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| Sarajevo, Bosnia i Herzegovin |
I wanted to give myself a day to process my thoughts and reflections from our visit to Bosnia and the beautiful town of Sarajevo. I had intended to write on the train from Sarajevo to Budapest, but the train was miserable and making myself hotter by having a warm laptop in my lap was not an option. Entering Bosnia was one of the most relaxed border checks I have ever encountered. Our passports were not even stamped. Some people just waved their ID card at the patrolman. As we entered the country I nearly immediately noticed an increase of abandoned buildings – many of which were not just abandoned, but were demolished – caved in or hollowed out with trees and shrubs growing out through the windows. We passed many cemetaries that seemed very full, but were also very unkempt – with grass growing higher than many of the stones. We also passed many, many, many works in progress and buildings at various stages of construction.
The randomness of which buildings were damaged was especially apparent. We saw a beautiful church – perfect, pristine, intact – juxtaposed with the connecting fellowship hall that was completely hollowed out and destroyed. We noticed that abandoned buildings often occurred in strings, with five or six all in a row. As we drove through Mostar, the effects of war were especially noticeable compared to the countryside and a large number of the buildings were damaged. On one of the main streets our bus drove us down we saw a cafe, a clothing shop, a shell of a building in which the only living things were trees and birds, a pub, a shoe store...
Now I must mention that Daniel really gave me free reign while planning this trip. I told him what I was planning along the way – but as he wasn't the one researching each step, he wasn't processing all the details the same way I was. Now, with that in mind – I definitely told him we would be going to Bosnia and I did mention that there were still visible signs of the war that occurred over a decade ago. But I guess it hadn't processed. The look on his face as we drove into the next city of our vacation – a city that was full of bullet holes and bombed out buildings and piles of rubble and barbed wire fences... well his face was priceless. But his trust in me was unwaivering (I think), and I quickly won him over once we arrived with a walk through the city and a yummy Bosnian meal.
After surviving our bus ride – which was supposed to be seven hours, but took eight, we finally arrived at the bus stop. We immediately sought an ATM and got some BAM out. :) Bosnia and Herzegovina are two different regions. Bosnia's capital is Sarajevo, Herzegovina's capital is Mostar. The country is most frequently seen abbreviated at BiH (the “i” being like our “and”). Money is noted on the world market as BAM, but frequently referred to as KM (Konvertible Markas). The country is also abbreviated as “Ba” sometimes – like on websites.
Anyway, we reached the bus stop, got some BAM, and hailed a taxi. About ten bucks later we found ourselves at Hotel Michele – which ended up being a fabulous choice – a little pricey – but by far the nicest room we've ever had in our lives. It was our sanctuary. We also later found out that Richard Gere had stayed in the apartment above us, Michael Moore in the apartment across from us, and Steve Buscemi had stayed in our apartment. (Yes, the aparmtent really was that nice). The front desk was wonderful, very helpful and welcoming, and whisked us upstairs to our gorgeous room. Our room was larger than our own apartment – all hard wood and full of furniture you usually find roped off in palaces or museums. We spent the first five minutes standing in amazement and trying to figure out which of the fifty light switches did what. We realized we had gotten in just in time – because for the first time of our trip, it started storming. Not just thunderstorming, but actually hailing almost quarter size hail. And that was it for our hot weather. The temperature dropped to sixty and we were in heaven.
We showered while it stormed – finally cool after our days in sweaty Hvar and the dreadful bus ride, we were ready to explore! We discovered that we were two or three blocks from the old town area that is open only to pedestrians and includes lots and lots of little shops. We walked down towards the water and City Hall and made our way to a restaurant called Inat Kuca that our hotel had recommended to us. The restaurant served authentic Bosnian dishes and was wonderful. I ate a dish called “dolmas” which was vegetables (peppers, onions, and rolled herb leaves) stuffed with meat and rice and Daniel got a dish that was the equivalent of the Tour of Italy at Olive Garden, giving us a tour of Bosnian food from Inat Kuca (some dolmas, sis kabob, and other things). The food was excellent. I will also mention that my excitement continued to heighten, because as we ate dinner, one of the calls to prayer began to echo through the city from the loudspeakers of some of the minarets. We had made it to Sarajevo and I was loving it!
We headed in fairly early and got a good nights sleep so that we would be ready for a full day of exploring. We woke up early – had an incredibly fancy breakfast, and set out to see what we could. In daylight we realized that our hotel truly was an oasis amidst a row of buildings that had been severely damaged. The building directly beside ours was uninhabitable, the one beside that was a pile of rubble, the one beside that was standing and functional – but barely. We passed a tall apartment building on the way to the main road and realized that some of the stories were missing chunks of their exterior walls – we could see into some of the people's apartments as they drank coffee and read the newspaper. We walked down the road past a building chock full of bullet holes – listening to several different instruments practicing all at one – and realized at the bottom that it was actually a music academy.
We wandered through one of the main bazaars, stepped into the Cathedral of Jesus' Sacred Heart, and signed up for a tour of the Tunnel Museum at the tourist center. We spent a few hours wondering around, checking out the Kazandziluk road full of copper, nickel, and silver pieces and looking at the City Hall/National Library that lost over 90% of its books during an attack and is currently under rennovation. The City Hall's architecture is extremely beautiful and we could definitely see how beautiful a building it once was – but the damage was extremely evident, and though under rennovation, it was very obvious that there was a tremendous amount of work to be done. From there we headed down to the Latin Bridge, which is very close to the sight where Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914...hopefully you know what happened after that... We took pictures of the plaque marking the spot and went into the museum that had the pistol used by Gavrilo Princips and some other items of the Black Hand conspirators. Good pictures for a history teacher to have.
We ate a quick lunch of cevapi – pita and sausage, and headed on to the tourist center to meet our tour guide. We were sent with eight other English speaking tourists down two or three blocks to meet up with a man named Tak who would serve as our escort to the Tunnel Museum. The tour included transportation, guided information, and admittance to the museum. During Bosnia's quest for independence – a war from 1992-1995, Sarajevo became beseiged by the Serbains and the city itself because nearly surrounded. The city was essentially bottlenecked, with a very narrow corridor linking the city to the rest of free Bosnia. This narrow corridor was their only hope to receive supplies, food, weapons, etc. The corridor linked up into the Olympic mountains – in which their was one road that remained open to connect them to the other side of the mountain pass. Now, this was a very modern war and the Serbians has sniper rifles, night vision, and a number of other tools that empowered them to shoot anything that moved along the corridor; thus inhibiting any supplies from reaching Sarajevo. During 1993, (a year in which our guide told us was a year in which the entire city went with no electricity), a tunnel was built by a group of volunterrs that ran underground for 800 meters through the narrow passage, linking the city of Sarajevo to a series of houses by the mountain pass. During the war the tunnel shuttled over 4,000 people a day from one side to the other, along with millions of pounds of essential goods to keep the city running. Our guide said he actually had to use the tunnel to leave the city for a while, but as a fifteen year old male who was expected to serve in the military at seventeen he only received a one month visa to go to the other side.
As part of our tour we drove through the city as our guide pointed out various buildings and their relevance during the war. As we approached sniper row he explained that the Holiday Inn was the location where all of the journalists and UN workers stayed and it was the only building from which no one died. He told us that during the seige supplies were extraordinarily low and that it was difficult to find necessary supplies without leaving your home – but, sniper row was a very difficult place to need to leave your home. He pointed out the one section of the city that had big trees older than thirteen years old and said the city government had protected those few trees, but all other trees were cut down at some point and burned for fuel during the long winters. He discussed the conditions of the rows and rows and rows of apartments that looked very similar to the aparmtnets in Croatia – essentially tenements. Tak explained that the aparmtnes rose up as homes to accommodate factory wokers – but that after the war the factories oved and unemployment was especially high.
