Chilly Chilly

The Kinks couldn't have put it better: chilly chilly, its evening time... 

Autumn's been making me nostalgic, for some reason. Not only does this song make me think with an eternally warm, fuzzy smile of my time in London - I really did walk over Waterloo Bridge at sunset once or twice, one of my fondest memories of that amazing city being the particularly radiant August evening I passed across that dirty old river (must you keep rolling?) with my three closest friends - but I've been thinking of the autumns past. Perhaps its because this is the first Autumn in many years that hasn't brought a change of scene or new beginnings. Last October I moved to Bosnia, the year before that I set out as a graduate and walked into the welcoming arms of Front Line. The year before that, in 2009, I could hardly contain my excitement about moving to London, and for the four years before that I had at least been facing into new years and new apartments and new stages of college in Limerick. 

This year I'm simply settling into a place - this odd little country - that I already know, or if I'm more precise, continuing the process of slowly getting to know. Autumn doesn't seem to exist in the Balkans. Two weeks after I was sunbathing, swimming and coaxing out this year's very last little hint of a tan in Greece, we were cranking up the central heating, desperately searching for woolly scarves and shuddering against the cold when it came time to leave the office in the evening. It went from summer to winter almost overnight, and all of a sudden Kosovars were defrosting ice from their cars in the mornings and Pristina had become a city of woodsmoke and puffing chimneys. It's warmed up a little today, but it was jaw-achingly, toe-clenchingly cold earlier this week, dipping below zero at night and changing my wardrobe, appetite and weekend plans with alarming  upheaval. All of a sudden the cafés and bars I've favoured all summer, lovingly chosen for their outdoor terraces and air-conditioning, are out of bounds and rather useless, and I'm reacquainting myself with this new Pristina emerging for winter. 

But strangely, of all the places and feelings of newness I can associate with autumn, it's Sarajevo I felt homesick for this week. Six months on, I still find myself missing Bosnia and my life there. There was something indefinably cosy about it, some inherently familiar and comforting. Perhaps I didn't feel like that living there - maybe that's only a feeling that's possible in hindsight - but this week the familiar Sarajevo smell of woodsmoke, of indoor stoves, of the rich, fatty smell of qofta and the warm morning fug of bakeries which began to permeate the Pristina air (making me sadly aware that those weren't aromas unique to Sarajevo after all) brought on terrible pangs of nostalgia for my never-to-be-more-loved apartment, the pekara on the corner and the rattling, mouldy, woollen-layered tram ride to work. 

More than anything I wanted to go for a pint at the Police Bar, a place I hadn't thought about for months and months but which was possibly my second home last winter. We called it the Police Bar because it was near the police station - I think its real name was The Hunting Lodge, but the Bosnian translation of that was somehow too complicated to remember. The Police Bar was just around the corner from the office and was more of a cupboard than a pub - it was the downstairs front room of an apartment, with a skateboard-sized bar in one corner and space for six or eight people to squeeze around a table in another. If you arrived only to find that three or four policemen had arrived before you, then you just had to reverse out and go elsewhere; you very literally could not fit inside. But best of all it had an open fire, and a window which fugged up with condensation behind a heavy net curtain. The middle-aged couple who ran the bar - if you can call the act of serving some drinks to people who essentially took over their sitting room the job of running a bar - were sweethearts, greeting us with one-armed hugs and enthusiastic and unintelligible (to me) Bosnian. If you ordered wine the husband would usually throw on his coat and go to the corner shop to buy it; if everyone stuck to beer he would often head down to the shop regardless to buy some pretzels or crisps, which he would pour onto an oval silver platter and set on the table with a smile of tired satisfaction as if serving a Sunday roast. 

The couple would watch the evening news on the television and afterwards put on some Balkan power ballads which it seemed were appropriate listening for us "young people". They were sweet to us and sweet on each other; he would always stoop and kiss her goodbye if putting on his coat at eight o'clock to head downtown somewhere. She was strangely ageless but must have been in her late forties. She was a beautiful girl who was still living out past glories as she became increasingly middle-aged; she had immaculately highlighted bottle-blonde hair and wore an entirely mad pair of leopard-skin, spiky-heeled boots around the bar as if they were her bedroom slippers. But, you would get another squeeze and a hand on your shoulder as you and your friends struggled heroically to fit on your coats in the tiny space left for standing. We would stumble out onto a crystal night of ice and the shining darkness between the old, bullet-marked buildings, our breath proceeding out of the bar before us. The vents from the heating systems steaming majestically into the night, as a slippery trudge downtown to the next bar began. 

The Police Bar was magic. And I really miss Sarajevo. 

The Arrest of Mladic

I suppose it was quite inevitable that I would have to make some comment on this. I never planned on making this blog a political forum, I thought of it only as an extended travel diary - a sort of consolidated place which might form a more innovative improvement on sending tedious group emails. Maybe the frantic pace of news this year has kept me alert and opiniated, maybe it is simply that I've realised that this is a good place to raise awareness of some terrible things that have happened recently to people I knew. But it's also true that something as topical as the arrest of Ratko Mladic provides an interesting insight into one of the places I have been writing about, and for those of you who might have been interested on my musings on the subject, I feel that the large amount of press that this arrest has generated about Bosnia - a rare occurrence these days, now that both the international media and the internationally community itself is moving onto sexier, racier events and places - that some of this coverage might atone for the background information and the overall picture which I never really felt myself capable of providing.

So I felt it worthwhile to post an article which I found both powerful and moving today. It's written by one of the journalists who originally uncovered the existence of concentration camps in Northeastern Bosnia in 1992, exposing the details of ethnic cleansing internationally for the first time. "Ratko Mladic's arrest is a hollow victory in a country that refuses to apologise", it is entitled. It's not particularly long and I highly recommend reading it for anyone interested in the current state of affairs in Bosnia, because it is for me at least a response to my inner dismay that for all the extensive coverage of the arrest - the headlines, the reporters running back to the Balkans, the statements of praise from international dignitaries - none of it was really about Bosnia at all.

All the stories and the face-to-camera commentaries talked instead about Serbia: about it's EU candidacy, about its previous reluctance (now amended and forgiven) to arrest a man whose whereabouts was well known, about the implications for geo-political realignment and economic development in the region. None of the stories were about Bosnia, no one went and reported from Sarajevo. Glib statements that the survivors and the families of the victims of Srebrenica welcomed this news that "justice would finally be done" were left unsubstantiated. I really wished that I'd been back in Sarajevo last Thursday, to see and feel the reaction there. But my suspicions that there would be little celebrating were later confirmed by friends who mentioned the air of sadness, disappointment and anti-climax. It must have been a day for remembering - both in terms of the good memories of the individuals and the unbearable memories of what happened to them - and for the bitterness of futility.

