From my compartment window, the train slowed to a crawl and I watched towering apartment building give way to single homes tucked into hillsides. They looked down at a valley. Minarets shot up like spikes from domed mosques and the whaling commenced, as that early hour marked the first call to Muslim prayer. Women dawned in burquas and stern faces held shopping bags by the platform. For a brief moment, my common sense and education of all that I knew of Europe had eluded me. Had I arrived in Sarajevo or Istanbul? My initial walk through Sarajevo’s Stari Grad, or Old Town, did little to dissuade me from the Istanbul theory. People here looked like Turks; dark, stubble beards, and jet black hair. I lost count of the minarets throughout the center and those that rise
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