He was fat and lazy and it now late June, had foraged for months on a rich providence of leaves and berries that had flourished through Spring and small mammals and reptiles with their young who are so active as the days grow warmer, until he stumps his claw down on them. He had long forgotten the March day when he was driven out of hibernation by desperate hunger, standing skin and bone. The animal he'd seen upon his usual daily prowl route, he identify as a homo-sapien, would've been easy prey, but he didn't need meat and was too lazy to be bothered, so decided to make a detour round the stranger stood death still with a terrified look on it's face. He had seen that he'd frighten the life out of it and that was enough, letting it know he was there and who he was. Let it be to sleep in a tent and cycle away in the morning with a wonderful tale of how it seen him, a bear.

Frightened is an understatement. I was for taking down the tent and leaving, but then reckoned the bear looked so well fed and had walked away from me, so the danger if there was any, had passed; though, I remained a little worried should the bear return. Anyway I didn't loose any sleep.

It is a bright sunny morning, a nice change to yesterday's foggy start.

I have the last of the cereal biscuits for breakfast, which is the last food I have until I get to Sarajevo and get some cash out in the local currency.

I'm on the road for eight, sweeping down to the first of many small valley bottom towns on the last bit into the city. And at one point pass a signboard, like what is common when passing into a new province, in three languages including English "Welcome to Republic Serpska", which set me wondering. My map has Bosnia separated into two national entities by a border. There's a squiggly frontier-line on the map inside the national frontier, running roughly parallel with the Montenegrin border in the south, the Serbian border in the east, and Croatian in the north, leaving Bosnia proper an island in it's own country. Looking at the map it looks like a pool of spilt liquid.

The reality I find out later, from the guild on the "City Walking Tour", came about during the break up of Yugoslavia. During the eighties after Tito's death, the six nations making up the federation reverted to electing their own presidents to represent them in Belgrade. But in March 1992 after Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia had broken with Yugoslavia, Bosnia decided to follow, so had a referendum. A "Yes" on the ballot to break with Belgrade. The Muslim and small Croat community voted "yes" and the yeses had a small majority, so Bosnia Herzegovina would go independent. But, the large Bosnian Serb community stayed away, as they regarded the ballet illegal. This led ultimately to a battle for territory with Serb strongholds joining up and after the war which ensued, it was agreed under the "Dayton Peace Accord" in 1995, to run the country in the present two parts.

"So Bosnia now has two presidents?" I ask the guild. He replies "Three. The Croats also have their own president" and he laments "Politicians spoil this country. Unemployment stands at sixty-five per cent for twenty-five to thirty year olds. We need foreign investment, but with three presidents and a split country, it's perceived that Bosnia is an unstable place to invest"

I pass the airport. Pope Frances has just visited as there are big billboards with his holiness there and along the main highway into Sarajevo. And having left the city last January, the hills which encircle the city were then brown and it was frosty, today they are green with lush foliage and the sun is warm.

Heart

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