Blog Feed: WeDoAdventure

By now friends and followers of this blog who like the Novi Most Facebook page will be well aware that the organisation is making the most of the opportunity afforded by social media to get the word out. This is important. We who are involved in the

Quiet...

Published on 2013-04-21 06:22:00

Things have been a little quiet on our blog for the past couple of weeks. That's usually a sign things are not quiet in our offline existence - and this has certainly been no exception to that rule. April has, thus far, consisted of scaling the steep

Don't go chasing waterfalls!

Published on 2013-04-03 13:41:00

We've been hearing reports of heavy rainfalls and flooding from around the country. In Jajce we've had rain but have to feel we've escaped lightly. However, today the Pliva was running high through town, turning the weirs into wild white water. By th

Castle in the snow

Published on 2013-04-01 14:35:00

Today, as if we were being treated to some

Seasonal signage

Published on 2013-03-31 11:51:00

We were in Zagreb, Croatia, on Thursday and Friday, celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Wandering through Trg bana Jelačića – the city's central square in a similar way to what Trafalgar Square is to London – when we spied a seasonal

A new playground!

Published on 2013-03-24 14:00:00

Yesterday we enjoyed exploring a “new” playground - Ski centar "Raduša". We'd been intrigued by the pictures on Facebook and the reality didn't disappoint. I had been looking for one sunny day of snowboarding this season and we finally got it! A

A year ago today

Published on 2013-03-05 13:10:00

On the 5th March 2012 I took my newly purchased first snowboard up our nearest mountain for its first run out on snow. Why do I remember this? Well, partly, it was one of those moments I never imagined that would happen; such moments have a habit of

You win some

Published on 2013-03-03 10:26:00

On Saturday Jajce's Lavovi (Lions) bit back at the BiH Floorball League tournament in Tuzla. At least they did in the first game they played. The last time the Lavovi played Gladijator from Prijedor the game was a 4-4 draw. This time we won by a surp

The girls and the boys

Published on 2013-02-17 13:56:00

On Saturday morning I tweeted that we were “giving more young people their first snowboard experience today.” I added, “Let's hope they learn as much as the last group!” The last group was mostly girls, this group entirely boys. When we say g

The view from the top

Published on 2013-02-12 06:40:00

As is the way with mountains, you get to the top only to see another higher peak staring down at you as if to quash your sense of achievement. Yesterday we spent a day off at Vlašić, a mountain in the very centre of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is

Lightning strikes

Published on 2013-02-10 13:21:00

This is Lavovi Jajce (Jajce Lions) all smiles before our first game in the new BiH Floorball League. That's me second from the left. Saturday was the first of four tournament days we'll compete in this year. Hopefully we'll do better at the competing

Comparing highs

Published on 2013-02-07 02:53:00

Last night lightning stopped play. This was both disappointing and encouraging; disappointing because I was just hitting my snowboard stride, powering down the powdery slope in ridiculously poor visibility, but encouraging that the local ski centre d

It Begins in Bosnia

Published on 2013-02-05 06:15:00

This video was filmed during the first two weeks of this year. They were two weeks that proved beyond doubt there is no gain without a sizeable portion of pain. So much pain! Going from effectively no snowboard experience to nine consecutive days of

Shining a little light on The Lampost story

Published on 2013-02-03 11:08:00

Over ten years ago now one of my brothers and I decided to convert our parents garage into a home studio. My brother had a friend with a studio on the south coast that was being forced to close. We bought the live room from them; dismantled it, trans

Not quite to eleven

Published on 2013-01-31 14:22:00

Yesterday I dug out my guitar amp for the first time this year. In fact it was the first time in a lot longer. It's not that I don't play guitar anymore, more that I have a habit of playing my electrics unplugged when I'm at home. Pragmatism has trum

Today's challenge

Published on 2013-01-26 15:24:00

There is more going on in the world, and in our lives, right now than snowboarding. However, if you'll indulge us, I'll take this opportunity to explain why this photograph is actually a lot more exciting than the dog seems to think.Today nine of us,

World Snow Day

Published on 2013-01-20 13:20:00

Today was World Snow Day so we went snowboarding this afternoon. It was not epic conditions but I made this video anyway. Maybe it'll inspire you! (Find out more about World Snow Day.)

