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.