Sarajevo

On our list of places to visit was the old Olympic venue in Sarajevo. Old, abandoned, neglected - but still worth seeing.

The Winter Olympic Games were held here in 1984. Back then, this place was teeming with life. Today it is quite different. To this day, only the distinctive concrete bobsled track and the ruins of a few old buildings have survived.

With a bit of imagination, we organized our own bobsled race, running down the track. In summer, no sleds - crazy, right?

Fun fact: the bobsleigh track lies on the slopes of Mount Trebević. During the siege of Sarajevo in 1992-1995, Bosnian Serb forces used it as an artillery position.

Good to know: since 6 April 2018, the cable car from the Bistrik district up Mount Trebević has been running again. Its top station is near the bobsleigh track, so you can get there without driving through the steep, narrow streets.

Then we decided to drive down to the city center for lunch.

Google Maps showed us two possible routes, one taking half an hour and the other only 15 minutes. We trusted the navigation and chose the shorter one. And that was a mistake…

At first, the road went steeply downhill and after a while I knew that turning back with a fully loaded van would not be possible. Adventure time - no way back. We drove into the first residential area, the road was getting narrower. People came to their windows, staring at us as if to say: “where is he driving?”. Later, it was even more fun, because the road was only wide enough for one car, with no room to pass oncoming traffic. It got narrower with every meter. Finally, we reached the end of the road and when we thought we had succeeded, the most difficult part of this “shortcut” was ahead of us.

Mirrors folded in, the passage was literally centimeters wide. Our bus is over 5 meters long and maneuvering it on a steep downhill slope is not easy. After a few minutes of fighting, we succeeded, although with a small scrape on the running board. I was watching the body panels, but the running board sits slightly lower and caught on a concrete step. Oh well - adventures are part of the trip.

We parked the car in the center of the town and went to a restaurant for lunch.

We still had a short stretch of road ahead of us to our accommodation - a campsite on the Tara River. As it turned out, this campsite was a starting point for people who go rafting on this wild river.