After getting
situated I walked around the old city a little bit. It was about 8:30 at night
and the town was abandoned except for a very few people wandering around. It
was very quiet and I more or less had the place to myself. Even my hotel seemed
to be abandoned other than me. There was a rainy mist and that may be a part of
it but compared to Dubrovnik or Sarajevo in the evening, this place is a ghost
town.
Stari Most, the lighter part is where they had to rebuild the bridge after the Bosnian Serb's shelled it in 1993
Market place for the tourists and the Gypsies, the locals don't shop here
The next
morning there were more people, I am not sure where they came from but by
around 11:00 the buses must have arrived because the streets became full, the
shops were open and even the Gypsies had returned asking for money. I have to
say they, the Gypsies, were a little hard to deal with at first because were
very passively but consistently asking for money, the kids in particular would
follow you down the street. Too bad for them Chicago has made me rather cold to
panhandling and I did not hand out any money, and once I heard somebody say the
word Gypsy I was even less likely. If anything I got a bit annoyed that they
would be using their kids to beg for money. I am not immune to people in need
but my problem is I don’t know them and know what they really want to use the
money for. It may be for food but as I have learned in Chicago, it also may be
for booze or drugs as much as it may be to get a place to stay or something to
eat. Sadly addition and homelessness often go hand in hand. There is the
possibility they were not Gypsies but they were more persistent then my
experience of somebody who is begging because they are hungry, usually they are
more passive about it. Lets just say they seemed to have the routine down and
that was a put off for me.
Mostar is
known for the Stari Most or Old Bridge and people jumping off of it into the
river below. At first I thought it was too late in the season for this but just
as I was getting ready to head out to Sarajevo, a guy was getting ready to
jump. There was some usual fanfare from the crowd and guys from the local
diving club that work the crowd and hopefully get them to hand over a few
Bosnian Marks or Euros. The guy who jumped had a British accent so apparently
you don’t have to be a part of the dive club to do this and the thought crossed
my mind to do it myself. Perhaps at a younger time in my life when I don’t have
to worry about insurance so much, but that time is past and despite the desire
I kept my shirt and shoes on.
There is also
a photo exhibition of Mostar during the war at the Stari Most from a photographer
named Wade Goddard. Wad is born the same year as me and came to Bosnia from New
Zealand on his own. I know the feeling as just having graduated with a
journalism degree in 1993 I felt like doing the same thing at the time. I just
did not have the guts or smarts to figure it out but I have heard of several
stories of guys who had no journalism experience who up and left for Bosnia
during the war to take photographs or write stories.
All of his
photos were of the year he spent in Mostar and while walking around I
recognized several of the structures photographed. Many had been fixed but
there were still plenty more that were in the same state they were left in in at
the end of the war in 1995. In fact probably about 8-10% of the buildings in
the old town area are still bombed out. From the pictures I saw the entire city
was left in ruins and in some ways it is a miracle to me that many of the
buildings have been rebuilt. For example the old bridge was blown up by the
Serbs in 1993 but they cut new stones and rebuilt it the same way as it was
before being destroyed.
The Stari Most after being destroyed.
In the
afternoon I drove into Sarajevo and I have to say that I am enjoying driving
again and the roads through Bosnia wind up and down the mountains and along the
rivers which is rather enjoyable. But it is a bit of a challenge to get around
the slower moving buses or trucks and Bosnians are a bit like Michigan drivers,
in that they don’t slow down for much. So one always has to keep an eye open
for that car in the opposite direction passing around a corner. You also only
average around 80 kilometers per hour, or 50 miles per hour, so it takes a
while.
The next day
in Sarajevo, Tuesday, I guess you could call my war tour day and I had booked a
guide from Green Visions to take me around to some of the former Olympic sites.
Samer is from Sarajevo and was around 6 at the time of the 1984 Olympics and
can remember going to a few of the events. The weather is not ver good as we
drive out of the city into the mountains that are obscured by clouds. It is
only about a 30 minute drive from the heart of the city to get to the cross
country skiing, downhill skiing, ski jumping and bobsled sites. The cross
country and downhill sites don’t have anything left to them but are both active
sites today. The cross country site has become a walking and biking trail in
the summer and is still used for cross country in the winter and the downhill
site is still an active skiing hill. The downhill site is largely inactive but
there are some kids’ camp activities and a restaurant at the base during the
summer months. The structures are still there and the jumps themselves as well
as the media house still stand. The UN took over the area during the war and
they actually dismantled most of the upper structures to use the materials for
other things and the media house still has “UN” painted on it. In the cases of
the skiing sites, they were inside the territory held but the Bosnian Serbs so
for the most part they were not damaged by the war. The bobsled site is on a
different hill and was directly on the front lines but is surprisingly still
intact and Samer told me has been used recently for some in-line skating and
skateboard events. It is also a favorite spot for graffiti artists.
