bosnian photos

an abandoned building

more war torn

mas

a church

bullets, bombs, and grenades

more

from my hotel room

traditional dancers

tri worship, jews christians and muslims all practice here during the holidays
the rest of the time its just christian

part of the mosque, everything else was blurry

this is where franz ferdinand was assassinated

this is who shot him and some pictures of his captures

the bill gates club, viva capitalism and windows

snow from hotel room

same different angle

snow and homeless people

from the airplane

there wasnt much sunlight in bosnia, ill take more next time,

jacob

bosnia y herzegovina

bosnia y herzegovina Finally have some time to write the Bosnia y Herzegovina blog. Of all my trips overseas, this was my least favorite. And now you'll see why.

Thursday

Because our tickets were purchased so late we actually couldn't make the trip in one day. Another thing that was bad is that we flew over on a 767 which is not a good plane when it comes to entertainment. They only have screens for the whole cabin. They showed that Dave movie starring Eddie Murphy. What did I do to get punished? So we had to overnight in Munich. Pretty awesome right? Not really, we were staying at the Munich airport hotel which is about 30 minutes outside of town. All of my fellow co-workers weren't in the mood to go explore the city so we just hung out in the hotel bar. Lay-ame.

Saturday

Yeah there is no Friday; I lost too much time to report on Friday. We landed in Sarajevo and got through customs just fine. Boarded a very nice bus and went to the late-soviet Holiday Inn. A lot of browns and yellows, which I attribute to the smoke stains. Sarajevo and Bosnia y Herzegovina are still trying to recover from the war in the 90's. When you check out the pictures next week, you'll see there are quite a number of bullet holes, mortar rounds, and grenade explosions still visible to the naked eye. There one claim to fame is the '84 Olympics. The hotel still uses the china from the Olympics and you'll see various Olympics themed restaurants, bars, clothing, and flags around the city. After check-in and a quick nap we went to dinner at a steak house, it was pretty good; the décor was very nice.

Sunday

This was our first work day, didn't do much though. Just set up a server, rebuilt another one, said hello and made with pleasantries of seeing everyone again. Because I'm new on team, everything is new and exciting. Not to my coworkers, if they have seen one museum, church, castle, bar, restaurant; they've seen them all. They are perfectly happy just hanging out in the hotel bar and restaurant and then calling it a night. We had pizza, because pizza is "safe", that's all they ever eat. Pizza is "safe" because you cook it to 400 degrees F; the thought is all the bad stuff gets killed off.

Monday

This was the day of the pre-conference. I do the same thing at every conference, just server support for all the participants. No need to go into all of that for the 8^th time. Monday a few of us went to a restaurant across the street. It was Italian, most countries have Italian restaurants. You really can't mess that up and who doesn't love Italian. Now, I am going to tell you why I didn't really care for Bosnia y Herzegovina. It was very, very smoky. More so then other places, generally in Eastern Europe you can smoke indoors and it's a nuisance, but here it just seemed tenfold. Maybe they didn't have good ventilation, I don't know. Further the Bosnian beer is not very good. I don't think I'm a beer connoisseur by any means, it is my drink of choice, but when it comes right down to it I don't know talk about ales, lagers, porters, and stouts and try to determine the differing tastes and contrasts. If it tastes good drink it. If not pass. Well I passed and the Bosnians took offense. I still ordered beer, it was the Denmark beer. You would have thought I ate their first child. You beer isn't good and I didn't feel like placating them.

Tuesday

More work. We had the ice breaker this night. It was held at some army building. Pretty good food. Lots of spiced meats and cheeses, all bad for your arteries, but they make your tummy happy. Its open bar and the poor bartenders are bum rushed for beer, wine, sodas, and juices. Here is another thing I don't like about Europe. Beer must be served in a glass. I understand that brewers want their beer showcased. That is why they provide bars and restaurants with logo glasses. I understand its tradition. I even understand that it is more high class. But when your only job is to serve beer and you're getting upset about the number of people coming to get beer, just give me the damn bottle. People just want beer; they don't want to look good doing it. So take a cue, only it certain instances, from your repressed cousins across the pond. If you can open 20 beers in 20 seconds, that will get you points. Beer pouring is not an art form at rush hour.