The warm glow

Published on 2013-01-14 04:36:00

This was the parting shot of how we kick-started 2013: a final powder run up on a mountain above Jajce, bathed in the golden light of a glorious sunset. As introductions to a new year go I can't remember one that has been as exciting and satisfying,

An Olympic Year

Published on 2012-12-31 10:55:00

2012 has been a great year for British sport, most notably at the London Olympics. We were in London for the New Year celebrations the year it was awarded the games and by some happy symmetry we are

The Great Outdoors

Published on 2012-12-21 15:00:00

This morning I was in the Sainsburys that used to double as our local corner store, browsing the magazine section, when my eyes fell on an unexpected keyword: Bosnia. I've waited a long time to see a UK magazine write a positive article about the cou

When 2nd is the best

Published on 2012-12-16 13:34:00

Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties "No Fear" was a very cool clothing brand and "No Fear" posters were a must have for any adventure sports

Wax on, wax off

Published on 2012-12-12 15:28:00

Novi Most International, the organisation we volunteer for in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has a challenge it gives its team members. It's called "How Dare We?" To a team that has committed to help work for a better future for young people growing up in t

Dangerous distractions

Published on 2012-12-10 15:42:00

One of the temptations I constantly fight during much of the driving I do is the desire to enjoy the view. All too often something spectacular is trying to catch my attention, but narrow, twisty roads are notoriously unforgiving of lapses in concentr

Proof-reading required

Published on 2012-12-09 11:52:00

Today we took a snowy Sunday afternoon stroll. Partly it was to walk off a generously proportioned late lunch but mostly it was to see the waterfall; we've been back in Jajce over a month and had thus far failed to pay it a visit. It is still there,

First in, last out

Published on 2012-12-08 11:27:00

Back when we used to do youth work in the UK I was often the first in and the last out. For a number of years we ran different events in a converted warehouse building that had slightly temperamental heating. It was controlled by a computer system; a

Who's the odd one out?

Published on 2012-12-04 16:34:00

I saw this picture posted on a friend's Facebook wall earlier today. My first thought was: spot the flippin' foreigner! Yes, it was me who missed the memo about only sporting subdued hues before I left the house this morning.Today the new structure t

5 year ago today...

Published on 2012-11-29 10:01:00

Having reminded myself earlier this week that today would mark the 5th anniversary of our first trip to Sarajevo I thought I'd be only right to dig out an old video to commemorate. This video was filmed the four days of that visit. In the last 5 year

On the sidelines!

Published on 2012-11-27 09:00:00

On Sunday afternoon we drove just over two hours to Prijedor to play floorball against the team there. Our team, Lavovi Jajce – or Jajce Lions, had comfortably beaten the Prijedor side that visited us earlier this year. We felt the return trip woul

A quicker there and back

Published on 2012-11-26 16:36:00

Today I did a quick 'there and back again' to Sarajevo. This was made all the quicker by the completion of another section of motorway since the last time I made the trip; that was mid-May, if my memory serves me right. It's strange to think that the

A painful realisation

Published on 2012-11-19 04:52:00

Over the past couple of months we've done a lot of walking: the streets of London, must-see Vancouver, most of Seattle's downtown and the pretty bits of Cape Town. We haven't, however, done much running. I had foolishly thought our pedestrian pavemen

One man's walk in the park...for now.

Published on 2012-11-11 11:02:00

One man's walk in the park is another man's first off-road riding experience. In fact I took five people out on bikes on Saturday afternoon. For all of them it was their first time riding mountain bikes on a mountain. (Our ride topped out at about 35

Finding inspiration

Published on 2012-11-09 06:49:00

In September and October we had the opportunity to travel. Taking a three month sabbatical is something Novi Most asks its international volunteer workers to do after three years; we took two months after four years! Thanks to the amazing generosity

UnEasyJet

Published on 2012-11-06 04:29:00

Over the past couple of years we've said only good things about the EasyJet flights we've taken from both Split and Zagreb. Through social media and real social interaction we've talked about the efficient and economic service we'd experienced. Maybe

We owe One Direction

Published on 2012-09-30 16:58:00

It's been just over two years since we moved from Mostar to Jajce. Mostar is not short of internationals living there; there are governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies and the United World College that between them draw people from the four corners of the globe. Jajce is different. There are very few foreigners who live in the town and while many of the young people we work with seem to have cousins or aunts or uncles scattered across Europe, or in the States, we found ourselves with a [..]

