Remnants of a war
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
88
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sunday, December 2, 2007
My first full day in Sarajevo was filled with a tour from the hostel. Harris, the 19-yr old who runs the hostel (and lives in the lower level of the house with his parents and sister), piled six of us (2 Aussies, 1 Kiwi, 1 Brit, and 2 Americans) into a van to show us the major sites of Sarajevo. Our first stop was the Tunnel Museum. During the war Sarajevo was surrounded by the Serbs with no route left open for the Bosnians to exit or enter the city. In order to link the city with the outside world, the Bosnians dug a tunnel through the city and under the UN-controlled airport into the area known as Free Bosnia. This allowed some people with the monetary means to escape to Croatia or other nearby countries and allowed those without the means to leave the city to buy or trade for food and other supplies which were scarce and difficult to get in Sarajevo. The tunnel took about 6 months to construct and was 800 meters long (about half a mile), 1 meter wide (3.3 feet), and 1.6 meters high (5.2 feet). While walking through the tunnel, most people carried heavy bags on their back in order to bring as much as they could with them. There are about 20 meters that haven't been destroyed and are now preserved as the Tunnel Museum. Harris told us about his experience as a 7-year-old going through the tunnel with his father.
The other stops on the tour were not quite as interesting as the Tunnel. We visited the Olympic Stadium, destroyed by shelling during the war but rebuilt, the old library which was destroyed during the war - burning many of the books inside, the old and new parliament buildings, and Sniper Alley. Sniper Alley was a street where many people were killed during the war. Serbian snipers would sit in the hills and other buildings shooting at anybody, soldier or civilian, who walked down this street, the main through-way to the river which was the city's only water source. But the Snipers were also under strict order not to shoot at the Holiday Inn down the road where all of the journalists were staying. Should a journalist be shot, international outcry might cause international intervention that wouldn't necessarily be in favor of the Serbian side. But the recent Yugoslav war wasn't the only significant war to take place in Sarajevo; the Latin Bridge was the spot where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed, spurring the start of WWI.
The tour ended with lunch - burek for me. Burek are a type of pastry made with filo dough, somewhat similar to the Greek spanakopita, though in Bosnia there are burek made with spinach, cheese, potato, or meat. I didn't try the meat one for obvious reasons, but the other three are all very good and make for a cheap, filling meal.
Another interesting reminder of the recent war is what they refer to as Sarajevo roses. Whenever 10 people or more were killed in an attack, they filled the shell-holes in the sidewalk with hard red paint as a monument to those who lost their lives. Sadly, you see them fairly frequently around the main town of Sarajevo. Unfortunately because of the snow, I never got a chance to get a good picture of any of them.
During the next day I visited the Sephardic Synagogue and the Jewish Museum. While I was at the Jewish Museum there was a press conference going on, though I couldn't figure out what it was for. Afterward I asked one of the women who was watching it what was going on and she introduced me to the guy who was in charge of it. He explained that they're currently trying to gather more information on Bosnians who were righteous gentiles during WWII (for those who aren't familiar with the term, righteous gentiles are those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust). He said that only 40 Bosnians are included at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, but that they know of at least 120. So they're trying to gather as many stories and details as they can and work to get more people added to the list at Yad Vashem. I was also invited to attend the candle lighting for the first night of Hanukkah at the synagogue that night, but by the time I was back in the hostel that evening, I decided it wasn't worth the 30 minute walk in the cold and snow just to watch a candle be lit. If it had been warmer or my hostel was closer, I probably would have gone.
Some other Sarajevo highlights were the hot chocolate so thick it had to be eaten with a spoon and the snowball attack of a New Zealander on the snowy walk up the hill back to the hostel (he said we threw like girls so we had to prove him right).
I thought Sarajevo was a really beautiful and interesting city. It still has so many scars from its recent past and the hatred of the Serbians is clearly still there, but you can see that they are trying to move forward. It will be very interesting to see how this city and country matures over the next 10-20 years. Bosnia is definitely a country I'd like to return to in a warmer season when I could enjoy more of the outdoor activities.
