We arrived in Sarajevo on our private minibus. From the moment you arrive in Sarajevo it’s pretty apparent where you are – there’s still so much war damage. They have done an amazing job of cleaning up and reconstructing the town, but there are still so many buildings with bullet damage. At street level everything looks lovely and tidy, and then you look further up. I think the fact that they build everything with brick and stone probably saved a lot of lives.
Our hotel was just off the main street in the old part of the city. Sarajevo’s another place with a huge Turkish influence, and most of the old town is full of souvenir shops and Turkish cafes. It was really weird because the old town and the new town are right next to each other on the same street, and it changes really abruptly and on both sides of the road at once. It was also the most obviously religious place we’ve been (aside from the monastery). There were churches and mosques everywhere. Just down the road from the hotel, there were two mosques directly across the road from each other. They have very strongly divided religious affiliations amongst the population, to the extent that they have three Prime Ministers and three separate groups in parliament, one for each of the main faiths (Muslim, Orthodox, and Christian) and they can’t decide anything in parliament without all three agreeing to it. Which of course makes for a very slow decision-making process. Apparently they have a state school system as well as three individual religious school systems, which don’t follow the same syllabus. From what I heard, the country used to be very unified, and everybody got along with their neighbours without any concern about differing religions, but it’s not the case anymore.
What really took me aback about the place was that the people are just like me. That sounds terrible, but I clearly remember a lot of talk in the news about Sarajevo, and about Bosnia and Serbia, and I don’t know about anybody else but I just assumed that the people in such war torn places would be like famine victims, and look and act totally differently to me and the people that I know. But that’s not true at all. They’re just people, and what I really enjoyed about the place is how much they’re now getting on with their lives. There were a few people who looked like they had probably been injured in the war, like a young woman who was missing most of one leg, but not very many in relation to the overall number of people who are in the streets. They go to cafes and go shopping and hang out with their friends, and it feels like a safe and relaxed place to be.
We had two optional excursions in Sarajevo. One was a guided city walk and the other was a tunnel tour. We did both in one day, the city walk first and then the tunnel tour.
The city walk was pretty good. The guide was this gorgeous young woman, which meant half the group was very interested before she even said anything. She was also interesting to listen to, very knowledgeable, and very happy to tell us about the politics of the country when we found somewhere quiet, which a lot of times people don’t really want to discuss. The walk was meant to be two hours, but I think we finished in just under that time. We all had sore feet and were finding it hard to concentrate by the end. Except for Cameron, he could’ve listened all day!
We visited some of the many many mosques, churches and synagogues in the city, as well as the old merchant’s quarters and markets, the river and the bridges, and the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
The tunnel is only about 1.6m at its highest points, and something like a kilometre and a half long, and goes right underneath the runway. They used it to get supplies of food and weaponry into Sarajevo, and to move people back and forth, and generally people going through the tunnel had 80kg of supplies on their backs. We had a guide for that as well, a young man who was only a couple of years older than me, so about 28. He was 11 when the war began, and he seemed to still be deeply affected by it, and by the loss of many of his friends during the war. He also took us to where the front line was, right outside some people’s houses on the edge of town, so that we could see for ourselves how close the Serbs got, and up to the fort (of course there’s a fort).
When we arrived, we came in on the local bus. That journey was a bit of an experience. Quite a similar one to Moscow, actually. When we went on the tunnel tour, the guide told us that there hadn’t been any rain in Sarajevo for 43 days, and they were starting to get pretty keen for some. When we went to get on the bus to Mostar, we noticed that the wind was picking up and there were some interesting looking clouds around, and by the time we got onto the motorway it was absolutely pouring, and there was thunder and lightning right over us. The bus had to slow down because the driver couldn’t see far enough ahead. When we arrived in Mostar it had stopped raining, but the road was wet and the bus clearly needed a couple of new tyres. Thank god for ABS braking systems. As we were standing waiting for taxis it started raining again. Of course. I was in the third of our five taxis, and by the time we got to the hotel the streets were awash and it was absolutely pouring, and the driver refused to get out and help with our bags. We ended up with a chain gang, me with my head in the boot pulling all the bags out as fast as I could and throwing them at the others. At, not to – I saw mine hit the pavement but it was raining so hard I didn’t bother stopping, I just assumed someone else was going to grab it. Which they did. As soon as I got inside it started with the massive thunder and lightning storm again. It was pretty dramatic, we were all loving it.
