Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
A once-important Ottoman Empire crossroads settlement & location for the iconic Stari Most (Old Bridge), the oft-rebuilt bridge over the Neretva River.
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
“I find it somewhat ironic that a city in which Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christian & Catholics have lived in harmony for centuries should have such an unenviable and undeniably tragic past – Sarajevo was both the birthplace of World War I & the location for the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.”
Belgrade, Serbia
The Balkans Party central situated on a confluence of the mighty Danube River. A quirky & likable city still bearing very visible scars from the 1999 NATO bombing during the Kosovo War.
Transylvania, Romania
Rolling rural farmland, Neo-Renaissance & Medieval Dracula castles & Carpathian Mountain resort towns.
Bucharest, Romania
Wide Boulevards. plazas, beat-up Dacias, crumbling & eclectic architecture & gargantuan concrete monstrosities from the infamous Communist era. There’s more to the Romanian capital than a desire to leave.
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
Atop 4 hills & the location for the skyline-dominating Tsarevets Fortress, the stunning & historic former medieval capital of the Bulgarian tsars.
Istanbul, Turkey
Where East meets West & where Europe meets Asia. Straddling continents & oozing history, one of the major centre points of the world for thousands of years.
Zagreb, Croatia
Bloody rain. I’m fairly tolerant of the stuff but twice in as many days now it has, & if you’ll pardon the oh-so obvious pun, put a dampener on me gallivanting around gorgeous Central European capital cities. Yesterday Ljubljana, Slovenia & today...
Ljubljana, Slovenia
What a difference a day makes. I’m sure glad I saw what I saw of Pula on the Croatian Istria Peninsula yesterday when bathed in sunshine because it was a miserable day today in this little corner of Europe. ______________________________________________________ Date...