Top 7 Hidden Gems: Bosnia and Herzegovina (Focus on Sarajevo) with Local Experts Nermin and Katrin Numic

Introduction

Voiceover: You’re listening to the Zero To Travel podcast, where we explore exciting travel-based work, lifestyle, and business opportunities, helping you achieve your wildest travel dreams. And now your host, world wanderer and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason: Hey, Jason here with ZeroToTravel.com. Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out, letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms, to fill your life with as much travel as you desire, no matter what your situation or experience. And as you know, most places are discovered at this point, right? But I try to do my part to introduce you to some places to visit before they get too discovered, let’s say. And today we’re going to put the spotlight on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I’m doing it by bringing in two local experts, Nermin and Katrin Numic.

They’re a Bosnian-German couple who run a travel agency locally in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the goal of helping people discover some of those in-between places most tourists miss. And of course, that’s exactly what we’re going to focus on today. We’ll link up to their website. You might be confused by the name, .Cheyf, it’s pronounced. And it is actually a Bosnian term. It’s basically enjoying a little me time, a little simple pleasure in your day. We talk about that as a cultural concept, and of course you’re going to get a ton of hidden gems and just get a vibe for what there is to see and do in this country.

Stick around on the back end, I will leave you with a fun fact about this area of the world and a little quote to let you go about your day. Don’t forget zerototravel.com/newsletter. If you want to join the community off the pod, keep in touch over there, would love to welcome you to the newsletter community. Okay, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Nermin and Katrin. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the other side, my friends.

How Nermin and Katrin Met

Jason: Nermin Numic and Katrin Numic, welcome to the Zero To Travel podcast, my friends. I hope I got it right there with the pronunciations.

Nermin: You did great, my friends.

Jason: I said friend, there’s two of you here though. Nermin and Katrin, I know you go by the nickname Numa, so we’re going to roll with that. Anyway, welcome to the show. You guys are a couple, you’re doing some pretty cool things in Bosnia, and we’re going to get some of the hidden gems from you today, along with a bit of context on how you ended up there. Well, that’s probably a good place to start, because we all love a good transition to travel story here. How did you end up living a life abroad? But first of all, we have to go to, where did you guys meet? Give us the origin story of your relationship.

Nermin: She’s pushing me that I should start.

Katrin: She’s literally pushing you like she was nudging you with her elbow.

Nermin: So we met in Cape Town, South Africa, 2016. So this year is ten years. I was there for work. She came there for work, but more because of the city. And we met in a classic manner, on a house party. I immediately fell in love. She needed some time. It was my first week there, and she was like, I need friends, I don’t need to meet someone, I’m not interested. But persistence. And I speak German as well, she’s from Germany. We were in a faraway country, so one thing led to another.

So in the end, I was living there a year and a half in Cape Town, South Africa. She did as well, one year. And then when I needed to move for work back to Europe, to Prague, Czech Republic, then came the question if she wants to move with me, which was not the plan for her, neither for me. But then, you know, nobody came, none of us came to South Africa to find the love of their life. But then she was convinced somehow. So we moved to Prague in Czech Republic for a year, half a year after that, half a year in Hamburg, a year and a half in Munich, both in Germany. And then we should have moved back to Cape Town in South Africa, where my former employer offered me a better position, head of business development, which is great for my CV, and we really liked Cape Town. So we signed a contract, I signed a contract with that company in February 2020. COVID was somewhere far away in Asia. And then when we cancelled our flat and should have left the apartment in Munich, there was a complete lockdown in Germany.

Katrin: And in South Africa.

Nermin: Everywhere, I mean.

Katrin: Yeah, I mean, at that time, everywhere, yeah.

Ending Up in Bosnia During COVID

Nermin: So long story short, we went to Katrin’s mom to live for a short time, until the borders opened, that as well she could move somewhere, because in Germany it’s not so easy to find an apartment when you just left one. From Germany to Split in Croatia, and then from Split to Sarajevo. And then we spent six months here. We were just waiting our time, basically, until South Africa opened the borders again for foreigners, because you couldn’t even go there for business travel.

So this half a year, I showed her my country. I mean, she has been here before, to meet my parents and my friends, and we did maybe the classic touristic stuff, but I never showed her a little bit more. But as well, it was a new experience for me. I’m born and raised here, but I left the country when I was 30. And, you know, I had different interests, different budget, didn’t come now with a wife here. And as well, I travelled the world through my company, was treated well everywhere. And when we travelled through Bosnia, we were both amazed. Like I said, even if I’m from here, I needed maybe this shift of perspectives to come here and to see how amazing this country is, what unique culture and as well nature it has, with different climates, different topography and everything. I was amazed by it, and as well, Katrin was too.

Jason: Do you think you were seeing it in a different way because you had spent so much time abroad, and then you were coming back and you were getting to show her? So you kind of get a heightened awareness around what is there actually, what should I show her, what are the things to do here, what makes life nice here?