Serbia and its politicians have been heaped with praise for doing something that they had the ability to do years ago. The timing alone strikes me as politically suspicious (Catherine Ashton's visit, Serbian state TV apologising for the propaganda it broadcast in the 1990s). The arrest has not been accompanied by the repeat of previous apologies or acknowledgements, only by Mladic and his supporters' insistence that he stands wrongly accused. Like Milosevic, he is in poor health and might potentially die before a trial is concluded. He won't be tried in Bosnia by Bosnian courts, prosecutors or judges. Even if found guilty, the trial is unlikely to provide information about the whereabouts of victims (or their remains) which are still missing, still buried in undiscovered mass graves. The arrest will make no difference to the fraught political situation within Bosnia, where those referred to as "the victims" of Sarajevo and Srebrenica generally feel that the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign was a success, resulting as it did in the Serbian-controlled Republika Srpska - one of Bosnia's federal entities, taking up about half of the country's territory - which shows no sign of wanting to share a state with those eternally-referenced "victims".

As Ed Vulliamy puts it in the article mentioned above, "the Republika Srpska makes no secret of its desire to accede to Serbia proper, or to make Bosnia such a dysfunctional state that it becomes pointless".

I specialised during my Masters in international law, particularly international criminal justice. Obviously I am pleased that this man has finally been arrested - and that unlike some others on the 'most wanted' list, that this problem wasn't solved with several bullets to the head, administered by the agents of a foreign country. I look forward to pondering the legal issues in his forthcoming extradition and the upcoming legal battle and inevitable delaying tactics. And I don't argue that this Vulliamy's article is an impartial or objective account of Bosnia today or of Mladic himself - far from it, really. But at least it bothers to stop take a look around Bosnia and see what the arrest means for this beautiful, troubled, tragic little country, and that's something that has been sorely lacking since last Thursday.

Last Sarajevo afternoons...

Bye bye Vuchko!

Travelling, Balkan-style

There are two ways to travel around the Former Yugoslavia. You can take a flight with a national airline through an airport in a third country, which remains startlingly expensive (remember what flights used to cost before the budget airline revolution?). Or you can travel overland, which is extremely cheap but requires vast reserves of time, patience and ingenuity. By necessity, that's how I travel.

I recently went for a visit home to Ireland. Flights out of Sarajevo itself cost between 400-500 Euro, involve a stop-over in Budapest, and an overnight stay in Dublin for both incoming and outgoing flights (the curse of living in Kerry). On the other hand, Aer Lingus have just started flights from Dublin to Dubrovnik which are much cheaper, require no change of planes and get into Dublin airport in time to make a train or flight to Killarney. As my flight left Dubrovnik on the Monday morning, I decided that I would use the opportunity to have myself a pleasant day of Adriatic sightseeing. So I booked a sobe (guesthouse) and bought a bus ticket from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik for the Sunday morning. How very pleasant and straightforward, no?

Except... a wild Saturday night got in the way. What can I say? This 'problem' of spontaneity and random adventures is the very reason I love Sarajevo so much. We started out in the former Olympic stadium watching our friend's ice hockey team win the Bosnian championships - it was shown live on television, I'll have you know - before going to a friend's house to watch the Bosnian football team beat Romania in a qualifying game for the European Cup. Within minutes of the game ending, it seemed that everyone who owned a car in Sarajevo had taken to the streets, and was parading around town beeping their horns. The city centre came to a literal standstill as traffic gridlocked and played a symphony of car horns. Following which we ran to Mash, a bar of pulsating trip-hop, sofas and "group" cocktails which come in a wine carafe with long straws so that you can race each other to the bottom of the drink. From there we had to run to Sloga, an old theatre turned into a nightclub where bands and DJs alternate throughout the night. Sloga's Hollywood-style tat and greased up Bosnian menfolk and fog of smoke and dirty beer all literally stink of Yugo-chic - and it's fantastic. Danced for hours. Except that I kept staying for "one more song", and then the clocks changed for spring, and when I left the nightclub after 4am I realised that it was in fact, well after 5am. And I had to get up at 8am.

Fast forward several hours of unconsciousness, and I gradually surfaced from sleep only to realise that my bus had left town two hours earlier. The only bus to Dubrovnik. Queue frantic stumbling around the apartment and panicked phone calls to friends who speak Bosnian and could call the non-English-speaking bus station for me to find a bus - any bus! - that would take me somewhere - anywhere! - remotely near Dubrovnik.

Twenty minutes after I woke up, I had left the apartment and was running up and down my street looking for a taxi to take me to the most far-flung bus station in the city (of course), where I managed to make the last bus out of town with only moments to spare. To be quite honest, in hindsight I'm amazed that I didn't forget my suitcase, wallet or passport.

It was only when I was safely installed on the bus, bouncing up and down rhythmically on my seat above the rear wheel, that I started to realise how unwell I felt. Last night's mixture of the potions and brews of three different bars and a house party would haunt me for the next five hours. The bus wound it's way along curved roads between hills, through gorges and over mountains. Oh it was beautiful, but oh did I curse the gods who made it impossible to build a straight road anywhere in the whole damn country. We stopped and started at every village in Eastern Bosnia - and picked up any number of people who just stood by the side of the road. This was not a coach service between cities but the closest thing Bosnia has to a public transport system. Most of the pickups only went as far as the next town, and all of them seemed to have to squeeze in and out of the only remaining seat beside me on the back wheel, with their shopping bags and boxes and children. And amidst all of this, I was fully sure that someone was going to take my suitcase out of the hold, even if only by accident. It was a long, long afternoon.

I finally ended up in Trebinje, a very small town in southeast Bosnia, just across the border and about 30km from Dubrovnik. Trebinje is surprisingly beautiful. Although inland, it's built entirely of white Adriatic stone and even in March had the mellow warmth of a Mediterranean evening. But it was 6pm on a Sunday in the off-season, and other than a few cafés everything was closed and dead. Something had possessed me before I left Sarajevo to look at the single page of the Lonely Planet that describes Trebinje and to make a mental note of the name of a single hotel. I took one look around the deserted streets and decided that there was no way I was going to walk around town looking for a guesthouse. Ten minutes later, a taxi had dropped me at the door and the young woman who single-handedly ran the whole hotel alone was checking me in, somewhat in shock that someone actually wanted to stay there, unannounced, on a Sunday night.

I was the only person in the hotel. A laminated list of prices was taped to the reception desk. For 30 Euro I had a clean, crisp double room with an en suite bathroom, a small plasma screen TV on the wall, and a large plateful of eggs, cheese and ham in the morning. On the other hand, special rates which were advertised as "The Daily Rest" cost only 20 Euro for a double room. What wonderful value for an afternoon in bed; the problem that I gleefully imagine is the difficulty in this small town of getting in and out of a hotel in daylight without being seen by prying eyes.

