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Once at Београд [Belgrade] bus station, I did my best to spend the rest of my Serbian denars. I did it so well, than when the bus driver asked me 200 denars for the luggage scam, I mean, supplement (I love buses), I was missing 20. Oops… Luckily, he was kind enough to let me and my bag in.

Have I been too harsh on Serbia? Yesterday, I immediately took my bus ticket without thinking. I was tired, I was pissed off at things not going smooth, and I was also biased by my previous negative experience two years ago.

Sorry Serbia, we are just not meant to be. But this time it’s on me.

We arrived three hours later at the border crossing of Лозница [Loznica]. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t even checked if there were train lines going towards the border. Turns out there is one to Лозница.  And I dared say that the Balkans are the cyanide of train travel. Ah! Serves you well, Alexis! The crossing was again surprisingly easy, we got stamped out without getting off the bus, and likewise stamped in.

Zdravo Bosna i Hercegovina!

For real this time! We followed the river Drina that makes up the border. That was a wonderful road! High leafy mountains on both side of a perfect turquoise water, a true postcard. For the next three or four hours, we kept going in the mountains, sometimes completely covered in forest, sometimes in wide grassy plateaus.

And then finally, we reached it from the East. Sarajevo. WOW! I was not ready for this slap in the face. I didn’t know much about Sarajevo, and especially not that it was completely in the mountains. It’s nuts. There are tiny houses on every hills and mountains slopes for kilometers around! The route reach Sarajevo from pretty far up, so we could gaze over the entire sprawling city.

It took another hour in the traffick jams to reach a small bus station that was absolutely nowhere close to the center. I would learn later that this bus company only stays in Republika Srpska, the Serbian region of the country, where this station lays, in Istočno Sarajevo.

I teamed up with Ben the British to get back into Sarajevo proper, which was very handy for me as I don’t have internet data in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We got a city bus for free, as we asked to the driver how to pay, since we didn’t find an ATM yet, and he was kind enough to let us in. That’s a much better first impression!

I dropped a few stops earlier than Ben and checked in at the Balkan Han hostel. The mood is great there! I got a welcome shot of rakija, and later in the evening, to celebrate the last day of one of the staff, I got offered a beer, and talked to many people from all over the place.