Nermin: I showed her all the things that I know that are a tourist attraction, but now I had a different perspective. So this country, the biggest part of the Dinaric Alps go through Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it has three major climates, but six if we count the sub-climates. So it creates a lot of natural wonders. It has over 200 waterfalls. Sarajevo is in a valley. One of four Olympic mountains is literally in the city. This is all stuff that I took for granted, and as well all the different religions. So Sarajevo was always called Little Jerusalem, four major religions living side by side, synagogues, churches, mosques. So all of that stuff I grew up with. So when you grow up with something, it becomes normal for you. So that as well became a new perspective for me. And as well, living the last three years together in Europe, in Prague, Czech Republic, and two cities in Germany, before that in South Africa, this untouched nature, but as well, this organic food that is here, this is the norm. I mean, in this half year, it was also COVID, of course, so there weren’t so many tourists. But for me, it was just mind-blowing that there is nobody there to see how beautiful this is. There are just no people. And I think that makes it very special also.

Jason: So Katrin, you were there temporarily, you thought, for COVID, but then you guys decided to stick around. How was that for you? Because there are challenges that come with moving abroad, and I’m sure on some level maybe you thought you’d end up there, but maybe you thought you’d end up in Germany, your home country, or maybe you will one day, who knows. How was the adjustment, the excitement of moving to a new place, and then the reality of the day-to-day life, and trying to settle in and build a community and all that kind of stuff?

Katrin: I mean, for the first six months that we spent here during COVID, it was just really nice for me to spend more time with Nermin’s family and friends. Because, yes, I’ve been regularly, every summer, sometimes in the winter we went to visit, but it’s different if you live in a place versus visit a place. So for me it was just really nice to explore more of his hometown and to get to know the people of his life better, because in just two weeks of vacation you don’t have a lot of time to go into depth, right? And then we went back to South Africa for like a brief episode at the end of 2020, just for six months, and visa troubles, work troubles, in the end we came back to Europe. We came back here to Bosnia because we didn’t know where else to go. And then we were thinking, like, do we want to stay here, do we want to move to Germany, do we want to move to a third country, what should we do?

Deciding to Start .Cheyf

Katrin: Well, we decided to stay here, and we decided to open the travel agency, just to try, because tourism was slowly picking up again. And we were both convinced that there is really something to see here in the country that deserves more attention, or that Bosnia has a bad reputation in general anyway, and it deserves a better reputation. And then coming back here from South Africa, that was an easy transition, because I mean, Bosnia is southern Europe, or south-eastern Europe. So of course there is a little bit of a different mentality than in Germany. It’s more like the south of Italy or the south of Spain, people are more Mediterranean, people are more loud, more open. But in the end it’s still a European country. So moving back here from South Africa was not a hard transition, because South Africa is, of course, very different, culturally.

Jason: You guys decided to start this up. And for everybody listening, we’re going to get into some of the highlights on what to see, give you some reasons to go. I do think this is a, although in my little bubble of people that I talk to, and I know we connected through our associate producer, Caitlin, who has spent a lot of time there and met you guys in person at one of these fairly recent Nomad events, this is a destination that I think people that are travelling a lot, they’re aware of, but maybe for the more sort of mass tourism crowd, let’s say, it’s not as on the radar, I would say.

Nermin: That changed.

Jason: Yeah, okay, that’s changed.

Nermin: Or it’s still changing. I mean, what I want to say, it was on the radar, now it’s picking up, yeah. But it wasn’t like that five years ago, it was really exotic.

Jason: Katrin, your background, content creation, marketing, this stuff. But Nermin, you were, technical sales consultant and battery testing, I’m looking at your LinkedIn here, lighting solutions. This was more in her wheelhouse than yours. So when you guys decided to start this company and show people what you had to offer in this country, and start these small tours which we’re going to talk about. But just in the beginning, I’m just curious for people listening that are going through that decision-making process for themselves, how did you guys decide? Was it just going to do this, or was it more intentional? Because you’re working together as a couple, not everybody can or wants to do that. I’m pretty sure my wife doesn’t want to work with me, I’m fairly confident that I would drive her crazy, and she would drive me crazy, I don’t know if it would work. But how is that working for you guys?

Nermin: First of all, you’re completely right, we knew nothing about tourism when we started. We just knew the kind of tours that we would like to take if we were tourists visiting Bosnia. And that’s probably enough.

Katrin: Yes, that’s how we started. And we were like, well, the rest about tourism, you can learn.

Nermin: As well, I have to say, we had a couple of good, but also a couple of bad experiences when travelling, and we said, oh, we definitely don’t want to do this to our guests. It was this kind of mass tourism, trying to sell us something on the way that we weren’t interested in, and still needed to wait half an hour until the other ones did their buggy show. So that happens, so let’s not do this, let’s do that. We know what is quite appreciated. So maybe when you read my CV, it’s a lot of technicals, but in the end I was studying economics, working in marketing and sales all my life, customer perception and how to create it, and maybe this is my strength, and the storytelling, also what Katrin is really strong at. So I did my travel guide license, but then, to have the perspective how to attract somebody, how to create packages, what to offer, I think this is the perspective that we brought into the industry in Bosnia, I think. And that was the fun process also, that made working easy together in the beginning, because we had the same plans and the same ideas, we knew what kind of tours we wanted to create.