I decided to venture out and "see" Trebinje, seeing as how I had gone to all this trouble to get there, but it took all of 20 minutes to circumnavigate the whole town, all the while getting incredulous looks from the locals who were out strolling around in exactly the same manner I was. A new girl walking around town? By herself? A foreign girl? Who on earth is she and what is she doing here?? No one could understand why I, a solitary pizza-eater, was standing on their bridge admiring the sunset. Perhaps it wasn't the most orthodox way to have dinner.

I bought a slice of pizza from a hatch in the wall, got some of Bosnia's best snack food from a kiosk - pretzel sticks filled with peanut butter in the middle, they are genius - had the increasingly startled hotel lady make me a large mug of Bosnian-style coffee, and then at 8pm got into my hotel bed, watched the History Channel - the only English-language channel on my plasma screen - and finally cured my hangover.

I was cheered by the sheer absurdity of watching, in these ridiculous circumstances, the overblown pomposity of a documentary about The Blitz ("Facing everything that Hitler could unleash upon them, the British airforce was Fearless. Organised. Airborne - and Ready").

Until I saw the next documentary, a literal history of torture. Each episode examined a particular historic method of torture, running experiments and reenactments on animal carcasses and then bringing in doctors or scientists to examine the damage and explain in medical terms how the torture worked. Lucky me, I caught an episode about the Rack, which used a pig's leg to demonstrate the effectiveness of the process. The doctor in question was absolutely amazed at how - contrary to all expectations - the crack heard when tightening the rack hadn't in fact snapped the ligaments but only broken the bone - a femur. I was - and still am - profoundly disturbed by this program, which is the reason that I'm writing about it. I watched, dumbstruck, until I eventually managed to snap myself out of my trance of horror and change the channel. I didn't even want the station to take the credit for high ratings for this show. The profound irony of airing this in - of all places in the world - Bosnia defies belief, and elevates this example of alarmingly bad taste to a position where it becomes downright shameful.

Next morning Keko came to pick me up and take me to the airport. Keko's number was given to me by a colleague who had made a similar detour to Trebinje some months back. He drives a silver GTI Volkeswagen Golf, specially modified so that he can drive using only his hands. Keko does not have the use of his legs; as he told me along the way, he had a motorcycle accident a few years back, and now makes a living driving people around. He's not a taxi, he told me repeatedly. "I only drive my friends. Friends like you" he said with a wink. Keko's quite the dude - he's probably about 30 and told me he used to be a DJ, and I imagine he's a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the ladies.

He doesn't have much English and I don't have much Bosnian, but we had the chats regardless. I tried to tell him the story of how I had ended up in Trebinje, because I had too many parties on Saturday night. "Oh, me too!" he interrupted. "I had very hard party Saturday night. I got out at 6 in the morning!" Oh, so Trebinje has good parties then? "No, not really", he shrugged, shaking his head. Well, full marks for effort regardless then?!

I ask him about being a DJ. He used to like playing "different stuff, not the Balkan stuff. I like this," he says pointing to his car stereo. "Something different for club, you know?" I like it too - mellow, funked-up jazz mixed with some trip-hop. I ask him who is the musician or DJ. "No no! This is mix!" Oh. Oh right then. I knew that. "But this not for club!" He looks at me wildly, amused because I'm a total amateur. "This is too quiet. I make it better for parties". Well, of course you do.

Keko has friends, lots of friends. "I have many friends in Dubrovnik, and even in Sarajevo. Maybe I'll come there in August. For parties. Sarajevo has good parties."

"Sarajevo does have good parties," I say. He nods sagely. "Yes. You like Sarajevo?" I do. "Well, maybe I'll see you in August. I'll come with some friends. This is your number for Sarajevo?" He gestures to his mobile phone. It is. "You have apartment in Sarajevo?"

I'm amused with where this conversation is going. "I do," I say, "But I think you would have a problem there because I have many stairs". He says "Yes!" and looks delighted. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what 'stairs' means.

Just past the Croatian border we're stopped by plainclothes police at an informal roadblock. Their detailed questions about where we are from, where we are going and what we do make it clear that this is not a routine check. My guess is they're looking for someone specific, probably following a tip off. Afterwards I ask Keko if this is normal. He shrugs. "No. But this road is for Montenegro. You see Montenegro? It's over there." So it is; we're high on a mountain road, with a magnificent view of the coast, and those hills just over there are another country. "After Montenegro is Albania," Keko shrugs, "and there are bad people there". Hello, organised crime. Well, it wouldn't be a proper road trip without a few of the best Balkan clichés along the way.

When Keko finally drops me off at the airport he wishes me Sretan Put and asks if I'm on Facebook. I smile and say that I am but it's very hard to find me. He laughs uproariously, beams a big Balkan smile, shakes my hand and zooms off.

Inside, the airport is deserted. I have started to panic that after all of this I've come on the wrong day, before eventually seeing one little check-in desk lit up in a far corner. The girl tells me that only 15 people will be on the flight - it's Aer Lingus' very first flight out of Croatia since October last year; the schedule has just restarted for summer. Sitting at the gate, I watch the Irish brigade shuffle off the incoming flight. The word 'shuffle' is not an exaggeration: 80% are of a certain age and are undoubtedly pilgrims going to Međugorje. Many are using walking sticks, and there is more than one pair of crutches on the plane. Međugorje is, in fact, in Bosnia, and I've talked to people before about what a shame it is that Bosnia gets absolutely no benefit from it. Almost all pilgrims fly into Croatia, stay in Croatia, pay in Euro or Croatian Kuna, and probably don't even realise they've entered another country when going to the shrine on day trips. It's a heartbreaking waste of potential for Bosnia.

As I enter the plane I see those homely, freckled Irish faces wearing those blue-green uniforms, which is the point at which every Irish person begins to feel like they're almost home. My assigned seat - of course - is in the very back row of seats, so I'd only walked halfway through the plane before I asked an air hostess with a smile if I won't cause too much trouble by sitting somewhere closer. She laughed and told me it's no problem.

"To be honest though," she confided, "We're surprised there are even 15 of you flying with us today. We didn't think there'd be anyone". I try to surpress my smile - this might be the first direct flight to Ireland out of the entire Balkan region in six months, but it's hardly difficult to get here. How isolated and remote a place - how different a world - does she think this can be, after all?

The air hostess watched me for a moment, and then continued confidentially, "Do you mind me asking? But.... how exactly did you get here anyway?"

Oh, if only she knew.

Spring

It has sprung.

Although it was snowing in Sarajevo last week, and it wouldn't surprise me if it would do so again next week, the past few days it's been 16 or 19 degrees, sunny, blue-skied and winter is a distant memory. While usually only half of Sarajevo is out drinking coffee and wandering around during the afternoons, the past few days everyone has been out blocking the pavements, acting like they're on holidays in a new city, buying ice cream for the children, and showing off new sunglasses (you can get Ray Bans in the market for about seven euro here - I'll be stocking up before I ever come home).

It's been quite lovely.

