Let’s get to the part that everyone wants to hear:
Women:
TL;DR version:
For a n00b trying to get his first flag, I have to say as charming as Sarajevo is and as beautiful the women’s faces are, this would be a very tough place to start and not worth it if you only have 2 weeks of vacation a year. The society is still a bit conservative in some ways and the language barrier is very large.
Quality:
Looks:
The girls in Sarajevo are very good looking, and all over the place. They have faces that are a very nice cross between Italian and Slavic with extremely high cheekbones and delicate features in most cases. They are slender, with long black and brown hair, brown and light eyes, with teeth in good but not tooth paste advertisement condition. That being said, you won’t see many girls above what Roosh would consider an 8. As well, while they almost always have nice hour glass figures well into their 40s, you will be disappointed if you are an assman or a breastman. You should not expect much in those categories. For guys obsessed with blondes, any blondes that you see are almost guaranteed to be peroxide.
Fatty Alerts:
Almost none. You see only a couple of girls under 35 a day that you see overweight, and one gets the feeling that they really do have a glandular problem.Girls are extremely slender here in general. Also, they remain slender as you go out into the suburbs and the country side. I think that I can safely vouch for this since my hotel was 2 miles outside the city center and I took a bus trip to Mostar, 2 ½ hours away by bus. As far as I can tell, one will not see what Roosh saw in Latvia, with hotties during the day but fat suburban girls at night.
Attitude:
They are quite friendly and helpful, very pretty girls actually smiled when I asked them questions that would get zero reaction in DC though their English was usually hopeless. I was stunned when the extremely good looking stewardess on Bosnian airways seem to take a liking to me by simply smiling at her during turbulence. The few girls who I approached seem genuinely glad that I had. I even caught a few checking me out. About half of those were sub 5s by Roosh’s standard, which would normally depress me but it didn’t. Then I realized that they weren’t overweight and making the best of their appearance, making it feel like a genuine compliment. While they are mostly Muslim in Sarajevo, it is a very secular version. Almost everyone drinks alcohol and relatively few women wear head scarves. PDA between couples is common.
Also, I got the impression that Sarajevo is a bit of a small town. Cabbies would regularly honk at people, which I thought was rude, when I would realize that they were just saying hi to their friends. I’m guessing judgment is going to be a problem for her, especially given that 20 years ago the Serbs and Croats were attempting to wipe her from the face of the earth with only her family and friends to protect her.
Attitude-Kino:
There is an exception to the good attitude – kino.
My few attempts at very light kino (light touching around the elbow only) did not go over well.
I got immediate squirmy reactions from Kino that I do all the time in DC and never have a problem and backed off. One girl that I had take a photo of me immediately moved away as I tried to direct her to where to stand by touching her upper arm.
When I bought some groceries at a grocery store indistinguishable from any modern European one, when I put out my hand for change the lady behind the counter put it instead on the tray.
While my sample size is small, I get the feeling that touching women you don’t know in Sarajevo is heavily frowned upon.
Language:
This is going to be a very big problem. Most people don’t speak English, and those that do don’t have conversational fluency. How bad is the lack of English? The waiter at the Hotel Europa (the best hotel in Bosnia) and the girl at the McCafe at McDonald’s in the Old City could not speak any. While body language might help, kino does not seem to be appreciated as I showed above. I’m not seeing one getting far here unless one knows Serbo-Croatian unless you have a lot of experience getting flags in difficult places. It gets worse. While S-C is a Slavic language, they do not understand Russian.
Mentality:
Bosnia looks fairly well off but is in very bad shape below the surface. It doesn’t look third world beyond the war damage but has third world numbers. They have 44% unemployment. 60% of foreign aid gets lost to corruption. Tourism is far lower than it should be due to expensive flights and a lack of modern highways due to corruption. They can’t emigrate because not enough of them moved to the UK, States, and Canada before the Civil War to lobby for immigration quotas and were dealt another blow when it turned out a few Bosnians worked for Osama Bin Laden. Since the country has significant Serb and Croat minorities who refuse to cooperate, reform is next to impossible. People are happy and helpful, but underneath there is a desperation. The girl you’re trying to swoop has a grim future ahead of her. I would speculate that she is painfully aware of the need for protection given that she lives in a country surrounded by people who want to rape and kill her with little hope of help from Western Europe.
The Competition:
Busted Dudes Test:
You’re not going to see any trolls with 6s in Sarajevo. While some of the men have the Slavic “Square Head” look, many others are tall guys with the Northern Italian Soccer Player features that girls go ga-ga for the world over. The girls appeared to be quite happy with their men. That being said, I saw plenty of cases of shorter, overweight (not American overweight), slightly goofy guys with very cute girlfriends.