And then working together, we just realized each of us needs their own responsibilities. So even if we live together and work together and see each other every day for work, you just need to know, okay, Nermin is doing this, I am doing this, we need to have a proper meeting for things, so you don’t have an idea over dinner, and then you’re like, oh, by the way, I have this idea, and the other person is annoyed because they just want to eat dinner and chill.

Katrin: That’s mostly me, and Nermin is like, I have this idea, before we even eat.

Nermin: The German needs order, right? You have to compartmentalize in some ways, otherwise you can’t be working.

Katrin: And departmentalize, yeah.

Nermin: So we know that if it’s something for sales or networking, that is mine, otherwise, you know, I thought you will answer this and I thought you will do this. So we needed one day to sit down and say, okay, we are a company, we need to know who is who. So that helped, that helped. But it still, it was a long way.

The Meaning of Ćejf

Jason: Well, we’re going to get into this list. But I love cultural concepts, and I had to look up what your website name was about, which we’re going to link to in the show notes. And I read it’s pronounced Chayf. And it sounds like it’s a cultural concept that encapsulates the ethos of perhaps your personal lives, and also the tours you run. So I think that’s a good place to start, because I feel like that’s going to inform the sort of curated list you brought us today. Would that be accurate?

Nermin: Yeah, I think so.

Jason: Okay, so is it Chayf, am I pronouncing that?

Nermin: Chayf. Chayf.

Jason: Okay, tell us about Chayf.

Nermin: So it’s an idiom that is not translatable into one word. It comes from an Arabic word that means to enjoy, but here it’s more of a lifestyle. We translated it as to enjoy the small things in life that make life worth living. The everyday life that makes your life special, that you don’t, without that, your day is kind of ruined. Very often here, this is a coffee, or coffee and a cigarette. It can be, you know, beer after you work, or it doesn’t have to be even to consume anything, it’s just something you really like, and if you don’t get it, it makes you a little bit grumpy.

Jason: Okay, that’s a good way to put it.

Nermin: But the easiest is to connect it with food and drinks. So each of our tours has something, and it’s very cultural here. Food is the epicenter of everything, and coffee as well, the backbone of the society. The first coffee bar in Europe was, after Istanbul or Constantinople back then, was here in Sarajevo, only 150 years later in Vienna, and then it spread across Europe and the world. So this has a big cultural importance here, and as well historical. So each tour that we do, even if it’s a three-hour hike, we have a local lunch with the local farm-to-table food, and we enjoy it, and we don’t rush from one place to another. Unless obviously if somebody is waiting for us so that we can meet some other vendor, then we might rush, but otherwise we take our time to explain and to sit with the people, and we want that they feel like they are visiting friends, and that’s the goal.

Hidden Gems One and Two: Wilson’s Alley and Ambassadors Alley

Jason: For the list that you brought today, what was sort of the thought process behind the places or experiences that you chose? And then we’re going to dive right in.

Nermin: It’s just there’s a few super interesting cultural things here that people maybe don’t think about when they visit. And then we were thinking also about what we, or people from Sarajevo in general, like to do, or places they like to go, so that when somebody comes here, they just get a more local experience, because they are mingling with Bosnians in those places.

Jason: Great, okay, let’s dive in, what do you have for us first? I don’t know if you have these ranked as your number one, seven to one.

Nermin: No, just how they came to mind.

Jason: Okay, all right, great.

Nermin: And it’s a combo of nature and culture. Some viewpoints, because we are here surrounded by mountains in the valley, so viewpoints and sunset views are obviously important.

Jason: Perfect, all right, where do you want to start then?

Nermin: So the first one is Wilson’s Alley, so Wilson, like the US president during the First World War. So this is outside of the old town. Most of the people stay within the old town borders, don’t take the time to explore more. And Sarajevo is much more than other cities, and it’s constructed different than other cities. So the old town is actually the beginning of the city. So the more you go in direction west, the more you can see how the city has been developed, since it’s in a valley, and it started, it was founded at the beginning of the valley, so it could only stretch in one direction. So on this Wilson’s Alley, it is every day closed for traffic, for motor vehicles, after five p.m. and on weekends. So that part next to the river becomes very alive, it changes totally when there are no cars. As well, in summer, stretching the whole alley, there are cool bars, but as well, sometimes events, food, there’s a food market, there are concerts or day events, electronic music events or something like that. So it’s a nice place to check out. And as well, it goes next to it, or when you pass it, you will see the national museum, the historical museum, and soon the conceptual art museum. So it’s a place that most of the tourists don’t visit, but it’s very nice for at least for a stroll, even if there is no events at that moment. So I think that people are missing out only staying in the old town.

Jason: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, anything that gets you sort of out of the central area, like you said, a place to hit on the way, and then I love stumbling on those local events when you’re in the city, then you’re just like, you won the day if you stumble into that. So giving us the opportunity to kind of have that chance is always good.

Nermin: Always a good thing.

Jason: Yeah, I agree.

