Elena Arsenijevic is an academic painter originally from Belarus. She has been living in the Balkans for 12 years, 8 of which in BiH, where she found her love and married Zoran from Bugojno.

“I lived in Boka Kotorska in Montenegro because of the beautiful environment and climate. Winter in Minsk is long and cold. I met Zoran, who brought me from Kotor to Bugojno, where the winter is also long and cold, and also foggy,” Elena laughs and continues: “For a couple of months, I cried and regretted that I replaced the sea and the sun with fog and snow, but then I decided to get to know the country where I live now. We started travelling to interesting places. Before every trip, I tried to prepare, to read something, I looked for information in Russian, but there was almost none. And then I started reading about Bosnia and Herzegovina in your language, because by then I had already learned it, and I’ve been writing about it in my own language,” She tells N1.

Elena remembered that her first trip was to Vranduk, its fortress and rich history delighted her.

She fell in love with BiH, its history, culture, nature… She began to investigate down to the smallest detail. To date, she has written around 1,200 articles about Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The blog has long since grown into a structured online guide through Bosnia, which tells curious travellers about all aspects – from natural and historical sights to cuisine and cultural specialities.

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N1/Elena i Zoran

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“I write for a Russian-speaking audience – that is the entire former Soviet Union and the diaspora. More and more people read my blog, and more and more tourists from that area come to Bosnia. But the pandemic happened, and the interest in tourism completely disappeared for a while. Therefore, I started devoting much more time and attention to my primary occupation – painting. And in painting, my only inspiration is Bosnia and Herzegovina. I'm obsessed with it, I can't even think about anything else. Now I talk about it not only with words but also with pictures,” says Elena.