Why You Need to Visit Bosnia & Herzegovina // Van Life Europe Ep. 11

This is why you have to come to Bosnia and Herzegovina! We explored Sarajevo, Mostar, beautiful waterfalls and more! This is one of Europe’s hidden gems and I’m so glad that we visited. We tried Bosnian food, stayed with a local and swam in magical waterfalls. Most importantly, we learned about the history and heard from locals about what living in Bosnia and Herzegovina is like.

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Sarajevo and full day Bosnia tour by – https://meetbosnia.com

Raya
Youtube // https://www.youtube.com/rayawashere
Twitter // https://twitter.com/rayawashere
Instagram // http://instagram.com/rayawashere

Louis
Youtube // https://www.youtube.com/louis
Twitter // https://twitter.com/louiscole
Instagram // http://instagram.com/louiscole

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good morning from sarajevo bosnia and herzegovina i’m ryan and i’m louis we spent the first four years of our relationship traveling the world full time and now we’re back on the road we’re pausing our road trip through the u.s down to costa rica and we’re taking on europe for the summer after reuniting with louie’s family in the uk we bought a van to drive down through france and italy and across to bulgaria to visit my family we’re vlogging almost every day of our trip subscribe so you don’t miss any of it so we’ve just arrived in sarajevo we’re in the old town we’re gonna go and try and find some lunch raya found like a vegan spot nearby we’re gonna go check that out and then we’re just gonna have a little tour around do some sightseeing we’ve arrived for some lunch yes yes we have found a restaurant for lunch that has vegan options and apparently it’s traditional bosnian food so i’m super excited first up we got some nettle juice fresh is it interesting is it good it’s really good yeah i really like it and there’s tons of health benefits too oh i like that okay i might get some [Music] this salad i mean i’m excited about all of this but now that we’re in this part of the world like the food is getting very similar to bulgarian and the salads i don’t know what it is about them it’s just like the freshest vegetables and oh my gosh i’m just it feels like i’m almost home like everything about it the houses and the food and the language like it’s the closer we get to bulgaria it’s obviously like the closer it is to the culture and i’m just so excited to be here me too yeah check this out this is a vegan stew these are stuffed vegetables potatoes and tomato salad so we just finished lunch it was amazing so so good would definitely recommend and now we are going to go and try and find a walking tour because every website we’ve read every vlog we’ve watched everyone recommends doing a walking tour around the old town and the center of the city so that’s what we’re going to do we have found a walking tour this is our guide kiki she’s going to take us around show us some of the sites talk about some of the history and uh yeah we’re going to take you guys along with us and share what we learn i was just asking um if there’s still quite a divide here between like the different religions different groups well yeah yeah a city is pretty divided unfortunately before the war we had a 46 percent of the mixed marriage so it was completely normal to be within love with someone who is different than you and nowadays there is no so there’s still a lot of division so people fall in love that are from different backgrounds would like maybe their family would not like it yeah especially you know all the generations are the ones who are blocking yeah but as well i i believe in next generation in generations who are coming after us it will be much better in a commerce regime there is no religion as you know there is no practicing yeah so my grandma she was really religious person and she was praying in another room grandfather and another was saying like please don’t stop that if police see us they will you know arrest us and things like that but again my parents my mother in this case she has a she has a freedom to her friend be serbs to be a catholics to be cross whoever doesn’t matter even to be in love because my background it’s a big mix if you are wondering how to recognize locals just pay attention at coffee shops you’ll see locals drinking coffee for the entire day if you are wondering why we are not the members of the european union we don’t have a time who will drink the coffee you know ritual of the city is to drink a coffee three times per day in the morning mid part of day and even evening i like that i like that tradition pretty good i enjoy coffee i enjoy it can i try some uh actually yes there is a coffee shop here [Music] he does this every day really yes very good my grandma you should i should meet you with my grandma she do say [Applause] [Music] so this is copper copper pure copper you know and then i buy copper like one meter with the two meter that you know oh then cut to the size it depends what i need like coffee pot whatever and then these tools i make different kind different tournaments every piece it’s really unique this is like a coffee pot and then yeah when i finish concrete these designs are doing like that for me and the lead melts out it comes with when it comes out because it’s got a lower melting point than the copper oh perfect i am going to try bosnian coffee for the first time i’m actually very excited i’ve had turkish coffee before i’ve had arabic coffee i haven’t had the ozone coffee so see if it’s any different apparently it’s very sugary probably not a good thing to drink every day so we do like this to mix okay very good yes you see [Music] and that is all your coffee is ready to drink have a cube you put the cube in okay well you can put it in your mouth or you can put like this what’s the buzz name way in your mouth also we can do like this i’ll do just this wow okay wow so you just dip it in and then you just bite a straight up sugar okay [Music] delicious combination it is a delicious combination