Nermin: So people are missing out, because the old town is very interesting, it has this Ottoman part, in some parts bigger than many, many cities in Turkey, I think. Because the city is so long-stretched, people also sometimes just don’t think there’s more. They’re like, ah, there’s the old town, okay, now I have seen everything. And then because they would have to walk along the river, they kind of forget that, ah, there’s more to see.

Jason: Yeah, go ahead, give us the second one.

Nermin: That’s also a walkway. People here just like walking in general, people like strolling around. So the second one is also, it’s called Ambassadors Alley, and you also leave the old town, and a lot of people don’t go there because it’s basically just like a walkway and the biking lane, but it goes along the river Miljacka. So it’s a really nice walk. And if you walk to the end of it, you get to the Goat’s Bridge, which is an old Ottoman bridge. They used to cross into Sarajevo, all those centuries ago, where the delegation would be waited for and then taken into the city, and you actually enter a canyon of this small river. It’s very rare that you have five minutes from the old town you enter, and it’s an old bridge, but it’s not as impressive as the one in Mostar, right? Everyone wants to go and see the bridge in Mostar, but you have an old Ottoman bridge right there, just outside Sarajevo, and people don’t know about it. So it’s a really cool spot to go to. And from there you can take the old train track with a bike, and go to the whole part of the Miljacka Canyon, which is also very unusual for a bigger city to have it five minutes from the old town.

A Viennese Coffeehouse and a Thousand Years of History

Nermin: So the third one would be the Viennese coffee place. It’s in Hotel Europe.

Katrin: Because it’s in Hotel Europe, many people, it’s in the hotel, so many people don’t visit it or don’t know it.

Nermin: Yeah, or think they cannot enter because it’s the hotel. Looks fancy, like Viennese coffee places look like, maybe that is also a thing that people don’t go inside. But it is preserved during the Hungarian times. It’s a big contrast to the Ottoman part. So being in the Ottoman part, drinking a traditional Bosnian coffee from a džezva, this copper pot that you have, and then you go to this Viennese coffee place, and it’s like a 180-degree change. And we were in Vienna just a year and a half ago, and it really looks exactly the same, like the cafes in Vienna, there is no difference.

Jason: But it sounds like, in this case, it’s not necessarily like they just wanted to create this experience, this is sort of a part of the cultural blend of the city, isn’t it?

Nermin: Yes, exactly.

Jason: Can you talk a little bit about that, so people can get a better understanding of why you mentioned the four religions living side by side? Now you’re talking about walking into a Viennese cafe versus an Ottoman bridge. How are all these things coming together in this one place?

Nermin: Let me try to give you a very quick overview, a thousand years of history in one minute.

Jason: All right, give us your elevator speech on a thousand years of history.

Nermin: Okay. It is an elevator speech, at the beginning I wanted to make it shorter, but now that you told it like that, I’ll give it. So a thousand years ago, there was a Bosnian king, first of all it was something like a duchy, and later on it became a kingdom. When the Bosnian kingdom was at its peak, on the west it was until almost Istria, the whole Dalmatia was under Bosnia, and then southern Serbia, northern Montenegro, in today’s borders. So this was when the Bosnian kingdom was at its peak. As well, a thousand years ago, the church split into the Eastern Byzantine Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church. Where the church split, very often it’s referred to be Bosnia, the border, or even the river Bosna that is here, ten kilometers from where we are sitting, as well.

So that is where it split, and here a so-called Bosnian church started to emerge, since Bosnia is very mountainous and a lot of forests are here, so it’s been kind of neglected from both of the churches. So when Bosnia, the Bosnian kingdom, started to spread as well, the Bosnian church started to spread, it was also Christian, but more nature-connected church. And then when it started to spread, we are talking about the fourteenth and fifteenth century, years of Crusades in the churches. So they started to threaten with Crusades to the Bosnian church and to the Bosnian king, so that it should stop practicing. Mid-fifteenth century, the Ottomans come here, at that time the biggest world power, they beat the last Bosnian king, and they founded the city of Sarajevo, so they founded it in a valley, next to a river, within a fertile land. And a lot of those that were part of the Bosnian church, that was weakened because of the Crusades and everything, throughout the time converted to Islam. So for that time, the Ottomans were quite progressive, so you could keep your religion, but since the Bosnian church was very weakened until then, a lot of them converted, and that’s why you have Muslims here, and not in Croatia or Serbia, for example, they have been on the whole Balkan Peninsula, but that’s why you have them here.

And the Ottomans stayed here for around four hundred years. In 1878, at the Berlin Congress, the Austro-Hungarians received the management of Bosnia from the Ottomans, and then later on they annexed it. They stayed here for forty years, until the end of the First World War, which also started here in Sarajevo, it was ignited here with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Then during the Second World War, the Partisans fight a so-called guerrilla warfare against the Nazis, and the leader of those Partisans, his name was Josip Broz Tito, they found here in Bosnia, in the city of Jajce, where the last king was beheaded, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, consisted of six republics, all of them today independent countries, so Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, today North Macedonia. Tito was a lifelong leader, a dictator light version, I would call him, some of them loved him, still love him, some of them don’t. He was ruling Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.

