S U N D A Y

We woke up on Sunday morning to the sound of, well nothing. Being the only inhabitants of this huge lot, apart from a couple of permanent dwellers, explained the lack of background-noise that would certainly follow as soon as the first bunch of the Bosnian Red Cross volunteers arrived. Empty stomachs soon started rumbling and so we waited for our breakfast that would be brought to us by Amela, one of the organizers of this camp and loyal employee of the Swiss Red Cross in Bosnia, and another volunteer, Nedim, who, incidentally, is also one of the leaders of the camp.
Our breakfast consisted of Burek, a Bosnian pasty filled with either meat (for the carnivores), spinach, or cheese (for the vegetarian majority), and nutella-like spread whose whole content of sugar would stick stubbornly to our teeth. We wolfed down our breakfast accompanied by strong Bosnian coffee, which by the way, the author thinks, is the  greatest beverage in the world making Starbucks a pariah among all caffeine consisting drinks. True story.

After breakfast, we were sent off to 'explore the city', as our team leaders had to discuss the organisation of the days to come. Boris, who was mentioned earlier on, took us to a place called 'Ethno Village' in the white Red Cross van. Apparently, this place is the Disney-land of Bosnia and quite obviously, 'the real thing'. As we climbed out of the vehicle, we were dumbfounded, believing that this had to be a mistake: not in a million years could this place, that seemed to be taken out of a bad Barbie-daydream, be the city we arrived in the night before. But Boris was quite adamant to leave us explore the wonders of Ethno-Village and only persistent arguing convinced him that we would be much happier to spend the day in the actual city of Bijeljina. And so, he loaded us up again in the van and drove us to the city center, still smiling and concerned, as usual, about our safety.

We got off near a bus stop, in the center of the city, surrounded by trees and smiling wedding guests that were gathered in front of what looked  like a town hall. And so we started walking and ended up at a cafe, about fifteen minutes later. The heat made it nearly impossible to walk more than twenty minutes straight and so we dragged our feet to the nearest place we could find that offered cool drinks and clean toilets.
The rest of the day would look a lot like that: walking from one air-conditioned place to another, filling our bodies with liters of lemonade that would evaporate as soon as it touched the inside of our mouths.

With dried up and fried bodies we waited for our team leaders to come to the city center for dinner. Looking for an adequate restaurant would take another our and ironically we ended up in the very Ethno Village we had dismissed only hours before. But Disney kitsch set aside, this place does offer great food, an interesting scenery, and real life swans! Full and happy we returned to the camp, where we would conclude this day with another satisfying shower from PET bottles.