Hi zoossh,
How was your trip?
Any tips to share as I am planning a trip to the Balkans next year?
voxz
sorry, i didn't check back on this thread. also would not know if you will read this post, but anyway, i didn't expect the european summer to be so hot and stuffy. we ended up spending a lot of our time hiding from the heat despite of long daylight hours.
in the end, the itinerary is sarajevo - dubrovnik - korcula - vrboska - sibenik - skradin - split - mostar - sarajevo. there isn;t time for montenegro. and as i have delegated the planning to the whole group, i didn't have as fine a control as i would like to have. its a group effort.
my pictures here is now halting for a while as i need to get a good raw conversion software to handle my nikon D90 raw files. my nikon capture trial ended, and i dun like adobe DNG..
some of my pictureshttp://www.clubsnap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=532826&highlight=rejoicedsarajevo: turkish quarters (bascarsija - pronouced bas-char-...mumbling) is very touristy with lots of sourvenir shops. i didn't like it. if you can find high vantage point from surrounding areas, you might get better pictures. we went up korvaci cemetry near the turkish quarters which is better shot from top down during descent - think i wasted too much time shooting from below. the other part is austrian-hungarian in architexture, better for photography from ground level. the bridge where duke ferdinand was killed by gabrinovik sparking off WWI is a plain ugly bridge with a badly vandalised signboard. the sarajevo brewery is not opened at the timing that we went, but the outside may be nice to shoot during daytime. you can go in the pub to have a beer but it look super high class. we also took bus to check out the war tunnel that supports sarajevo from the allied held airport when serbian forces surrounded and siege sarajevo for 3 years. it is a really really tiny place despite of its historical importance. on our way back, we realise that the bus may have been a little earlier than it is supposed to come, and the next bus may be in another few hours or none, so we waited more than half an hour to get 2 taxi for 5 people at this super ulu suburb. sarajevo has a more commercialised part near the sniper alley, again of historical interest only, and where the main train station is - this is where we took the tram to the war tunnel, as well as the bus off to korcula.
super beautiful. pearl of adriatic. beige white building, red roofs, white umbrella, fort wall. unfortunately the fort wall that you can walk around opens only till 7... officially.... we stayed at fresh sheets and it again is super beautiful as we got the top floor next to the ceiling, with 3 beds and lots of space. it is a super romantic place, that i probably will rank just next to santorini and venice (both i haven't been to though). there is a hill that u can trek up or take a cab up. a war museum is of interest, showing how the serbs bombard the city and yet it is restored to such beauty today. the sunset at the hill is the most beautiful we have for the whole trip. there is a big cross on top. we also make an excursion to the nearby cavtat island, but find nothing interesting on the resort island apart from a cemetry and a church, and perhaps some shots taken of dubrovnik from the water.
korcula: a small town with very narrow alleys. i think it is good to walk around if it is not so hot. bay is beautiful. from here, you can take ferries to various places. funny thing is that you can only buy the ticket next day from 6pm onwards the day before, go earlier dun sell you and the auntie in the booth only stay there from certain hours to certain hours in the morning and then in the evening, very troublesome. this is the allerged birthplace of marco polo so you can expect some nice sourvenir shops pertaining to that. we can watch the sword dancing performance here... supposedly only on thurs but we saw it on weds nite instead, somehow...
vrboska: we took ferry from korcula to hvar town which under the hot sun, and not wanting to wait for the next bus hours later, we went directly to the bus stop without seeing much at all, though i think it is still worthwhile to walk around, my group isns't interested. we bargain for a cab to bring us to vrboska, a really dead quiet though simple and beautiful town, which we just rot there. i feel that i can count the number of people walking around within my 10 fingers. the harbour and canal is beautiful for shooting, but there is nothing else then. the fishing museum has a perculiar sharp end like the hull of a ship. but then the door is locked and we see no one to approach. a fisherman next door who spoke no english however invited us into his house showing us the fishing net that he weaved. we also went to stari grad, which is fine to walk if it isn't so hot.