Just a couple of years later, the blessings of our mountains around us, we were the first winter Olympic country, first Communist country that held the Winter Olympics. And then, just a couple of years after that, the curse of our mountains, we were the longest besieged city in modern history, so from April ’92 till the end of ’95, when the peace agreement was signed, there was war in Bosnia, but only in March ’96, when the last neighborhood, Grbavica, was reintegrated into the city, was the end of the war here in Sarajevo. And then we have the post-war time. So a lot has happened here, a lot of influences, from our own church and kingdom, to something totally different from East and totally different from West, and a Communist country with totally different borders, war, and this, and this all translated into the architecture, the food, the people. The people are here very great hosts, they love to be hosts, and all of these influences from Ottomans and Austrians and everything, you will see on every step you make, kind of, and every food you eat.

Jason: Yeah, okay, yeah, thanks. That’s a comprehensive breakdown, and I think we’re getting off the elevator now.

Nermin: You did it, that’s incredible.

Jason: Well, I mean, and to your point, you know, this is all infused with the experiences and the vibe and the things that you’re going to come across there, so I just thought it’s helpful to kind of understand a bit about where a country came from and where it is today, and some of those influences that are surrounding you. I think it connects you deeper to the place while you’re there, so a bit of history is important. Okay, we’re going to leave the cafe at Hotel Europe and go on to number four.

Hidden Gems Four and Five: The Trebević Observatory and the Hotel Hecco Rooftop

Katrin: Yeah, that’s another Austrian spot, basically. A lot of people go up the Olympic mountain, Trebević, to see the abandoned bobsleigh. Nermin said the Winter Olympic Games were here, and there’s a really cool lost place here up on Trebević. You can go by cable car, it’s super easy, and you can walk along the bob track for a kilometer and a bit, kilometer and a half, which is really nice, and most people do that, so that’s not the secret. But once you reach the end of it, most people just head back to the cable car and go back down. But there’s actually an old Austrian observatory that you can visit, it’s a little bit hidden in the mountains, and you have a great view of the city. And we actually just learned this weekend that it’s now being renovated, so for now it’s another lost place, it’s in ruins, but they will renovate it. So you have that cupola thing, again, to look at the stars, I don’t know how you say that in English, and there will be a cafe. But yeah, it’s a hidden place that most people don’t go to, but if they are already on the mountain, they shouldn’t miss it.

Jason: All right, I love that, it sounds like, yeah, it’s some place that people are going to probably check out anyway, so just go a little further, basically, to find this. Okay, great.

Nermin: As well, a lot of people just go with the cable car to just a smaller stop, and then they go back, they don’t even see the whole bobsleigh, even though the graffiti is getting better and better the more you go down the hill.

Katrin: So the next one would be also, again, a view. It would be the Hotel Hecco rooftop. So you get, it’s in the old town, the Austro-Hungarian part, next to the eternal flame. You go on the ninth floor, and there is a cafe, coffee and sweets bar, where you get a 360-degree view of the city, towards the old town, towards the Olympic mountain, but in all the directions, like I said, the terrace is all around the hotel. It’s really nice, so you can really just walk around the entire building and see every angle of the city.

Jason: What’s the name of the hotel again?

Nermin: Hecco, but with a double C, H-E-C-C-O.

Katrin: Should we just send the list of all those Bosnian names?

Jason: Yeah, yeah, awesome. So I mean, I love that coffee is a big part of the culture there, I’m a big coffee drinker, so go up there, have a coffee, walk around the terrace, get a view of the city, could be a great way to start the whole trip, or maybe even end it after you’ve been around.

Katrin: With a nice sunset.

Jason: With a sunset, yeah, pair it with a sunset. Done. What do you have next?

Hidden Gems Six and Seven: The Sarajevo Haggadah and Bakery Imaret

Katrin: The next is a cultural one, because a lot of people, of course, want to visit some museums, learn more about the history, and the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of those a lot of people go to. But many people don’t know that they have a very valuable artifact in the National Museum, it’s a Jewish Haggadah that actually moved from Spain all the way to Bosnia, during those times of the Crusades that Nermin talked about. A lot of Jewish people from Spain and Portugal moved here to Sarajevo, and they brought this book with them. And it’s here in the National Museum, and you can see it every Tuesday and Thursday. Of course it’s very old, very valuable, so you cannot go there every day and see it, you can request a private visit, but that’s costly. But if you just go to the museum on Tuesday or Thursday, between twelve and one o’clock, the room is open and you can see the book, and it’s really special. We did the tour, we saw the book, and it’s worth having a look at it.

Jason: Yeah, okay, amazing, small windows of time to see it.

Katrin: Yeah, since it’s the best preserved Haggadah in the world.

Nermin: So they flip the pages every day, here and there, and then it is in a glass.

Katrin: Yeah, they need to air it out or something, I don’t even know.

Nermin: Yeah, yeah. So, and then, having a private tour, then you can learn a lot about it, what makes it so special, but as well to have a look at it, and then in between, in this time, somebody is there to explain a little bit more. Yeah, but just one hour, between twelve and one. And otherwise, I mean, you need a group to pay, but this is also not too expensive, I really have to say, for this kind of explanation.

