Hvar and Sarajevo

Am back in Croatia-- Zagreb to be exact-- for two days before heading first to Munich, then onto Berlin for language school! After only three weeks of backpacking, I can't wait to be camped out in the same place for an extended period of time. I think I left my stamina, along with my favorite Target tank top and not a small amount of dignity, back on the islands. Backpacking through Europe, especially as a solo girl, one has the same conversation over and over and over, and one invariably gives the same answers:

Where are you from? DC.
Where have you been? Germany and the Balkans.
What do you do back home? History student.
Traveling by yourself? Yup, it's the best!

The last time I went backpacking I was able to lie here and there just to shake things up. I'd say I was an actress doing accent research in Belfast, or was on leave from a stint with the CPA in Baghdad (and when people asked me what it was like there I would say "hot"). But in this day and age of Facebook everything can be backed up and verified, and one does tend to see the same people over and over again if you spend a certain amount of time in the same region. So I soldier on through the polite tedium, and sometimes people turn out to have conversational skills beyond these basics and we pass lovely days together.

Sarajevo was one such place where this happened. I admit, I started to regret leaving Hvar almost as soon as I got off the ferry in Split. "You dope," I said to myself, "you had such a great time in Hvar, stay an extra day. Tomorrow is Sunday. Everything will be closed. Not to mention it will be a million bajillion degrees and AC isn't a high priority for a nation still dealing with a plethora of unexploded landmines." It turns out I was right about both of these, but that neither of them really mattered. I grabbed a front seat on the almost-empty doubledecker bus and spent the next nine hours having my attention grabbed away from my tattered copy of The End of the European Century by a scenic tour along the Dalmatian coast and the Bosnian countryside.

Sarajevo is gorgeous and fascinating, one of my favorite places I've ever been to. After a nine-hour bus ride through the beautiful Bosnian countryside, I arrived at the Hostel City Centre around midnight, exhausted and craving sleep and a shower, not necessarily in that order. Music pulsed all over Basčarsija, the old Turkish quarter, and impossibly beautiful girls with perfect blowouts and skinny jeans tottered their way around the street as I lumbered up to the entrance from my cab, nearly collapsing under the weight and sweatiness. If you will forgive the digression, how these girls wear these outfits in this heat is beyond me, but they do. You can instantly tell a tourist from a local because the tourist will be wearing as little clothes as possible while looking miserable and sweaty, while a local girl will be wearing skinny jeans and a top that covers as little as possible and will look like she stepped out of a lad mag. In any case, my sweaty tourist ass collapsed in my un-airconditioned hostel until I was woken up by the call to prayer from the minarets at 5:00 that morning, allowing me to check one more thing off my Bucket List.

My hostel was about a five-minute walk from Baščaršija, the old Turkish quarter, and I made my way down there after a quick shower. Unlike many towns in Croatia, where the city centers have been overtaken by tourists, Baščaršija is still very much a gathering place for Bosnians. Cafe culture is like nothing I've seen before-- even the next day, Monday at noon, people of all ages were jammed into cafes at all hours, sipping on obscenely strong Turkish coffee. The old quarter is stuffed with Ćevabdinica and slastičarna, also known as sausage shops and bakeries, and are teeming with locals all day long. Tin and coppersmiths line the old alleys selling their wares, which at first glance are all alarmingly similar, but if you dig a little into back shelves reveal the locally made antiques. Most craftsmen have begun to use old mortars and bullets in their work, something that at first seems alarming but after about the fourth or fifth shop makes perfect sense-- after all, it's free raw materials, and why not make the best out of a bad situation?

And that's pretty much how I spent my first day in Sarajevo-- wandering around, stopping for coffee or delicious ćevapi with pita and raw onions at one of the two restaurants eljo whenever I got hungry, taking a million pictures of bullet holes and mortar craters, including the now-faded Sarajevo roses. At dusk I wandered into the hills, always sticking to a paved path, and watched the sun set over Sarajevo with the church bells pealing and the calls from the imams wailing in a clashing harmony over the golden valley below me. For the first time I appreciated how big Sarajevo is, how much it took to sustain her during the war and how far she has come in the last thirteen years.

Next time: more war stories from Sarajevo, why they love Bill Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, and how to survive an overnight train ride through Bosnia as a single American woman.

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