Driven round the bend

Published on 2012-08-17 13:22:00

Back when we were living in the UK there was a time we were proud owners of a new new MINI. It was yellow. It was also a great car; the sort of car you could get back into after a day at a motor show and be completely satisfied with, even though it cost a fraction of the price of some of the cars you'd sat in during the day. It was during on of these motor show trips that I paid a tenner for a ride in a Caterham 7. Because if the MINI had a reputation for go-kart like handling the Caterham repre [..]

A long bus ride

Published on 2012-08-08 11:27:00

It wasn't so long ago that I wrote about a bus ride from Zagreb to Jajce. When I did I would have considered it quite a long trip. No longer. Last week was bookended by two 28 hour bus journeys. Sarajevo to Oldenburg, in northern Germany, and back again. In a little bus. 29 seats, 25 passengers and 3 drivers. As near to non-stop as was possible. Had the bus been able to reach the speed limit on the motorways the trip may have been many hours shorter but the seats did recline a little, the air-co [..]

Fake camping?

Published on 2012-07-24 16:12:00

There can be little debate that a camp that doesn't involve tents or sleeping bags, dodgy toilets or cold showers is no camp real camp at all. Be that as it may, last week's camp we organised in Jajce had a lot of other ingredients that go into making a memorable summer experience: sunshine, swimming, sports and surprisingly good food. That everyone got to sleep in real beds, in respectable bungalows was, in my opinion, simply something of a bonus!The picture shows everyone but me - I was holdin [..]

Mine, not mine!

Published on 2012-07-21 13:43:00

This is this evening out by the lakes in Jajce. What you can see around the the top of the mountain in the middle of the photograph are not clouds but smoke from fires that have been burning up there for the past two weeks.We spent last week 'camping' out by the lakes: the inverted commas indicate that I understand staying in a bungalow doesn't equate to real camping; but neither I or any of the young people involved seemed to be complaining about that.Almost every day was cloudless but every da [..]

Pedal power on Plivsko jezero

Published on 2012-07-15 15:16:00

It only seems appropriate after our previous post to upload this video. This is proper pedalo action from Jajce's Plivsko jezero. Well, I say proper but I'm not sure whether a duck shaped pedalo can properly be described as proper. Nevertheless, it proved a worthy lake-going craft, even if it did list a little to port. We wondered if this was due to my superior weight advantage but we noticed every vessel out this evening was leaning one way or the other. Perhaps not then, but if it was then an [..]

We like lakes

Published on 2012-07-11 09:25:00

In the last couple of weeks we've had a couple of great watery experiences. Together with the Novi Most team we went on a canoe safari on the Trebižat river, near Čapljina. Surviving three hours on the water in the hot and sun without getting burned was something of a triumph - it was up around 40C that day - and our canoe skill were almost impressive, up until the point we capsized! I took photos but they didn't do the scenery justice. Neither does this video. Instead here's a picture from ou [..]

An insight into bus travel

Published on 2012-06-27 09:35:00

Five hours and twenty minutes sat on a bus between Zagreb, Croatia, and Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, yesterday morning gave me more than enough time to ponder some of the idiosyncrasies this mode of transport offers in this part of the world. I suppose I should confess I'm no expert; the town I grew up in was not big on buses and, baring one memorable overnight coach journey from London to Edinburgh, most of my bus experience involves the top deck of old London Routemasters. That and school tr [..]

Chips and dips

Published on 2012-06-16 15:55:00

We recently came by a generous consignment of tortilla chips. Although they are readily available in shops here they are relatively new and comparatively expensive. Most of the young people we work with had never tried them before. It's fair to say most were not impressed when they came out of the box last week.This week, in an attempt to spice up the taste experience, our local colleague suggested we buy some salsa dip and make a more local-orientated dip, by mixing sour cream and ajvar– a re [..]

Surprised

Published on 2012-06-10 17:41:00

There are good surprises and there are bad surprises. Today we had a bit of both. We had a floorball game arranged for the team I'm involved in training, Lavovi Jajce, against a team from Prijedor, a town about an hour and a half north of us. The bad surprise was the size and age of their team. Bigger and older than ours. Significantly. I wasn't expecting to play, seeing as our team are all teenagers, but they wanted someone to drag the average age up so I was called into action. The pre-match t [..]

New hydroelectric development in Jajce?