Nermin: And the last one would be a bakery, it’s called Bakery Imaret. Like I said, we will send it to you, but it’s the oldest bakery probably in the country, but for sure it’s in Sarajevo. It has been built since the city of Sarajevo has been founded, there has been some neighborhood before, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the biggest constructor of Sarajevo, Gazi Husrev-beg, started to build a whole complex of a mosque, and a school, and a library, and a monastery. And as well, he built the first public toilet, but also the bakery there, for the workers, but also for those in need, so that they could have food. So the first public toilet was the first public toilet in Europe back then. So, like I said, at that time the Ottomans were, you know, at the peak of civilization, so they brought the water pipe system and all the things that we take today for granted. And as well, this bakery still exists. So it’s a five hundred year old bakery, it’s a hidden gem, you need to know through a passage where to get through. And yeah, five hundred year old bakery, used to be for those in need, now you can go there and buy some great food to go.

Jason: That sounds amazing. All right, when I come to visit, I want to go to all these places with you guys.

Katrin: Sure.

Nermin: Yes, it’ll be our guest.

Where to Find .Cheyf

Jason: Well, speaking of which, you should, I mean, I’m going to ask you a couple more questions about the country as a whole, I want to talk about some of the maybe the nature spots and some day trips and things, but really quickly here, if you want to just share a little bit about where everybody can find your stuff, and what you guys do, and how to get in touch, basically.

Nermin: From the beginning we tried to build a big online presence, so that people find us before they actually come here, because, like you said earlier, Bosnia is not on the radar for a lot of people yet, so they have a lot of questions before they come. So you can find us on our website, of course, or on Instagram, and we just started with YouTube this year, and we hope that we will bring a lot of interesting content to YouTube, introduce the city better and the country, introduce some people also that have really cool projects here, or that started their own business, just to mix culture and sightseeing a little bit more, so that people can see what to expect.

Jason: Yeah, okay, great. Yeah, so, and I’ve noticed on the socials, yeah, you’re just really showing people around, giving them a taste of what they could see. We’ll link up to that, and I know you guys run the tours and everything, so people can find everything there.

Day Trips and Nature Around Sarajevo

Jason: You know, we focused on Sarajevo for this list, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about perhaps, you know, it sounds like there’s, like where I live in Norway, there’s a lot of nature within reach, which is always a nice thing. I think those are some of my favorite cities, when you also have the option to get out of the city, do some nature-based stuff, or day trips, whatever. I just wanted you to highlight a couple of things in and around that might be worth, even if it’s a bit further and you can go somewhere, spend a couple of days, or even just a day trip, whether it’s nature-based or something else. What are a couple of the experiences that you guys treasure as locals that you might recommend to travelers, where they’re going to get the authentic type of experiences that you give them in the city?

Nermin: I haven’t been to Norway, but I would say it’s probably very similar to Norway, but without the fjords, but with better weather.

Katrin: Definitely better weather.

Nermin: But it’s very close to, so look, an hour from here is the second deepest canyon in Europe, and two hours is the deepest canyon in Europe, here in Bosnia, that one is between Bosnia and Montenegro. One hour from here you can do white water rafting. We are surrounded by Olympic mountains. And all of this that I’m mentioning right now is already something that has been recognized by National Geographic, was it for 2025, or this year, that it’s been recommended as a city you should visit, for that year, because of this proximity to an incredible nature, but still you have everything that a city can offer, it’s still the capital city, a lot of cultural events, a lot of food events and so on. So it’s quite a lot to do.

Katrin: Yeah, I think what we like doing on the weekend, if we are not working, because we are working on the weekends a lot, but the mountains are just so close, and I think that’s really a luxury. Now you live in Norway, you probably feel the same, like of course I can go hiking in my lunch break. But that’s something that we really appreciate, and there are just so many restaurants on the mountains. You have hikes in all different kinds of, you know, different difficulties. So sometimes we just do like a half an hour, forty minute hike, and then we have a really nice lunch at a restaurant, and other times you do a proper hike. I mean, there’s Lukomir, it’s one of the highest villages in the country, the highest village in the country actually, at 1,500 meters, and there’s a really nice hike taking you there, it’s on another of the Olympic mountains. But there are other hikes in that area that we really like, to other peaks that are maybe not so crowded, not so popular, Visočica is one of them. We can write all of this down because they are hard to pronounce. But yeah, so basically you just hop in the car, and you drive forty-five, fifty minutes, an hour, and you have like five, six different trails to choose from, and I think that’s a real luxury.

Nermin: What a real luxury is also, what we discovered, like me again, since I wasn’t living here, so taking the cable car up to the mountain Trebević, that is in the city, and from there you can hike up to the top of the mountain, it takes, depending on your fitness level, let’s say like an hour and a half, and going back to the city and to your work then in one hour again. And that is something that we’ve done last year quite often, when we want to just go quickly into nature but not drive anywhere or something. So you’re like in ten minutes up there with the cable car.

