Hecco Sarajevo

... not as (aesthetically) dramatic as I thought they would be, but I guess they have faded with time, but still a strong reminded of the force the city came under....


I left here after three days of just wandering and people watching, though I felt I could have stayed for longer and there were parts still yet to be discovered, this has to be one the absolute highlights of my trip!!

The trip has been off to a flyer, after the 36 hour ordeal between Port Mac and London Heathrow I was finally in Europe. The kind englishman behind the immigration desk was kind enough not to interrogate me which had me on the tube within half an hour. I met Matty and the Don in Hammersmith, caught up and bought some ciders (I missed them).
We had a mental night out in the city and as promised the boys got me rotten.
We passed out ...

 

We caught the 7:30am train to Sarajevo with a lovely Australian couple, fellow Mostar tour veterans, who are spending 16 months travelling from London to Australia overland.    Unfortunately for us the weather in Sarajevo had turned and it rained the whole time we were there. Inbetween showers we ducked out into the Ottoman-era old town which is a maze of one-storey shops and workshops selling mostly souvenirs, hand made ...

... and spirit? We both we interested to see how Sarajevo would leave us feeling. Lonely Planet talked it up so much we thought there was no way it would ever live up to the "bible's" (what lots of travelers call Lonely Planet) expectations. For those that don't know (which we did not until we came here), the city was basically where WW I started and then the war from 1992 - 1995 is still apparent on almost every street you walk down. The history has been rocky to say the least ...

... possesses. Bands playing are new, cutting edge artists and grass root feel musicians from around. Finnish groups are here to meet regional ones. It is for you to decide who rocks hardest. Festival is about creating links between artists and bringing different cultures together. We offer rich and diverse program plus unique and laid pack atmosphere. In Bosnia the eastern and western civilization and culture meets. Its also ...

... even the floor tiles were salt carved. Luckily there was a lift back up, alhtough it was tiny and very jolty, quite an experience in itself. That night we had a yummy Polish meal of dumplings served on a plate made of bread. The next day we headed to Zacopane in the Tatra mountains and caugh two cable cars to take us up to the top of a mountain. We were freezing by the time we got there as there was a 1.5 hr wait to get up the cable car - it was the access for a ski ...

... else on earth) and I was amazed how nice they were considering how much they suffered. The legacy of the war is still there, houses boarded up when their owners fled in terror, worse were the ones which had just been blown up- you can only hope the people got out of there in time. Some of the villages also have graveyards full of white gravestones...and you don't have to be a genius to know who lies there. Most interesting was Ivan the ...

... Sebilj". La abrimos pensando que seria la entrada y era un patio muy oscuro y en construccion. Llamamos al timbre. Nada. Gritamos y nada, que no sale nadie. Al rato aparecio de un edificio un hombrecillo medio minusvalido que solo hablaba frances y que llevaba puesto el pijama. Nos dio una habitacion y nos confisco los pasaportes. Otro creepy! El sitio era nuevo pero estaba por terminar! En fin, manana sera otro dia, ahora a dormir.

... flat in Sarajevo, to look out towards a faint panorama of huge, crumbling, identical, communist-era high rises; something spooky and unsettling about the city at dawn, though also beautiful. Here in the outskirts the streets are imposingly wide and take on a sort of silvery grey sheen that stretches on without end. Past the infamous Holiday Inn which housed journalists during the war, past building after bombed-out building. It's difficult to know what to ...