sibenik: this is done out of the way. we left hvar island to split, then with no further ado, took bus to sibenik, spending a short few hrs there as we cannot find cheap accom (cheapest is S$100 per pax), and online we cannot find availability of leave luggage service, so we book accom at skradin. however, when we reach there we did see leave luggage service at sibenik. there is a st james cathedral which would be very impressive if you can shoot it with a person standing next to this monster. however, sadly someone's having a concert and the nicer side illuminated by the light in the afternoon is now covered by a platform of seats like our national day.
skradin: we quickly left sibenik on the same day after lunch, to take a bus to skradin, where there is only a few bus per day. the bus stop very near the only hotel in skradin which is called skradinski buk, which we pre-book and spent about S$65 per pax. the hotel is a little rundown and aircon not working so well. i would rather stay at the homestay though some of these ppl cannot speak english at all, one of them did invited me in and ask me to drink their liquor. unfortunately i cannot take their rooms which are extremely nice and probably way cheaper than the hotel. skradin is a small town but more lively than vrboska, with kids, some locals and some tourists walking around in the evening. it feels more like you can take some serious street photography here. we also saw one big serbian orthodox church that is locked up and looks burnt inside. considering the history of the serbs here who declared independence and fought the croats, and with the great exodus that occurs after war is lost, we didn't ask much of who are the locals (probably croats) and what happen to this church.
the next morning after settling in skradin, we took the ship to this national park. they have a few locations that are beautiful to shoot if you have a helicopter but otherwise you can just enjoy the waterfall and the island in the lake on ground levels. well, they made us pay for this, pay for that. i think this is rather an expensive location not too worthwhile unless you are a good landscape photographer. while setting up tripods and shooting, we end up almost forgetting to leave krka on time to catch same day bus back to sibenik (limited no of buses per day). fortunately the boat ride back is probably downstream and is faster than expected, and we have an extra 10-15mins before the bus come. if we miss that, we got to stay another nite over at skradin.
split: another big city like dubrovnik. holding the ancient roman ruins of diocletian. really good to relax and indulge but it has a bad reputation where restaurant sell you bad food at pricey charges and may overcharge you if you drink. an englishmen who settle down at split called his place al's place. a little rundown and a little stringent about rules under his place, he did gives good and honest advices with very good maps. i like the harbour and walking around this place. very good for exploration, just a little short of time though. a nearby hill at the east didn't give as good a vantage as dubrovnik and i suggest skipping the hill.
mostar: after split, it is a long way from the croatian coast back to hercegovina of bosnia. it is a very rundown place with war-torn buildings everywhere, something the bosnians remember for the terrible things between the croats and the bosnians. what happen is that after the serbs go into eastern bosnia. the croats in bosnia also decided that they need to protect themselves, and in order to secure the land, ethnic cleansing was necessary to make sure that certain areas becomes croat majority so that UN will allocate these lands to croatia. our tour guide is a big tall and loud bosnian who suffered betrayals and near death situations before he managed to run away to sweden, and now he feels a duty to guide us through a historical journey. that is interesting at first, until we find him a little domineering to the extent of arguing with the other caucasian tourists over issues about israel/palestinians. as it is a large group of caucasian, much of the time is spent on their waterfall and jumping from the bridge, which we find it quite boring (likewise they probably find us quite boring too). that however said, we met a super drop-dead gorgeous 16 year old croat waitress who looks like vivian hsu. a lot of good lighting is wasted when we are expected to meditate inside an islamic location, and by the time we went out of the house, it is already too dark. i think he probably talk for another half an hour about philosophy and it is a little tiring after the whole day for us though - we just feel like having the tour ending. there is also a mostar bridge that is quite famous, but we didn;t get good shots due to the poor weather with a drizzle, plus i didn't bring out my tripod for that evening. if given more time and better mood, i think this location would be superb for streets.