Katrin: Since you were asking about day trips, what we do not recommend people is to just take a day trip from Sarajevo to Mostar, because I know a lot of people want to do that, and it’s very beautiful, take the train in the morning and then take the afternoon train back. And Mostar is a small city, so it’s doable in a day, but we don’t recommend it, because it’s really magical in the evening and in the early morning, like Mostar as a city, and there’s also a lot of things to explore around, so like don’t just go with the train for a day and come back, stay longer if you can. It’s also our wine lands, so like a lot of wineries that you can visit there, and a lot of waterfalls, so like don’t stay just for a day.

Jason: I love the wine, it’s always nice when you can spend a night in those day-trippy type places, I find that, yeah, when everybody leaves, then you get those experiences, and hiking, when you can go out and sweat a bit and get some awesome views, and then earn a delicious lunch, a drink, whatever, that’s always a nice thing.

Must-Try Local Food

Jason: The food, speaking of which, what would you guys say are the things that are must-tries when people are visiting? You’re like, all right, yeah, there’s all this different food, but you can’t leave without trying this traditional dish or whatever.

Nermin: So there are two of them that everybody knows who knows a little bit about the Balkans. One would be ćevapčići, so it’s like little minced meat sausages. So that comes from the word kebab, became ćevap, and then ćevapčić, to make it a small kebab, with a flatbread. So here it’s a lot of, you would see a lot of maybe familiar food that looks exotic, but then it’s quite European. It goes into a flatbread, and you eat it with onions, raw onions, but they are soaked in water, so they are actually not super spicy, because a lot of people are like, what, raw onions, no, but they’re actually really tasty. And then it goes with kajmak, which is kind of like a sour cream, because otherwise it would be a bit, you know.

Katrin: Right, right, to just have the minced meat and the bread.

Nermin: Yeah, no, it’s not really a sour cream, you have to try it, it’s delicious, it’s very fatty, creamy, buttery spread.

Jason: Yeah, you had me at buttery.

Getting Around Bosnia

Jason: What do you recommend to travelers who, okay, they’re in the city and maybe they want to get out and explore some of these places you’re talking about, and you can mention the cable car and things like that, but if they want to go to other places, do you recommend the public transportation, or do you recommend them renting a car? Is it pretty affordable to rent a car? What’s your advice there, and other general advice for travelling around the country, if you have any?

Katrin: It depends on how much time they have. If they have five days, it’s maybe better to stay in Sarajevo and base yourself here, and do day trips, maybe even do guided day trips, so you don’t have to worry about renting a car. But if you have more time, we definitely recommend renting a car, so that you can explore the country, so that you can stop along the way if you discover some new viewpoints, there are nice restaurants. But if someone doesn’t feel comfortable driving, it’s completely fine to take the bus, the bus system here is good, all the cities in the country are connected. So if somebody doesn’t want to drive, but in general if you’re just staying in Sarajevo, you don’t need a car.

Nermin: Yes, we have very narrow streets, it’s very steep here as well, being in a valley, so a lot of people that are not used to driving this kind of streets will get nervous.

Jason: Especially, yeah.

Nermin: Yeah, so we have public transportation, you know, you can take the tram, you can, I mean, from the airport as well. I think what’s just good to know for people, when they want to drive in Bosnia, is especially for someone from the US or other countries, it takes a long time to get from A to B, so really the road is the destination, because they are very windy, you know, you have a lot of little villages that you cross through, we don’t have a lot of highways, which is in the end nice, right, because when you’re on vacation, you want to see something of the country. The drives are very, very beautiful, wherever you go. It’s not flat land, it’s like all the time some views, so it’s not a highway.

Jason: So you will need a little bit more time, but the drive is one of the most beautiful, wherever you go, it’s going to be really pretty.

Final Travel Tips and Bosnian Hospitality

Jason: Okay, a couple more things before we go, I just want to, did we miss any major travel tips, like things that you think are worth mentioning to anybody listening who wants to come visit, are coming to visit, any sort of last ideas that you think are important to highlight?

Katrin: People need to drink the coffee, even if they don’t like coffee, they need to try the Bosnian coffee.

Nermin: I would say, come for a minimum of seven days, and then you will figure out that you need to stay even longer. It’s so, like Switzerland is not big, but it’s bigger than Switzerland, it has three times less people. Nature is beautiful, food is beautiful, and since people don’t know a lot about it, it’s not so crowded. So obviously in summer, Sarajevo and Mostar will be crowded, the other cities, nothing similar like else in Europe. I would say now is just the right time to go.

Jason: Okay, because people start discovering it.

Nermin: Yeah.

Jason: Well, there’s always a sense of urgency around that, I always encourage people to revisit their, whether they call it a bucket list or the places they want to go, whatever, prioritizing them sometimes by how popular they are can be an important way to kind of look at it, because some places you do want to get to before it’s exploding in some ways.

Nermin: And people here are very excited still about tourists, and they are curious, that’s a nice thing. If you visit, people will want to talk to you and ask you how you like it, maybe invite you for a drink. They’re not shooting the tourists with water guns yet.

Jason: No.

Nermin: They’re inviting you into their home very often.

