Balkans reporting from Via Dinarica: An introduction

Editor's Note: Olivia Burton will be sharing her adventures reporting from the Balkan Peninsula in May with Village Living. This is the first of several installments written by Burton, a 2014 Mountain Brook High School graduate. She interned for Village Living last summer and wrote for the Sword & Shield at MBHS.

This month, I have the opportunity to combine my love of writing with my passion for the outdoors on a reporting trip for The Yale Globalist.

During my freshman year, I joined the Globalist, Yale's undergraduate international affairs quarterly. Every summer, the Globalist sends a group of student reporters to a foreign country to research topics of their own choosing. In years past, the Globalist has sent reporters to Vietnam, South Africa, Chile, Turkey, Indonesia, Tanzania, India, China and Venezuela. 

This year, we are going to Bosnia and Serbia. I will be writing about the Via Dinarica, an international trail project spanning the Balkan Peninsula. Via Dinarica project leaders hope that the trail will connect communities within the fragmented region, attract sustainable tourism, preserve cultural heritage, and facilitate economic development and environmental protection. Throughout my stay in Bosnia, I plan to go on a few day hikes with some of the Via Dinarica project's leaders to learn more about the goals of the project and to see how it is already beginning to take shape. 

My experience writing for Village Living and my love for the outdoors that began with Mountain Brook's Venture Crew 2010 seem to have united in this reporting trip. As I write this from the Munich airport waiting on my plane to Sarajevo, I have no idea what to expect from the next three weeks. But I am sure it will be an adventure. I am excited to test the skills I have learned working for Village Living in a completely different setting from Mountain Brook. 

Throughout the trip, Globalist reporters will be updating our trip blog: http://tyglobalist.org/category/onlinecontent/reporting-trips/. Village Living will be cross-posting my Globalist blog post as well as publishing a few trip reports from me. Stay tuned!

For more information on the Via Dinarica, visit viadinarica.com.