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Damn you Balkan buses. You are all out to get me and I know it. Maybe it's not a conspiracy, but it sure seems like it. First, in 2004, you explode on me. Fine, okay, I can accept this. It was in Croatia and just bad luck. I'm able to walk away from a bad situation with a good story and my life. That's okay. But then, you stupid bastard bus from Belgrade to Sarajevo, you go and screw me as well.       It all started with accepting the fact that there is no train from Belgrade to Sarajevo. Well, there is one. Somewhat. Technically. You just have to get off in Croatia, in Slavonia and then transfer with a wait of countless hours. Not easy. So, we decided to take the bus, which is something like a seven hour long ride in theory. This is not fun because for a good few hours of that, you're in the very flat lands of Serbia, going through small towns and picking up guys who like to listen to MP3's on their cellphone MP3 players on the bus, just to have some noise. Once again, I don't do this all the time, so I could live with it.       Then there's the stop just before the border so that the drivers can have lunch. Great, nearly killing us with passing other cars and tractors for the last three hours so that we can sit at some craptastic roadside cafe and watch the same cars and tractors pass us up again. I don't get this, but these musings are for another article.       So, we move on and then it's the border crossing. This is rather funny in a sad way as you see that you're entering the 'Republika Srpska' which is one of the halves of Bosnia Herzegovina and is crap because you're really entering Bosnia Herzegovina. They act like they're some other country with this sign, which they really aren't. Okay, fine, that's their problem. Let's move on because we sat at the border for almost an hour. There were about 15 people on the bus and ultimately none of us was a problem. Sure, they might have to search the bus for the possibility that Serbian kajmak is being smuggled in, but come on...       Okay, so we got pass the border and head on in to Bosnia Herzegovina "proper", but the bus drivers seem alarmed. "Oh crap", I start thinking, "I've seen that look before and the bus exploded in a ball of flame shortly after the drivers looked like that in Croatia in 2004." Sure enough, we pull in to the next station and the drivers run out to put more water in the radiator to find that one of the radiator hoses is shot on this ancient bus.       So, not understanding what was said, we sit on the bus and head in to a small service garage and wait. Thankfully the mechanic was able to prav some random hose in to place, otherwise, we would have been really screwed. After an hour, we head out, pick up the people who were smart enough to wait at the station and head on.       Thankfully, nothing else really went wrong from here. It just took a long time because the roads in this part of Bosnia Herzegovina are in pretty bad shape. After some time, we pulled in to Sarajevo, but not the center where most buses would go. Oh no, we pull in to Istočno Sarajevo or Eastern Sarajevo (formerly known as Srpsko Sarajevo) which is the Serbian chunk of Sarajevo that's more than a half hour taxi ride from the real Sarajevo.       We shrugged this off because after what ended up being a ten and a half hour ride, we just paid the 5 Euros to the first taxi that was there to get on to where we were staying for a shower and a sleep.

Time and again, I'm amazed at the lack of train use in the Balkans. For some reason, everyone is really in to the buses and I don't know why. Sure, there's the fact that buses go places where trains don't (such as from Split to Dubrovnik) but there are many reasons not to take the bus and take the train such as:              - Comfort. I can get up, walk around, go to the dining car, and use the tragic, albeit thankfully there, restroom.       - Cost. Trains are almost always cheaper than buses.       - Speed. Trains are quite often faster or at least the same speed as the bus.              Given these reasons, you can understand why anyone in Western Europe would take a train and people do take them in places like France, Britain, Germany, and Spain with great abandon. I think that most people in the US would much rather take Amtrak than Greyhound. It is true that the trains do not usually have air conditioning, which is a big problem in the summer for about two or three months. But the AC in buses can be pretty shoddy at times or not even there.       I have a perfect example from our stay in Serbia to illustrate my point. We went to Novi Sad from Belgrade twice. The first time we took the bus. It cost us $30 round trip and took a tad bit more than two hours each way. The second time we took the train which cost us $10 round trip. It was suppose to be a one hour and 15 minutes trip, but was delayed a half hour each time. Even with the delay, it was still 15 minutes faster than the bus! Take that delay out of the equation and it's even faster, plus the train and bus stations are right next to each other in both Serbia and Novi Sad, so there is no advantage of one over the other.       So, why would someone pay more to go slower? I have thought about this a great deal on a great many long, crappy bus trips. I don't really have any concrete answer, but I have a theory that can be summed up in one word: Communism. In Communist times, both the bus and train lines were state owned. It has seemed to me that one of the main images associated with the progress aspect of Communism was the train (Tito and Mao Zedong both had their personal trains) and thusly I think that to some extent, people still associate the train with a Communist past that they are happy to leave behind. You see, while the trains are still nationalized or part of a privatized monopoly which is pretty much the same thing, the buses are all privately run and there are multiple buses covering the same routes for pretty much the same price. This gives the illusion of choice and people like that. With the train, you've got one option, the train and you're stuck with its schedule.       So, I think this is what it all really comes down to and in some ways, it's a shame as trains are lovely transport systems and once electrified, quite eco-friendly. Maybe with time this will change. In Slovenia (which doesn't actually consider itself part of the Balkans) they already use trains a great deal, so I am hoping there is hope for the rest of former Yugoslavia.

