Advertisement
Published: July 17th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Correction July 16: in my flawless map reading abilities (or maybe it's the definitely-not-flawless internet), I misread Google Maps. Baščaršija does not mean old town, but is rather the name of the square in the center of Sarajevo's old town. That being said, we were near the old towns in both Sarajevo and Mostar.
****
Today was certainly a busy day. It was actually the busiest day we have scheduled this trip; most days in Belgrade have 2 meetings at most. Apparently several have nothing planned since we're kicking the work into full gear then.
We started with a trip to the Parliament of Republika Srpska, where we had the chance to take a tour of their conference rooms, press rooms, and rooftop deck. One thing I noticed was their defensiveness; they knew we just came from visiting Sarajevo and Mostar, which are both in the Federation and mainly Bosniak or Croat. The Federation, whose people, for the most part, want a unified Bosnia, is the counterpart to RS. RS and its people, on the other hand, mostly want more freedom and autonomy, if not independence from Bosnia. They also disagree on several points...for example,
Serbs believe Srebrenica was blown way out of proportion. While many agree a war crime did take place, they put more blame on the UN and the Bosniak leaders, and claim fewer deaths. To be honest, I may have stated the information I put on here as fact rather than one side of the story, and I'd like to point out now that, especially in this region, every story has at least 2 sides. If not more. But to be fair, it was an emotional day and I wasn't thinking about being technically correct.
After Parliament, we took a tour of the local barracks, where we saw the memorial to the 22,447 Serb forces lost in the war from 1992-1995, about 1.7% of its population at the time. We also got to see the military museum, including some disabled units from the war, which was very interesting.
We went from there to the RS National Library, where we visited the Russian Cultural Center to discuss Russian influence in Bosnia. The discussion included Bosnia's potential ascension to the EU and NATO, the possibility of RS following Crimea's example and declaring independence,
and the process of privatization. At this point we'd been out for almost 6 hours and we were starting to feel it, so we were happy to get back to the hotel for the night.
It turns out - I didn't know this until tonight - that 6 of the girls got put in the presidential suite at the hotel we're at for these 2 nights. We went up there to celebrate one's birthday, and it was amazing. Full living room, kitchen, dining room, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, amazing balcony overlooking the city, and, better yet, there was a music festival in the fort down the road that we could listen to. I'm a little jealous of their room, to be honest though!
Tomorrow we head out of Banja Luka and head to Belgrade by way of Croatia. Sadly, we don't spend any time in Croatia, but I am looking forward to Belgrade, as it will be the biggest city we hit. Look for postcards! And, of course, if you want one and haven't received one yet, let me know your address!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.267s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0764s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb