Bosnia and Hercegovina

From very European Croatia I headed into Bosnia and Hercegovina. The border guards check passports, but they never stamp them. I crossed their border six times and not one stamp!

It's absolutely nuts how obvious it is that you've crossed a frontier. One second you're in modern Croatia. The next you see bombed- ut buildings and a mosque. Even the trees and hillsides look battered. Weeds grow up through cracks in sidewalks. The roads looks old. The buildings look tired. It's like time has frozen in the '90's.

The drive to Mostar from the border doesn't take too long- 30 minutes? But, as I mentioned it's like crossing into an alternate reality. Naturally, You start looking for the signs of war. They're not that hard to find. Fully restored or rebuilt buildings stand cheek by jowl with the bullet-riddled and cratered shells of businesses and houses. The war ended about 14 yrs ago, but Mostar is still rebuilding. The streets are ok. There's electricity. The people look like they've moved on. You have to wonder, though, what's really going on under the surface when you've got these reminders of the past everywhere you go.

For most Americans they might know B and H because the '84 Winter Olympics were held in the country. They might even know that there was a war and saw images of it on the news. But, seeing the place brings it home like pictures on a tv screen can't. Not to say that you understand the war or the situation. It makes it real. You can't switch off the pictures of the broken neighborhoods. You can't switch of the realization that everyone over the age of 19 probably has vivid memories of atrocities and hardships the rest of us could never fathom. I look at them and wonder how they can look and act so normal. Guess it says something about the will to survive.

Aside from seeing B and H because of the recent war I came to see the famous Stari Most bridge. Ok. Let me just say it. It's pretty, but anticlimactic. What it symbolizes to the world is what gives it its prominence.

That said, there is a small museum with photos of the city taken in '92 and '93. It shows the destruction to Mostar. The street you just walked down used to look like so many dozens of little landslides from the rubble spilling out of each building. Nothing looks like it stands taller than 10 feet. The photos also show how the bridge was pummled over a couple of years before the final blow brought it crashing into the river below. It underscores how the bridge was seen as a symbol of unity not just by the warring factions, but also by the international community. Taking down that bridge was a political statement more than a strategic maneuver. It also underscores why the city wanted to rebuild it as quickly as possible in the same exact manner. The blocks that fell into the river were unsalvageable, so they literally had to go back and use the exact same technique originally used to construct it roughly 500 years ago. If you go down to the river you can sit on the original blocks while admiring the view of the bridge above. The divers have returned to work the crowds and win the girls, but there weren't any in sight while I was there. Not enough tourists.

From sunny Mostar I took a train to Sarajevo. I recognized a couple from the bus ride to Mostar, and we ended up sharing a compartment on the train. The ride takes you through the countryside and up and over a mountain pass. The train slows as it chugs up one hill and speeds up as it goes over the crest. As we climbed higher mists moved in, and unfortunately they never left us. We arrived in Sarajevo with overcast skies that threatened rain.

On our ride into town and our hostel we passed the Holiday Inn where all the international journalists were holed up during the war. It is predominantly an egg-yolk yellow color (yellow is a very popular color for houses in this area), and when it snowed that's how you found your way back to the hotel. Quite a clever gimmick. I recommend the hostel where I stayed just for the friendly staff alone, but it's right next to the old quarter. They'll find you when you come into town on the train, because they've got a travel agency office there, and offer you free coffee or tea and a lift to the hostel.

The destruction of war isn't as obvious in Sarajevo. The overall feeling I got as I walked around was of gloom. The clouds didn't help, but most of it has to do with the pollution thrown up by the cars. There is no such thing as vehicle emissions regulations. Walking down the roads means knowing that you're surpassing a lifetime's quota of monoxide inhalation. This must be what Los Angeles was like before they cracked down on smog. The buildings wear grey and black coats with barely any sign of their original color underneath. The river running through the city is brown, and you pretty much assume it isn't by choice. It runs down in steps and at each level there are plastic bottles and rubbish trapped in the roiling waters. At one point I even saw a dingy caught below a step. Let me just note that Sarajevo looks better by night.

Sarajevo isn't a place with lots of sights in the normal manner of the word. It's more a place you walk to take in the sights and get a feeling for what used to be, and how it is now. I have to wonder if sunlight brings a different feeling to the city. There are places you visit in rain that don't bring on the same subdued feeling, Florence for instance. Sarajevo was the place where you felt like the people were still feeling the effects of war. Maybe it's that in living in a small place you know your neighbors, and there's a stronger sense of community that helps with the healing process. In a larger place like Sarajevo, there's less of that network. The greater sense of isolation makes it harder to overcome the trauma. This is just armchair psychology and a recent semester of abnormal psychology speaking, so take this for what it is, mere opinion.

The second day in Sarajevo was all rain. It never let up. I went out with Rob and Kate, the English couple I met on the train, to grab food and stretch my legs, but, otherwise, we stayed in the hostel restaurant chatting with the other trapped travelers. Half were from the US-California, all of us!-the rest were English, Canadian and French. I do recommend that you track down a place called Dveri in the old town for a meal. It can hold 20 people inside, and it makes freshly prepared meals that are like five star meals after you've been eating bureks for days on end. Bureks are phyllo dough pastries filled with meat, salty local cheese or onions: filling, but like eating a cheese sandwich for every meal.

Before heading out to catch the overnight bus to Belgrade, Serbia I walked to the nearby river on one of my leg-stretch breaks. The rain had slowed, but the river was swollen and raging. It made us nervous that the locals were even eyeing the river suspiciously. There were firefighters at one point also eyeballing the river, perhaps gauging when it would crest its banks. I just hoped the rains hadn't washed out any of the roads to Belgrade.

Our taxi driver to the international bus station was a young guy of around 25. He spoke enough English to tell us that if the UN and other organizations keeping things cool in Sarajevo were to leave another war would most likely occur. He said there are still politicians from the old war-mongering parties in government who want another war. It was incredible to hear. The traces of the last war are still evident, yet another war could easily start? It's not just trying to understand human nature, but trying to work in a history that goes back over a thousand years. Americans only have to deal with about 250 years of history.

Serbia, next.

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