tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55561182011-09-25T16:55:18.669-05:00Bosnia BlogAndrew Currie chronicles The Toronto Second City's journey to the Balkans, and the shows for our Peacekeepers there.acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comBlogger171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058912472286396122003-07-22T17:21:00.000-05:002003-07-22T17:21:12.296-05:00And we're done! We took the stage tonight in Banja Luka in 35-plus degree weather; two hours and buckets of sweat (not of the flop variety) later, we were done. Since then I've downed more than my share of Ozujsko Pivos, hobnobbed with British officers, offered to do the camp commander's workload for the rest of the week, and generally made an ass of myself. This tour has been an absolute blast,acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058880346623714272003-07-22T08:25:00.000-05:002003-07-22T08:25:46.700-05:00Yak attack! Well, almost... The British Merlin pilots who rescued us from a five-hour bus ride made our short trip even better by inviting us to sit, two at a time, on the lowered back ramp of the craft while in flight, giving us some specatular aerial views of the countryside. And almost as soon as I took my position there the saucy pilots decided to pull some fancy flying maneouvres. I was acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058853366808910572003-07-22T00:56:00.000-05:002003-07-22T00:56:06.663-05:00In the home stretch now... On this, the morning after a show for our first International audience in Sarajevo, we're calling in a favour and getting a ride to the camp at Banja Luca on board a British Merlin Helicopter. Copy and paste this link for info and pictures: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/merlin/ Our show there is tonight; first thing tomorrow we leave for a one-night hotel acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058801227207859382003-07-21T10:27:00.000-05:002006-10-01T08:40:57.686-05:00One thing I didn't know about the Balkan conflict was that the city of Sarajevo was under siege for more than thirteen hundred days. Even after NATO took control of the airport, there was still no way to get supplies into the city, or people out of it -- that is, until a tunnel was built underneath . Today, after a morning tour of the city, I got to walk through about twenty metres of Sarajevo acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058716561046158932003-07-20T10:56:00.000-05:002003-07-20T10:59:02.573-05:00I've just checked into my room at Camp Butmir, in Sarajevo... If you could call it that. Once again, we're staying in what the army calls "transient quarters", and because Butmir is a multi-national base the Canadian army had no choice but to throw us, four deep per room, into the boiling hot second floor of a portable. One of the big selling points of this SFOR base is the wide variety of acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058676222894562532003-07-19T23:43:00.000-05:002003-07-19T23:44:51.843-05:00Well, it was a bit of work getting the troops at Castle Greyskull to warm up to us last night, but warm up they did. With the kind of shit going on over here, it's amazing that anyone's laughing at all. Case in point: Back at Camp Black Bear, our first stop on the tour, we saw a family of locals chatting with the guards at the front gate on our way back from the pirated CD shop across the road -acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058609550867368632003-07-19T05:12:00.000-05:002003-07-19T08:47:59.753-05:00Just came back from a visit to the caves that during WWII were the stronghold for Yugoslavian Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito. In fact, the entire town of Drvar is the site of a failed Nazi operation to assassinate him. You can read more about it by copying this link and pasting it into your web browser's address field: http://www.eliteforces.freewire.co.uk/Waffen%20SS%20Text+Images/FAL_500.htm acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058538318803400562003-07-18T09:25:00.000-05:002003-07-18T09:25:18.976-05:00Honest to god, they call this place Castle Greyskull! What once was a flour mill has been converted into a small but imposing military base, nestled into the Bosnian hillside. And though the base is small, the living arrangements are just what we all needed -- not the M*A*S*H*-style close quarters tents like we had at Zgon, but nice long ones, with private, curtained off rooms and a powerful fanacurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058513878834903572003-07-18T02:37:00.000-05:002003-07-18T02:37:58.870-05:00Imagine being so hot that your clothes, even your jeans, are soaked through with sweat. You're having trouble seeing straight because perspiration is overflowing from your eyebrows and clouding your vision. And then, on top of all this, imagine having to don a rubber slicker and woolen hat and dance. That's what it's like to perform on tour with Second City. Tha good news is that the battle acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058436804791359282003-07-17T05:13:00.000-05:002003-07-17T05:13:24.846-05:00This morning we went into town to see some kids at a local school, and relieve ourselves of the many pounds of candy and souvenirs we're all carrying. Thing is, with it being July and all the schools are empty. So our unit of entertainers and armed escort wandered around town in search of children, looking like idiots. We finally ambushed some in the courtyard of an apartment complex, where all acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058373941343808382003-07-16T11:45:00.000-05:002003-07-16T11:45:41.246-05:00Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I've gone from the wide open spaces of my private room in the transient quarters at Velika Kladusa to sharing a tent with five other guys on the floor of a boiling hot factory, now the base at Zgon, and my home for the next two nights. Our show last night in Bihac was well received, though the audience was a little rowdy. As we travel further into the acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058253730462226682003-07-15T02:22:00.000-05:002003-07-15T02:22:10.473-05:00This is so annoying... It seems that I've got some money owed to CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registry Authority, for my andrewcurrie.ca domain. So instead of letting me know this in advance they decide to suspend my domain without telling me! That's why my permanent website is down. This morning I'm recovering from what I call switchback fever. The road to Bihac from Camp Black Bear is a curvy acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-105818875956809542003-07-14T08:19:00.000-05:002003-07-14T08:19:19.626-05:00Greetings from Bihac -- pronounced "Bee-hatch", though "bi-atch" sounds way cooler... The base here, a former car dealership, is the site of our first outdoor show, and the third of our tour. Today is our set up and orientation day, so we were treated to a driving tour of the town and came face to face with our first roped-off mined area. Plenty of photos to come! Now I'm sitting here in what acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058138942707251282003-07-13T18:29:00.000-05:002003-07-13T18:29:02.670-05:00So the army has this rule that everyone can only drink two beers a day. They even issue cards that get stamped for every beer that you have, on every day of every single month. This means that most folks don't drink until the end of the day, which is obviously good when you spend your daylight hours walking around with guns or flying helicopters, but it also means that people like me, who would acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1058078280960157142003-07-13T01:38:00.000-05:002003-07-13T01:39:23.523-05:00Gotta make this entry fast... In ten minutes I'm going on a tour of Bosnia... By helicopter! After a slow start, last night's show turned into a big success, and as usual, we headed over to the patio afterwards for our mandatory two beers. I would never actually drink this much if there wasn't a limit on how much I could drink! Yesterday we supported the local economy with a trip to the black acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1057943730533584212003-07-11T12:15:00.000-05:002003-07-11T12:16:42.726-05:00My worst fears have come true; I'm stuck here at Camp Black Bear in Velika Kladusa, Bosnia, using an army PC. It's not so bad, certainly no worse than the two-hour layover we had at Greenville Airport, somewhere in the Anapolis Valley, before finally leaving the continent to get here. I can't write too much; I'm expected at this moment at a meet & greet with the troops... All I can say is that Iacurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5556118.post-1057811573251266572003-07-09T23:32:00.000-05:002003-07-09T23:32:53.263-05:00Testing... No, I'm not in Bosnia yet -- just want to make sure this thing works!acurriehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03850637786168967964noreply@blogger.com