Christian Travelers Guide

Missing a bit of randomness in my life

We were thinking last night about how much our lives had changed since we got back from Bosnia at the end of April. Most of it has been really enjoyable; a fantastic English summer, lots of friends, Thai food, no nails sticking out of swings at the playgrounds and just a much, much easier life in general. But there are things we really miss about Bosnia now we are back and last night we decided what we missed most of all was the complete and utter randomness of living in a country that is not quite as, well shall we say structurally sorted as the UK.

To give you an example. We had a wonderful weekend this weekend. The city we live in hosted an Open Doors day and we tootled off to the fire station to go and see what really happens. Before we went I could have predicted we'd look at some fire engines, try on a fireman's helmets and marvel at the fireman's pole. Which we did and it was marvellous and the boys enjoyed it very much. We mooched around town for a bit; predicted to be crowded but lots of music, buskers and people, which it was. We went to a birthday party; predicted to be lots of small children hyped up on sugar running at full speed and the party did not disappoint. We really enjoyed our whole weekend, it was lovely but all just as we'd expected.

In Bosnia we never quite knew what was going to happen. We went for lunch one day in a nearby city and found ourselves lost with the car surfing down a river that had just appeared in a torrential rain storm. We got stuck in snow storms, climbed far too steep cliff faces with the kids stuck on our backs. We never really knew where we were going to end up when we set off for the day and whilst occasionally a bit alarming it was also fantastically exhilarating.

Without a doubt my favourite random Bosnian moment was a text I received from Dave after he had set off one April morning to climb the nearby mountain of Konjuh (between Zivinice and Banovici for the Bosniaphiles amongst you). The snow hadn't completely gone so I wanted him to let me know that he had made it up safely. Off he went with his friends and sure enough, quite a few hours later, I received a text:


'made it to the top, spectacular view and am now sitting in the middle of a mine field with the Bosnian army. They've given us coffee and are singing opera to us.'.

You couldn't make the randomness up and I do miss it.