Goodbye to Bosnia, for now

On the fifth of September, after an overnight bus ride, I arrived in Sarajevo. Despite having spent a month in Bosnia in June and July, I hadn't been to Sarajevo in two years. The city was every bit as great as I remembered it, and even more so because it wasn't raining as it was last time I was there.

Some pictures from around town:
The town hall was heavily damaged during the war (the inscription goes with the picture of the town hall that follows it):


The bridge on which Franz Ferdinand was assassinated:
It was a Friday, so that night I went to synagogue services. Two years ago, the building (which somehow went untouched during the war, someone alluded to something about the Israelis selling weapons to both sides but who knows if that's true) was being renovated, so I didn't get to even see the outside. The inside, which I couldn't take a photo of, was ridiculously beautiful, probably the most beautiful synagogue I've ever seen. The community doesn't have services during the summer because there are only 700 of them and too many go away during the summer, so I attended the first services in two months, and there still were maybe 40 people there, mostly older. After services there was a small but tasty dinner and I was able to chat with some people. A younger guy who I met said that services more and more are attended by only the older people and a handful of tourists and expats.
The clock tower and the minaret of the big mosque in Bascarsija (old town):
A photo, because I was too cheap to buy one for 5 euro, of a map of the seige of Sarajevo:
Shell damaged buildings on left, a new facade put over the building on the right to hide it:
The famous Holiday Inn where foreign journalists stayed during the war, which I assume is also sporting a new facade to hide the shell holes in its cement:
One of the "Sarajevo roses," shell holes filled in with red:

From Sarajevo I did a day trip to Srebrenica, despite the fact that it is 4 hours each way on the (pricey) bus. Arriving at about 11am, I had some chevapi (one of two Bosnian specialties, the other being pita/pie), and the view from the terrace was another bombed out building. In places hit hard by the war, this is a rather commonplace site, but it's still shocking as a tourist.
Kind of fortuitously, and kind of remembering that a guy on the bus had mentioned a "gora" (mountain) amongst the stream of Bosnian I couldn't comprehend as we were arriving in Srebrenica, I found a cobblestone trail to hike on. It ended in a gorgeous waterfall which went down the hill aways and was hard to photograph in all its glory, but:
Srebrenica was the site of a massacre of Muslims by Serbs, so it was heartening to see a new mosque being built:
The memorial was a taxi ride down the road. I had trouble getting a picture of the whole thing, but there were endless gravestones stretching around it. It was very peaceful, featured an outdoor mosque, and I can't say much more about it:



After 3 nights in Sarajevo (including another day trip to Zenica to retrieve a suitcase I'd left there), I spent two nights in Mostar, which is an incredibly scenic town. Mostar is home to a river of the most gorgeous color and a bridge that was emblematic of Mostar and Bosnia, that was pointlessly destroyed by the Croats and then rebuilt a few years ago. Although it is crawling with tourists, much of the city hasn't been rebuilt, or has only partially been rebuilt.






On my last day in Bosnia, I did a day trip to Stolac, a town that sees almost no tourists. It was very pretty, featuring a fortress and these tall piercing pine trees. I mostly enjoyed getting away from tourists, and I spent 2 hours or so sitting in a cafe watching the patrons as well as children on their way to school (ah, September).

With that, I said goodbye to Bosnia, although I hope to get to the Sarajevo film festival next summer. Early on Wednesday, I headed to the beach in Croatia for a little R+R. Saturday evening I fly to Switzerland.

Serbia

I've been away from a convenient place to blog, and then putting off blogging until I got my laptop back. I'm on the beach in Croatia for a few days and I suppose I can spare a few minutes to write about Serbia (Bosnia forthcoming).


Let's see, after an absolutely freezing night train ride to a Romanian border town (I was wearing probably more than half my clothing by the end of it), I spent two days in Belgrade back on the 1st and 2nd of September. I really liked the feel of the city and it was nice to be back somewhere where I had a tiny, miniscule grasp on the language. I actually was quite pleased with myself in Bosnia and Serbia; I found that I understood a lot more than I thought I did when I last was in the region, and while there were many things I couldn't have said myself, I understood enough bits and pieces to be able to get the gist of directions and advice.

Around Belgrade, there were a few big orthodox churches.
The Ministry of Defense buildings were hit hard by NATO, and despite the fact that it's almost a decade later, they haven't demolished them. They've obviously been left standing as a political statement and a reminder to Serbians of the bombings, which really consolidated nationalist feelings at the time.