A group of us spent yesterday hiking up the hills outside of town to visit out favourite mountain-top hut, where Dragan serves up ustipči doughnuts with sour cream, sausages, rakia and beer. I think everyone in Sarajevo seems to know of Dragan; from his ramshackle hut constructed from sheets of plywood and corrugated iron, he has earned a reputation as a legendary host. A sticker on the window inside states that "this is the best place in Sarajevo", and I don't really doubt it. Yesterday however it was too hot for the wood stove inside, so we sat outside in the sunshine playing with the dogs who belong to Dragan and other hikers, staying far longer than planned and really drinking more than we should considering that we had to walk back down the mountain again.

Tuesday was International Women's Day - you might think that's just an excuse for me to give you a human rights-themed lecture, except that its a serious occasion here (as in most post-Soviet and post-Socialist countries), where it functions as a sort of Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Little Christmas all rolled into one.

Sarajevo in newborn sunshine on Women's Day was lovely. Each and every street corner had an over-coated man selling red roses and carnations, and people buy flowers and chocolate not only for their female loved ones but also their colleagues. Businessmen in suits carried armfuls of bouquets around the city, and teenagers in scruffy runners trailed long-stemmed roses from their backpacks. Girls walked around with flowers giggling. The restaurants and cafes were full of women either being taken out to lunch by someone male, or having lunch out with groups of other women.

In fact it's such a special day that at 10am we got an email telling us that all the Organisation's female staff could leave after lunch. Not all the staff - just the female staff. How an international organisation gets away with that kind of discrimination, even on such a pleasant and generous basis, is entirely beyond me. I imagine it would trigger strikes and court cases in Ireland. But hey, I wasn't complaining about this gender-sensitive example of positive discrimination! The men didn't even seem particularly displeased either.... but that was because, as I suspected, they merely waited until 3pm and then went off home themselves. And because they had plenty of opportunity for remarking that this was most likely the decision of senior management so that the women would go home and cook for their menfolk on this most auspicious of days. How original. How we rolled our eyes.

So, it ended up that I too was one of those women having a boozy lunch. Three lady friends and I went for a meal which involved several glasses of wine, and spent most of the afternoon swapping inappropriate stories related to body hair, bras and much worse. Well, indulging in feminine clichés was entirely appropriate for the day that was in it, no?

Luckily for everyone concerned, Women's Day by coincidence was also Pancake/Shrove/Fat Tuesday, so with great assistance from a fellow Irish pancake-obsessed ex-pat, I hosted what I think I can presume was Sarajevo's only pancake party. Pancake extravaganza ensued: three different types of batter (crepe, fluffy, and a posh version involving mascarpone), a entire block of butter, three different types of jam, four varieties of fruit, two types of syrup, cheese, whipped cream, and a very large jar of nutella, amongst many other goodies.

Five days later, I'm literally still digesting it.

Skijati, skijati

Spent last weekend away skiing. A group of friends (we were 17 people at one point on Saturday night) rented a cabin on Jahorina, a mountain near Sarajevo which was a competition venue when the city hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984, and which somehow managed to avoid being laid with landmines during the war.

It's an unseasonably mild winter this year and the snow was terrible - some of the main lifts are closed because the mountain is reverting to spring-time brown muck - but we skied regardless and although I'm by no means a good skier, I feel myself making a huge amount of progress since about a month ago when I skied for the first time in four years. And that's satisfying enough for me.

Bad snow is a disaster for beginners; terrible patches appear which are either smooth ice or else actually smooth rock. Imagine what happens on ice or rock: skis cant turn, can't grip, can't slow down. Normally you can dig the edge of your ski into the snow and/or turn them parallel to the slope to slow down or stop - but on ice or rock, the ski just falls out from underneath you. More or less the same rules apply as when driving a car on ice: no brakes, no gears, no steering allowed. Hold your breath and hope for the best.

So I fell. A lot. Not a nice soft thump into snowdrifts, which you normally don't even feel, but fell on ice and rock.

This weekend wasn't too bad: I had lots more adventures my last time up Jahorina two weeks' previously, when I more or less fell over the side of a little cliff. We were chugging along a track cut along the side of a hill, perfect for beginners as you can glide along and practice turns. Everything was going great, except suddenly I was going too fast and I couldn't stop, couldn't slow and couldn't turn. And instead of veering right (into the hill and snowbanks, thereby braking) I went left, where there was a perpendicular drop of maybe 10 feet - a mini cliff - at the bottom of which were big trees. Two people were standing at the side of the drop and I very nearly knocked them off before me in a good imitation of human bowling. Instead I found the ability to start screaming IZVINITE!!!!!!!!!! (pretty impressed with myself I managed to scream in panic in Bosnian, I must say), they moved aside, and I went clean over the side of the cliff in between the two of them.

I mean, I was fine. I hung on to the top, and I was cushioned by a cloud of powdery snow which clung to the side of the hill. I even managed not to drop my skis or poles into the abyss. But helpful bystanders had serious trouble digging me out, my leg and ski were twisted painfully underneath me, and when I tried to help them pull me up by kicking and stretching, I only managed to dig myself further into the powder - which couldn't support my weight - and slip further down the drop. Anyway, it was fine in the end. A nice random man eventually pulled me out, and really I could see the funny side to it - the indignity, the inelegance of the whole thing. But of course I had just thrown myself off the edge of a cliff, and that feeling of helplessness is terrifying. So by the time they got me back up I was laughing my head off and crying hysterically at the same time.

I got off the slopes after that; it was nearing the end of the afternoon and I figured I had pushed my luck enough for one day. Unfortunately, I was at a different part of the mountain from our starting point and it was too far for me to walk back (walking in ski boots is a slow form of torture). So, I let the others ski off to finish out the afternoon, and I went out to the road and simply started looking for someone with a car who would give me a lift.

After a few false starts, I ended up making friends with Dvor. When I say I made friends with him, of course I mean that I looked for an unaccompanied - and hence vulnerable - driver, walked over and started batting my poor, defrosted, worn-out eyelashes. Dvor was burly and possibly about 30, with the inconclusive hair colour shared by most Bosnian men and cheeks flushed by broken capillaries. He had very little English and I have very little Bosnian, but we muddled on with a conversation regardless. I guessed I had to make some kind of payment for my lift, after all.

Dvor was interested to hear I was from Ireland - he seemed to think it was a big country - but I put my foot in it by asking casually if he was Bosnian. The mood in the car suddenly changed dramatically. Ne, he replied. No, no, no. Ne Bosanski. Ne. Shaking his head and scowling. Republika Srpska. Meaning - he was Bosnian Serb. And very emphatically not Bosniak. Oh right then.

Regardless of this faux pas, not long after he had driven off and was picking up speed - in other words once it was too late for me to jump out - he started asking me whether I drank rakia (homemade brandy) and whether I had a boyfriend. I said why yes, of course (by helpful coincidence my friend Eoin had just called my mobile) and when Dvor didn't believe me, I did what any girl in my situation would do. I smiled my best imitation of coquetry, shrugged flirtatiously, and politely but firmly told him that in fact I had two boyfriends (there were indeed two guys in the group that day). Well, Dvor did what any wounded male ego can do in such a situation: he shrugged, laughed and said, hey - you need three boyfriends minimum!