Published on 2012-06-04 12:17:00

This video is about one of the hot topics of the last week here in Jajce. As I say in the video, I'm not claiming to be an expert on the issues or have all the facts at my finger-tips. But as I was cycling past Brana today I thought I'd stop to film incase there's someone out there on the internet who'd be interested in this news who hasn't heard it already.As for what will actually happen to this beautiful little part of central Bosnia: time will tell. And when it does I'll be sure to make a vi [..]

June already

Published on 2012-06-03 17:17:00

I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon soaking up the delights of the Jubilee Pageant, thanks to the streaming video on the BBC website. The sight of singers belting out Land of Hope and Glory while clearly soaked to the skin was, I confess, a highlight. The commentators predictably commented on Britishness of it, although they can probably be forgiven as such assignments rarely require more than restating the obvious for the umpteenth time. After my fix of rain and Britannia ruling the waves I thought [..]

Pixels and picking winners

Published on 2012-05-29 11:42:00

Those familiar with the sort of Bible stories that get told to children will know about Jonah. He's the guy who was running from God, only to become the cause of a big storm necessitating his being dispatched to the depths only to spend a long weekend in a large fish. If anyone was ever a jinx on a journey he was it. In a tenuously connected kind of way I feel I was a jinx on Saturday night's attempt to watch the Eurovision final. As regular readers will have noted, I wasn't expecting to get th [..]

Braver

Published on 2012-05-28 09:17:00

This time last year I uploaded a video showing me chickening out of a first swim for summer 2011. We were in Gradac, Croatia, for a Novi Most team retreat and trying to make the most of a few days by the coast. This weekend we were back in the same place for the same reason. However the outcome of the 'will I, won't I?' swimming question was not the same. In an relatively uncharacteristic act of bravery in the face of less-than-warm water I took the plunge...remembering, of course, to take the c [..]

I won't be watching

Published on 2012-05-24 05:20:00

I won't be watching this year's Eurovision Song Contest. This may not mean much to UK readers, less still to US ones, but it puts me firmly out-of-step with the prevailing culture here in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It's not that I'm boycotting the event or attempting to display some assumed cultural superiority, it's simply a case of a calender clash; that and the disappointment the act I favoured didn't make it out of the Semi-Final the other night. I am no longer bothered by Saturday's results.I [..]

Road works

Published on 2012-05-22 08:59:00

The other day the M40 cropped up in a conversation with a friend. We discovered we have differing views on this sweeping stretch of motorway that connects London and Birmingham. I used to look forward to it as a relatively congestion-free chance to actually drive after grinding around the M25. She was too aware of the accident statistics people playing this kind of catch-up caused to ever enjoy using it. At 89 miles long, or 143.2 kilometres, the M40 alone provides almost exactly double the amo [..]

Drop Everything

Published on 2012-05-17 15:32:00

"Drop everything" was the thought that went through my mind when I saw the second round of unseasonable snow this morning. Round one came just as Manchester City wrapped up their first Premier League title on Sunday. I don't know what was more surprising: that Edin Dzeko scored or to suddenly look out of the window to see large white flakes falling from the sky! Round two happened overnight. The temptation to grab my snowboard and head for the hills was very real, but I resisted. For one thing, [..]

A song and dance or two...

Published on 2012-05-11 14:13:00

You'll spot maybe half a dozen umbrellas in this video, if you watch closely enough. What you won't see is any footage of the two enormous thunder storms that sought to disrupt last Thursday afternoon's performances. The first of these storms was freakishly heavy, with a healthy dose of hail mixed in with the torrential rain. It came on so hard and fast that, despite being under cover, our PA desk looked like it had just take a shower. The area where you see people dancing was a lake just half a [..]

An artistic triumph

Published on 2012-05-10 15:42:00

If you read our previous post you will know already that last Thursday was no ordinary day. While some of that was for reasons way beyond our control this video captures the part of the extraordinary that we planned. It's not exactly the video we thought we would make because many of the young people and the other adult organisers who had worked on preparing the project were not able to make the delayed start to deploying the art drop around Jajce. What you see is the work of more people than yo [..]

Stark contrast.

