The cool air feels good to me and reminds me that I am going
to be returning to the U.S. during the fall and another reminder that I have
essentially missed the summer this year.
Zurich reminds me a bit of London, or at least the East
Putney part of it, and the feel is instantly different than Peru. For one it
does not smell like shit but is quite clean and cosmopolitan. It also has the
old world buildings of Europe with the small winding streets and cable cars. I
walk around a little bit but the streets don’t really follow any kind of grid
and it is easy to get lost and Peru has left me tired and my stomach a bit
upset so I also don’t really feel like wondering so I just walk around a bit
and grab some lunch. One interesting fact, mustard in Zurich comes in the same
type of tubes oil based paint does.
Zurich seems like a rather young city and has a similar feel
as Sydney did to me many years ago when I was there. Most people here look to
be under 35 or over 65. My 2-1/2 hour’s downtown is not scientific but there
seems to be a big gap where everybody but a few hardy souls move out of town
when they get older.
Sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to Sarajevo
leaves me with a feeling of anticipation. Of all the places on my trip, I have
been wanting to go to Sarajevo for the longest. It came onto my radar during
the Bosnian war of independence in the early 90’s and has held a level of
interest for me ever since. I was in my mid 20’s during the Bosnian/Serb war
and was quite outraged by what was going on. Perhaps it was an idealistic age
for me but the images of the siege of Sarajevo were constantly on the news and
I could not believe how the west could sit by and do nothing about a slaughter
in their back yard. I found it very cowardly of Europe and wrong of the U.S. to
simply sit back and wave their fingers at the Serbs who were clearly doing it
out of what seemed like bizarre nationalistic reasons that went back hundreds
of years to WWII 40 years earlier. Arguments that we can’t get involved with
every conflict just did not cut it for me.
Since then I have watched several movies and read several
books on the subject. One of my favorites is “Hello to All That” by John Falk
as the guy was essentially my age and I can relate. I read it again before
leaving Chicago and read another book called “Goodbye Sarajevo” by Atka Reid
and Hanna Schofield while in Peru.
It is evening when I arrive but there is still some daylight
left and I’m immediately excited to be here and one of the things I am struck
by is that you can still see some buildings showing war remnants from 20 years
ago while there are also several new shiny glass office towers and shopping
centers that have been erected. I am also struck by the large amount of graffiti
that many of the older buildings have.
I take a long hot shower and afterwards wonder around the
Old Town part of the city for a few hours. My hot shower is perhaps only the
third one I have had since the 4th of July and I have to wonder when
a long hot shower became a luxury for me on this trip, but it is. My hotel is
located right in the main shopping and bar area so it is pretty busy all night
and as I walk around I can quickly tell when I get outside the area with the
nightlife.
The next morning all I have to do is get down to Dubrovnik
by the bus so I also sleep in late and finally crawl myself out of bed to find
that there is no water in the building. I also find out as I go downstairs that
the buses do not run as frequently as I expected, and in fact I missed the only
bus to Dubrovnik at 7:00 am! Shit! So it looks like I am spending an extra day
in Sarajevo, which is somewhat upsetting to me as now I don’t know how much of
Dubrovnik I will actually be able to see. But I can’t change it so instead I
take advantage of it and see a bit of the city.
Sarajevo is about half a million people and the central part
is very walkable. I stroll around. In the daylight the old signs of the 92-95
siege of the city are everywhere. Many buildings have been fixed but many more
still show the scars, either intestinally or because they owners possibly have
not had the money to fix them. On my walk over to the bus station to get my
ticket for Sunday, I see several buildings that have been riddled with bullets
and patched or the holes still there. Often they are next to fixed buildings or
new ones. There are also several war memorials set up and a large number of
graves from 92-95 in some of the mosques as well as one of the city’s parks.
In the late afternoon I went over to one of the museums that
shows pictures of the war as well as recount the massacre at Sebrenija in 1995
just before the war ended. Before the UN grew a pair and finally did something,
at the arm wrenching of NATO, the Bosnian Serbs has surrounded several areas
and were systematically killing the Muslim men, the biggest and most documented
being Sebrenija. In all an estimated 8,000 men are estimated to have been executed
over a 2-3 week period in July of 1995. It was particularly bad because the
Dutch UN troops at Sebrenija not only let it happen but actually handed over
6,000 people to the Serbs that were in their care. A pretty appalling and
disgusting failure of military troops sent in to protect. I don’t get it and
wonder how they could live with themselves after something like that. They were
sent in to help and all they did was stand by and watch and be humiliated by
the Bosnian Serbs. They apparently tried to get the UN to help but were
constantly denied assistance, but even then I don’t know how they could have
done something like this with the full knowledge that the Serbs were executing the
male prisoners.
Green Market where the Bosnian Serbs dropped a mortar shell into a lot of people waiting in a bread line and killing scores. Today it is a normal market again, just with a notorious past.
I’d like to lay that all at the feet of the Dutch but I was
told at the museum tour that in some U.S. documents declassified after 20
years, there was an agreement in place with the Serbs by the U.S., British, and
French that they would not intervene if U.N. troops were left unmolested by the
Bosnian Serbs. I doubt that the intent was to hand over the Muslims but that
was the outcome. Anyway in July/August when it became clear to the UN that the male
“prisoners” were disappearing in the hands of the Bosnian Serbs, the UN finally
agreed to intervene militarily to stop the Serbs. Probably because it sounds
like NATO members told the UN they would bomb regardless if the UN agreed, so
they did to probably save face.
The museum is a little bit of a downer but seeing some of
the history of the war is part of why I came and in some ways it is like a trip
to the 9/11 museum in NY. When I return after kayaking I have a tour to hike in
the hills and see some of the old abandoned Olympic sites and I also plan a
trip to the War Tunnel museum out by the airport.
But it is also good to see the city alive again with a lot
of energy and new construction going on. It is signs of the city slowly
recovering and the people moving on.
No comments:
Post a Comment