For the most part, however, we used e-mail and chat services for nearly all communications. I used a local ISP, smartnet.ba, for internet connection from my apartment and was very satisfied with the service. The internet access from the university is limited and often down so one s laptop and internet access from the apartment becomes your life line. As a result, the internet was my source of communication and my news and research resource. Speaking of news, the embassy web site is excellent and provides links to all major world and local news sources as well as to most NGO s.
Personal banking is relatively simple.
The same is true of cash advances on credit or debit cards. To simplify bookkeeping I elected to have Fulbright deposit all my stipends in my USA bank which I could access via debit card and thus had a record of my expenses during the assignment. Generally, this is a cash society and credit cards are not usually accepted although that is changing. We had only limited need of medical or dental care during our assignment and used medical people as suggested by the embassy and were quite satisfied with the results. In general, we found that administrative problems encountered living in BiH could be easily solved with the advice of faculty professors, embassy staff, common sense and a bit of humor.