I think he was disappointed I didn't want a lift all the way back to Sarajevo.

Time passes...

Time does indeed pass. Work is busy, social life is busier. People are leaving and going away parties are organised. A weekend away skiing. Papers to write. A conference in work. I've started monitoring a war crimes trial. My mother comes to visit this week. Trying to catch up with people via email but its proving difficult.

I spent a few days in London last week, more of a brief Special Guest Appearance rather than anything more substantial. When I've been away I forget how much I love that amazing city, so that when I get the chance to return I'm so devastated to realise as of new that I don't live there any more, that I never really fully enjoy the time I get to spend there. So it was this time; I had frequented some of my old haunts, caught up with friends and ate a hell of a lot of the kind of ethnic food that doesn't exist in Bosnia.

Going away from Sarajevo for a few days is a funny experience. After a few weeks here, you forget your first impressions. I spent my first month here tip-toeing around and thinking of all the terrible things that had happened here and the awful memories that everyone must carry around. But of course, we're all human and get on the course of things, and after a while that sensation of history just... wears off. You stop noticing the bullet marks on the concrete, stop carefully circling around the Sarajevo roses, and stop referring to the war in hushed whispers. You stop noticing the shabbiness - Bosnia actually differs little in this aspect from the other parts of Eastern Europe I've seen. The tower blocks here look identical to those which cover most of Poland, except that Poland doesn't have the excuse of a recent war or failed economy for its drab concrete. This is just what socialist housing looks like.

Not a socialist example, but a hauntingly ruined Austro-Hungarian Mansion

The brand new Parliament building - restored with international donor funding - seen through a nearby wasteland of concrete and weeds

Which is why seeing both London and Sarajevo in the course of one day was fairly depressing. It's difficult to fail to notice the patched-up walls and uneven pavements and ancient cars (the mid-80s VW Golfs are my favourite) which are so ubiquitous in Bosnia, when you've only just passed through Kensington a few hours before. In fairness, the sensation had worn off and was all forgotten by the time I woke up in Sarajevo the following morning, but it was interesting to see the city with new eyes again. Its funny what you also forget of the rest of the world when you've been here for a while - London stunned me because everyone on the street was so stylish; I had forgotten what it felt like to be surrounded by Hipsters. And how it felt not to be surrounded by people speaking a language you don't understand. And to be able to get any kind of food imaginable at a moment's notice. I think I had just forgotten sushi in general. Sigh.

The usual mix of beautifully landscaped street and war-scarred building

Ireland v Bosnia

Here's an interesting link a friend sent me today: If it Were My Home, which compares your country of choice to another in terms of living standards, environmentalism and size, amongst other things. Sounds a bit dry when I describe it like that, but actually it's pretty cool, especially if like myself you've wandered to a few different countries and like to ponder and consider the differences to the Auld Sod.

I haven't blogged here about the utter implosion of the Irish government and economic situation lately, but trust me when I say I've been following it avidly and spewing my disgust, usually at coffee time, to the other Irish working at the Organisation. Except the truth is, things don't really seem all that bad when you pull up Ireland vs Bosnia. Maybe a little perspective is good for all of us.

It turns out that "If Bosnia and Herzegovina was my home instead of Ireland", I would have 3.3 times more chance of being unemployed, would make 85% less money, and have a 78% higher chance of dying in infancy. Then again, I'd also be using 85% less oil and 68% less electricity. Which makes little sense to me given that the air quality in Sarajevo isn't always it's greatest charm. And while I'd be spending 80.17% less money on health care if I was Bosnian, rumours about the hospitals here make me think I'd prefer to take my chances on the VHI.

That 12% unemployment rate back home doesn't look quite so drastic from this point of view.

As for perspectives, it's nothing new to say that it made me realise how tiny Ireland is... except it turns out, not that tiny at all by Bosnian standards. The only thing this has put in perspective is how ridiculous it is that a drive across Bosnia takes hours and hours longer than it would to whizz from Dublin to Cork. So I'll leave the condition of the roads here up to your imagination.

The Corner Shop

At the bottom of my street, the road widens into triangle centred around a white marble fountain. Inscribed with Arabic script, it contains several water taps where worshippers can wash their hands on the way to the mosque. One side of the triangle is made up of a tram stop and kiosks. The other sides are lined with small shops and cafés - a couple of bakeries, a guesthouse, the nearest branch of the ubiquitous Croatian supermarket Konzum, and three small grocery stores. They're not all located on corners, but more or less they're what I would recognise as corner shops: one or two are no larger than glorified cupboards. They sell some bits and pieces of basic necessities, but nothing special. Most stay open either very late or else never close at all, and mostly they're useful for late night booze runs when house parties are threatening to collapse from various shortages of beer or cigarettes.

The guys who run two of the dingiest, darkest, miserable concrete box-like shops in Sarajevo are the epitome of what the rest of the world generally considers to be the stereotypical Balkan male. Behold, how he stands scowling at the night from the shop's low door, a step or two below the level of the street, lovingly backlit by a fluorescent tube. Burly, dressed in jeans cut square like it's still the '80s and a black leather jacket - either a ribbed wool cap pulled down over his forehead or a vaguely colourless crop of hair - he blocks the door with his arms crossed and generally dares you to enter and buy something. A few cronies usually stand nearby, all equally brusque, scowling, and dressed like it's 1992. They watch the night and the city and the passing traffic and, I have no doubt, curse most of it.

Generally I can't tell any of the guys who run these two shops apart. I get the impression that the same two or three guys are there all the time, no matter what hour of the day or night - no wonder they're grumpy - but for all I know there's a small army of curt men, probably all related to each other, who take various turns at spending their Friday nights cursing the city from their vantage point near the tram stop.

Needless to say, I prefer the one shop on the other side of the street. For a start it's above ground level, lifted somehow above the snow and slush. It looks less like a bachelor's lair and more like a functioning shop - it's even been swept out and cleaned somewhat recently, which I attribute to the woman who works there. Yes, a woman; no wonder I feel basically safer taking my business there. A large metal table outside the door holds reasonably fresh fruit and veg. If she sees me lingering outside to look the produce over, she'll come bringing paper bags and wrap up whatever I point out to her with a faltering ovaj, ovo - toi (which translates as something along the lines of "that one - no, this one! Or - maybe that one after all"). She smiles wearily back at me like an exhausted housewife. In contrast to the other shops, I also know for sure that it's always the same one guy working there. He appears to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. He's there on my way to work in the morning, and he's there when I come back at night. He speaks German and usually insists on saying Guten Tag to me, seeming somehow offended that I don't reply auf Deutsch. (The second spoken language in Bosnia is probably an even split between German and English - huge numbers of Bosnians went to Germany during the war and most people still have family there today).