Wednesday

More work. We had our cultural tour this day. Unfortunately it also gets dark at 430 here, so when the cultural tour starts at 400 you aren't going to get to see much. Besides I had to work. We had a dns issue and I don't know anything about dns. Turns out it wasn't an issue, but when you don't know anything, you also don't know that you don't have a problem. Anyways I'll be back in march so I'll go on the cultural tour then. My coworkers are old remember and usually are in bed by 8. So I went for a walk on the town to find some dinner. Not the smartest thing in the world. It is safe there, but nobody knows where you are and you don't speak the language. It all worked out and I'll probably do it again.

Thursday

More work. This was the night of our cultural dinner. It was held in the hotel. It was one of the better cultural dinners. It was four courses, very good food. I don't know how to describe the food, other than that is was Bosnian. The singers and dancers were also very good. Check out next week's blog for photos. I wanted to behave myself seeing as we had work to do on Friday. I was well behaved with the wine, only had a few glasses. But as people started to mix and mingle, so did their bottles from the respective countries. The fins brought their version of jager; it's 32 times better than Jager. The French brought their Courvoisier, it was NOT good. Before you know it I was drunk from mixing alcohols again. So my morning was not that happy. My morning was also not that happy because my bed was pretty bad. The pillows were lifeless. No support. They just sat there. Couldn't fold them, couldn't roll them, and couldn't throw them out. That was my other big complaint, seemed jet lagged until it was time to go. In hindsight thought, if your biggest complaints are the pillows and the beer, that's a pretty good trip.

Friday

Was the last day of work. We packed up and all was well in the world. Coworkers stayed indoors and I went exploring to the old town of Sarajevo. This was the original Ottoman market place. This part of the world is known for their handcrafted leather, tin, and copper products. Especially Turkish coffee makers and slippers. Kind of an odd pairing, but it works. There were quite a few beggars in the street market. Very aggressive, very touchy. Its best to keep your hands in your pockets, avoid eye contact, and keep saying no assertively. You don't know want to be a dick, I have money, and my life is much more lucky, easy, and fortunate compared to theirs. But if you give one something, they will tell the network of beggars about and then it's on. Many of these people have handlers also. So if you give them money, some of it goes to their pimp. So just make a donation to a charity or give to toys for tots or something. You don't need the latest app on your phone.

Saturday

It snowed and was very picturesque. We had a late flight, so it was nice to sleep in. There aren't many flights into and out of Sarajevo per day. So when we got to the airport at 1030 it wasn't even open yet. I had to take some things out of my bag, because of weight excesses, but other than that Sarajevo did a good job. Returning, we had another layover in Munich. Again my old counterparts weren't up for adventure. Luckily they were having a festival at the airport. Food, carolers, skating, and drinks; all while it was snowing. Crazy Deutschlanders. Had some Donner kabobs and some crystal weizen . Then had some gluhwein and Feuerzangenbowle, the latter is way better if you ever get the chance. They are both like wine ciders, but the latter is lit on fire first. I also had a bunch of waffles. That's a popular dessert there. Get money, get paid!

Sunday

We had an ass early flight out of munich, where it snowed, we flew into London, where it was snowing, then we flew to DFW, where it was NOT snowing. Luckily though there were no major delays. Flew home on a 777, sat next to some crappy republican Austin-ites. Movies were good, I ordered the kosher meal and one of them looked at me like I was diseased. Now I know the plight of the Jews. Or not really. But I wanted to tell him to stop mean mugging me. I only choose this meal because it's better than the typical chicken or beef option they give you. Got back to Tucson, drove home, went to sleep.

Not too bad huh?

Thanks for Reading

Jake

tour de arizona

I always try to do something post trip because I always have weekend that follows. This time around Ian came to town to have a taste of Arizona. We had a lot of miles to cover in the long weekend, luckily we had the fuel efficient 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid.

Friday lunch time I pick Ian up and take him to a local brewery. It's called Nimbus; it's awful by the way. The food was okay, I had an awesome fried bologna sandwich, but their beer is so-so. I lot of Tucson people swear by it, but they lost their taste buds long ago. Next, we made the 1.5 hour trek up to Phoenix. We had tickets to the Diamondbacks game.