Published on 2012-05-06 11:15:00

It is not every morning you are shaken from your sleep by the sound of a gun fight; nor that this is immediately followed by the sound of someone running under your bedroom window; nor that you get to take a photograph like this from the comfort of your own living room. But that was last Thursday in Jajce. It was a day that was supposed to have been all about Project Avant-Guarde, a street-art project Rowan has been part of organising for the past couple of months. However a rare armed robbery, [..]

Reptiles

Published on 2012-04-24 14:11:00

All of last summer we watched little lizards scramble over the wall opposite our house. I would say that with the exception of a singular salamander I happened upon while out cycling these were the only reptiles we saw but the glossy black fellow with bright orange spots was actually an amphibian.This year we're barely into a convincing spring and we've already run into a host of interesting creatures. Pictured far right is what is probably a slowworm, which would have been sunning itself had th [..]

Double rainbow over Jajce

Published on 2012-04-22 08:16:00

After spending last weekend joking with friends from Mostar about catching up on Herzegovinan rain we have had some of our own this week. It has to be said that, in our experience at least, the rain in Jajce does not fall with the same intensity it does in Mostar. Nor is it so unrelenting. The flipside of this is the summer sun does not shine so long, or so unrelentingly, in Central Bosnia. If the mid-forties are your thing Mostar is undoubtedly the place to go. It's the kind of place where anyt [..]

A game-changer?

Published on 2012-04-16 12:26:00

By some happy coincidence we ending up being in Mostar this weekend as the city's new Mepas Mall opened. When we lived in Mostar we watched the old hospital buildings where it now stands being demolished. We witnessed the digging of an enormous hole and watched as a giant concrete structure began to appear. Then we moved to Jajce. Almost two years on the construction is complete and it's open for business. Business on the opening weekend was busier than we've ever seen in a shopping centre in B [..]

Driving

Published on 2012-04-11 14:35:00

I like driving. This is a good thing as a lot of my work here in Bosnia and Herzegovina revolves around driving. Almost all the driving I've done in the last three and a half years has been behind the wheel of one of Novi Most's Volkswagen Transporter vans. I won't claim extensive knowledge of this catagory of vehicle but I will say the Volkswagens drive better than any Ford Transit or Renault Traffic I've driven, particularly when road conditions are less than perfect. Conditions are thus a lot [..]

Twenty years on

Published on 2012-04-06 15:46:00

Much has been written, tweeted and retweeted, today about the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the 11,541 red chairs laid out in Sarajevo to commemorate those who died there. I saw this photo on Facebook and felt it expressed my feelings better than I could in words. This stretch of street in Sarajevo is a place we know well now - we were last there last weekend - but I have no idea what it was like to be there during the siege, although we have friends who spent four years tra [..]

Floating opportunities

Published on 2012-04-02 11:23:00

After a busy weekend in Sarajevo, today was a day off. I decided to make the most of the sunshine and head out on my mountain bike around the lakes near Jajce. I'd been going about an hour when I stumbled across this sight: the super-sized marriage of a decoy duck and a pedalo. Obviously, a photograph was essential, not just for its comedic value but because it illustrates an important attitude we have to our work here.Last summer we ran a month of activities with Novi Most for young people in J [..]

WeDoWork

Published on 2012-03-28 14:35:00

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" goes the old saying. That is not a problem this blog suffers from. I was reviewing our posts since the start of 2012 and realised they consisted only of updates on the state of our toilet and reports of us playing. That does not constitute a fair representation of how we've spent the last three months. In the interest of balance I thought we'd treat you to a picture of us at work. This is us smiling for the camera during a morning meeting with Budo, o [..]

Exploring Vlašić

Published on 2012-03-26 16:35:00

Today we finally got around to visiting Vlašić, a mountain about an hour and a half from Jajce. The season there is officially over and almost everything was shut up. But the sun was out and there was still enough snow on some of the slopes to give a beginner their first snowboarding experience. That privilege went to Katie, Novi Most's BiH-based journalist, who has been visiting us in Jajce this weekend. Despite my limited experience I'd say she is a natural; she certainly fared way better on [..]

That cave video...

Published on 2012-03-20 14:42:00

Finally, after about forty-eight stubborn hours, YouTube decided it would start up loading this video this morning. I won't claim it's a visual epic, but it is a short-and-sweet glimpse at an interesting diversion we took on Saturday. If nothing else it shows that the long winter is finally over!

While Youtube is being uncooperative...