The reason I write about this, is because this man and this woman seem to me to sum up entirely the attitude of the Bosnians you cross paths with around Sarajevo. A smile isn't enough to initially cross the barricades, and unlike many countries where even one or two words of the local language is enough to get a good reaction, you have to go to greater lengths here to prove yourself. Mostly you just have to be a regular customer. I'm not sure if it's a matter of winning someone's trust or respect. To be honest, I think partially it's just that they don't particularly see the point in bothering to be friendly if they've never seen you before.

And with working conditions appearing to be what they are - those long hours, the undoubtedly tiny wages, the shaved profit margin, the sheer tedium of it all - I can't say I blame them. It's not that there's a terrific rudeness, just that very often no one's in a particularly good mood, and there's little or no incentive to pretend otherwise. And so explains the genesis of the local assumption that bad service is just the norm around here.

Which is why it's quite nice when you begin to get a friendly greeting when you pop in. After all, it's the same people working everywhere all the time, so it only takes a matter of days before they'll start to recognise you as the foreign girl who doesn't speak a word of Bosnian but will try to say hello anyway. The lady at the kiosk from whom I buy a tram ticket whenever I sleep late and don't have time to walk to work, for instance, started to smile at me once I'd slept in three days in a row, and with a wry smile showed me the weekly ticket that would be better value for me to buy. The girls in the café near the office know my coffee order and acknowledge it with a tired smile and a nod before bringing it over. Personally I think the real root of perceived unfriendliness here is not rudeness but exhaustion. Everyone just always seems so bored, and so tired.

Yesterday I tramped into the corner shop out of the snow, laden down with heavy grocery bags which I was carrying from the bigger, better-stocked supermarket down the other end of the old town. It's easier to get heavier things like wine or sparkling water in a shop closer to home, and I like giving smaller businesses some trade. As usual, we had our little exchange of pleasantries - I often end up wishing them good morning when it's evening time or stuttering nema veze ("no worries") instead of samo malo ("hang on a second") while fumbling for change.

As usual, he asked me if I could speak German. It seems he keeps hoping I'll eventually change my mind on this matter overnight. Lots of gesturing and wiggling shoulders. Ich spreke kein Deutsch! They must have been in a more talkative mood than usual, and with the lack of German they made the only logical conclusion - "Iz Amerikanska?". This one I understood - "Ne, ne. Iz Irska". No, no. Irish.

What a the reaction! IRSKA! Great excitement. "Dublin!" I tried to gesture no, not Dublin, but it went unnoticed, because they knew Ireland all right. "Irska! Dublin! - Eurovisia!"

Well, it made me laugh. Eurovision. Bosnians apparently love Eurovision. I hope I'm still here in May so I get to join in the excitement. I'm not exactly sure how it works in a country so desperately divided on ethnic, federal and political lines, but clearly getting to compete against the neighbours whilst showcasing your own talents on a larger, aspirational European level is popular down here. So he knew Ireland because after all, we still have a good reputation left in the one sphere that none of us remembered to celebrate: cheesy Euro-pop song competitions. The really sad part of course is that the great successful run of ballads which he was referring to lasted from 1992 to about 1996; right when the crisis in the Former Yugoslavia was at it's worst. Later in the conversation he told me he used to live in Frankfurt, so I guess he used to vote for the Eurovision from Germany, but it seemed a poignant memory: his only associations of Ireland's good times being linked to Bosnia's lowest moments.

So my welcome has evolved from gloomy scowl, to hesitant scepticism, to the vague hints of a smile when I come through the door. At least - unlike across the street - they don't look exactly displeased when I come in. And I call that progress.

January Blues

It only recently occurred to me that I hadn't yet written a single word here in 2011. It's already my third week back in the funny little land of BiH, and time is slipping nicely by.

If it hasn't occurred to me to write here, it's probably - sadly - because there isn't much to report. I have a reasonably moderate case of the January Blues - crippling lack of money (even by Bosnian standards), debt (oh that unpaid gas bill!), horrible weather (I've yet to see any of the hills surrounding the city this week with fog), general apathy (my chances of ever seeing gainful employment seem to shrink by the day, they're about to FAIL to vote out the government back home - yet again - and I can't get my hair to behave the way I want it to. All pressing issues of our times, you'll agree).

Then again, a self-declared period of austerity, sobriety and seclusion does have it's benefits. It's good for the health (no public transport for me, I'm powered by foot), good for the figure (soup is more or less all I can afford to eat), good for my cultural aspirations (two books down so far), and good for my pop culture references (making January Oscar season for movies is genius).

Last weekend, thanks to the unseasonably mild weather, we also managed to make it up the mountain for a hike. Heavy snow is finally forecast for later in the week: bring it on, I'm looking forward to some skiing!

The Great Migration

After three days of obsessively and feverishly checking, rechecking and monitoring the status of airports, flight schedules, airline information and train schedules across Europe, I'm shortly heading to Sarajevo's infamous little airport to begin The Great Trek Home of 2010. Like some others two thousand years ago, we're makign a laborious and hazardous journey from the East in search of a Christmas miracle: fully-functioning flight connections.

We commented yesterday that in the same way that Irish people still talk about "The Long, Hot Summer of 95" (ah, those were the glory days), we'll probably still remember The Christmas Chaos of 2010 for some time to come. I'm scheduled to leave Sarajevo at 3.05pm this afternoon, and supposed - in theory - to arrive in Kerry some time after 2.00pm tomorrow. It remains to be seen how on earth that'll ever work out.

In the meantime, Happy Christmas to one and all; I hope that your evenings will be boozy, your family not bickering, your presents wrapped with a big red bow, your mistletoe be occupied, and that your own Great Trek Home be not so great, and not so much of a trek at all. See you all on the other side of 2011.

(In other news, Sarajevo's Eternal Flame has finally been relit. Perhaps there is hope for a brighter and warmer new year after all).

Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to go shopping

A new shopping centre opened this weekend just next to our office, so we went for an expedition at lunchtime today. I have mixed feelings. Yes it's beautiful, shiny, new and convenient. Of course I am going to go there all the time. But.... I know this is going to be an entirely predictable, middle-class ethics rant, but please, humour me.

I mean, some of the stuff in there is just fantastic. Clothes shops, electronics shops, pharmacy, all within reach of your lunchbreak. No longer do I have to trek through the snow, possibly visit two or three different shops and then carry heavy shopping bags home; now there's a really big, really attractive supermarket in the basement. If you're used to Bosnian corner shops run by grumpy old men, or of walking half a mile to get to a big supermarket before paying for a taxi home with your bags, this is a big deal. My word, it was like the first time I ever walked into Marks and Spencers Foodhall. Granite counters, varnished pine and recessed lighting! Imported wine! A take-out deli! Low and behold, untold and unknown exotica like blue cheese and - oh, wait for it - PORK! Ham, sausage, bacon! There are very few things I miss, living in a majority-Muslim city, but pork is - surprisingly - one of them.