There wasn’t too much to do in Mostar, other than wander the old town and take photos of the bridge, which suited me. We only had one night there I think… Once the rain stopped, we literally did just wander around the old town and take photos of the bridge. It was so nice and relaxed. Mostar is in a worse state of repair than Sarajevo, there are a lot more buildings that were damaged that need to be torn down, but there wasn’t a lot of money to go around at the end of the war, and private buildings were up to the owner to fix or abandon. Even just on the road we were staying on, there was a lot of this sort of thing. One caught my attention because you could see from the street, through the windows, to the bullet holes on the interior walls. I found that quite upsetting. There were also a lot of buildings that had bullet damage concentrated around the windows, more noticeably so than in Sarajevo.
Our hotel was just off the main street in the old part of the city. Sarajevo’s another place with a huge Turkish influence, and most of the old town is full of souvenir shops and Turkish cafes. It was really weird because the old town and the new town are right next to each other on the same street, and it changes really abruptly and on both sides of the road at once. It was also the most obviously religious place we’ve been (aside from the monastery). There were churches and mosques everywhere. Just down the road from the hotel, there were two mosques directly across the road from each other. They have very strongly divided religious affiliations amongst the population, to the extent that they have three Prime Ministers and three separate groups in parliament, one for each of the main faiths (Muslim, Orthodox, and Christian) and they can’t decide anything in parliament without all three agreeing to it. Which of course makes for a very slow decision-making process. Apparently they have a state school system as well as three individual religious school systems, which don’t follow the same syllabus. From what I heard, the country used to be very unified, and everybody got along with their neighbours without any concern about differing religions, but it’s not the case anymore.
What really took me aback about the place was that the people are just like me. That sounds terrible, but I clearly remember a lot of talk in the news about Sarajevo, and about Bosnia and Serbia, and I don’t know about anybody else but I just assumed that the people in such war torn places would be like famine victims, and look and act totally differently to me and the people that I know. But that’s not true at all. They’re just people, and what I really enjoyed about the place is how much they’re now getting on with their lives. There were a few people who looked like they had probably been injured in the war, like a young woman who was missing most of one leg, but not very many in relation to the overall number of people who are in the streets. They go to cafes and go shopping and hang out with their friends, and it feels like a safe and relaxed place to be.
We had two optional excursions in Sarajevo. One was a guided city walk and the other was a tunnel tour. We did both in one day, the city walk first and then the tunnel tour.
The city walk was pretty good. The guide was this gorgeous young woman, which meant half the group was very interested before she even said anything. She was also interesting to listen to, very knowledgeable, and very happy to tell us about the politics of the country when we found somewhere quiet, which a lot of times people don’t really want to discuss. The walk was meant to be two hours, but I think we finished in just under that time. We all had sore feet and were finding it hard to concentrate by the end. Except for Cameron, he could’ve listened all day!
We visited some of the many many mosques, churches and synagogues in the city, as well as the old merchant’s quarters and markets, the river and the bridges, and the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
The Town Hall, still under reconstruction since the war.
The entrance to the old merchants' rooms; the washing pavillion at the mosque;
the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
The tunnel tour was out next to the airport. I hadn’t heard about it before I got to BiH. During the war the Serbs had the whole of Sarajevo surrounded. The UN made a deal with them about the airport, which I understand to be that the UN controlled the airport but the Serbs were allowed to use it, not the Bosnians, which effectively cut Sarajevo off from any supplies they might have been able to get in. So, there was a group who dug a tunnel under the airport. The end we visited opened out right next to a house. The same old lady still lives there, and she and her family helped a lot with feeding and watering and nursing people who used the tunnel. It was all very undercover when it was being built, but I believe the Army had a lot to do with it, and that when the Prime Minister at the time heard about it, and he actually endorsed it and helped provide tools. The Serbs did of course find out, but there wasn’t a lot they could do without bombing the airport, which of course they didn’t want to do – cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Map of Serbian front line; shell casing embedded in the floor by the tunnel entrance.
The tunnel entrance; inside the tunnel.
From Sarajevo, we went to Mostar. It’s famous for its very pretty stone arch bridge, which was the first of its kind when it was built. It was bombed and destroyed during the war, but they’ve rebuilt it to look exactly the same. If somewhat… newer.
There wasn’t too much to do in Mostar, other than wander the old town and take photos of the bridge, which suited me. We only had one night there I think… Once the rain stopped, we literally did just wander around the old town and take photos of the bridge. It was so nice and relaxed. Mostar is in a worse state of repair than Sarajevo, there are a lot more buildings that were damaged that need to be torn down, but there wasn’t a lot of money to go around at the end of the war, and private buildings were up to the owner to fix or abandon. Even just on the road we were staying on, there was a lot of this sort of thing. One caught my attention because you could see from the street, through the windows, to the bullet holes on the interior walls. I found that quite upsetting. There were also a lot of buildings that had bullet damage concentrated around the windows, more noticeably so than in Sarajevo.
This post is now so huge that it won't do anything if I try to add any more photos, so I think I'll end it here!
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