Modern-day Bosnia Herzegovina includes people of many different ethnic affiliations, most notably the Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. Most people speak a Serbo-Croatian tongue. The arts have always been strong in the region, offering in the most repressive and challenging times an essential means of self-expression and defiance. One of the most notable rock groups to emerge from a thriving scene in the latter decades of the 20th century was Zabranjeno Pusenje, a Sarajevo-based outfit that challenged authority through “New Primitivism” garage-punk. Wonderful cultural institutions include Sarajevo’s contemporary-art museum, Ars Aevi; the Sarajevo Film Festival; and the multidisciplinary art school and performance hall of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, named for the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti who helped establish it.

Bosnia Herzegovina occupies a great geographical and cultural bridge in the Balkans Peninsula, and the influence of the Mediterranean, Turkey, the Middle East, and other regions of its hinterland comes out strong—and deliciously—in its cuisine. Stews, soups, dumplings, meatballs, and pastries are all popular styles of preparation. Dolmas or yaprak describe meat, rice, and/or vegetables folded into grape leaves. One of the national dishes is cevapi, a kind of ground-meat kebab that is commonly served within flatbread. As elsewhere in the Balkans and Turkey, baklava often serves as dessert or as a standalone sweet. Common libations include wines from the southern part of the country as well as plum brandy.

Bosnia Herzegovina encompasses two regions: Bosnia in the north and Herzegovina in the south. The country borders Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro in its position in northwestern Balkan Peninsula, and has a tiny sliver of a southwestern coast along the Adriatic Sea. Topographically, the beautiful and rugged Dinaric Alps dominate much of the territory, climaxing in the 7,828-foot peak of Maglic on the Montenegro line. That grand summit belongs to the outstanding Sutjeska National Park, a rugged alpine landscape of sawtooth peaks, glacial lakes, waterfalls, and the globally exceptional Perucica old-growth forest. Extensive caverns, springs, and other karst landforms, meanwhile, make for striking scenery in the southern part of the country.

Bosnia Herzegovina’s history as a country is about as complicated as they come: The modern state formed in the early 1990s with the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, only one of several political entities that cycled through on the heels of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire around World War I. The Turkish influence from centuries of Ottoman control remains strong in Bosnia Herzegovina: in customs, food, music, and architecture. Landmarks of that era include the Gazi Husrevbey Mosque in Sarajevo, internationally treasured as a pinnacle of Ottoman architectural genius. The country also boasts a rich share of ancient ruins, including the Illyrian city site of Daorson to the old Roman villa of Mogorjelo not far outside Capljina.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina_cuisine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/700826/Bosniaand- Herzegovina