And best of all, the shopping centre also has places to eat over there. Anyone who knew me in Dublin will know how often I b*tched about places like Dundrum Town Centre exploiting a captive market with corporate coffee chains charging extortionate prices. Today I threw off all of my principles and eagerly embraced a foodhall. Our office has only two cafés; any kind of extended choice at lunchtime is eagerly welcome.

So yeah, the shopping centre's great. But on the other hand... I walked inside, we looked around, and I thought, just like that, I'm right back in Dublin. Why do shopping centres in any and every part of the world look exactly the same? It's so... depressing.

Today it was absolute bedlam in there, you could hardly walk around for the crowds... but none of the shops were busy. The whole of Sarajevo had gone there for a walk and a look around. But no one has any money to go shopping. Most people didn't even go into the shops and pick things up and look at them. They just looked in the windows and then strolled away. The local joke is that shopping centres here need to have as many cafés as shops, because no one ever buys anything but everyone goes out for coffee.

I've written before about how there's at least a 40% unemployment rate here. Every weekday afternoon, the city centre is heaving with pedestrians, while every seat in every café is occupied by young people slowly smoking, sitting for hours with empty coffee cups before them. Today, all those people left the streets and came to the new shopping centre instead. Yes, the weather's miserable so it makes sense, and everyone wants something new to see. And going by the deserted halls of other shopping centres, I'm pretty certain that in a few days they'll all go back to strolling on the streets and drinking cheaper coffee elsewhere.

But today there was something so grim about everyone sitting around the new cafés in the shopping centre, really delighted with themselves and enjoying a day out. It reminded me of a stressful day in an Irish - American - British - Spanish - anywhere - mall, queueing, getting run over by parents with buggies, getting shouldered by people who couldn't be bothered making space for you as they passed. Ferhazdija and the old town with its pedestrianised streets and alleys are so neighbourly when everyone's out walking, the youth checking each other out, the grandparents with little kids, the middle-aged looking on, disapproving. Because they're all there every day, and most likely all do know each other. That atmosphere was dead in the shopping centre.

And yes, I know exactly that I sound patronising; coming over here and working for an international organisation and begrudging Sarajevo for getting on with what every other country deems progress. Yes, I know, I wasn't here during the war when all of this must have been an unimaginable dream. I don't begrudge it to them in the slightest, but hear me out.

During the Irish boom (oh, back in the day!), almost overnight the whole country was suddenly filled with identikit housing estates, shitty cardboard-box apartment complexes, and vast noisy shopping centres on new motorways around the cities. Very little public transport, just traffic jams outside. Every little town got a big Tesco supermarket, built of pre-fabricated glass, sitting in the middle of acres of parking. Meanwhile town centres (old, unplanned, poky, lacking parking, but hence quirky, charming and distinctively Irish) withered, while locally-owned businesses were replaced with branches of Euro2 and Eastern European food shops. And everyone was so excited about it, and so proud of it. And now where are we?

I find all that as convenient as anyone else - I remember very well having to drive an hour to Cork to do any kind of shopping for clothes, Christmas, birthdays - but I find it deeply miserable that Irish families now take their kids for a day out to shopping centres on Sunday . I totally avoid those places at the weekends because they're full of screaming, tired kids and parents who'll ruthlessly run you down with baby buggies. Actually I avoid them in general, I'd prefer to just get the bus into the city centre and soak it all up. And I know that not everyone can do that, or has the time and energy to do that. I just still don't see this as a trend to be glorified.

I just don't think of shopping centres as progress, so why on earth does Sarajevo need four of them when no one can afford to buy anything there? It can't possibly provide that much employment or income, I don't see this as marking an economic change. Please prove me wrong if you have figures that show otherwise, but the fact that this new centre is located beside two multi-story buildings filled with international organisations and multinational financial firms suggests that this new venture may not be entirely targeting the locals for it's clientèle. Apparently this new centre's been built by an American consortium; the last centre to open last year is owned by a group referred to locally - mysteriously - as "the Arabs".

There's something really quite tragic in imagining Sarajevo deserted because everyone's out in the suburbs.

Ugh. And the worst is I'm almost disgusted with myself in advance because I know I'll be making use of it all the time...

Snijeg!

SNOW!

I can't help it, I get excited about snow. I'm Irish: I was reared on a reality where three inches of snow meant school was cancelled and you were officially given permission to stay wrapped up in a warm bed listening to the muffled silence outside for as long as you liked before spending the rest of the day frolicking like a toddler.

The snow arrived while I was in Zenica at a conference organised by one of the field offices. To give you an idea of how bizarre the Bosnian climate is, it was 18 degrees Celsius when we arrived at 10am; when we left at 4pm, it was 0 degrees with a raging blizzard and psychedelic purple lightening. It was a fun drive back to Sarajevo.

Here are some photos of the vantage point from my window tonight, as I sit here wrapped up on my sofa in a duvet, drinking tea, and dreaming of snowmen tomorrow.

Eternal Flame

On Mar

šala Tita, one of the main arteries running through the city centre, outside the fading bulk of an Austrian imperial mansion - previously the city's grandest hotel, once a makeshift Nazi prison during the wartime occupation of the Balkans, now a government ministry of some kind - sits Sarajevo's eternal flame.

It's not hugely ostentatious. An alcove built into the building's porch is carved with names in that squared, art deco font universally used on Soviet memorials; the alcove curves around a small green metal laurel wreath on the pavement, which contains a flame like a small campfire.

The flame commemorates those who died during World War II; specifically those who fought as partisans against the Nazis for the liberation of Yugoslavia. Not that anyone really talk about it in that context any more, of course; the partisans simply fought against tyranny in the name of freedom. Best not to mention the politics that surrounds the memory of that hard-won state. Somehow, in general, the Yugoslavian resistance manages to be remembered as the fight for the freedom of its' constituent peoples, even though those peoples many years later started killing each other so brutally.

On 28 November - Bosnia and Herzegovina's National Day, the day in 1943 that Yugoslavia declared its modern boundaries, although the occupation lasted into 1945 - the country's three presidents laid wreaths in memory of those partisans before the flame. Two days later, on the 30th, the flame went out. It's still out. Eternal no more.

Nothing I've seen here so far has for me summed up so perfectly the state of this small little country. The eternal flame sits to the side of a wide pedestrian area, where the unemployed and disenfranchised youth of the city walk aimlessly up and down the long, straight Ferhadija all evening and afternoon, gossiping and checking out the other unemployed and disenfranchised youth. The odd tourist poses for a picture in front of the flame, girls approach it to bend elegantly over their high-heeled boots and light their cigarettes, and the beggars stand around it warming their hands. Otherwise, no one takes any notice of it at all. So short, unceremonial and unattended was the wreath-laying on the 28th that a friend who lives directly across the street didn't notice anything going on outside.

