Life Got in the Way From Mount Igman to Mount Hum.

Tamara, Me, Rob, Aly

Old friends, mountain gatherings and the first signs of autumn in Bosnia

It feels as though the past couple of weeks have been rather full.

When I wrote the last Sunday Edition, I was still up on Mount Igman, just outside Sarajevo, where I was spending the week working with a group from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Ministry of Security.

I was sharing some of the experience I’ve picked up over the years in digital communications, particularly around crisis communication and social media.

It was a long week. A very enjoyable one, but a long one nonetheless.

I’d also managed to pick up a cold, so I probably wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders. But I thoroughly enjoyed being with the group, and I hope they got as much out of the week as I did.

Normally, after something like that, I’d come home, put my feet up and disappear for a couple of days.

That was the plan, anyway.

From Igman to Zenica

Our hiking club had another event taking place at the club’s mountain house, the dom, on the side of Mount Hum, above Zenica.

Rather than travelling all the way back home near Laktaši, I finished the course, got myself onto a bus in Sarajevo and headed for Kakanj.

I was picked up there and taken to Senad’s house on the outskirts of Zenica, where Tamara had arrived having driven down with her father and, naturally, with a car containing what seemed like enough food to sustain a small village.

Then we headed up the mountain.

Once we’d arrived, unpacked and settled ourselves in, the barbecue was already underway.

Obviously.

The following morning Tamara headed off on the walk.

I didn’t.

☝️ Here’s a video (NOT Mine) of the walk Tamara did ☝️

I’ve still got a slight medical issue and have been told not to overdo things when it comes to walking.

I’ll probably contradict that advice at some point, knowing me, but for the moment I’m behaving myself.

We spent two full days and three nights up there.

It wasn’t really a party atmosphere. More an event atmosphere, if that makes sense.

People arriving, conversations going on everywhere, enormous quantities of food appearing from seemingly nowhere, and everyone bringing along something to drink.

Very Bosnian. And very enjoyable.

I also managed to record quite a bit of video while we were there. Most of that will probably stay in my personal archive, but I’m increasingly pleased that I take the time to record these little moments.

They don’t always seem particularly important at the time.

Years later, they often are.

Tamara’s dad

Something else struck me over the weekend.

Tamara’s father really seems to enjoy these trips with us.

I don’t think I ever imagined that he would particularly take to this sort of thing.

He enjoys Banja Luka, of course, but has always been happiest spending time out here with us in the village, pottering about, talking to the neighbours and finding yet another little project that apparently needs doing.

And now he seems to have taken to our trips to Zenica as well.

I think that’s really rather nice.

On Sunday morning we eventually got ourselves organised, loaded everything into a kombi, drove back down the mountain into Zenica, transferred everything into our car and headed home.

Where, finally, I could rest.

Well...

Not quite.

An old friend arrives

We had less than a day before an old friend of mine arrived.

Rob and I go all the way back to the late 1980s, when I was still a soldier in Germany. He and his wife Aly have visited us here before, and this time they arrived in something rather spectacular.

Rob now owns what I can only describe as an enormous, state-of-the-art luxury camper van. When I first saw it, I genuinely wondered whether it was going to make it up our drive.

It did.

And when Rob showed me around inside, I realised that calling it a camper van probably doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like a hotel room on wheels. Cookers. Underfloor heating. Air conditioning. Solar panels. All manner of clever things.

I half expected to find a concierge hiding somewhere in the back.

They stayed with us for three nights, which meant plenty of catching up, reminiscing, gossiping and generally putting the world to rights.

And, naturally, there was food.

Lots of food.

When Rob and Aly arrived, I’m not entirely sure they were hungry.

That didn’t matter.

There was meze. Then čorba. And later a full-blown barbecue with several different types of meat, including the Zenica ćevap that we now seem incapable of visiting Zenica without buying.

So it has been a rather hectic few days.

Wonderful.

But hectic.

Why I like being ahead

I’m writing down these thoughts on Friday, sitting in the studio, with a few podcast episodes still needing some pre-production work before I record and upload them.

And weeks like this remind me why I like working ahead with the podcast.

Having episodes prepared in advance gives me some breathing space.

Life can happen without me immediately thinking, I’ve got to get an episode out.

This coming Tuesday’s episode is a rather personal one.

I’ll be remembering my friend Martin Gannon, who is sadly no longer with us, and talking about his experiences as a Brit living in the former Yugoslavia during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I think it’s going to be an interesting listen.

If you subscribe to this newsletter, I’ll send you the episode when it’s published on Tuesday.

Autumn has arrived

As I sit here, the sun is coming through the studio windows.

But the radiator is on.

Not very long ago we were dealing with temperatures of 34, 36 and even 38 degrees.

Far too hot for me.

Now we’re hovering somewhere in the low twenties, and I have a feeling that from here the temperatures are only heading in one direction.

Autumn is arriving. Before too long, switching on the heater will probably become the first thing I do when I come into the studio in the morning.

And actually, I rather like that.

There’s something about autumn that suits sitting behind a microphone and telling stories.

And a sad piece of news

There was some sad news this week as well.

One of the people we’d become close to through the hiking club passed away.

He was a really lovely man and somebody we always enjoyed seeing when we went down to Zenica.

We’re waiting to hear the funeral arrangements, and when we know them we’ll make the journey back to Zenica to say goodbye.

He’ll be sorely missed.

These things are part of life, of course, but that doesn’t make them any less sad.

Perhaps it also makes those weekends sitting around a table, sharing food, talking nonsense, laughing and simply spending time together seem that little bit more important.

And finally...

When you meet somebody you haven’t seen for a while, isn’t it rather nice when they tell you that you’ve lost weight?

Even better when they tell you that you’re looking younger.

Apparently I am. Do you believe that? I’m not entirely sure I do.

But I’ll take it.

Until next Sunday,

David