Balkan Travels

We arrived in Zagreb from Kolarić  late Sunday afternoon. Google Maps directed us right through the center of the city where many roads were closed due to a marathon. Wouldn’t have been a big deal but I really needed to pee. Luckily we finally got out of the jam and made it to the same…

We stayed at the beautiful old family property in Kolarić once before, in 2019. During that visit Ljubo’s mom, Ana, was convalescing in the hospital so we did not meet her. But we met his dad, a quiet but kind man, who just died at age 90 a few months ago. Ljubo and his mom…

We have driven through Karlovac many times but have never explored this place. We chose to stay here this time because it is close to the village where we planned to go next to see a cousin who lives on the land where my paternal grandmother’s grandmother grew up, ie, my great great grandma, Kata…

In preparation for meeting Lud’s cousin for lunch we walked into town to buy a gift. We found a nice mum plant to give along with some candy we brought from the US. On our trip last year Lud had suggested we stop and meet his second cousin, Milka, but we had not planned to…

I’m listening to and vibrating with the 8 am church bells….deep rich tones, rhythmic but not quite perfectly predictable. That wee bit of unpredictability and slight variation make the bells seem alive. Not programmed. Not powered by an app. Not a recording. Oh I will miss those sounds. What else will I miss?  Domača kafa-…

It’s Sunday morning. We are due to leave for Croatia tomorrow morning. My main concern is that we get there safely, and hopefully without a long wait at the border. And I have my list of usual hopes/preferences- that the car keeps working, that we stay healthy, that the apartment we’ve chosen is comfortable, that…

I slept nearly 8 hours! Temps went down into the low 40s. There are various types of heaters in the house but our hosts never ask if we’d like them to turn them on. We could ask but there are enough blankets that we stay warm once in bed. Jim made breakfast, then we hiked…

We made it safely from Zlatibor in just over three hours, and that included an unmarked detour in Bajina Basta, and a pee stop. It’s in the mid 70s and sunny.  We are back in our same apartment. We like it aside from the lack of shower curtain and having to hold the shower head…

We left Zajačar at 11:45 and had no problems on the drive, just an odd detour near Kraljevo on a meandering tiny back road. We never figured out how we ended up there.  We arrived  at our one bedroom Moon Apartman in the beautiful but over-developed resort town of Zlatibor in western Serbia at 4.…

Well I didn’t get far yesterday with writing. I thought we were going to have much of the day to ourselves but Dragan came up to our place and said he knew a nice place for a walk so off we went at 11 and didn’t return until nearly 4. We drove west again toward…