So like always when two best friends get together, you just pick up where you left off. The last time I saw Ian was in March and sure as shit nothing had changed. We talked, got caught back up, made fun of people. We checked into our honeymoon suite up in Phoenix. Then it was off to the game.

Walking around we couldn't decide what we were going to eat, then Ian saw a Peter Piper Pizza station and turned into the fatty we all know and love from high school. He ordered two pizzas just for himself. We had descent seat, about row 30 on the third base side. The stadium wasn't that full because the night before they dropped from contention for the wild card. So after about 5 innings we upgraded our seats to row 3.

Big booty hos

Much better! Ian had just purchased a very expensive camera so I played with that and the different lenses throughout the game.

Some fireworks after the show

Afterwards we went and saw Sara and Joe. We went to Mill Ave, which is the 6^th street, 4^th street, Cincinnati of ASU. The bars and clubs were packed and there were lines, so we decided to go off the strip to Macayos, they had $2 red stripe on a Friday. I've never heard of that cheap of beer on a Friday, so we did that for a few rounds. They were also playing Katt Williams stand up uncensored. That was very good. Sara was the only one carded and was upset for looking young for some reason, after she complained everyone was carded. We hung out for awhile, got caught up and then called it a night.

Because I'm awesome and a gold member of the Starwood Guest Program, Ian and I were treated to free breakfast buffet that was lackluster at best. I still had about 3 plates, but I didn't enjoy it. So about 10 am we finally got on the road for our 3-4 hour trip.

Ian put his camera on multishot so I have about 40 of these things

Pretty easy drive until we got to Flagstaff, the elevation goes up pretty quickly, 1000 to 7000 pretty quickly; needless to say, my batteries were maxed out and drained quickly. We went in and out of a few rain storms which made us think this might not have been a good idea. We had to do some NASCAR type passing of cars, trucks, and buses on the two lane highway, way to go 97 hp Honda civic. Well we finally got there and it turns out it with customer appreciation day for national park service, so they axed the cover charge. And we are all about avoiding cover charges.

As far as the Grand Canyon goes, if you think you don't need to see it, you are wrong. If you think I can see it online and get the gist, you are sadly mistaken. I'll let the photos speak for this part of the blog.

That smoke is not natural, the Forest Service was doing controlled burning that day, so our shots ended up getting ruined because of all the smoke, damn yous guys.

whoopsie daisy

Ian and I did a lot of Clark W. Griswold where we go look over the edge, alllright, and then move along. We didn't have much time there and we didn't have that much time because Arizona doesn't partake in Daylight Saving Time. We tried to hit every aspect of the South Rim; I think we were pretty productive. The drive down was interesting; it was pitch ass black out and raining. So naturally we went over 80. Or rather I did because I was hypermiling. Which means put your car in neutral and let gravity work for you, can't think of a better way to get 100+ mph.

see warp speed can be scary

It helps when you have a gradual descent of 6000 ft, I think we hypermiled for about 30 minutes. SWweeettTT! We stopped in Flagstaff for dinner and then made the trip all the way back to Sierra Vista that night. We were booking it too, did it in 5 hours‼

Sunday we poked around in the morning and played rock band for awhile. Then I gave Ian a quick tour of Ft. Huachuca, showed him where I work and play. Then I took him to hippy central Bisbee.

das devil donkey

mining pit

It's an old mining town that hippies have invaded. A lot of bars, antique stores, restaurants, you only need to see it once. It's very pretty there though because of all the red dirt; red dirt because of the copper, gold, and silver mining. Then we made the trip up to Tombstone. I was able to get my Marshall Jacob badge, trip a success for me. We saw a histogram show. We saw a reenactment of the shootout at the OK Corral.

Took some pictures at Helldorado. Took some pictures of the sunset and then we drove back to down. Ian damn near busted a nut when he saw Buffalo Wild Wings; I didn't know he loved wings so much. Evidently they don't have good wings in California. That night we played some more rock band, Ian is a fantastic drummer, better than me now, I'm still better at guitar so I guess it's all good.

Monday we were going to get up early and get some lunch before I took him to the airport, but when you wake up past brunch, the only thing you have time for is driving to airport macht snchell!

My trip with Ian was fun. He was my third houseguest. Being a host to your friends is usually pretty easy especially when they go with flow so well.

Had a blast Ian, thanks.

Jacob

Here are two of the widescreen shots