The Belgrade castle truly is huge. Inside they were doing repairs/rebuilding in a few places; I'm not sure if it was damaged by NATO bombing or if it just needed some touch-ups due to its age. There were lots of tennis and basketball courts, and other athletic facilities inside the castle in addition to park space, which I thought was really nice.
And the military museum inside the castle was well worth a look. I had to photograph this drawing of Kotor, where I was at the beginning of my trip. You can see the fortress high on the hill and on the left, a few people being hung.
The military museum goes up to World War I, skips World War II (perhaps they are too ashamed to address it?) and then has a modern section that was quite nationalist/propagandist against the NATO bombings. Pictured is part of the display bragging about an American plane that went down (was shot down?).
Belgrade was home to several nude statues. The male was inside the castle; the woman in a park by the hostel.After 2 days in Belgrade I went to Novi Sad. My couch surfing host there was truly awesome, and sums up the reason I have loved doing couch surfing. We had several long discussions, first over lunch (Bosnian style lunch, meaning at 4pm; the countries are culturally the same with stuff like lunch, coffee culture, most food...) and then over drinks. I went into Serbia aware that I was biased against Serbs because of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and aware that I needed to intentionally try to get another perspective and keep an open mind. While I met some very stereotypical nationalist Serbs, including one on the train from Romania to Belgrade, and while signs like the one pictured below of Karadic are quite disturbing, my host in Novi Sad provided me with a nuanced perspective that challenged by feelings about Kosovo's independence. He was not anti-independence, but we talked about whether Kosovo was viable economically (it needs Serbia's excess energy) and problems with politicians, and I kind of ended up thinking Kosovo would have been better off accepting a high degree of autonomy within Serbia.

My host also had interesting stories about during the war. Novi Sad was bombed, despite the fact that it is waaaaay north of Kosovo and of Belgrade. Its bridges were taken out, the logic being that they were supporting military supply lines - but also civilian food sources. Where do you draw the line in a bombing like that when hypothetically you could link pretty much any aspect of a country's economy or industry to its military and therefore justify bombing anything? Anyway, NATO miscalculated how much Milosovic would care about the suffering of his people, because the bombing everyone thought would last a week or two and not two and a half months, but Milosovic didn't give a shit that his people were being bombed. The most interesting thing my host said, which I'd never heard before, was that as people got angrier and angrier at Milosovic, one of the ways they protested was to drown out the 7:30pm national news broadcast, which was how the government propagandized its people on a daily basis. People would stand on their balconies beating on pots and pans, blasting horns, even pointing their electric drills in the air and drilling away at nothing to drown out the news broadcast. Pretty awesome.

I also talked to two of his friends, extensively, about all the American TV shows we have in common - the miracle of the internet!

Novi Sad was an interesting city in and of itself. The statue of the family below was at a monument on the river banks that had Serb Orthodox and Jewish writing and symbols as well as names inscribed in stone. It turns out it is a memorial to an event during World War II in which Jews and Orthodox were thrown into the river to drown.

The castle in Novi Sad was neat. It's the location each June of a huge music festival and depending on the lineup, vacation, life, etc., I'm going to try and go next summer for it.
The fortress has a stop light. Heh.

On the 4th I headed for Subotica, a city known for its art nouveau architecture. I wasn't disappointed. The first building pictured was an art gallery with a fabulous display of work from contemporary Serbian artists.
(This cathedral isn't particularly art nouveau, but if you click on the picture to enlarge it you'll see a crack down the middle of the building.)
Even the synagogue was pretty art nouveau!


Finally, before catching the overnight bus to Bosnia, I got to try a Serbian specialty, the pljeskavica. You are given just the bun and hamburger-like meat patty, and there's a huge spread of salads and sauces to pile onto it. I of course had to put pretty much everything on, both for a more filling meal and because I like everything. It cost about $3 and was completely delicious.

Turda (tee-hee)

From Sighisoara I spent one night in Cluj, a university town that is known for its lively night life on weekends and during the school year. It was a Thursday, and classes aren't in session, but I went with some people from the hostel to the cutest little cocktail bar where for a total of $10 US I got a cognac hot chocolate, a fruit cocktail, and a whiskey hot chocolate. It was a quiet night but delicious.