how many uh people here have diabetes every second person every second person wow and always whether you want to drink coffee you should buy it but wow every sip of coffee is a bite of sugar yes some of them practice drink coffee like that do people have more than one sugar cube per coffee well if they’re normal they’re heavy they’re crazy they don’t work they have more it’s good coffee it’s good coffee all right thumbs up to bosnian copy yes [Music] cheers how do you say cheers [Laughter] yes [Music] okay we’re in the main square the bash chest here and there’s this drinking fountain that’s been here since the 15th century and i just think that’s insane like he was just laughing at your pronunciation and what again i pronounced it wrong again okay you pronounce it yeah is it bashashi exactly this is a tradition everyone that came back to sarajevo had to drink from here right so see you then tv [Music] [Music] we are now at the caravan sarai i’m sure you know what the caravan means so this place originally founded by the ghazi hustle bay his name you can read there and agathi husterbei he was i mean a grandson of by azit ii [Music] so we’re in one of the most famous places for baklava and this is a copy of the original recipe no one is there oh wow she has the main recipe nowadays the lady next to her she’s making backfall no way this is fascinating this is the first ever public toilet in europe and it was built in 1530 only the same time as the mosque or just before the mosque before this mosque was built they decided to build a public toilet check this out this is one of the most significant parts of sarajevo this is latin bridge and back in 1914 the archduke and prince of austria who’s next in line for the throne came here to visit bosnia which austria occupied and ruled at the time and he was assassinated which austria blamed serbia for and that triggered the first world war so this is a very significant point in europe so i’m sitting in a replica of the car that the duke was assassinated in this is the spot right here where the assassination happened so when i was growing up when i was like 10 or 11 the bosnian war was kicking off and i really first heard of sarajevo because of that it was always in the news and it was under siege and i think yugoslavia was in the process of breaking up after the ussr and everything communism was falling and from what i understand serbia was attacking bosnia and there was a power struggle there was a fight um a lot of people living in sarajevo were serbian and there was yeah just a war broke out for like i think like three years four years and this was crazy this was a completely war-torn city i think the whole country was war-torn so it’s amazing to be here now and seeing what it’s become and its road to recovery and kiki was saying it still has a long way to go to fully recover but it’s been amazing just learning about it can i ask you about the bosnian war in the 90s but did you have friends that stayed here during the siege uh my number one friend he destroyed granite is destroy him leg and he go to italy they help him to leg because local doctors said we must cut both legs from a bomb bomb and italian government is organized helicopter and transferred my friend to torino in torino he stayed two and a half years in hospital and today he played football wow did you prefer life before during yugoslavia before the war or now i’m longer live in but yeah then after he was like you preferred it wow why because everybody have the job everybody have money every nickname or problema he’s saying whoever says whoever says like in socialist regime like we didn’t you you didn’t live good he’s lying oh wow these these are bullet holes how much of the city was destroyed during the bosnian war well city was pretty destroyed did serbia succeed in invading sarajevo was it did it become under serbian rule no it didn’t so bosnia defended sarajevo and the war went on for four years yes after the four years ended up and now is the same city as before the war and there was a treaty the treaty was signed in dayton in ohio yeah so as you see the same city before the war milestone cultured mountain religion multi-ethnic [Music] so we are arriving now at the museum of crimes against humanity museum of crimes against humanity and genocide and we’re gonna learn more about the bosnian war [Music] so we briefly got to look around the museum and honestly i couldn’t film most of what we saw because it was so heartbreaking and gruesome and it’s reality it happened we do live in a world where there was atrocities that happened and that’s part of history i think it’s hard to grasp how recently this happened in my lifetime and yeah i just uh i understand why a lot of people probably don’t want to talk about it to be honest it’s probably impacted so many people in such a negative way but yeah it’s amazing to see how this city’s recovered and uh yeah it’s uh it’s crazy my heart goes out to the people and lives that were lost during the war and i really hope as as a global community as humanity we can avoid wars and death of this scale in the future okay let me give you an update so we’ve decided to book a full day tour tomorrow with meet bosnia because basically we were like we were asking where we should go and they gave us a list of all the things and um we were just gonna drive with our van but you know our air conditioning isn’t working and also there’s just something about going places with locals and hearing their stories like we could have walked around sarajevo alone today and it would have been like 10 as good as having a guide so we decided to leave the van for the day and go on this full day tour but anyway we were asking kiki where do you think we can park our van to you know somewhere safe and she has basically invited us to stay at her family house and there’s a like paid safe parking lot around the corner um so we’re gonna go there tonight leave her van and then stay at her place and this is just the magic of travel is meeting locals and um yeah getting to stay with them yeah