bike the AG-world: Balkans

Well, so much to tell!

"I fell in love with the Balkans!"

Three weeks ago I entered the former Yugoslawien countries and drove more than 300 km along the Croatian coast. I took almost the same route than last year, just the opposite direction! And it was more than great another time!!! :-)

In Bosna i Hercegovina I drove across the country all the way to Sarajevo and afterwards down to the south. One night a local farmer, who didn't speak English or German at all, offered me to stay with my tent in his backyard. After milking his cows he brought me a glas of fresh and hot milk in the evening... Great ;-)

His little kids were really attracted into my bike... :-)

Very nice experience!!

Along the road I saw many of those "plasts", that's how the local people call these outside storages for their hay.

Later on I met a local farmer, while he was cutting his gras ...

with his "self propelled" mower

He told me in this way he is cutting his 10 ha (25 acres) in four days (!!) and that two times a year for making the hay. He said, he doesn't own a tractor and some farmers are still cutting the gras by hand with a scythe. Unbelievable...!?!

I also saw how those "plasts" are built while swathing the hay by hand...

... one person is climbing on top...

... and the other one is handing the hay up...

All the local farmers have been very friendly and happy to take me pictures with them, even if I drove them almost on their feet with my bike :-)

I drove almost across the entire countries of Bosna i Hercegovina and Montenegro and meet just great, freindly and very helpful people! Awesome experiences, which I had here and far away from "dangerous" or what else most the people in western Europe (and the rest of the world?) are thinking about the local citiziens.

I spent 2 nights in a rafting camp between the boarder of those two countries. The camp is owned by a member of the BIH national rafting team and he offered me to try rafting, which I havn't denied... ;-)

Through the beautiful "Tara-Kanyon"

During one night he had a party in the camp and several of his local friends appeared. We had a lot of fun and again, they have all been very fiendly and treated me extremly polite and good! Just great!! They told me that they feel sad about foreign peoples opinion about their countries and I should pass my experiences, what I certainly will, because I really fell in love with the Balkans!! The food, the people and the scenery are just awesome!

Just a great time I had there!!

and meet several new friends...

The picture below was while passing from the "Federal republic of Bosna" into the "Republic of Srpska". These are the two countries the entire BIH exists of.