On Friday morning I went to Turda, where I'd arranged a couch surf with a girl. Honestly, I decided to go to Turda largely for its name, but it's got a really cool salt mine. The air is supposed to be really healthy inside, and there were a bunch of families with children playing football in the huge excavated cavern or digging in the sand while dressed up in parkas (it was about 55 degrees inside). There was an awesome echo chamber.

There's also a gorge that we hiked in with a couple caves that the locals once used to hide from the Turks. To get to the gorge we had to wander through a village which was really interesting. (Pictured: onions drying in someone's back yard.)I was going to leave Saturday morning, but then the mother of my host started talking about all the food she wanted to cook me, and that convinced me to stay another night. We've been stuffed with fresh mozerella from their grandparents' farm, fresh homemade jam on bread or crepes, several varieties of soup (one of which contained what I swear were matzoh balls), meatballs, and these pastries that have cheese and raisins in them or chocolate. We went to the salt lakes yesterday, the last of Turda's three potential tourist attractions. There's been a festival this weekend so during the day the center of town is crowded with food booths and gypsy stalls selling various things. At night Romanian bands have played, and I'm sorry to say we never made it to see them, because my Romanian host has been hanging out at night with a bunch of Air Force soldiers who are on some sort of NATO mission here. That in and of itself has been interesting (army culture = a strange study), and solved the big mystery for me of why I've seen and heard military planes flying overhead for the past five days or so.

Krazy Kommunists!

I've been busy since I last blogged. I've spent a lot of time on trains and had a great time in Moldova. So far I am lukewarm on Romania.

Back in Moldova, I took a day trip to Soroca, a town that has the largest gypsy settlement (settlement, as in a while back they put down roots and didn't move around, so they are relatively prosperous). The other attraction in Soroca is the fortress. When I arrived, it was apparently time for the dude who ran it to take his break, so he said "Hey lady, I am leaving for 30 minutes. I will lock the door. My wife will come and unlock it in 30 minutes. Is that OK?" And so I was locked in the fortress. I spent some time setting my camera timer on its maximum of 30 seconds and racing around the path at the top of the castle to the other side to pose for pictures.
I went to the village, to Soroca, and to Tirsapol in big vans called maxi taxis. They are like tro-tros/matatus in Africa except they are much newer vehicles. But they will still cram 60 people inside one van, and the windows don't open, so it can be a bit torturous. They use the same maxi taxis within cities as buses. They cost $.30 and you can get on or off wherever you'd like so long as it's on the route. Unlike in Africa, where literacy is lower and they've got a guy yelling the destination out the window, Moldovan maxi taxis have signs in their windows with their route number/destination.

I also went out at night for drinks, and witnessed Moldova's money moving around. There were some really nice cars by the bars, including one stretch hummer.

Saturday, my awesome couchsurfing hostess took me to Transdniestr's capital, Tirsapol, along with a few others from couchsurfing. My host works for a human rights/democracy organization and works on Transdniestran issues, so she had really interesting insights into Transdniestr and Moldovan politics. For instance, the majority of Moldova's people vote democratic, but they vote for one of the seven different democratic parties, while the communist party is just one party, and that's how they stay in power.

But let's back up: what is Transdniestr? Transdniestr is a "state" recognized by no member of the UN. Moldova contains a mix of Romanian and Russian speakers, the Russians having come rather recently from the 1812 invasion. Just after Moldova declared its independence (and, tangentally, changed a lot of signs from the cyrillic to latin alphabet, making some older Russian speakers illiterate overnight), Transdniestr declared its independence. The area is majority Russian although the Romanian minority is something significant like 40%, and the territory itself, a small portion of Moldova along the Ukranian border, contains about 40% of Moldova's energy potential. So understandably, the Moldovan government was not willing to let it go, although if they did they'd have a much easier time entering the EU/unifying with Romania (which some people want). Furthermore, Transdniestr wants to join Russia, even though the Ukraine is in the way, and Moldova doesn't want Russia up against its border.

So Transdniestr has some crazy percentage of its population in the army, many of whom are occupied with border control duties, patrolling the artificial unrecognized border they've set up. This creates problems if you enter Moldova from the Ukraine through Transdniestr, because you won't have a Moldovan entry stamp. And it creates problems if you enter Transdniestr as a westerner, because the border guards will shake you down for a bribe of at least 10 euro, and I heard of one guy who refused and got his camera taken instead. However, we crossed with a Moldovan (who speaks Russian as well as Romanian and English) so we didn't have to pay a bribe. But as soon as she disappeared into the toilet on the "border" we were surrounded and harrassed until she came and rescued us. The border crossing is really hilariously ghetto: they scan your passport upon entry and exit. I wonder what they did before scanners; photocopies perhaps.

