Brits in Bosnia - toddlers, dog and all

Sometimes a situation leads to something becoming so much greater, more pleasurable than it actually is. To clarify with an example, when you have spent a few hours tramping up a cold wet mountain, the piece of melted chocolate that has solidified in an odd shape with all the weird...

Read more

I'm getting progressively more hopeless at keeping up with my blogging etiquette. I've been tagged hither and tither and I can't remember who tagged me or what for. So, in a vain attempt to try and get back on top of it all, I'm sort of doing a meme that...

Read more

Take some good coffee (Doncafe, the red packet being my preferred version, I am far too much of a wuss to go for the super strong green packet) and a Bosnian coffee maker thing that has a name but it escapes me right now.Put one tablespoon per person into the...

Read more

I now have my answer for the question that all teenagers hurl at their parents at some point 'What did you ever do for me anyway?'All last week Adam's nursery has foregone normal morning nursery activities and headed down to the ice rink that opens every winter in Tuzla's central park,...

Read more

I've been sharpening my pencil over the past couple of weeks and I've got plenty to say. So here are the postcards that I wish to write to all and sundry.**********************************************Dear Next Door Neighbour,We have repeatedly asked you not to feed our dog. She gets fed enough at home and...

Read more

January 27th is the World Holocaust Memorial Day, a day on which we are asked to take the time to reflect on what can happen if racism, prejudice and exclusionary behaviour are left unchecked and unchallenged. Whilst the Holocaust is a specific event tied to Nazi persecution during World War...

Read more

One of the blogs that I always enjoy reading is Big Beluga Baby. Gail is a mum of 3 (soon to be 4) living in Almaty in Kazakhstan. She came back to the UK recently to await the birth of her baby and has been writing some brilliant posts about...

Read more

One of the best blogs about Bosnia is Tim Clancy's Pure Intent. Tim is the writer of the only Guide Book to Bosnia that I've ever seen, but more importantly is an environmentalist doing his best to keep the Bosnian politicians from destroying the country's most beautiful natural features and...

Read more

There were all sorts of things I was going to post about today, but I've just got a bit of the January blahs. But a very random blogging connection made through Mother's Ruin introduced me to Henry Dingle's song January, and I'm loving it: have a listen.Isn't it great? Really...

Read more

There is very little more that can be said about the awful situation in Haiti, but to encourage anyone who is thinking of donating to please do so (The Disasters and Emergency Committee is a good place to start, they are an umbrella organisation for 13 of the best known...

Read more

Everything has changed now we've made the decision to move back to the UK. Having resisted talking about England as being home, we now talk endlessly about when we go home, being back at home, what it is like at home, what we miss about home. Just making the decision...

Read more

I absolutely love hearing the stories behind the songs that people love; the places it reminds them of, that moment in time that that song will forever bring to life for them. Obviously I have more than a mild obsession with Desert Island Discs and the Inheritance Tracks that they...

Read more

English is a funny old language. There are so many phrases that are grammatically correct, but we just never say them.Yesterday afternoon, I was musing over (ok, I was being dragged by the arm and being encouraged to think about) what had happened to the playmobile pirate's sword. The boys...

Read more

An interesting opportunity has appeared. A chance to apply for some short term consultancy work that would be interesting, very useful on my CV, relevant to my own studies, fits into our time scale and pays pretty well. In fact that rare sort of job that ticks every single box.In...

Read more

The boys on a beach in the Isle of Wight in May 2009. This photo has been my wallpaper on my computer for a long time and I love it because it is so indescribably English. It makes me think of going paddling in rock pools before heading back to...

Read more

Many of you may be unaware that Bosnia has some really great skiing. Olympic standard skiing in fact. Remember Torvill and Dean in a cloud of purple skating to gold medal success in that sea of perfect 6.0s in 1984? That Winter Olympics was in Sarajevo. There are 2 mountains...

Read more

We're back. The house is officially a catastrophe and buried under piles of laundry. The dog is furious with being left behind and sulking by the front door. The boys are back in nursery. I'm having my first proper (i.e. sludge at the bottom) coffee in weeks. And, finally, a...

Read more

It's still snowing here. I hear that it is snowing in England too. With luck, not too many of you will have to repeat what I found myself saying earlier:- Look at all that snow boys! Lets go outside and play!- Want to build a snowman?- Yes we can throw...

Read more

Guess what?(I'll have you know that these photos were taken at about 11am. It was snowing and really was that dark, has been like this for days. Continued snowing for quite a while as well. Above is the garden. Below, the view from the front door - when I say...

Read more

During the war here many people couldn't manage to feed their dogs so had to set them free to fend for themselves. This combined with a patchy government strategy for dealing with dogs means that there are a lot of strays around here. Really a lot.For the past couple of...

Read more

There are many things that I will miss about Bosnia when we go, but one of the things that will not have me all dewy eyed with nostalgia will be our kitchen. Words cannot describe how much I hate our kitchen. Sometimes I go to bed cursing it.I am of...

Read more

I've had Christmases abroad but until we moved to Bosnia I had never spent a Christmas in a country which doesn't really celebrate Christmas*. Christmas Day is a normal working day here and I am finding it odd. I hadn't realised how ingrained into my psyche Christmas is and to...

Read more

Last year I couldn't find any Christmas cards anywhere, so we made the lot. Or rather, given that my boys were more into throwing the paint, I made the lot pretending that they were helping, whilst they ran around demolishing the play room. I remember the afternoon well, it wasn't...

Read more

It's Friday. Time for that moment to write some postcards to the people I have something to say to, and as it has been a while I have a lot to say. Right, who is first in the firing line?**************************Dear Jessie,Although the weather has been filthy these past few weeks,...

Read more

So, it turns out that in the office next to Dave's works a guy that I once knew at University. Last time we had a conversation was probably somewhere around 1994. Bearing in mind that Bosnia is hardly the worlds most visited destination and Tuzla doesn't top the list of...

Read more