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Published: April 19th 2007
Chess in Sarajevo
All the old boys knock about and play in the town centre. They all talk with their mates as they play and discuss tactics! We arrived in Sarajevo after a day train journey from Budapest not really knowing what to expect. I think most of us can remember the pictures from the war and the siege on Sarajevo I was expecting the possibility of a very depressing visit although Lee assured me he had read great things about the city!
We were greeted from the train journey by the agent of our hostel who was absolutely bonkers his English wasn't too great as we had realised when it had taken an hour to see that he hadn't sent us a text message in Bosnian but that it was actually English! He took us to the hostel Marko Polo and we were pretty disappointed but he kept telling us that it was the best hostel in Sarajevo... I really hope not!
We went walking around Sarajevo the next morning. A lot of the city has been restored and so areas such as the Turkish quarter are now lively and almost as good as new. That said there are still so many reminders of what happened- bullet holes are still visible on many buildings and the pavement in some parts of the city shows
Sarajevo
View from the hill top sign of mortar attacks. Many of these have been painted red as the locals thought they looked like roses. The other major reminder is the massive graveyards on all of the hillsides that surround Sarajevo, many of them are for Bosnian Muslims and the number of these clusters which our tour guide called "white stains" was incredible.
Sarajevo is really keen to promote the new unity between the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim communities. I'm not sure if that really works in practice but it was nice to see mosques, catholic and orthodox churches all within 200m of each other and people mingling freely. We didn't speak to too many people but our tour guide was a young female Muslim with the attitude that life was too short for the conflicts of the past and that was very much the feeling of the place- ‘happy go lucky’! There is a real cafe culture in Sarajevo with young people socialising and sipping their espresso’s in really very cool places, we thought it would be rude not to join in and sat drinking and people watching like everyone else on both of the afternoons we had there! The city is incredible, a
Sarajevo Rose
These are found all around the city. They are where mortars killed people, but they have been filled in in with red paint as a reminder to all. real star of the journey, we have loved every second here its so beautiful, we wish we could have stayed longer. It is definitely a place where you could take a year out and work.
Our next stop was Mostar a beautiful little city with a very tragic recent history. In 1993 many of the buildings and the city’s famous Stari Most (bridge) were destroyed by Croatian forces hoping that the area could secede from Bosnia and become part of Croatia (Mostar is only 2 hours from Croatia). There is still a very obvious division in Mostar as the Muslim and Croat communities live on opposite sides of the river although the famous bridge has been rebuilt as a symbol of the new reconciliation process between the communities and on both side of the bridge there is a stone with the words 'Do not forget 1993'. The amount of damage on the front line of the fighting in Mostar that has been left ever since was very shocking and distressing to see. The work they have done to restore the old town and the bridge is definitely a sign of hope, it is such a beautiful area it is
Franz Ferdinand Bridge
The bridge from which Garvrilo Princip shot Franz and his wife and so started the chain of events which lead to WW1. so hard to imagine the troubles that were once there. I just hope Bosnia can continue to resolve the problems, we enjoyed our time there so much it should become a real tourist attraction in the future we definitely would recommend it to anyone.
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Rayne
non-member comment
Wow
Doing project on Bosnia-Herzegovina, didn't know there were so many amazing sites!