Bosnia and Herzegovina - About the Country


The country Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in southeast Europe, it has borders with Croatia (232 km), Serbia (312 km) and Montenegro (215 km). Its size is 51,129 km2 and its population 3.8 million people (pre-war 4.3 million people). The Capital is Sarajevo with a population of 400,000. Other major cities are Banja Luka, Tuzla, Zenica, Mostar, and Bihac.

The country is still in the aftermath of the Balkan War, there are still areas with landmines. On the other side, since 2007 it participates in the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) with the goal to become a member of the European Union. Nevertheless, the touristic development is low and the sites we listed are few, and several are almost undeveloped. A lot of possibilities to see spectacular sites off the beaten track, but preparation and equipemnt is required. A smartphone with downloaded maps, preferably OpenSourceMap, which is quite detailed, is essential. To the fact that there are few signs at all, most signs are in Bosanski - Bosnian, which is written in kyrillic letters. This makes orientation sometimes quite tricky. Sometimes there are competent local guides, so we generally recommend to look for english speaking guides.

The country actually has no own currency, their money is called Konvertible Mark (KM) and is actually pegged at par with the German Mark. In other words it is converted into German Marks by any bank in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the rate of 1:1. This was a result of the 1995 Dayton Agreement. Actually it was just the legalization of the fact that the locals did not trust the communist Yugoslavian Dinar (which was not convertible) and used German Marks for payment. As Germany does not have the German Mark anymore, because it now uses the Euro (€), the Konvertible Mark is now pegged at the Euro with the fixed official exchange rate of 1 EUR = 1,95583 BAM.