The Tickets!

Here they are, the tickets are here. I leave for Bosnia on the 4th of May. I fly from Toronto to Prague, then from Prague to Sarajevo. I do the same thing on the way back, but I have a week stop over in Prague. I plan on using that extra time to travel

Someone asked me last night, why I hadn't updated the blog for the last 20 days, well, I'm still in Canada. There's not much to write about here, except for these tickets, so here they are. I will write more once I'm on the ground in Bosnia, hopefully every day.

It's hard to believe that in two weeks I'll be in Bosnia, although the tickets make it easier. I'm going to start a shopping spree next week to get all the stuff I need, like shoes and shorts and others. If you've ever backpacked in Europe or done anything similar to what I'm doing, let me know and leave some packing suggestions in the comment box, I check almost every day.

That's about all I have for now. I'm glad I'm doing this whole adventure, because it makes leaving residence a lot easier. Hopefully I'll get a pic or two of all the cool things I get to buy and bring with me, like Immodium! 

Where in the world am I going?

This is a satellite photo (stolen from Google) of where I'll be heading. Gornji Vakuf - Uskopije is at the top on the left, right in a mountain range, well the valley between two mountain ranges. Almost directly east is the capital Sarajevo, the largest city in BiH. To the south is the city of Mostar, it have a beautiful bridge that has been recently rebuild after it was destroyed during the war.

BiH has two neighbours, Croatia (to the north and south west) and Serbia-Montenegro (to the north and south east). The water at the bottom of the picture is the Adriatic Sea, a part of the Mediterranean that separates the Balkans from Italy.

As you can see, the country is fairly mountainous where I am, so I'll get plenty of exercise mountain climbing and such. I might even make it down to the coast to check out the ocean.

There's a whole lot more info like this from the BiH tourist office, the link to which is on the right.

The Beginning

Hello to all who read this!

It is April 1st today, kinda cold and gloomy outside. In a month I'll be only a couple days away from flying. Right now I'm fairly excited, but not irrationally so. This blog will for the most part concern itself with my trip to Bosnia with Intercordia. As such you are welcome to post comments and questions. I'll try to keep this updated on a regular basis, simply because I don't want to forget someone on an email list, and this way it is easily accessible. I expect to have internet access daily, but let's be realistic: It's Bosnia, I'm not going to try to be unreasonable. I might go days without seeing a computer (kinda sounds like a cool idea) so try not to expect too much.
I'm so ready to be finished school right now and get on with this journey, it can't happen soon enough. As for now, I'll study, try to learn the language and prepare. I hope you can make, at least in some part, the journey with me.

A picture of me

This is me, my name is Mike if you were unsure. I figured that I wasn't going to get much better looking than this photo, so here you go. The fantastic building is the Math and Computer building at Waterloo. I thought that if I'm going to a formally communist country, I should have a picture next to a concrete bohemith.

The reason for this picture is to see how well Picasa and Hello (they are computer programs) work. If this turns out nice, well then you have Picasa to thank. Also thank Chris Drolle, he took the photo