Continued from November 21, 2006 ...Dubrovnik welcomed us to Dubrovnik quite a long time before we actually got into Dubrovnik, with signs announcing the city and all the attractions for what seemed like an hour prior to our arrival. But we knew for sure that we had arrived when we crossed a bridge that spanned the Rijeka Dubrovačka, this peculiar fresh water river that runs underground and suddenly punches out from the earth a little ways to the east to empty in to the Adriatic.       From there on, it was a slow descent past the ancient manors of town nobles long since dead and in to the Dubrovnik suburbs of Gruz and Lapad. For many, it is bound to be something of a let down because the bus station is very far from the old city that I had come to know in getting ready for the trip. Luckily, my friend Ivana was there waiting with a big smile as she laughed about the last time we had seen each other… on the eastern tower of Notre Dame in Paris. I asked if she had been waiting long and tried to express my frustration about the delay in the bus trip which was a little over an hour at that point. She simply shrugged and I realized it was something she had come to expect or at least not care so much about.       For others who weren't lucky enough to have a friend waiting, they were flocked upon by the ladies who were waiting at the station to rent rooms. The words, "in old city" were being said in three or four languages around me. One or two of them came up to me, but walked away discouraged when Ivana told them in Croatian that we were with her.       We hopped in to her little car that made me look like a seated camel and zipped off to the old city for a meal, some fantastic Croatian wine and the start of a lengthy stay in Dubrovnik.       This concludes the series. Hope you enjoyed it!

Continued from November 20, 2006 ...After endless stretches of the clear blue waters, I started to think, yes this is a nice sea, but wouldn't it be nice to see something else? As if to answer my question, we started to go a bit more inland, which took us from the glistening waters; to be shuttled along some of the most amazing farmlands I have even seen in my life just south of Ploče. There are these neat little rows of different crops growing next to each other at whatever angle someone felt would be good that day. It's a far cry from the large quilt-like patches of homogenous crops that we see growing across the US. It's a funny thing to think that this spot where the Neretva River forms a wetland delta used to be a massive source of malaria for the inhabitants, but is now one of the most fertile (and beautiful) areas in the whole country.       Pulling out of the Neretva delta, we ran parallel to the Peljesac Penninsula, eventually coming to the Bosnia Herzegovina border. As odd as it seems, there is this very small strip of the country that interjects into Croatia to grab a little bit of the coast, a bit to the north of Ston. Historically, I've been told by Croatian friends that this piece of land was given to the Ottoman Empire by the old city-state of Ragusa (which Dubrovnik was the capital of) in order to provide a buffer between them and the encroaching Venetians. How much truth there is to this, I've never been able to find out, although it sounds like the sensible kind of thing that the Ragusans would do. They were masters at maintaining independence for centuries despite being directly between the Ottomans and Venetians.       The border was nothing to worry about, since they checked our passports, were slightly bemused in seeing Americans, and let us on through to the 10-15 kilometers that the road runs through. We actually stopped in this little strip of land, and it was most certainly not in an official capacity. Apparently, the drivers used to pick up large piles of goods while in Bosnia Herzegovina because they got them at nearly 25% less than in Croatia due to the fact that there were no, or at the very least, were less taxes there. This explains why there were few markets in Neum, which was an otherwise barren area. We were delayed a good half hour by the drivers doing their shopping and going to multiple markets to get the best prices. It was annoying, but we had little choice. I'm sure that the temerity of the drivers was more than likely due to the fact that there were few of us on the bus at that point and they felt they could probably do as they pleased with little consequence. It turns out that in the years since my ride, the Croatian government has been cracking down on this by having police ride the buses at random. With a couple of cases of beer on board, the shopping was done and we passed back into Croatia, which was even less of an issue than passing in to BH...       Continued on November 22, 2006

Having ridden the American Greyhound line and various Amtrak connection buses that are one step away from soul-crushing in their perfunctory practicality, never would I have thought that a bus ride could be so beautiful, lulling, and inherently dangerous. These thoughts kept beating through my head as my traveling companion and I twisted down the Croatian version of California Highway 1, the E65 from Split to Dubrovnik.       Due to our ride from Zagreb to Split, we were a little cautious as to what bus line we picked. You see, after cruising along for about six of what was then an eight hour trip, the bus immediately pulled off to the side of the road somewhere within the vicinity of a major town called Knin. It heaved, sputtered, and died a rather sordid mechanical death right there in the middle of nowhere. In the flash of a second, a ball of flames erupted up the side of the bus, next to me. Naturally everyone ran off, they put out the fire, started tearing apart the bus and in a few hours, sent another one that was short a few seats which made for an uncomfortable ride for those who had been displaced by this exploding bus fiasco. Eventually though, we did arrive in Split and spent a few days there before venturing on to Dubrovnik.       Once done with Split and having departed the drab bus station, I'd have to say that the initial part of the ride is lovely. It twists and turns along the side of the Adriatic Sea, showing all the glimmering waters below. Occasionally, we'd stop in a smaller town along the way (like Omiš with its never-ending beach) to pick up more passengers or drop off some of the ones that were on board, but these were quick stops. Old stone homes were perched alongside new ones, as it is just about anywhere in Croatia. But, whatever their age, the homes, businesses, and old fortresses cling like nervous birds to the steep cliffs.       Bus drivers for these lines have a tendency to drive a bit maniacally and I'm sure it gets worse as the tourist season and coastal traffic moves into high gear. They will pass other cars on these narrow, steep roads. They will tailgate. They will curse beautiful strings of Slavic profanities in the general directions of slow drivers they feel who are not driving in a manner of which they approve. I highly recommend sitting on the side of the bus closest the mountainside if you're used to driving, or just don't feel as suicidal as the bus drivers. I say this because sitting on the side closest to the sea is much like flying. You feel as if you're hovering above the Adriatic and as romantic as that sounds, it can make you nauseous in very little time...       Continued on November 21, 2006