Sarajevo – Never Forget

For this chapter I would like to re-iterate my phrase from my last post in that “The more I see, the less I know.” Sarajevo is the very manifestation of that phrase for me. This city, the capital of BiH, is not large by comparison for capital cities with a population of less than 300,000 people. However, it is full of history and has a strong presence in the music and other art forms.

Also, it’s really interesting because of the heterogeneous cultural and religious mixture of its inhabitants all living amongst each other. It’s actually one of the only places in the world where you can find a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church, and synagogue all within a few hundred meters of each other. There’s also many influences from different occupational periods of the area including Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian occupations that it is a melting pot of different physical traits too ranging from blue eyes and red hair to olive skin, dark hair and eyes. Plus, it’s quite common that people of different practicing religions marry and will adopt both sets of practices or observations such as Christmas mass, Hanukkah, or Ramadan. Pretty cool!

Side note: here’s a cat that randomly came up to me while eating.

Sarajevo was also the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics.

We set out to do some sight seeing the second day, and we decided to go to the City Hall or National Library. It was originally opened in 1896 and served at different periods for government or educational purposes until it was burned down in August of 1992 in the Yugoslav Wars. The reconstructed building was completed in 2014.They were showing a documentary film in the main atrium called “Scream for me, Sarajevo.” I HIGHLY recommend everyone to watch this as it gave both of us a dose of reality about what really was happening during the early 90’s during the Siege of Sarajevo and greater Yugloslav Wars. It also featured Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden and how he made an unprecedented, completely covert trip to Sarajevo during the height of the fighting to perform an underground concert for the civilians of the city. I have a newly found respect for Iron Maiden now. Haha. Another documentary we really learned a lot from was a BBC documentary called “Fall of Yugoslavia”. I think everyone needs to see both and be aware of what these people went through.

Oh! Another good book I read was Logavina Street which details the personal accounts of multiple families living on this famous street right in the line of fire during the four year siege. It really brought home what these people went through and how they have managed to rise above the rubble. It definitely changed how you interacted with people knowing you’re walking among people who went through all of this that are sometimes even our age. I respect them even more for how kind they were to us during the entire trip. Bosnian people are truly wonderful.

Another thing we saw was the bridge where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess of Hohenberg, Sophie were assassinated in 1914, sparking the first world war.

Changing to a more upbeat tune, we celebrated our two year anniversary while here by taking a traditional Bosnian cooking class. This turned out to be one of our favorite things we’ve done on this trip. Mersiha and Mustafa picked us up and brought us to their beautiful home overlooking Sarajevo. Here we learned how to make burek (round meat,spinach and cheese, or potato pastry), dolma (stuffed grape leaves), and stuffed onions and peppers. What a fun day. We figured we’d only be there a few hours, but we spent the entire day just talking, sharing stories, and laughing. They are awesome people, end of story.

Here’s a shot of me when I started bawling my eyes out due to the onions about five minutes into the lesson. We all had a really good laugh at that.

The next morning we took a transport bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia which took you to multiple UNESCO heritage sites along the way. Driving from point to point takes about five hours, and we figured why not break it up with a little history along the way. We went to a few different places including the town of Visegrad where the Drina and Rsav rivers meet. This also is the location for the subject of the book “Bridge over Drina” by Ivo Andric. It was also a very important location near the borders of Bosnia and Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars as well as earlier periods such as World War I.

The Dobruni monastery originally built in the 14th century which was later reconstructed.

Sargan Eight train and railway from 1925 which was restored and reopened in 1995. We ended up crashing a middle school field trip where the students were very interested in asking us about the United States. They were fun.

Tara National Park – “Home of the Brown Bears”.

House of Drina which is a tiny cottage located on a rock in the middle of the river for over 40 years.

And finally an old cemetery with headstone ruins from before the 10th century. Very, very old and made of large limestone.We continued on from there and finally made our way to Belgrade around 9 pm. It was a long day, but we made some good friends and saw some neat sights.Tagging Morgan now! Bye!