Transdniestr has its own currency which is completely worthless outside its borders. I changed the equivalent of $4.5 from 40 Moldovan lei to 33 Transdniestrian roubles, which bought me a delicious cold soup for lunch, some ice cream, a little souvenier communist sticker, and a ride to the bus station, plus a 5 and a 1 and a collection of change left over as souveniers.
The city is full of communist monuments. I did a whole photoshoot with the tank.
Note the huge Lenin statue in the background.
The men in the foreground of this picture are doing the "Moldovan squat," which men tend to do when they're waiting for something instead of standing around waiting for something.

My couchsurfing host said that since she'd been to Tirsapol a week or so ago, the below sign was new. It proclaims support for South Ossetia.We saw a guy putting up posters that say something like "Together we are stronger" or "Victory through unity" and have the flags of Transdniestr and the 3 breakaway republics within Georgia.
And below is an embassy/office for cooperation between Transdniestr and Abkhazia (if I'm remembering correctly).

I'd been told that going to Transdniestr was like going back to Soviet times. While the gigantic Lenin and all the other communist stuff around the city was interesting/amusing, I was absolutely in awe when we went into a bookshop and the clerk was totalling orders on an abacus. My jaw literally dropped.


Despite the fact that Transdniestr has many monuments to communism, a communist president named Smirnov (kinda like the vodka), the country has quite a bit of money on display and shows a fondness for some aspects of capitalism. The president pretty much has his hands in the pocket of every businessman, there's some shady arms dealing going on, and there are some ridiculously rich Transdniestrans. I was amused by the Adidas sign, the weird Disney-like construction going up in front of a communist apartment building, the flashy movie theater, and several other sites. Not pictured are the two (!!) regulation football stadiums, one with a roof and one outdoor, that cost one of Transdniestr's rich businessmen a fortune to build and cannot possibly be profitable but are impressive for show.


The below two sites flank some sort of government building. The first is a monument to good communist Transdniestrans, except some of them aren't Transdniestran, like the mayor of Moscow, who appears in the photo second from the left. I don't think the astronaut is, either, but who knows. The second display is of all these rich business men; owners of Tirsapol's shopping mall, stadium, etc. It's basically a delightfully ironic monument to capitalism.

I took the below photo to caputer a lisence plate from the country that doesn't exist, but the car is also pretty spiffy.

As I mentioned, at the border between Moldova and Romania they hike each car of the train up on jacks and slide out the wheels and slide in the new ones.
After Moldova I headed for Brasov, from which I made a day trip to Sinaia. Sinaia's got a really neat architectural style and Peles castle where the Transylvanian royal family lived. It's one of Europe's newest castles and inside were some seriously ornate rooms.


Next to Peles castle was a less ornate castle built for the Princes/Princesses. The decorating style there was a little more down to earth and I really liked the paintings in the nursery below.
Romanian money is plastic!
Brasov was a scenic town also crawling with tourists. Romania is the most touristy and expensive place I've been on this trip, which is funny, because for many of the backpackers I'm meeting in the hostels here, it's the cheapest place they've been.
See the little Hollywood-style Brasov sign up there? I took a cable car up to it (hiking in Brasov is dangerous; a tourist was killed by a bear there 3 weeks ago) and the below view is from right next to the sign.




After Brasov I backtracked to Bucharest, because I wanted to tour the aforementioned largest building in the world besides the Pentagon, heaviest building in the world, building that is 4-5 kilometers around and has a kilometers-long fountain streting in front of it, etc. It was built in just 5 years with shifts working 24 hours a day and the communist government displaced 30,000 homes for the palace, fountain, parks, etc. Then in 1989 as it was nearly complete the Romanians had their revolution and killed Ceaucescu. It was quite an interesting tour. Although it cost me an extra 6 hours on the train and basically a full day to go back and do it, I'm glad I did. The painting below was a favorite of Ceaucescu's and I found it quite interesting, the room is the largest in the palac.


And now here I am in Sighisoara, a tiny little town crawling with tourists for its scenic old town. Below; a picture of the clock tower that was built starting in the 14th or 15th century, and a picture from inside the torture museum of some sort of torture instructional.