Sarajevo

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Geo: 43.8607, 18.4214

Today might be the day when I realized just how amazing a country Bosnia actually is. The 5:30am alarm bell was a bit of a shock to the system but totally necessary if I was to make the once every 12 hour train to Sarajevo. I dragged myself out of bed and off to the train station- surprisingly large building for the 5 trains a day that pass by. A 1980's two carriage diesel train pulls into the station and we all hop aboard. I find myself in a compartment with a policeman on his way to Sarajevo for training. We get chatting and he told me his life story- the war in Mostar began when the Serbians bombed the town in 1992 and his mother left the country taking him and his sister into Croatia while his dad stayed to fight. They then ended up moving to Sweden and then to Norway where their application for asylum was refused. At the end of the war they moved back join his father. He also informed me Mostar is culturally divided by the river- the Croatians live on the west side and the Bosnians on the east. He is Bosnian but lives in a Croatian neighborhood and one day his neighbor shot his father who survived after some time in hospital. He was telling me that pre-war Mostar was an industrial area where factories were the main form of employment. Post-war the Croatian side of the river is much more developed than the Bosnian- the reconstruction is mainly complete, there is now a shopping mall and more people have jobs. On the Bosnian side, the reconstruction is only around 40% complete and unemployment is also around 40% so the young people have nothing to do all day.

Anyway, I arrived in Sarajevo around 9:30 this morning and headed straight to the hostel. This hostel is great- right in the middle of the city and full of lovely people. I hung out with some girls from Serbia for a while and have plans to meet them in Belgrade in a few days time. I then went for a walk around the city; like all Balkan cities Sarajevo is pretty compact and can be walked around in a few hours. I went passed the war memorial dedicated to children who were killed, several mosques, churches and synagogues and then back to the cobbled streets of the old town. I also had the best lunch- small meat sausage type things in bread with salad all served by a guy who named his restaurant after his favorite Turkish football team. I then met up with a girl from the hostel and we walked to one of the highest points in the city and looked down over the orange rooftops and reconstructed buildings. Our first taste of grappa followed with some more amazing food- seriously, Sarajevo is amazing.

Tonight it's taken me 3 hours to write this as I got distracted by the Serbian girls pouring copious amounts of vodka, speaking Chinese to a guy from Hong Kong and agreeing to go to salsa dancing with a Bosnian girl tomorrow night. Tomorrow I'm heading to a small village about 2 hours from Sarajevo - apparently it's covered in snow right now!

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Photos

Children's war memorial
Spot the funny weights for the tram line