Ratios:
There seemed to be plenty to go around. Every venue that I went to had a significant proportion of attractive women.
Use of Game by locals:
If game is used by locals, it’s imperceptibly subtle to an American. One guy actually egged me on to approach girls at a table and it worked – though one girl turned out to be Polish. With the right attitude and practice, approaching seated girls might actually work fairly well here. But again, good luck hoping they will speak English.
Drunk Brits, Desperate Italians, and Other Obnoxious Tourists:
There are very few tourists from anywhere in Bosnia due to a perception of risk, minimal intercity roads, and the total lack of cheap flights. This may be the last big and pretty European city west of the Baltics where the girls are untouched by desperate foreign men. Drunk Brits have not pissed everyone off yet. That being said, I saw middle aged British business men act like jerks to the hotel and refuse to pay their restaurant bill over the need to register passports when you check in. I got no perception that locals hate Americans.
Competition Conclusion:
Your biggest competition is learning to speak Serbo-Croatian.
The bars and clubs:
The café culture is EVERYWHERE – including late night bars. Everyone sits around. There is effectively ZERO mingling in any of the night spots that I went to – I wonder if I was the only guy in the entire city to make an approach at all. There are some late night clubs, but I only went to one and even in those places there was a bit of a seated culture.
The Old City:
There are two bars called Cheers and City Bar across the street from each other near Hotel Europa. This was the only area where I found students who knew any English at all. If you can speak Serbo-Croatian, though, the night life is massive. The old walking street on a Saturday night is packed with people. There are night clubs but I was only there one Saturday night and no Thursday or Friday nights, so I really can’t comment besides the one I went to rather drunk. It was packed and had a weird metal live band. I did not get the feeling that anyone mingled outside of their social groups.
Special note on the night life:
Sarajevo sprawls to west in suburbs that go on for miles. Even around my hotel miles from the city center there were cafes that served alcohol open late into the night. Before I saw that, I was suspicious that some of the people at the bar who were not drinking were doing it because they were muslim and not because they were designated drivers. Given the size of the place, there are probably other night spots out in the western areas with women of equal quality to the old city. However, expecting anyone to speak English in those places would be naïve.
Mundane Details:
Getting there:
Not as bad as needing to learn the language, but still tough. Flights are very expensive due to Bosnia not having control of its airspace and corruption causing massive overcharging for landing rights at the airport. The only regularly affordable flights that I found were from Istanbul in a French-Italian turboprop so badly designed and maintained that I assumed that it was Russian. It can cost $3000 to fly to and from Munich.
Trains – there is only one train to and from Belgrade and it takes 9 to 10 hours. One could probably take a bus from Dubrovnik and then a train, but again expect long travel times.
Bus – The 2 buses that I took to and from Mostar were clean and had air conditioning. I do not know how it works with cross border, though. I was warned to avoid those by others on the forum.
Where to stay:
Hotels are very affordable, especially if you are willing to stay in the suburbs to the west of the old city – they go on for miles. Taxis are cheap, so it’s not so much of a burden, and the girls are just as good looking in the suburbs as the old city. From the city center to the airport is only 5 euros, but be careful on arrival. Taxi cab drivers will try to scam you. Insist on using the meter.
Prices:
Everything is extremely cheap due to a depressed economy. As long as you don’t go to luxury restaurants, everything is cheap.
Food:
World class. Bosnians know how to cook. You could schedule every meal that you had over 2 weeks and still not sample all of the delicacies that they have to offer. They make incredible Northern Italian style food, Turkish style kebab, as well as traditional dishes. The vegetables are incredibly fresh and delicious (at least in May when I was there).
Alcohol:
Even though it is Muslim, Sarajevo drinks a lot and it is cheap. Decent Vodka can be had for a euro a shot. Good beer from Germany and Denmark can be had for a Euro, though only drink the premium version of the local stuff. The normal kind had me uttering a phrase that I thought I would never say – “I long for the rich and full bodied taste of Bud Light”. The local wine is outstanding. It can go toe to toe with the best wine in the world. The reds are simply terrific. The local white is very well made but uses an odd berry that takes getting used to. Higher end restaurants have the local Chardonnay, which is the best that I have ever drunk – light and refreshing, not syrupy like California. It’s fun to try to local fruit brandy’s, but ultimately they are unmemorable.
The Sights:
Sarajevo is very pretty, but some have described it as a mini Prague. It is not. While charming and clean, it’s architecture and art in no way compares. I would describe it as a mini Copenhagen full of mosques in surrounded by gorgeous green mountains. It is dirt cheap right now, though, and when you realize that WWI started there, they had the most successful Olympics of the last 40 years, and the Civil War, it is one of the most historical cities in the world.