this is balkan hospitality 100 yes so but first we’re about to go and meet her dad who’s gonna like show us the parking lot and stuff but first we need to get some dinner so we’re taking us to get some falafel and then we’re going to go back it’s like a whole thing but i’m very excited did you ask me i asked if they had wi-fi at her house she’s like of course how would we live without wifi we are following one of kiki’s friends who is taking us to the parking lot in the house this is such a crazy adventure i love it it’s so good the fact that we’re staying with a local bosnian like her parents yeah this is so good [Music] perfect welcome to where we’re staying tonight um this is so sweet basically this is kiki’s like house that she grew up in and this is her little apartment that’s a part of the house but she’s moved out now she loves her husband so she’s let us stay here and there’s two single beds but her dad was saying that louie would likely not fit on there so i think this extends out we’ll figure that out in a minute um we have a really cute little kitchen sink everything and then of course the most exciting thing we can take a shower and we have a toilet oh this is so good so good i forgot that we didn’t have a toilet for a second yeah so this is going to be perfect and we’re going to be off bright and early tomorrow for a full tour of bosnia and hegenya see you in the morning bright and early good morning we woke up bright and early this morning to do a full day tour we left sarajevo and we are on our way down to mostar and we have quite a lot of stops along the way we just made it to cognet’s and we are on the bridge right now this is probably one of the biggest attractions here this is a beautiful town you can see behind me um but again like the rest of bosnia there’s a lot of culture and history here so this bridge was built in the 15th or 16th century i can’t remember but it has been destroyed twice once in the second world war as the nazis were fleeing this area they bummed it and then secondly in the bosnian war it was partially destroyed and they had to rebuild it it’s just so beautiful again there’s so many reminders in this country of resilience and people here have been through so much throughout the years and especially like recent years as well and i don’t know it’s just incredible to see that the optimism and hope that you can see physically in the places that are rebuilt and the people here as well [Music] this is definitely the earliest morning we’ve done on this trip so far but it’s good we’re gonna have a long productive day haven’t had my morning coffee yet so we just stopped into this little cafe i’m gonna get one before we hit the road again [Music] so we’ve arrived in kravitza waterfalls right in the southern border near croatia it is like 40 degrees celsius right now so we’re probably going to go for a swim yeah we’ve heard we can swim in the waterfalls so this is where we were yesterday sarajevo we’ve driven all the way down past mostar down to here we are very close to the coast here this is the croatian border look [Music] i put our bag on the side got my swimming shorts on and i’m about to go into this cool fresh water so clear i actually grabbed one of our masks so i can swim around and look at the fish this is amazing there’s so many people that are walking all the way down and not coming in the water i would very highly recommend bringing a bathing suit jumping in [Music] [Music] i think these may be some of the coolest waterfalls i’ve ever experienced blowing [Music] this place is amazing okay i’m gonna go up to the top of the tower oh this is crazy [Music] someone was just telling me that with a lot of these stone buildings really old stone buildings there would have obviously been floors made out of wood but that wood is rotted or burnt away so you only get the stone left but you can imagine where the floors would have been and what the interior would have looked like i love history this is so crazy [Applause] i was also learning that these uh these types of arches where you get a support rock in the middle that support these these rocks they’re kind of like leaning in this was the type of architecture that was introduced into the middle east during the crusades in the 1100s so most of the buildings in that area were smaller they didn’t have big arches but anything after that this building technique was adopted what are you up to over here oh this is crazy before we stopped for lunch we just arrived at another location i don’t know anything about this but it looks pretty beautiful this huge cliff we are on our way now to see a dervish monastery that was built 600 years ago and i’ve seen so many photos of this it’s like built into the mountains with a cave and beautiful water running and i mean you’re gonna see it in a second but it’s so beautiful and i’ve been waiting to see this for years ever since i first saw photos of it so i’m really excited so this place was built in 1520 as a monastery for the dervish and you may have heard of the whirling dervish but it’s a type of islamic worship where they spin and they dance as a worship to god and apparently when the guy first came here who built this monastery and founded it he had to cross the river with his horse and they swam across the river and then decided to build the monastery here but this is so so epic we just sat down for lunch in this beautiful location by the river and to be honest we are very hungry because apparently bosnians only two meals so breakfast and then a late lunch which keeps them full throughout the night we did not know that so we didn’t really eat breakfast and it’s already five p.m it’s five p.m i’m hungry we may have over ordered a little bit but we’ll see we just got a bunch of salads oh my gosh look how epic this location is for a restaurant on the river it’s so good you can see the cave right there and you can even feel there’s like cold gusts of wind coming from the cave and it almost feels like an air conditioner or something it’s like just really cold air coming out of nowhere