We continued on through the city and eventually reahced the tunnel museum near the airport. Homes were used on each side to serve as entrance and exit points – to offer shelter as you came up out of the tunnel. We entered the home and went down to a bunker like area to watch a twenty minute film. The film had all first hand footage and showed various artillary attacks on the city, cars flying down sniper ally, city hall burning with the national library's contents inside, etc; the second half showed the interior of the tunnel (which was very narrow and not tall enough for anyone to stand up straight in) and soldiers and civilians using the tunnel to bring goods and wounded soldiers back and forth. The footage itself was quite good, but there was no narration or any form of guidance to explain what you were watching.
From there we were invited to walk through a 20 or 30 foot section of the tunnel, so see it first hand. The tunnel had many problems with water leakage and was difficult to maintain, so only part of it has fully been preserved. There were tracks at the bottom for the little carts they would use as gourneys to transport the wounded soldiers out of the city. They had a large map with the boundaries of the Serbian and Bosnian military forces clearly marked to better explain the “bottle-neck seige” I attempted to explain earlier. Our guide used a little stick to show us where everyone was situated, as well as sniper ally and how Sarajevo is kind of in a bowl that was surrounded by Serbians on the hills. He also pointed out some of the mountains that the Bosnians filled with land mines to make it more difficult to traverse. He pointed to one mountain and said - “This one is so full of land mines we can't even think about trying to remove all of them. We'll wait one hundred years and then start using the mountain again...”
After that we went upstairs and saw different artifacts from the war – some of the different kinds of carts, some old artillery, and lots and lots of pictures. Their were lots of pictures from the war and further demonstrating the use of the tunnel, and there was also a wall full of pictures of famous people who had visited the tunnel with lots of letters and notes from political officials and diplomats. We saw pictures of John McCain, Michael Moore, Jeremy Irons (voice of Scar), Daniel Craig (new James Bond), Richard Gere, and Fred Thompson, as well as pictures and letters from the US Ambassadors to Bosnia and their families from over the past decade.
The tunnel musuem was definitely one of my favorite things that we did in Sarajevo – and I agree with Daniel whole-heartedly that our tour really made it all click and helped us really understand what we were seeing. Our hotel had tried to make it sound like it was too far away and not worth doing, but the tourist office was very helpful and contrary to what our hotel said, it took about 30 minutes to drive out each way and the trip was well worth it.
Next, I really wanted to go into one of the mosques – but I was in shorts and a t-shirt...which wasn't really acceptable. So, we went back to the apartment and relaxed for a little bit, got our stuff together (I have a black pull on skirt and a sarong to cover my head and arms for religious sites we're going to visit on the Holocaust trip), and headed back out. We got to squeeze in a trip to the Gazi Husrevbeg Mosque before it closed – which was very beautiful. Daniel got to stand there while I had to cover my legs, arms, and hair. We lucked out because our guide needed to be somewhere else, so he let us in and we got to take our time and explore on our own.
We spent the rest of the evening walking through markets and further exploring the city. I think I have a soft spot for countries and cities that have overcome adversity. The have a more palpable spirit that the others and I definitely thought this was the case in Sarajevo. I was romanced by the beautiful markets, the wonderfully delicious food, the beautiful mosques, churches, and synagogues, the courteousness of the people, and the lilting voice that emanated from the minarets. One of the continual themes of Bosnia is “making it work” and working with what you have. Another is that it's all a work in progress...the whole city is a laundry list of reconstruction projects – but they really and truly are working on it, it's just going to take a long time. It seems to be a combination of need for money, organizational issues, and the sheer number of projects that inhibit speedy reconstruction. And yet, there's the spunk, the perseveriance and belief that, no matter how long it takes, we will overcome it, we will reconstruct it, we will rebuild it, and as the cemetaries echo from the hills and as it commands on the plaque of Sarajevo's City Hall, “Do Not Forget!”
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