Women:
TL;DR version:
For a n00b trying to get his first flag, I have to say as charming as Sarajevo is and as beautiful the women’s faces are, this would be a very tough place to start and not worth it if you only have 2 weeks of vacation a year. The society is still a bit conservative in some ways and the language barrier is very large.
Quality:
Looks:
The girls in Sarajevo are very good looking, and all over the place. They have faces that are a very nice cross between Italian and Slavic with extremely high cheekbones and delicate features in most cases. They are slender, with long black and brown hair, brown and light eyes, with teeth in good but not tooth paste advertisement condition. That being said, you won’t see many girls above what Roosh would consider an 8. As well, while they almost always have nice hour glass figures well into their 40s, you will be disappointed if you are an assman or a breastman. You should not expect much in those categories. For guys obsessed with blondes, any blondes that you see are almost guaranteed to be peroxide.
Fatty Alerts:
Almost none. You see only a couple of girls under 35 a day that you see overweight, and one gets the feeling that they really do have a glandular problem.Girls are extremely slender here in general. Also, they remain slender as you go out into the suburbs and the country side. I think that I can safely vouch for this since my hotel was 2 miles outside the city center and I took a bus trip to Mostar, 2 ½ hours away by bus. As far as I can tell, one will not see what Roosh saw in Latvia, with hotties during the day but fat suburban girls at night.
Attitude:
They are quite friendly and helpful, very pretty girls actually smiled when I asked them questions that would get zero reaction in DC though their English was usually hopeless. I was stunned when the extremely good looking stewardess on Bosnian airways seem to take a liking to me by simply smiling at her during turbulence. The few girls who I approached seem genuinely glad that I had. I even caught a few checking me out. About half of those were sub 5s by Roosh’s standard, which would normally depress me but it didn’t. Then I realized that they weren’t overweight and making the best of their appearance, making it feel like a genuine compliment. While they are mostly Muslim in Sarajevo, it is a very secular version. Almost everyone drinks alcohol and relatively few women wear head scarves. PDA between couples is common.
Also, I got the impression that Sarajevo is a bit of a small town. Cabbies would regularly honk at people, which I thought was rude, when I would realize that they were just saying hi to their friends. I’m guessing judgment is going to be a problem for her, especially given that 20 years ago the Serbs and Croats were attempting to wipe her from the face of the earth with only her family and friends to protect her.
Attitude-Kino:
There is an exception to the good attitude – kino.
My few attempts at very light kino (light touching around the elbow only) did not go over well.
I got immediate squirmy reactions from Kino that I do all the time in DC and never have a problem and backed off. One girl that I had take a photo of me immediately moved away as I tried to direct her to where to stand by touching her upper arm.
When I bought some groceries at a grocery store indistinguishable from any modern European one, when I put out my hand for change the lady behind the counter put it instead on the tray.
While my sample size is small, I get the feeling that touching women you don’t know in Sarajevo is heavily frowned upon.
Language:
This is going to be a very big problem. Most people don’t speak English, and those that do don’t have conversational fluency. How bad is the lack of English? The waiter at the Hotel Europa (the best hotel in Bosnia) and the girl at the McCafe at McDonald’s in the Old City could not speak any. While body language might help, kino does not seem to be appreciated as I showed above. I’m not seeing one getting far here unless one knows Serbo-Croatian unless you have a lot of experience getting flags in difficult places. It gets worse. While S-C is a Slavic language, they do not understand Russian.
Mentality:
Bosnia looks fairly well off but is in very bad shape below the surface. It doesn’t look third world beyond the war damage but has third world numbers. They have 44% unemployment. 60% of foreign aid gets lost to corruption. Tourism is far lower than it should be due to expensive flights and a lack of modern highways due to corruption. They can’t emigrate because not enough of them moved to the UK, States, and Canada before the Civil War to lobby for immigration quotas and were dealt another blow when it turned out a few Bosnians worked for Osama Bin Laden. Since the country has significant Serb and Croat minorities who refuse to cooperate, reform is next to impossible. People are happy and helpful, but underneath there is a desperation. The girl you’re trying to swoop has a grim future ahead of her. I would speculate that she is painfully aware of the need for protection given that she lives in a country surrounded by people who want to rape and kill her with little hope of help from Western Europe.
The Competition:
Busted Dudes Test:
You’re not going to see any trolls with 6s in Sarajevo. While some of the men have the Slavic “Square Head” look, many others are tall guys with the Northern Italian Soccer Player features that girls go ga-ga for the world over. The girls appeared to be quite happy with their men. That being said, I saw plenty of cases of shorter, overweight (not American overweight), slightly goofy guys with very cute girlfriends.