And now the flame's gone out. A few days afterwards someone took away all the wreaths, and since then it's just been sitting there, unlit. The thing that strikes me is that no one seems to care. The internationals and the ex-pats are appalled: chatting about it at the Organization meets with small gasps of shock and shaken heads at this terrible faux pas, this symbolic gesture of neglect and disfunction. But there's been nothing about it in the press (or at least in the English-language consolidation of the press that we read, which usually reports almost exclusively on issues of governance, reconciliation and the international community). There's been no official explanation of whether it's due to a fault, or a dispute with the gas company, or for maintenance work, or whether it'll be relit at all. It's just gone out, one more thing that doesn't work properly - neglected, faulty, disparaged, disassociated - in a country which I've heard described a lot more than once since I got here as a failed state.

That image of beggars warming their hands around the flame, of teenagers indifferently using a memorial to light their cigarettes, stays with me. It seems a natural progression to the abandoned metal bracket on the pavement, no longer symbolic of anything.

So much for the memory of the fallen partisans; so much for all that shared history before 1991; so much for violence which had at least a common purpose; so much for commemorating anything that doesn't reflect your own ethnic group's victimhood.

Just another day in the Former Yugoslavia.

(Wish I could take credit for them but the photos are courtesy of Blaseur and Maciej Dakowicz)

Saturday afternoon, Sarajevo

Only 5pm but it's already been dark for what feels like hours. Winter has arrived: this week it snowed, wet damp sleet that only stuck around on the hills around the city. All of a sudden it feels a little alpine. When not snowing, the weather has that bone-chilling dampness that endures for months, unshakable and ancestral. I've realised this week my winter boots are not water proof. Some readjustment of plans for the months ahead may be necessary.

As always happens when you move to a new place, after an initial couple of slow-burning weeks of introduction, all of a sudden I've been very busy, and I have no real idea of how or when this started. One day I'm spending the evenings at home alone - using them to get through all the novels I brought with me - and the next, I haven't been home in a week. I've never really understood how this process happens, but it's been the same almost down to the day and the hour in every place I've lived so far.

Anyway, you'll all be relieved (!) to hear that I've found myself a social life. In trying to describe the big picture and the big thoughts that I have about it, I forget to fill you in - dear reader, whomsoever you may be - on the starting details. The Organisation is a very sociable place to work. The majority of my colleagues - i.e. within my own office - are young and good humoured, and within the Organisation itself there must be about 15 interns in addition to a collection of junior officers and temporary consultants. Of this group, most haven't been here longer than a year, mostly they socialise together, and in terms of demographics all are like myself: young, unattached (legally speaking, at least) and not taking anything too seriously other than the mythical quest in search of a permanent contract. The long and short of it was that when I arrived I was handed a ready-made group of friends, all of whom are more or less on the same page as myself.

So the dramatic reduction in blogging the last week or two has been more or less thanks to a resumption of social duties. I suppose I never could have kept that initial frantic pace sustainable. I give you the last week, as an example.

Last weekend I spent away in Korčula, an island on the Croatian coast, on a road trip with as many people as we could fit in one rental car. It's not really the best time of year to spend on the coast, but two nights of open fires, heaving team-effort meals, playing cards, hot drinks, big woolly socks, blankets on the sofa, walks on the beach, buying wine direct from the vineyard, jumping on and off ferries, and proving myself adept at driving on the right hand side of the road were just what the doctor ordered.

Monday evening I had language classes and didn't get home until nearly 8pm. Tuesday night I went in search of the mythical Mercator supermarket and was so excited to find the biggest range of everything I've seen since I was last in Tesco that I spent hours wandering around and planning what to buy and cook and invest in for my apartment, then trying to figure out how on earth I'd carry it all home (oh yes, I'm learning the hard way how used I'd got to having a car). Shopping was followed by the cinema - gotta love BiH, where seeing a move costs less than €3 (I highly recommend The Social Network, by the way).

Wednesday we finished work at 3pm and I spent a pleasant afternoon making guacamole, punch and mulled wine before throwing a housewarming party that evening. I am a domestic goddess: I even got a housewarming gift of a garlic crusher - this means I am officially an adult! I declared the evening a success: my little apartment has been cosier than ever since. Nine bottles of mulled wine later, we had a guitar and a singsong, as is compulsory at an Irish party, of course. Many ridiculous photos involved.

Thursday was National Day here in BiH, so a public holiday. By coincidence, it was also Thanksgiving so an ex-patriate friend invited me to her family's house for dinner. I'd never been to Thanksgiving before so it was really pleasant, and they were great hosts. I really don't know why we don't adopt some kind of equivalent back on the auld sod. A day set aside with no other agenda than eating and drinking (no mass! no presents! no political stress) - a day which means you have two Christmas dinners accompanied by consummate booze within a month can only be deemed a good thing in my book. Came home at 9.30, put on my pjs and lay in a horizontal position while I tried to digest. Super.

Friday - yesterday - I went for one drink after work with some of the other Irish working at the Organisation. Guess how that ended up. When they kicked us out of the café at the office, there was time and money for dinner in a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, then off to a friend's house to try and work our way through the supplies of wine we'd brought back from Korčula. Then off to the horribly named Cheers bar, which comes complete with a red phone box outside and Guinness memorabilia on the walls, but which is redeemed by great live music at night. There was a move towards a nightclub later but I pulled a disappearing act and vanished mysteriously into the night and into bed.

The point of all this is the spontaneity: it makes the best of most situations. I also think all of this outweighs the possible isolation of living alone. The goings-on and the going-out is great, most especially because its there if and when I want it, but isn't compulsory and is escapable. I don't know why, but lately there comes a point in the night when I've had enough, and whereas previously (in Ireland, surprise surprise) I would have pushed through and felt obliged to stay, here I am more inclined to sod off when I feel like it.

I've always had a partly anti-social side, in that within moderation I really like spending time alone. Today for example, I've yet to leave the house. I'm much too comfortable here pottering around and reading and working on some photos by myself. Very likely living alone is accentuating this side to me; it encourages me to embrace the solitude and indulge in being selfish with my own time. The months that intervened between Uganda and Bosnia in many ways were very difficult; it wasn't a good or an easy time for me, for a whole range of reasons which I won't be going into here. Living alone since then, I think, has been good in terms of letting me retreat when I need to and letting me tell the world to go sod off when I feel like it. Moving to a new country isn't easy and there have been bad days so far - anyone who would ever think of getting into this line of work should be told about the personal costs and the difficulties - but at the moment I think what I needed was to be able to be selfish for a while in a way which I never could back home.

Don't fear - I don't need too much arm-twisting to tempt me out from under my duvet! And I have two friends coming to stay next week who will no doubt keep me social. But for now, somehow, a bit of selfishness seems to be what this underpaid intern needs.