The long drive from Cazin in the north of Bosnia back to its capital in Sarajevo supposed to take me only a day… probably around 6-7 hours drive. But it took me two days to reach back to Sarajevo, I was driving slowly and steady until I was about 2 hours away from Jajce city…. I was interrupted. While driving in the wild approaching a small village, all out of a sudden, a stray dog came crossing the run right in front of my car. I managed to brake but I hit the dog anyway. Luckily the dog still alive and kept running away back to the forest. I kept driving another 2-3 kilometers until I found a safe place to stop at the roadside. Shockingly, the planet number of the car was missing, probably from hitting the dog.

I then called the car rental company to inform them about the incident and was quite shocked that it might cost a lot more than I expected. It was a mistake that I didn’t stop right away after hitting the dog. I thought it is probably just like in Malaysia, where I can just go to some car workshop to get a new piece of plate number which probably costs a bit expensive than a meal in McDonalds. I then learned that only the police can release the plate number and if I lost it, it can get complicated since its gonna be a police case and involving a lot of paperwork. I then rushed back to the same place where I hit the dog and… the plate number was gone.. probably someone has taken it away.

Since I spent a long time looking for it, I didn’t make it to Sarajevo so I went back to Jajce to stay overnight in the same place that I stayed a few days before. Only the next morning I continued the journey, which took another 3 hours to Sarajevo and I stopped by in a small city called Visoko, just north of Sarajevo. It was there where some ancient pyramids are located, which are older than the one in Al-Fayoum, Egypt. Historians are doing research on it and their findings might change the history of mankind. By the look at it, its just look like a normal hill. I didn’t spend much time there since I need to return back the car and settle the problem with the plate number back in Sarajevo.

Once I got back to Sarajevo, I took the first step to settle to problem with the car before taking a good rest there. The next day I crossed path with a solo Malaysian traveller who are currently travelling around the Balkan areas for a few months. It is always good to meet my own people, who speaks the same language with the same tempo and melody, and have totally the same sense of humor. We used to keep in touch of Facebook but didn’t really plan to meet… but it seems that our path just crossed. The timing was just nice, I was already done exploring and in the mood to relax so we spent hours over a few cups of coffee exchanging experiences. The weather was quite bad in Sarajevo, the sky kept crying so I just spent most of the time in my room reading books and met with the Malaysian girl for a drink.

It was totally a good experience being here in this country for 2 weeks. It was a good break and my mind felt fresh from my long journey of Central Asia. Sure I didn’t see much of Bosnia, being here for 2 weeks is good enough to see the surface of this country but too short to be able to blend with its culture… to really know its inhabitants. Seeing the beauty of both its cities and nature… with the friendliness of the people, I think this country is really doing well recovering from the Yugoslavia war in the last 20 years. I always try to look at the good side in everything, trying to find beauty inside ugliness… trying to find the good effect within every bad action and the benefits on every tragedy. This is one way to help me understand everything that happen within the realm of space and time… everything that happen under the sun… to understand reasons… The tragedy of the World War II for example, took many lives, creating tears to many and turned cities into dust and ashes. But to think of it, that unavoidable catastrophe gave birth to many useful technology that we use today such as the Internet technology, radar, cryptography and other technologies used in communication on battlefield. Along with that, the war also pushed the development of medicine and also surprising, business administration. I see the same here, the current generation here is experiencing building their country from destruction… they’re experiencing the struggle of waking up from defeat. Actions happen.. its unavoidable… but whether the effect is good or bad.. is up to us… depending on which angle we look at things.