Sometimes, when planning a long and exhausting trek across a continent, it becomes necessary to sacrifice some of the places you really wanted to go in order to fit everything into the time available. This, of course, is one of the most annoying things about travel - even if you were to set off from home as a newborn baby and spend your entire life travelling until the day you finally keeled over, you still wouldn't be able to find nearly enough time to visit half of what the world has to offer - so until we manage to replace our organs with self-sustaining cybernetic implants and begin living as a race of immortal science fiction super beings, I'm afraid we'll always have to compromise on the travel options. When I was planning this trip, my plans for Bosnia spent quite some time in a state of flux, involving my staring for hours on end at tantalisingly beautiful photographs in brochures and on websites while trying to decide how much I could fit into the schedule without physically dropping from exhaustion and returning home in a box. Unfortunately, however much you want to see it all, being an incurable travelaholic means that you are forced to waste much of your time doing all the boring stuff like sleeping, eating and siting on buses waiting to arrive at your next destination. This world travel business is no walk in the park, I can tell you. Feel free to point at the pile of paperwork in your in tray and threaten to punch me in the mouth at any point.

Anyway, since I don't come from Krypton or enjoy wearing my underpants on the outside, there was clearly no way that I was going to be able to fit both Mostar and Sarajevo into the time available to me - and this is one of the biggest regrets I have of the trip so far, as I was very much looking forward to visiting the capital. In particular, I wanted to see the infamous Sarajevo roses, a poignant reminder of the country's recent history. Wherever mortar shells have fallen on the streets of the city, creating ripple-like fragmentation patterns around the initial point of impact, the government has filled the damaged concrete with blood red resin to create the effect of roses blooming from the scarred pavement. The journey by train from Mostar to Sarajevo is also supposed to be one of the most ridiculously scenic journeys you could ever dream of making, which only serves to annoy me more that I have to miss it. The train station at Mostar, I'm told, is in serious danger of collapsing at any moment and doesn't actually have anything useful like signs telling you which train to board or at what time anything leaves, but assuming you manage to get past this and board a train going in the right direction, I'm assured that the entire journey will be spent with your face pressed up against the window in awe at everything that shoots past. Of course, please bear in mind that I'm just passing on information here, so feel free to do your own research rather than simply getting involved in my hearsay - or heresy, if my spelling checker has anything to do with it. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if you are considering getting involved in any sort of heresy, then a heavily Islamic country may not necessarily be the best place in which to do it.

One of the things which truly astonishes me about Bosnia is that, even nearly twenty years after the war, there are still parts of the country which are not technically governed by their own central government, being presided over instead by external peacekeeping forces. Up until 2004, NATO still maintained a large force within the country before finally handing authority over to the EU who proceeded to send in 7000 troops in their first real attempt at establishing a military of their own. To be honest, I'm not altogether sure just how much peacekeeping is still required in Bosnia twenty years on, but then I also have to confess that neither the UN nor the EU have ever personally invited me to any of their meetings, so what do I know? It continues to fascinate me, however, that people calling themselves peace officers always seem to have a curious habit of going everywhere with huge machine guns strapped to their backs while telling everyone around them what to do. To paraphrase the late great Douglas Adams, this must be some strange new meaning of the word "peace" that I wasn't previously aware of.

The population of Bosnia and Herzegovina is mainly comprised of three ethnic groups - native Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Now, you may be wondering why I just called the native people of Bosnia Bosniaks rather than Bosnians - and to be fair, since even my spelling checker chooses not to acknowledge the former, you wouldn't be alone. If you don't want to offend anyone, however, it really is quite a good idea to know the difference. Technically, a Bosnian is anybody living within the country of Bosnia and Herzogovina, regardless of whether they are Bosniak, Croat, Serb or Martian. A Bosniak, on the other hand, is an ethnic native of the country. The best way to think of this difference is to consider the various ethnic groups living in the UK - most of them are British, but of differing ethnic backgrounds. In Bosnia, they just have a different word to distinguish one from the other.

Each of the three major ethnic groups in Bosnia is represented in the government, which is unusual in being a three person presidency. The theory, of course, is that everybody has their say in government policy whatever their background, but in reality this simply means that the government spends much of its time arguing with itself. In 1995, for example, after the end of the war, the government called up its most talented designers and had them create a shiny new flag in order to present the nation to the world in a new era of peace and understanding. Unfortunately - and I expect you could probably see this coming a mile off - none of the representatives from the Bosniak, Croat or Serb section of the community could agree on the design because they all wanted to be represented on the flag more prominently than the others. After five years of arguing amongst themselves, the European Union finally stepped in - although what it had to do with Europe is anyone's guess - and designed a flag for them. Three more years and a not inconsiderable number of broken noses later, the Bosnian government finally caved in after the EU got fed up waiting for a resolution and threatened to do whatever it is foreign powers threaten to do when they're not getting their own way - so the Bosnian flag is now a rather innocuous yellow triangle on a blue background, adorned with white stars. It reminds me more of Superman's cape than it does the serious flag of an up and coming international entity. The blue represents the European Union - again, why they should be represented on the Bosnian flag is anyone's guess - while the Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs all choose to see the corners of the yellow triangle as representative of the three nations joined as one. The fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina is roughly triangular on a world map and that the yellow triangle is angled in exactly the same way as the country doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone, and it's probably best not to mention it in case they start squabbling amongst themselves again. There are seven complete stars on the flag, with the eighth and ninth cut in half at the edges - this is where the European Union really shows its hand, as this is apparently supposed to represent the prospective nations of the EU, infinite in number, stretching off beyond the edges of the image. Again, and I really am sorry to have to keep hammering this point home, it is not at all clear why the European Union gets to be represented on the flag of a nation which isn't even part of it. The official reasoning behind the half stars is also somewhat different from what we were told by our guide, who wanted us to know in no unclear terms that the broken stars represent the fragmented nature of Europe. You gotta love politics.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.