Day 21 To Sarajevo (Tuesday 22 February 2011)
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| Bus journey Belgrade to Sarajevo |
I am leaving for Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia Herzegovina, on the 1130 bus. Igor warned me not to take the train in this weather and, in fact, the bus journey takes eight hours, as opposed to the ten hour train journey, so besides the compromise in comfort, the bus seems to be the better option. In this blizzard, eight hours becomes nine hours, but that is pretty good going as the driving conditions are atrocious. We stop at a road side café in the Bosnian mountains where visibility is down to a few metres distance. Towards the end of the journey I start to worry as having approached the lights of Sarajevo city centre the bus now seems to have skirted around it and is continuing east, past where I am hoping to get off. Eventually the bus terminates at East Sarajevo bus station. I had not anticipated arriving twelve kilometres outside the city centre and I do not have any Bosnian Marks to pay for the journey into town. Luckily a man who had been on the bus, and who speaks English, walks with me to where I can get a tram into the city centre, and he even gives me enough change for a ticket. It is late by the time I arrive at the Hostel City Centre, on Saliha Hadziuseinovica, where I waste little time crashing into bed.
Day 22 Sarajevo (Wednesday 23 February 2011)
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| Bascarsija, Sarajevo's Turkish Quarter |
Last evening there was just enough time to introduce myself to Jackson, above whom I slept in the bunk bed we share here at the Hostel. Jackson is from Hong Kong, but his family moved to Canberra, Australia when he was younger. Today we have booked a city tour that leaves the tourist information building on Saraci, the main pedestrianised street in the heart of Sarajevo. I am led to believe that the tour will focus on the city during the war years, from 1992-5, when Sarajevo was under siege from Bosnian Serb forces. My tour group does not leave until two o'clock this afternoon so I have an opportunity this morning to explore the central area known as Bascarsija, the Turkish Quarter. First stop is for Bosnian coffee and more Burek. After breakfast while exploring the old town I discover that the principal buildings of each of the four main religions in Bosnia Herzegovina can all be found in very close proximity to one another. Across a tiny area, which I am able to walk in minutes, I see the Roman Catholic Cathedral, Gazi Husrev Bey's Mosque, Serbian Orthodox Church and Synagogue. In a city with such a tumultuous recent history this sign of tolerance and togetherness seems to me to be something quite special.
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| The Latin Bridge |
Throughout Sarajevo I see red imprints sunk into the paving and learn that these are known as 'Sarajevo Roses' which mark a place on the ground where a shell exploded during the war. On the north side of Baseskije is the outdoor market place where, in 1994, a mortar bomb killed 66 people in the largest single massacre during the siege. Before heading back to Saraci to meet up with Jackson and our tour there is just time to visit the Latin Bridge, another infamous landmark in the history of this beautiful place. Here, on the north bank of the River Miljacka, at the entrance to the bridge, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, leading to the outbreak of the first world war.
Taking the tour this afternoon, besides Jackson and I, there is only one other person - John: an Australian tri-athlete and web-designer from Brisbane who has recently lived in Saddleworth, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Our tour guide is Edin, who at twenty-six is not exactly a veteran in his profession, but I like him: there is no jargon or bullshit on his tour. Maybe it is his lack of years of experience; whatever the reason, his tour might lack facts and a deep knowledge of the city, but his views are honest and personal. He explains how as a Bosnian Muslim his family escaped to Germany before the outbreak of the war. I am surprised to hear him say that if it were not for the tri-nation peace agreement presided over, and still enforced by America, he believes that Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats would still be at war today. Since 1995 Bosnian Serbs and Croats have slowly returned to live in Sarajevo and this makes for an uneasy truce on the ground. Edin explains how the separate groups work side by side, but Sarajevo's social life is now segregated down ethnic lines. We are driven around the city by Edin in his banged-up mini bus; the windows in the back are so filthy the three of us can barely see through them. Our first stop is Sarajevo airport; or more precisely, an area of just a few houses and farm buildings near to the runway. It was from here that besieged Bosnian Muslims dug a tunnel beneath the UN-controlled airport, 960 metres, re-emerging in safe territories from where it was possible to reach the mountains to buy, food and weapons on the black market. Edin tells us that a handful of Serbs became millionaires selling arms to the Bosnian Muslim Army, with whom the Serb nation was at war.
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| Poster showing the 1992-5 siege of Sarajevo |
The last stop on the tour also happens to be the site of the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, on the valley side, overlooking the city. But the reason Edin has brought us here is so we can see across the river valley to the hillside opposite and witness the sheer scale of the atrocities committed during the three-year siege. From here I can see a cemetery on the other side of the valley; Edin explains that, historically, cemeteries had been kept separate along ethnic lines, but during and after the war the sheer number of dead Bosnian Muslims meant that their bodies had to be buried in non-Muslim cemeteries. What makes this sight so poignant is that the cemetery we are looking at was originally a burial site for orthodox Bosnians, whose gravestones are traditionally black, as opposed to the white gravestones used in Muslim cemeteries. I can see the black gravestones of the orthodox cemetery which, for over a century, as more graves were added, had been steadily climbing up the hillside. What I can also see is the tragic evidence of what occurred here. The nucleus of black gravestones is surrounded, and outnumbered, by an enormous mass of white gravestones: the graves of the Muslim people murdered here in the space of three short years.
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| Sarajevo's mass cemeteries |
Day 23 Mostar, (Thursday 24 February 2011)
This morning, John and I walk through the deep snow that has fallen on Sarajevo overnight. It is very early and we are on route to the train station for the 0715 to Mostar. Last evening, John had decided he liked my idea of a return day trip to Bosnia Herzegovina's second largest town. I am lucky to have met yet more great people; I get on really well with John, and he, Jackson and I had fun drinking in Sarajevo brewery, on the south bank of the River Miljacka, last night. Inside the brewery building is a cavernous bar, not unlike a Munich Brauhaus, with large tables and dark stained wooden furniture. Sarajevsko Pivo must be one of the most crisp and clean beers I have ever tasted and, as we were drinking it straight from its source it could not be any fresher. This morning I do not have even the slightest twinge of a hangover.
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| Heavy gun fight damage |
Having departed Sarajevo by train, we arrive in Mostar at the bus station (the train gave up on route and we were transferred onto a bus for the final hour of the journey). On the short walk into the centre of Mostar it is very apparent that Sarajevo, being the capital city, has had significantly more restoration work since 1995. In Mostar, only a few streets from the city centre, I can see buildings peppered with bullets holes to the extent that I am able to guess where the most ferocious of gun battles must have taken place. Here, it seems all paths lead to one place eventually: the iconic humped-backed Stari Most, or Old Bridge, that spans the River Neretva. Today, John and I are almost alone in the area around the bridge, which in 2004-5 was reconstructed with money from UNESCO and designated a World Heritage Site. The important status bestowed on the place only adds to the unusual sense of amazement at finding it so deserted - it feels as if we have been allowed into a UNESCO theme park an hour before it opens to the public. The Old Bridge had stood for over four hundred years until it was destroyed by Bosnian Croat artillery fire on 9 November 1993. A souvenir shop about ten metres from the bridge on the eastern bank displays a small exhibition of photographs and video footage taken during the siege of Mostar. John and I notice that two stones, retrieved from the rubble of the original bridge, have been placed at the entrance to the Stari Most on each side of the river, both with the same simple inscription: 'Don't forget 1993'.
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| Stari Most |
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