I trundled, bleary eyed down to Split's main bus station near the harbour to catch my 7am bus to Tuzla in Bosnia. Tuzla is not renowned as a tourist hotspot and consequently there was just me and one other guy on the bus. My reason for visiting was to have a meeting with the country director of Mercy Corps, one of the charities I am supporting.

After an hour we arrived at the Bosnian border and luckily there were no hold ups and we were allowed through very easily, the border guard seemingly only worried when flicking through my passport visas as to whether Turkmenistan actually existed or not. Within a few minutes of entering Bosnia you could sense the change in atmosphere. Croatia's warm climate dropped to a cooler more icy one and the mountains began to rise. Snow still capped the mountains and it had been snowing just last week at relatively low altitudes. It wasn't long before we started to pass relics of the Bosnian conflict. Bombed out buildings were a frequent sight despite the fact that the war ended over ten years ago. And bullet holes in many of the buildings were a constant reminder of the harsh realities of war. Recovery seems to have been slow in Bosnia, unlike that of its neighbour Croatia. Whole villages had been scarred and many were still on the road to recovery so much so that in some villages only a handful looked lived in, and even so it was clear that the family living there didn't have the economic resources to repair the whole house, leaving the top floor ruined and living downstairs. The remaining were simply left to decay bearing the horrors of war and still awaiting the return of their families.

Kabir was the other person making his way to Tuzla and we'd introduced ourselves earlier on. He spoke only Bosniak and German and was diappointed to hear I was Swiss but couldn't speak German. Nevertheless we communicated through a mixture of hand signals, grunts and the few words of German I happen to know. He was very keen to point out the remnants of the war as we passed them and tried to explain various parts of the history. The message was loud and clear either way.

After a fairly depressing seven hour journey we arrived in Tuzla and by Kabir's desciption Tuzla was just like Split. For me the only thing that was the same was the size. Tuzla was an mainly an industrial town whose name means "Salt City" on acocunt of the salt mines that used to exist there. It was noisy and dusty and had high rise buildings everywhere. Where there were not buildings there were mud paths and the only patch of green, the town's main park, was full of rubbish. There wasn't an awful lot for people to smile about and I could see now why tourists would never venture here. Still, in its own way it had a character which I was told was unique and people scurried about their business as normal.

Mercy Corps had booked me into the Motel Rudar nearby, which was the only hotel that seemed to be functioning. It was simple, but clean and I was only allowed to check in once I had shaken the owner's hand and that of his family. I didn't think they recieved many foreigners - in fact he'd specially organised for his son to welcome me as he spoke a couple of words of English, a nice touch I thought.

I sat down to dinner that evening and had the local specialty of Cevapi, kind of meatballs in a bread roll with raw onions and a bottle of local Tuzlanska Pilsner. The setting sun turned the sky blood red, an ironic reminder of where exactly I was and what had happened here not so long ago.