Jason: Well, that’s an important thing to highlight, that’s why I kind of brought this up, because I feel like, yeah, there’s some other things we haven’t quite discussed, and that’s a, yeah, that’s a huge thing, being able to connect easily with the locals, or the fact that they’re still receptive to having conversations with tourists. I think it says a lot about where it is in terms of tourism.

Nermin: I think so, yeah. They also do not accept no when they invite you, like you have to go, that’s it.

Katrin: And you will have to eat, you will have to eat, and if you say you’re full, it doesn’t count.

Nermin: Being a host here is something very important, it’s uploaded into our consciousness from day one of being born. I know when I lived somewhere else, I realized how it is engraved into each atom of my body, I think it’s every Bosnian. We have sometimes guests telling us how does it pay out for them, they gave them the, like some tip, and then he gave them wine, and they like, no, no, no, then they gave him something else, and then he, they started to fight who’s giving.

Katrin: I think this is a good example of Bosnian hospitality, we have friends, they travelled with the camper van, and they stayed at a camping spot, and it was ten euros per night, and the host brought them a huge bowl of fruit, and gave them free breakfast, and then he also gifted them a bottle of wine, which costs like twelve euros in the store, so he spent more money on them than they actually paid.

Jason: Oh, that’s sweet though, the fact that that doesn’t happen every time, not that people come here and, like, where’s my line.

Nermin: Yeah, but the fact that that hospitality, when it’s baked into a culture, that is a beautiful thing, it’s a beautiful thing to experience and soak in as a traveller, you feel welcomed.

Jason: That’s a good thing.

Business Lessons From Running .Cheyf Together

Jason: Business lessons, you guys have been doing this for a little while now, what are your sort of one or two biggest lessons you’ve learned running this business together?

Nermin: You always want to do more than you can, ain’t that the truth. There are so many ideas, and so many different things, and everything takes so much time, you know, like I’m just going to make this quick, and then five days later you’re still sitting on the same thing. But I think we also learned that when you want to make something work, you can. Like when we started the business, a lot of people told us, ah, you will not succeed if you don’t offer a war tour, that’s what people want, they want to learn about the siege, they want to learn about the Bosnian War. And we said, no, we don’t want to, we want them to learn about food and the culture and the music. And it worked, in the end it worked out, it was the longer way, so we don’t ignore that period of our history, it’s just like, I don’t think that should be the focus. Croatia had as well four years of war, and nobody’s talking about that, obviously people should educate themselves, history is repeating itself, but it’s not everything that this country has to offer, and this is what we want to change, and this is going quite well now, so other people are doing that as well.

Jason: Yeah, there’s a sort of, you have to feel connected in that way too, if that’s something you don’t want personally, and you’re not going to have fun with it, then that would obviously, just doing it just for the opportunity, sometimes that’s not always the best way to, people can kind of pick up on that, right? Rather just be your authentic selves and share the things that are close to your heart. And it sounds like that’s exactly what you guys are doing. So people can go check it out, you can follow all the socials if you want to get visuals and learn more about the country, and we’ll link up to the website, of course, .Cheyf, which is C-H-E-Y-F dot B-A, and it seems like you guys are doing a great job out there. So I want to say thank you for coming on the show and giving us a little hint of what there is to see and do, and I think coming out of this one, maybe this is another addition to the bucket list, a new addition to the bucket lists out there.

Nermin: Thank you for having us, for your bucket list, I hope as well, and mine too, absolutely.

Jason: So see you soon, thank you so much, there is now a direct slide from Norway.

Nermin: All right, we keep track of those things.

Katrin: Thank you, thank you, thank you for having us.

Nermin: Thank you.

Closing

Jason: There you have it, thank you to Nermin and Katrin Numic. Again, their website, .Cheyf, it’s C-H-E-Y-F dot B-A, if you want to learn more about some of the tours and experiences they offer, with that focus on the in-between places, which I love. Now, fun fact on Bosnia and Herzegovina, it’s a country that apparently, according to the internet, has more waterfalls than Italy, Germany, and France combined. So if you’re a waterfall junkie, I mean, who doesn’t love a good waterfall, you have 202 waterfalls to pick from in this area, so I’m sure you’ll find something you’d like. And we’re going to parlay that into the quote I’m going to leave you with, which is waterfall related, from one of my faves, a guy that I grew up watching, I’ll leave you with that in a moment.

First, just a quick reminder, we have a newsletter, zerototravel.com/newsletter, sign up if you haven’t done so yet. And we’re a part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network now, if you want to check out some other great podcasts, go to airwavemedia.com to check that out.

Okay, this quote from Bob Ross, if you don’t know who he is, you can look him up, he was this painter on PBS, the public access station in the United States, and he always had this calm, sort of mystical, I don’t know, I can’t explain Bob Ross, you know him if you know him. And I have some Bob Ross magnets here in my office, I always loved watching the dude, he just gave me a sense of calm. Anyway, here is a quote from him, he said, “Just let go and fall like a little waterfall.” I love that. Thanks for listening, I’ll see you next time, peace and love to you and yours, cheers.

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