monochrome

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Florence, Italy

Happy New Year everyone! I'm finally getting back to posting on this site after a long hiatus. And over the next few days and weeks I'll be posting outtakes of my trip from Rome to Istanbul, starting with this one from Florence.

I chose to undertake this trip after visiting Croatia last year. Towards the end of the trip, I found myself with an extra day I could have spent visiting Montenegro or Bosnia Hercegovina. I chose the former, but remained curious about the latter. As I thought more about it, I became curious about the rest of the former Yugoslavia and its surrounding countries. The Balkan war dominated the news of my youth, and I wanted to visit this region so recently engaged at war with itself.

I also wondered how Christianity would give way to Islam as one travelled east, and so I decided to begin my travels in Rome and end them in Istanbul, the seats of the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires, respectively. What I found was not what I expected, as religious affiliations hop-scotched between the countries, influencing events in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.