We're not Hooligans, I swear
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
72
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Monday, November 6, 2006
First we had to get to the Olympic stadium (it hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics). Because of the confusion, we didn't have much time to have breakfast, get money, and put on proper clothing for staying out given the weather. Half an hour later we found a taxi.
Our taxi driver was not so understanding; to run up the meter he drove lackadaisically. I had asked how much it would cost when I got in, he said probably seven KM (convertible marks, about CDN$ 5) so I said fine. Late in the trip he saw that the meter wasn't going to get as high as he estimated so he turned it off altogether. I didn't care to complain and waste more time as I noticed when we got out. I would have only saved a dollar. Typical taxi driving swine.
At the stadium entrance, we were told we had to buy tickets from the box office. Quite unsure where that was, we asked a cop who pointed to a shipping container that had been dumped on a patch of uncut lawn a hundred meters away. This container had a window sawed into the side. We spent five KM each for tickets and ran back to the entrance. The game was already underway.
Security at football matches is something akin to airport security. There are as many banned items, and everyone who comes into the stadium is completely pat-down searched. There have been problems with hooligans. We didn't realise the extent of the security until we showed up. Bro had brought one of those ubiquitous North American Nalgene brand bottles with some water in it along with him.
The security personnel were not going to let him in with the bottle, but we made a fuss about it (the bottle was worth more than the tickets). Hooligans have been known to throw full water bottles at the players on the field and at security officers. But and they were nice to us, seeing as we obviously weren't local football hooligans - being twenty minutes late doesn't show dedication - and no English team was within a hundred miles of the stadium. They made him dump out the water but he got to keep it.
There were perhaps two thousand spectators in the stadium. These spectators sat spread out from one another, and some sections were closed off altogether, so it felt pretty empty. I didn't see any women in the stands and many of the men were wearing team scarves. There was a bit of ice on the seats and experienced fans had brought newsprint along to sit on. Everyone else watched the game standing. It was a bit easier to keep warm that way because it is easier to bounce on your calves and keep blood flowing. It was about one degree out and the seventy five cent lukewarm Nestea I bought from a guy with a tank of the drink on his back didn't go a long way to making me feel much warmer.
The game was pretty energetically played and at some point through the first half, the home team scored. It was 1-0! A bit of fun for all. I noticed then that the scoreboard that looked like it hadn't been repaired since before the war. Nor did the rest of the stadium for that manner. Realistically, now that the war has been over for about ten years, that impression is probably false. Yet it did look a bit rough, under close scrutiny, a whole lot of bulbs didn't work and a bit stuff was broken in the stadium, including a lot of seats.
Eventually the game was over and it wasn't a moment too soon. FC Sarajevo beat FC Slavija and the cold wind was just on the verge of beating the crowd. It had been fun to watch but we were just freezing. We followed some supporters through the parking lot and to a café to buy something warm to drink and eat.
We decided to walk back to our room after having properly warmed up. On the way, we visited the cemeteries around the stadium. During the civil war there wasn't the normal option of burying the dead outside of the city, so as people died the survivors buried them wherever there was space. We had seen already an ersatz graveyard beneath a highway overpass. Likewise, the practice fields of the Stadium were pressed into service. There had previously been a only a few small graveyards on the periphery of the area.
One of them had been a grave for the Austro-Hungarian forces who invaded in 1878(?) and died in battles with local freedom fighters. It had been reused as a grave for soccer supporters and communist party officials. The former had footballs carved out of stone as grave markers, and the later had solitary five-point stars by their names. One aircraft crew died in a crash and they were laid side by side, and the propeller of their plane was put on their four grave long memorial stone. Not all graves were so decorated: not a small number of deceased were remembered only by simple wood crosses. Many were only a decade old and they were already in tough shape: some names plates were falling off; either in paint flakes or pewter letters. Some were still remembered by lit candles.
Elsewhere, the graves of Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim Sarajevans had been grouped together by faith. There are a few different sections of graves in the football fields, but they are tastefully kept separate, nothing like the five foot tall cinderblock wall between Muslim and Orthodox graves in Rhodes. The newer ones seemed to be mostly Bosniak Muslim. These ones are notable because they have a stone pillar at the head and another one at the foot. The plot is often lined by similar stone, giving them a lateral appearance of something like an upside down white staple. They are very simply marked. The fields near the stadium looked like a small forest of white staples that strangely pointed straight up.
After our long tour of the graves, we continued along to find a flea market. It was closing down for the day. I looked in every stall for mitts but they seem to have gone out of style. People are selling only gloves these days. We mingled with other Saturday afternoon shoppers in the twilight before walking the rest of the way back to our room. It was nice to get out of the dead parts of the city: I felt like we were seeing more evidence of dead Sarajevans than live ones.