Published on 2012-03-19 08:05:00

This weekend we took a group of young people to Sanski Most, a town about an hour and a half north west of Jajce. As an unplanned part of the trip we ended up visiting Dabarska pećina, a large cave just outside the town. I had a torch and camera on hand to capture the adventure but YouTube has been distinctly uncooperative since returning, flat out refusing to attempt to upload my video!So this post will instead present you with the view from the view from our kitchen window! We went up to the [..]

An Actual Working Toilet!

Published on 2012-03-08 16:21:00

We have waited fully four weeks for this moment...it would be wrong of us not to share it with you on video!

A Silver Lining

Published on 2012-03-05 13:30:00

There is a possibility that tomorrow normal service will be resumed with the water in our house. However after three and a half weeks with just one working tap I'm reluctant to get my hopes up. That said I can't wait to have a proper shower again. The novelty of pouring bottles of water over myself every morning has definitely worn off.We are well aware, however, that our current inconveniences don't compare to real hardship. But if they are a cloud of sorts then this morning we got to see the s [..]

Engel...who?!

Published on 2012-03-04 14:11:00

I'm not sure why I ended up watching a video featuring Eurovision expert Liam Jarnecki on the BBC site earlier this week. My attention was caught, however, by his irony-free embrace of the iconic singing contest. He was had a clear argument as to why Engelbert Humperdinck is the right choice this year for the UK. A big part of this argument hinged on the assertion that he was big in Eastern Europe. Living, as we do, in south-eastern Europe, I thought I'd put this to the test. Here's the shocking [..]

A borrowed banner!

Published on 2012-03-02 15:09:00

Novi Most, the organisation we work with, has a new volunteer in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of their responsibilities is being official "Tweeter" for the charity. Last week we had the pleasure of showing them around Jajce and introducing them to what we get up to here. As you might expect, photos were taken. One of them was so nice I've borrowed it for our blog banner! It's a very familiar view, taken from a vantage point just a minute from where we live. You can see the full photo, uncropped a [..]

The Ice Situation

Published on 2012-02-28 16:38:00

Last Thursday we posted a picture of the Plivsko Jezero looking wonderfully wintery. Yesterday I got my mountain bike out - the first time this year - to go see what things were looking like at the lakes. This video will let you do you own bit of compare and contrast.

Water challenges

Published on 2012-02-27 14:22:00

Life is full of challenges. For the past two and a half weeks one of ours has been living without a functioning shower in our house. Last week we discovered there was no problem with the outflow pipes from our house so we've got more adventurous in how we use the facilities on the non-functioning side of the house. For example, our recently replaced toilet will flush if you fill the cistern by bucket from our one working tap in the kitchen. Likewise it is perfectly possible to use the shower if [..]

Warmer but not warm

Published on 2012-02-23 16:28:00

The sun came out today and in it the temperature could almost said to have been warm. Warm enough, at least, to wander around with no hat and your coat unzipped. Warm is of course a relative term. Yesterday I thought the bedroom was feeling warm until I checked the thermometer and realised it was only 9C, although that's a lot better than it has been. Whatever the temperature was out today it too was a lot better than it has been, meaning that much of the snow around town suddenly disappeared do [..]

Winter and wartime

Published on 2012-02-21 16:21:00

Yesterday as we we walking through the slush to the supermarket to buy water I had a thought. Having survived twelve days with just one tap in the house this had been turned off at 4pm. This was to enable repairs to start on whatever it was that needed fixing so we would get water back to the rest of the house. Our urgent requirement now was enough bottled water for essential washing and teeth cleaning. But this was not what was foremost in my mind. I was suddenly struck with the similarity bet [..]

An almost working toilet

Published on 2012-02-21 16:20:00

Sunday sports

Published on 2012-02-19 11:11:00

In an exciting development for the floorball (aka uni-hockey) team we work with here in Jajce, training now happens indoors. Floorball is intended to be an indoor sport but the team in Jajce had trained outside for years because it wasn't able to hire a hall for practises. Playing outside in snow, ice and freezing temperatures is good for building dedication to the cause but not helpful in honing the finer points of technique. This Sunday was the second of what should be a regular session in Jaj [..]

An avalanche of sorts

Published on 2012-02-16 18:19:00

We are aware we've got off very lightly over the past couple of weeks compared to some people in the Balkans so, in the interests of keeping things light-hearted, we present this video of a minor inconvenience this afternoon.A more pressing concern is the fact the water is frozen in the side of the house that houses the shower and toilet - they've both been out of action for 7 days at the time of posting this video. Perhaps the 'avalanche' is an indication of a little thawing. We can but hope!

