We left this morning after eating breakfast at the hotel. And wouldn't you know, they served hot dogs AGAIN! However, this time they were with eggs so they were more manageable. After eating, Luka checked our rooms to make sure they were clean and then we boarded the bus. The bus was a little less crowded because two of my teammates were staying in Sarajevo and taking a bus back to Bar later in the day. One of the younger girls who wants to play college volleyball in America was taking her SAT in Sarajevo. An older girl on the team stayed so she would not have to travel back alone. The night before we were given lunch sacks with drinks and candy bars in them for the trip. On our way out of town we picked up sandwiches for everyone. Sandwiches here are nothing like sandwiches in the states. They consist of bread, cheese, and a mystery meat. It's not like going to Subway and getting lettuce, green peppers, cucumbers, and black olives on your sandwich. Ahhhh... I miss veggies on my sandwiches! :)
Layne and I were a little nervous about the trip back because the weather was not that great: There was a lot of snow on the ground and the roads were a little icy. Our owner left two days before us and it took him 9 hours to get to the Montenegro border when it should have only taken 2. Also, Luka only translates certain things to us, so we have to end up asking one of the girls what he really said. One of the younger girls told us that we might have to go another way because of the weather and that the trip could take 20 hours! This seemed a little bit extreme, but we were not sure because he may have said that and we would have never known.
The roads were pretty bad and we had to slow down every time a car came in the other direction. The roads were only "cleared" enough for one car to pass (I put cleared in quotation marks because they weren't really cleared, just had less snow then the other portions of the road), so the other car had to move as far over as they could. And then the other car had to squeeze by. As I mentioned earlier, some stretches of the road did not have guardrails. This was even more scary when the roads were icy. We also passed what I will call ex Bosnia soldiers just sitting on the side of the road. They were dressed in their uniforms and both had large guns. One of the guys was sitting in a wheelchair and only had one leg. When we saw this, Layne and I just looked at each other with big eyes. Kinda crazy, but nothing bad happened.
View from window as we left Pale
On one of the bridges on the way home (If you look to the left above the guard rail, you can see the road we had to drive along. Most of the roads were this high up or even higher.)
View from the gas station we stopped at to refuel and use the bathroom
In the end the trip did not take much longer than the trip there. We were home by 4:30 and immediately hooked up to the Internet. We also turned on the hot water heater so we could take our first hot shower in a week. (It was wonderful!) And we started laundry. We had accumulated a lot of dirty laundry, so we had to get started right away. The washer in Layne's apartment is smaller than a normal machine, and it takes an hour and half to do one load! Plus, we do not have a dryer, so everything must air dry which takes a few days. After loading up the washer, we went to eat at "our" restaurant and hung around for the rest of the night.
Now that we are back in Bar, we will have one practice per day because most of my teammates are back in school. This leaves the entire day for Layne and I to fill. I am not sure what we will find to do as Bar is not that big. Our first game is Friday night in Herceg Novi, a small town near the boarder of Croatia. We get to drive up the coast so there should be some pretty pictures in the next post! Until then...
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