures collide. No wonder that an outburst of violence could occur here, the traces of which can still be seen today, but no longer in the alleys of the old town. Here is business as usual. There are many small shops with all sorts of useful and useless things, and of course numberless small restaurants and bars and cafes, so many, that makes one wonder where all the people come from.

In the evening it starts to rain and it's getting heavier soon and so we hide in one of the bars. However, the rain does not stop, so that we go in a restaurant on our way back to our room. It's already after midnight until we are in bed.