Blogs from East, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Europe - page 18

4 November Eight hour bus ride from Belgrade to Sarajevo. We hope that the bus driver liked his mandatory tip of 80 dinar for stowing our luggage on the bus. This ride was less exciting than the first one, but as we approached Sarajevo we already knew it was worth it. Sarajevo is tucked in a valley and much of the city rests on steep slopes. Our first views of the city were breathtaking. The cityscape was dotted with a mix of mosques and Christian churches. It was already night and the city lights seemed to go on forever through the valley and into the mountains. We realized that another American was on the bus. He had a hostel reservation already so we shared a cab and joined him and a few other travellers at a ... read more

When you think of Sarajevo, the first thing that comes to mind is the war. It wasn't that many years ago that this city was under seige. Reminders are still visible - the UN peacekeeping force, the burn-out skeleton of the former parliament building still standing, the scars on the pavement. But Sarajevo seemed to me like a city that was rebuilding and moving on, not dwelling on the past. The thing that really made an impression on me is the relgious diversity of the city. Although the population is primarily Muslim, there are large Christian and Jewish populations that all seem to coexist rather well. I'd never been in a Muslim city before, and the first time I heard the call to prayer it really hit me. It was ramadan as well. One day around ... read more

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 ... read more

A few pictures from my time in Bosnia!... read more

I knew of Sarajevo as the place where World War I was touched off by Gavrilo's Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Princip was a Serb desiring the unification of the Balkan states. (Bosnia and Herzegovinga, where Sarajevo is located, wanted independence from Austria-Hungary, but not union with Serbia and the other Balkan states.) The assassination was considered by Yugoslavia in the Communist era to have been a protest against the occupation of Bosnia by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A commemorative plaque was installed in 1953 by Communist Yugoslavia (pictured). The plaque stood at the street corner where Princip took his shot. Previous Austrian commemorative plaques had existed since 1914. Also on the corner were bronze shoeprints to show where Princip stood. It amazed me how narrow the street was. He must have shot Franz ... read more