Old Olympic bobsled run in the hills above Sarajevo
Up until a
few years ago Samer told me the area in the mountains was largely abandoned and
that people would not go into the forests here. In part because it was on the
front lines, the land mine situation was not clearly known for a long time, at
one point I did see a landmine side while driving along the road to the
downhill site. But Samer also told me that too many people have bad memories of
the place and it holds a lot of ghosts for anybody older than 35. There are
spots in the bobsled run were holes were cut so the Serbs could shoot at
Bosnians trying to advance on them and the entire area was used to shell the
city and had sniper nests. We stopped at one on the way down and you could see
most of Sarajevo from there and I had to admit, it was a little unsettling to
think of how many people were shot and killed in the streets below by somebody
hiding were I was standing.
View of Sarajevo from one of the 100s of sniper positions on the mountain overlooking the city
Hole cut into the bobsled run so the Bosnian Serbs could shoot at people trying to go up the hill
But in the
last few years Samer more and more people have started to venture into the
area, which is good because it is really nice and while I understand the
felling of ghosts, at the same time it is good for the place to be reclaimed by
Sarajevo. By leaving it empty for so long, in a way that is like the Serb’s
still having the city under siege, so it is good to see it being taken back
mentally.
The forests
are thick and very pretty and the area reminds me of the North Woods of
Wisconsin or Michigan but they are only 30 minutes away. There has been some
development on the top where there are a few restaurants for day trippers,
cabins that you can spend the night in, lots of hiking and biking trails, and
even paint ball. The place is also full of wildlife, which includes wolves and
bears.
After lunch
on the mountain we head to the Olympic Hall where they house the remaining
artifacts from the 1984 Olympics. Most were destroyed with the Bosnian Serbs
shelled the former museum and it is sad to see how little remains of what was
probably the best thing to happen to Sarajevo in the 20th Century.
Afterwards I
head on over to the airport area where the Tunnel of Hope is located. When the
Bosnian Serbs had surrounded Sarajevo the airport was in the control of the UN
and provided a very small corridor that connected Sarajevo to other areas still
held by the Bosnian military. However, the UN had an agreement with the Serbs,
who were right next to the ends of the airport, that they would not allow
anybody to cross the territory. As such any time somebody tried to escape the
city this way they were usually picked up by the UN and turned back or machine
gunned by the Bosnian Serbs. That is until the tunnel was built in 1993. The
tunnel ran between two houses that flanked the runway and was about 800 meters
long. It provided a means for people to escape the city as well as fighters and
supplies to enter. Most of the tunnel is either filled in or closed but a small
section still remains on the far side of the airport in a home riddled with
bullet holes.
The tunnel
had a homemade set of railroad tracks that carts could be run across and from
the pictures, it looked like it often flooded. It was dig by hand and only
about 3 feet wide and 5 feet tall and in the short 20 meter section still open,
it is hard to imagine crossing under the entire runway in this thing.
1984 Olympic city map of Sarajevo with the front lines added to it, red area is the Bosnian Serbs. The airport is the small slot in the top and the tunnel was here, under the runway.
Wednesday is
my last day in Sarajevo and I mostly just hang out around the old town, doing a
little shopping before I go and relaxing. I don’t really need anything but
figure I will likely never get back to Sarajevo, so I pick up a Bosnian coffee
set, it is very similar to Turkish coffee and I figure a good souvenir of the
city for me, and a North Face coat. I have a rain coat but this is a bit warmer
and may be handier up north where it is colder, and at $50 US dollars it is
hard to resist since I will pay probably 3x more in the states.
The largest mosque in Sarajevo in the Old City section, there are probably 5-6 mosques close to the old city and it is like they are in competition with each other during calls to prayers.
Bridge where Franz Ferdinand and his wife was assassinated and WWI started
I also hang
out at a funky place called Zlatna Ribica, which I read about on Trip Advisor.
They serve coffee and alcohol and it is decorated with all sorts of funky things
and plays music from the 50’s and early 60’s. It is a little off the touristy
area and from the sound of everybody talking around me, pretty much a local
place.
In the
evening I don’t stay out late as I have a long drive to Prague in the morning.
It is around 650 miles and I am not really looking forward to it as it will be
an all day trip, but the alternative is taking a bus or train that will be
easily two times longer to get there. The train was marked out as taking about
24 hours.
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