Ratios:
There seemed to be plenty to go around. Every venue that I went to had a significant proportion of attractive women.
Use of Game by locals:
If game is used by locals, it’s imperceptibly subtle to an American. One guy actually egged me on to approach girls at a table and it worked – though one girl turned out to be Polish. With the right attitude and practice, approaching seated girls might actually work fairly well here. But again, good luck hoping they will speak English.
Drunk Brits, Desperate Italians, and Other Obnoxious Tourists:
There are very few tourists from anywhere in Bosnia due to a perception of risk, minimal intercity roads, and the total lack of cheap flights. This may be the last big and pretty European city west of the Baltics where the girls are untouched by desperate foreign men. Drunk Brits have not pissed everyone off yet. That being said, I saw middle aged British business men act like jerks to the hotel and refuse to pay their restaurant bill over the need to register passports when you check in. I got no perception that locals hate Americans.
Competition Conclusion:
Your biggest competition is learning to speak Serbo-Croatian.
The bars and clubs:
The café culture is EVERYWHERE – including late night bars. Everyone sits around. There is effectively ZERO mingling in any of the night spots that I went to – I wonder if I was the only guy in the entire city to make an approach at all. There are some late night clubs, but I only went to one and even in those places there was a bit of a seated culture.
The Old City:
There are two bars called Cheers and City Bar across the street from each other near Hotel Europa. This was the only area where I found students who knew any English at all. If you can speak Serbo-Croatian, though, the night life is massive. The old walking street on a Saturday night is packed with people. There are night clubs but I was only there one Saturday night and no Thursday or Friday nights, so I really can’t comment besides the one I went to rather drunk. It was packed and had a weird metal live band. I did not get the feeling that anyone mingled outside of their social groups.
Special note on the night life:
Sarajevo sprawls to west in suburbs that go on for miles. Even around my hotel miles from the city center there were cafes that served alcohol open late into the night. Before I saw that, I was suspicious that some of the people at the bar who were not drinking were doing it because they were muslim and not because they were designated drivers. Given the size of the place, there are probably other night spots out in the western areas with women of equal quality to the old city. However, expecting anyone to speak English in those places would be naïve.
Mundane Details:
Getting there:
Not as bad as needing to learn the language, but still tough. Flights are very expensive due to Bosnia not having control of its airspace and corruption causing massive overcharging for landing rights at the airport. The only regularly affordable flights that I found were from Istanbul in a French-Italian turboprop so badly designed and maintained that I assumed that it was Russian. It can cost $3000 to fly to and from Munich.
Trains – there is only one train to and from Belgrade and it takes 9 to 10 hours. One could probably take a bus from Dubrovnik and then a train, but again expect long travel times.
Bus – The 2 buses that I took to and from Mostar were clean and had air conditioning. I do not know how it works with cross border, though. I was warned to avoid those by others on the forum.
Where to stay:
Hotels are very affordable, especially if you are willing to stay in the suburbs to the west of the old city – they go on for miles. Taxis are cheap, so it’s not so much of a burden, and the girls are just as good looking in the suburbs as the old city. From the city center to the airport is only 5 euros, but be careful on arrival. Taxi cab drivers will try to scam you. Insist on using the meter.
Prices:
Everything is extremely cheap due to a depressed economy. As long as you don’t go to luxury restaurants, everything is cheap.
Food:
World class. Bosnians know how to cook. You could schedule every meal that you had over 2 weeks and still not sample all of the delicacies that they have to offer. They make incredible Northern Italian style food, Turkish style kebab, as well as traditional dishes. The vegetables are incredibly fresh and delicious (at least in May when I was there).
Alcohol:
Even though it is Muslim, Sarajevo drinks a lot and it is cheap. Decent Vodka can be had for a euro a shot. Good beer from Germany and Denmark can be had for a Euro, though only drink the premium version of the local stuff. The normal kind had me uttering a phrase that I thought I would never say – “I long for the rich and full bodied taste of Bud Light”. The local wine is outstanding. It can go toe to toe with the best wine in the world. The reds are simply terrific. The local white is very well made but uses an odd berry that takes getting used to. Higher end restaurants have the local Chardonnay, which is the best that I have ever drunk – light and refreshing, not syrupy like California. It’s fun to try to local fruit brandy’s, but ultimately they are unmemorable.
The Sights:
Sarajevo is very pretty, but some have described it as a mini Prague. It is not. While charming and clean, it’s architecture and art in no way compares. I would describe it as a mini Copenhagen full of mosques in surrounded by gorgeous green mountains. It is dirt cheap right now, though, and when you realize that WWI started there, they had the most successful Olympics of the last 40 years, and the Civil War, it is one of the most historical cities in the world.