When you mention casually to a friend that you're thinking of dropping in on Bosnia and Herzegovina while you're in Eastern Europe, a very odd thing happens. First, they start to develop that curious faraway look which tells you that they're not altogether sure whether or not this is something they should be worried about, and then, having failed to receive a satisfactory reply back from the depths of their brain after a minute or so, they resort to asking if you...

If you're one of those adrenaline junkies for whom a holiday is never truly complete until you've bungee jumped from a bridge on the end of a piece of knicker elastic or thrown yourself out of a plane wearing a backpack where your parachute should be, then I can highly recommend the drive over the mountains from Kotor to Budva - because it'll scare the willies out of you. Jeremy Clarkson would probably love this road, but only because he could kill himself on a r...

Just thought I'd repost this entry from my previous journals, as it seems suddenly rather appropriate again. Interestingly, OffExploring has chosen to censor the first sentence so I've changed a certain word to "Poo". Internet blogs like to do this for kicks - they routinely censor quite innocent words because they happen to contain a series of letters which form a different but not so innocent word - so I apologise if the first sentence below sounds as though it...

If you cast your mind back a couple of days, you may recall me saying that Montenegro has thrown aside it's dark past and moved on from the days when it was nothing but a haven for the rich and famous. Well, as it turns out, this was a lie. No, I don't mean a lie. What's that expression American presidents like to use when they've totally messed up but don't really want to admit it? Ah, yes, that's it. I appear to have misspoken. You see, things may have gone ba...

For anyone flying directly into Dubrovnik and spending their first few days wandering the streets of the old city, the culture shock experienced on a trip to Montenegro could best be described as a little like the feeling of leaving England for Scotland - although I see from your blank faces that I may need to expand a little before this simile becomes anything other than the ramblings of a mad man. I don't, of course, mean to suggest for one moment that the Mont...