Roamers Report #5 August 6, 2024

Dear Fellow Travel Enthusiasts,

Welcome to the 5th installment of the Roamers Report. 

Note: If you  cannot load the pictures or wish to view previous newsletters, you can read this edition and previous ones from our Newsletter Archive on our website at this link.

General Update:

We are now entering Month Three of our WorldSchool adventure and halfway through our 2nd Slow Travel stay in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Overall, we're still loving our adventure. That said, it's super hot in Bosnia and with no beach (as we had feared) there is less to do on a day to day basis once we fully explored the old town and many of the other places of interest in the larger city of Mostar. 

As an adjustment, we are looking more internally and spending some good quality family time, learning new games (backgammon, Chinese checkers, various card games, etc.), learning Spanish (see Homeschool Update below), and arranging 1 on 1 time for each kid with each parent where we plan a 2-3 hour "date" somewhere around town discovering interesting places together. 

One of the risks of extensive travel is the increased chances of getting sick. With all of the people crammed into airports, buses, trains and tourist sites, one is almost assured of catching something. And we were no different.  Over a period of about 10 days we each got COVID (we think) in succession. First Francesca followed shortly thereafter by me. Thankfully Francesca's was mild and didn't slow her down too much.  Mine was worse than I had it during the pandemic with 3 days of a bad cold followed by 2 days of fever and intestinal issues accompanied by no appetite, taste or smell. Ryan, Austen and Finley got it pretty bad in rapid succession with vomiting and high fevers. Poor kids.  Fortunately we had no travel plans so they were able to just rest it out. 

Where We've Been & Where We Are:

(An overview of the countries and cities we've been since the last newsletter and an update on where we are currently)

We've been hunkered down in Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina since July 21st.  The old town is a spectacular cobblestone wonderland that makes my heart skip a beat whenever I see it.  But it is also overrun with tourists and after a while it's an area that we try to avoid. The rest of the city has some lovely cafes, parks and a mall (we hadn't been to a mall in years!) so we tend to spend more time outside of the old city.

We have taken a few day trips to Kravica Falls and Pocitelj and are planning a weekend trip to Sarajevo this weekend.  

Travel Stories:

(Hopefully humorous stories about real events that happened to us on our trip)

To The Bat Cave Ryan!

"Dad, wait up!" I heard Ryan call out. He was several feet behind me, but I was moving fast until I came to a dead end.

"Let's go back. I'm starting to get a little scared" he continued with a slight panic in his voice.

"It's okay buddy", I assured him over my shoulder. "We'll head back."

The problem was we HAD BEEN headed back, but none of the cave looked familiar. It was a simple cave system with only one main route in and a couple of offshoots accessible by climbing down or up so I hadn't anticipated any trouble navigating our way back. However, everything looked different going back than it had coming in.  Ryan had joked about dropping breadcrumbs on the way in. Now I wished we had. 

I kept outwardly calm, but inside the panic was starting to rise. I had only been at the dead end for a few seconds, but my brain had already started to think through the calculations/ramifications of getting lost inside a remote cave in the mountains of a small Cretan village that likely saw little to no foot traffic....... (click here to read the rest of the story)

Homeschool Update:

(Many of you may not care about the home schooling portion of this, but since it's ostensibly the reason we are doing this, I will provide a brief update during these Newsletters.)

After a 10 day break we settled back into our 4 day per week of study (+ 1 day field trip) for the month we're in Bosnia. Given the tremendous midday heat we have adjusted the kids' school time from first thing in the morning, to midday so we generally head out during the morning and again in the evenings when it's cooler.  

We have also altered our 2 essays per week schedule to be a single essay/journal on Tuesday followed by revisions to that same essay on Thursday. We felt, more so than the content, what we really want to teach them is about proper structure of writing and therefore the rewrite will help with that. 

We have also all started learning Spanish on DuoLingo in preparation for our visit to Spain in September and Latin America next spring. We're asking the kids (and us) to commit to at least 15 mins per day.  With the exception of Austen who doesn't care much for it, the rest of us have become obsessed with the Duolingo gamification and trying to amass XP and top the leaderboard. :) 

Blog Posts:

(Blog Posts Published since the last newsletter - in case you missed them on social media)

Athens: Three Days in Ancient Greece - July 28, 2024

Balos Bay You Blew Me Away - July 16, 2024

Truth Serum:

(A does of truth about some of the things that did not go according to plan or worries that we've had about the trip)

As a card carrying extrovert, I am constantly evaluating people based on how easy they are to engage in conversation, how friendly they are, do they smile, are they taking people in visually, is their body language showing an openness to meeting people, etc  And if they are shop keepers, do they seem like they are happy to have my business.  

In Greece, I would say, for the most part, I found the people to be very open and friendly, especially in our small little village.  Maybe not 100% of the time, but what place on earth is.  But the general impression was that the people of Crete were a friendly lot, open to a conversation or at least an exchange of "Good Morning".  

Bosnia, on the other hand.....has given me quite the opposite impression. At least in Mostar (which is technically in Herzegovina), which is our only data point. Generally I don't see a lot of smiles on the locals and I have encountered surprisingly rude behavior from shopkeepers - more than once they have physically shouldered me out of the way so they could get by.  Maybe they don't know English and assumed I wouldn't understand the word for "excuse me" in Bosnian (does that word exist?), but still, physically shouldering your customers out of the way seems like a bad PR move.  And, just to be clear, this was multiple people in multiple stores. 

Francesca had an interesting theory. She posited that maybe if you'd lost your brother, husband, parents, kids, etc in a war in your town within recent memory, maybe you wouldn't be so eager to be friendly to outsiders.  Okay, that's possible.  But I would still think that would account for some of the lack of outward friendliness, but certainly not all.  

Of course, for Francesca, a hard core introvert, she is not expecting, nor seeking, an environment where people just come up and start talking to you, but I prefer it. I am still keeping an open mind and we'll see if I have a different impression after we visit Sarajevo. 

Trip Stats:

(I'm a little reluctant about this section because this trip is supposed to be more about quality and experience than sheer quantity, but I find stats like this interesting nonetheless) 

Here is the link to the trip stats page.

Thanks for joining us on our journey.

Regards,

The Roamers - Dan, Francesca, Ryan, Austen & Finley