a letter to Ms. Dee about our trip

I just realized there are tense shifts galore here, but I'm feeling too lazy to change them.
Additionally, Leif and I are considering buying roller blades.

We went white water rafting Sunday. Rode this Greyhound-style bus to a town (Konjic) an hour away. Boznia becomes "Herzegovina," which is (I've been told) a geological change--Boznia is trees and green, Herzegovina is rocks, mountains, cliffs. When we get there, a guy drives us in a van to the rafting place. (People here drive very aggresively but skillfully--everybody's got these tiny old cars that zoom around and screech on the pavement.) We sit at a picnic table and get fed breakfast--Bosnian coffee (strong and funky, but good once cream gets added--it's also described as Turkish), boiled eggs, hot dog weenies, french-style bread, and little Laughing Cow cheese wedges. With us is a girl from New York named Kasey who's here teaching English and a Bosnian guy who she's friends with that speaks perfect English. I think his name was something like Merzat, but it's a difficult accent/language to remember! Anyway, it was me, Reid, Whit, and Leif in a boat and then Mom, Dad, and those other two. The hilarious part of rafting was the difference between Aspen last summer (our guide was more like "don't French Fry when you should Pizza") and this (our guides quietly said "Okay, guys, peddle" ["paddle]) and every time we stopped to float around in lagoon-type areas, they took cigarette breaks). It was very picturesque over all, but the rapids were few and far between. The water was really low, too, so it was more about navigating around rocks then zooming through rapids. I'll show pictures later.

Monday we went to the Embassy to meet my dad's coworkers, then to lunch with Dad at a little funky place that kinda looks like Yvette Marie's cafe in Baton Rouge (I got veggie Risotto which was not so great, but Leif got veal wrapped in dough covered in cream and mushrooms and my dad got traditional "pot," which is a Bosnian beef stew in a little clay pot, which is what I should have ordered), then the fruit stand and the meat place (they ground it fresh!), then home, and that was it. Made dinner and chilled here. It was so effin hot, and a long walk.

Tuesday (the hottest day of the year, at 91 degrees) we rode the rickety tram 5 minutes outside of town to a place called Ilidzah (Eel-ee-jah) where there was a tree-lined walkway on which we rented a five-seater bicycle (think of the Flintstones' car) to this part where there are natural springs (and a couple of swans, to boot). It was very pretty. Then we ate pizza at a cafe after returning the "bike." The pizza is advertised to come with ketchup. It's not really ketchup, but there is a normal red sauce on the pizza and another salsa-type of thing in a gravy boat that comes on the side. Also there was corn on the vegetarian pizza. Italians would die.

Then Tuesday evening after dinner, we went back outside for an evening stroll on the town river (really just like a big "coolie"--concrete) because my dad says it's nice and there are little popcorn stands out there that he stops at when he walks home from work in the evenings. What we saw once we got out there was surprising--it turns out that the street out by the river is blocked off EVERY evening and people of all ages (families, teenagers, groups of guys, groups of girls, old ladies) go out there just to stroll around aimlessly. I couldn't get over it--it was packed like a festival on a Tuesday night with people on bikes, people roller blading, teenagers standing around or walking together, old ladies arm-in-arm, couples making out on benches, and families riding four-seater bikes. Just going nowhere! I guess people go out there instead of watching TV together. Or at least part of the time. It was awesome.

The most surprising thing about Boznia, I guess, is how not-a-third-world country it is. Or at least, not Sarajevo and the surrounding areas. It feels like I'm in California or Colorado, weather-and-landscape-wise, and a lot of the city areas feel like a smaller Prague. The people are ridiculously nice and very quiet. They seem to mumble to each other. The exotic aspects are that most of the buildings are all shot up with bullet holes, and there are little Muslim spires ("minarets") everywhere with speakers through which someone sends out the "call to prayer" five times a day. There are a lot of Muslims here, as well as plenty of white Europeans (men with capri pants and black socks, women with tight pants and heels and scrunchies). Oh, and everybody smokes and eats ice cream cones. But not at the same time. Also, there's a cafe every two feet. And I hear that everybody goes out to techno clubs. We haven't done any nightlife stuff, but I hate me some club music, so I don't know that I'm going to fight my exhaustion to go do that.

Today we are chilling here in the morning and then visiting the prosecutor's office and making our way to the Ottoman part of town again (old town) to shop and hang out at cafes and finish at what's called The Cave Club (on the edge of town, somebody made a bar out of a cave and a bridge, and there are bean bag chairs on the bridge that overlook the river).