which feels so good you can literally see the fish swimming in the river next to us look how big they are round one we’re starting with a bunch of salads oh there’s just like i’ve said it a million times nothing beats fresh vegetables this time of year this is just cucumber tomatoes some cabbage and tomato and boiled potatoes oh my god we definitely over ordered oh my goodness that looks amazing looks so good [Music] we just made it to mustard this is the old bridge behind us we don’t know anything about it yet but when we get to it our tour guide is gonna tell us the history we are walking to the old bridge now something i’ve noticed immediately is there’s loads of kind of mountains surrounding the the cities in kind of a valley so i just love looking up at these cliffs any cities that have mountains right there next to them love him something else we were talking to some locals at lunch or dinner i don’t know and they were saying that mustard actually gets really hot it’s one of the like hottest towns here so yeah they were like definitely wait until later on to come and it’s about 7pm now and it’s it’s a pretty good temperature so it’s like still in its mid-30s now but apparently it was like 40 degrees yeah honestly this trip has made us think about the time of year that’s ideal to visit southern and eastern europe and i don’t think august is the ideal one no i feel like we would come in spring if we were to do it again 100 or i think may june and september are the best time to do europe southern europe but anyway um if you do come to mostar and you do come in the summer like this come later in the day and it’ll be much better so all of these holes in this building are bullet holes whoa or a grenade drops and it ricochets into the building and it leaves these marks yeah like small metal parts from the from the grenade and it doesn’t like just hit the ground and like destroys the ground it just like did you have um did you have family that were here during the bosnian war all my family was here what was their experience like my father was a soldier wow yeah so he was fighting against the serbian forces definitely but mostar had different problems they had a problem with the croatian army they had problems with the creation of armies as well wow shooting like those were the front lines as well so serbia was invading from the north and and croatia was invading from the south silent killer wow and is it similar kiki was saying yesterday that because of the mountains like they were the disadvantage of sarajevo that this other soldiers could be up there and like shooting down yeah they had much more they had much more equipment yeah bosnian soldiers okay because uh before the war uh bosnia had an embargo that’s like for forbidding for weapons to enter the country yeah itself so that kind of caused a much more problem and uh soldiers were using uh guns from world war two they did not there was like one gun and three soldiers wow if somebody dies you just grab the gun and give it to another yeah crazy bulgarian must means bridge is it the same is that why mustard yes star star basically means yeah starting exactly old old basically it’s like a game yeah [Music] as we’re walking through the square it really feels like there’s a lot of like turkish middle eastern influence left over from the ottoman empire that ruled here for about 400 years and it’s super interesting for me because i’m from bulgaria and bulgaria is right next to turkey and we were also under ottoman rule for many many years however it really doesn’t feel like that in bulgaria like here honestly you’re walking through the market where like it almost feels like we’re in istanbul or something but bulgaria doesn’t really have that same kind of um ottoman influence so super interesting even though we’re closer um we don’t have that and then of course there’s so many muslims living here again left over from that time and it’s not the same in bulgaria we just learned that the old bridge was untouched during world war one and world war ii but in the bosnian war the croatian forces bombed this bridge and the whole middle collapsed into the river and it devastated the whole town because obviously this is like what the town’s named after it’s super famous and after the war was over they raised funds people donate from all around the world and they rebuilt the bridge and these parts of rock here are parts of the original bridge that fell down when it was bombed the world’s slipperiest stone this is crazy that was the bridge when it was destroyed [Music] okay what’s happened raya my shoe completely broke and has been broken for like half the day but it’s literally on its last legs no that’s beyond its last legs that has no legs [Music] [Applause] so we learned earlier that this mini bridge behind me was like a practice bridge before they built the big one so this was just built first i think a couple years before just to test it out and uh yeah i think it’s a pretty similar replica in terms of how they built it but obviously just miniaturized the heavens are opening you know when you have a really really hot humid day and then it just rains in the evening and like gets rid of all that humidity that’s what’s happening right now and i think it’s just about to go crazy we’re just trying to find the uh the van to drive back to sarajevo all right we are back in the band we haven’t seen you in a couple hours basically we ended the tour we drove all the way back from mostar to sarajevo and then we got our stuff from the apartment we were staying and we quickly jumped into the van and we are on our way to the next destination um but i just wanted to end this vlog by saying we were blown away by how beautiful this country is and the people and the food and um i’m just so happy to be in this part of europe and i just cannot wait to explore so much more and we will link the tour that we did down below if you want to come here and check it out we definitely highly recommend and we’ll see you next time bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] you