Sledging

Published on 2012-02-13 09:24:00

Despite the unquestionable inconveniences it causes there is still something wonderful about a decent snow fall. It's too easy to grow up and only view the downsides. Working with young people provides a healthy reminder to never get too detached from your childlike - perhaps even childish - side. And so it was that a Facebook post gathered a group of the young people we know for a bit of fun in the snow on Saturday morning. Our group had a collection of sledges of various vintages and a large p [..]

Back again!

Published on 2012-02-10 08:13:00

Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with much of the Balkans, has made the UK news for its recent bad weather. We arrived back in Jajce yesterday after three weeks in England. Our EasyJet flight from Gatwick to Zagreb took just two hours and the onward journey from Zagreb was surprisingly clear, given the amount of snow covering everything other than the road. Jajce has had heavy snow and seriously cold temperatures in the last week, although nothing on the scale of Sarajevo or Mostar. Sarajevo is use [..]

The final stage (shot)

Published on 2011-11-28 14:09:00

Having posted two photos of a people-free stage I thought I should end the run with this: us in action. It comes from an album of photos of the AVNOJ event uploaded by Jajceinfo.com. The album really captures the feel of the event so I'd recommend taking a few moments out to browse through them over a nice cup of tea...or similar beverage. And talking of drinks...it was only last week that Rowan was reading that Somersby Pear Cider was coming for Bosnia and Herzegovina, as their Apple Cider w [..]

Filling a stage.

Published on 2011-11-26 15:21:00

After posting yesterday's empty stage picture I thought it good to give it some context with today's image. This is how things looked late this morning before everything kicked off outside the AVNOJ Museum. We were responsible for that kick off, rocking out as the assembled Partizans, anti-fascists and other onlookers processed back across the bridge over the river, after a wreath laying ceremony at Jajce's Partizan memorial. If there was any disappointment from the crowd it was we didn't squeez [..]

The stage is set.

Published on 2011-11-25 13:51:00

Tomorrow, Saturday, is the big AVNOJ commemoration here in Jajce, remembering the founding of Yugoslavia on 29th November 1943. (AVNOJ stands for Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije or the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia.)We were asked to be part of proceedings again. Last year we gave an enthusiastic performance of some ex-Yu rock songs (plus a few international numbers) as part of the organised programme of events from the stage outside the [..]

Citizenship fail

Published on 2011-10-11 18:02:00

Yesterday's Guardian.co.uk homepage featured an article about the Life in the UK Citizenship Test. We've been out of the country for the better part of the last three years so we thought it would be good to see how we got on with their online quiz. We failed. Embarrassingly so! For us this means nothing more than some dented pride but I can't help feel for the genuine cases that are going to come unstuck when faced with the real deal.

Yes we did!

Published on 2011-10-09 13:23:00

It's not a picture I'm proud of but I'll say I guess it had to be done to mask the clear lack of principled behaviour on display here. As someone who has enjoy living in a land beyond the reach of McDonalds and Starbucks it is unfortunate to have to confess that this weekend's trip to Sarajevo saw us not just sampling McDonalds traditional fast-food but also indulging in their take of the Starbucks formula. One of the key strengths of the McDonalds brand is that, whatever you think of it, their [..]

Yesterday's news

Published on 2011-10-07 06:52:00

Yesterday's news was, quite fairly, dominated by the passing of Steve Jobs. It made for sad reading on my MacBookPro over breakfast. I for one am grateful to the man who designed a computer that does the things I want to do without requiring me to understand how the computer does it. That it does it all in a well designed package that is a pleasure to work with is an obvious advantage. But the purpose of this post is not to big up Apple or their various iProducts.It is, instead, the tale of two [..]

Eviscerated?!

Published on 2011-10-01 15:12:00

Most of us must have a favourite quotable movie and if not a favourite then we probably go through phases of plundering a particular popular film for our own entertainment. I remember when A Knight's Tale was the movie of the moment. It remains fantastically quotable, although these days its best lines might do little more than draw blank stares. Heath Ledger was good but I think the scriptwriters gave Paul Bettany a gift with a part they wrote for Chaucer: “I am a writer, I give the truth sco [..]

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