Despite having looked at ways around it, this travel journey was only feasible by road. There is no train - there has never been a direct train between Belgrade and Sarajevo, even in Yugoslavian times. There was only 1 flight a day between the cities and it was exhorbitant in price. Searching for bus information for going between Belgrade and Sarajevo was a little futile - I couldn't find much if any information, and a lot of the stuff I could find said it might take 7-8 hours by bus but a good option was to go in a Shuttle which was much the same price but quicker. When talking to Sam & Steven about what they'd done they said they had also taken the shuttle, for them they had ended up in some guy's car and it was just them but it had been a fairly smooth and painless journey. So we booked the shuttle online with Gea Tours while in Belgrade, and got a message the night before our departure saying we were booked in but the shuttle would go via Croatia and we might need visas. I sent a reply stating we had NZ & Australian passports - we would not need visas for Croatia. Going via Croatia seemed a little odd, until I put in Google Belgrade to Sarajevo and it said the fastest route was via highways that went into Croatia - and Google said it could be done in 4.5hrs. We had been told that we would get a call between 7am & 8am for pickup and to be ready 15mins after the phonecall.
We got up to be ready for 7am, and at 6.50am there was a knock at our hostel room door - the lady said our shuttle would be arriving in 10mins to pick us up, our driver had called her. Ok - so she got the phonecall and not us directly, a little bit odd but no trouble and we were downstairs a few minutes when a white van showed up, and the driver said "Sarajevo?". In the back went our bags, and we got put in the back seat. This freaked Sasha out a little - she gets travel sick and she likes to sit up near the front of a vehicle to help stem the effects. She started "Pre-emptively Panicking" as she put it, but we had the whole back to ourselves as the shuttle started navigating the lumpy back street roads of Belgrade as we started picking more people up. There was at least 2 points where it seemed we'd picked up everyone going by the GPS the driver had, but then we seemed to pick up another person, and then another, until we finally picked up the last person - we knew she had to be the last person because there was only 1 more seat free, and it was on the back seat so I moved into the middle. We were now a full van - and it had taken over an hour to collect everyone since we'd hopped in. Sasha reckons the time was 8.30am by this stage, I'm not certain it was quite that late but it was definitely a decent time beyond 8am. The shuttle now headed to the motorway and headed north towards the border with Croatia.
During this part of the journey, a clipboard was being passed around. Everyone else in the van seemed to be Serbian and they were all talking in Serbian to each other, but when the clipboard was passed to us by the lady in front of Sasha, she told me that we needed to put our names, passport number and signature on the sheet on the clipboard. Sasha was asleep - her travel sickness tablets having zonked her out but I had her passport so filled in her name & passport number as well as mine, but had to rouse her to sign the form. I then handed it to the lady next to me, who had been the last person on board. She looked at it for a bit, wrote her name and signed the signature column but seemed a bit confused - she then asked me in English what was that column for, passport number? I said yes - I had just presumed she was Serbian but her accent was definitely North American. She pulled out her passport - she was from Canada. Following filling out the form and handing it forward, we got to talking - her name was Lee, she lives near Alberta but spent a lot of time living in Australia with her husband. She'd just recently divorced him, and her holiday around Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia was being funded by the divorce settlement! As we talked about our respective trips Sasha would occasionally rouse herself out of her snooze to join in the conversation - when Lee mentioned that she was going to Dubrovnik, that seemed to wake Sasha up pretty quickly!
About 40 minutes into the actual journey we stopped at a petrol station for 10-15mins where we could get a coffee or have a toilet break, and our driver said he would collect the payment there as well. His English was not great, and he also asked Lee, Sasha and I if he could drop us off in central Sarajevo - which surprised us once we understood what he was trying to say because the Shuttle was meant to be a door to door service. So when we paid we gave him the written down addresses of our accommodation, but when we all hopped back in the van he said to Lee there was no street number on the address - for us that was the same, there was no street number on any of the addresses listed down in our information from the accommodation. It seems the rest of the passengers were going to Mostar, and one of them talked to us in better English than the driver - she explained the driver's GPS doesn't work in Bosnia, and that Sarajevo is a crazy place to find addresses and our driver is not great or familiar with the city so a good option for us would be to be dropped in the city center and then get a taxi. I for one was not going to pay extra for a taxi when the service we'd paid for was supposed to be door to door, but a quick look at my offline maps and almost across the road from where we were staying was one of the main squares in Sarajevo - I showed it to our driver on the map, and said we could be dropped off there and it should be easy to find being a major landmark. We searched Lee's accommodation address on my map - her place was the opposite side of the same square, so we could all be dropped off in the same place. Although I think our driver and the other Mostar passengers weren't too thrilled about having to actually drive a way into Sarajevo, there was no arguing that the square was easy to find and it was a central point where we could easily be deposited.
The next thing of note was the Serbian border for exiting - we handed over our passports to the driver, he handed them over to the control booth and a short time later they were handed back and we carried on to the Croatian border control. Here things took a bit longer - the Croatian guard was asking a bunch of questions, and the driver seemed to be asking the Serbian passengers for some help. I got the impression that he was spinning a story to say we were all colleagues on a work trip. After the guard called out all of our names one by one and sighted us, the passports were handed back and we were on our way. We were now in Croatia - but 30-40 minutes down the road, we came to the border crossing for Bosnia and we exited the Croatia side. Going between the Croatian border control and the Bosnian one seemed to take us through a village and across a river bridge - the town on the Bosnian side seemed to be heavily fenced off on one side of the road with clear spaces, but only a thin fence if that on the other side. The Bosnian guard asked some questions, looked at the passports and then handed them back to the driver and we drove on - past a sign that said "Welcome to Republika Sprska". We checked through our passports for stamps - we hadn"d gotten any Serbian departure stamps nor Bosnian entry stamps, but we had gotten Croatia entry and exit stamps! and the thing is, that little sojourn through Croatia doesn't even count as per The Rules because we never got out of the van.
About 12.30ish, we pull over at a wooden building adjacent to a service station which one of the passengers seemed to direct the driver to. We were on the outskirts of Doboj, and at the very least this seemed to be a comfort stop but I asked the driver how long we would be here - 15 minutes was his reply. That was enough time for Lee to buy and drink a beer (it was getting quite stifling in the back of the van) while Sasha and I ate some of our snacks we'd brought along on the journey. By this time we should have expected to be near Sarajevo, but Doboj is still in the north of Bosnia and given the traffic on the road it seemed like at best we might be there by 2.30pm. We'd been hoping to take a walking tour in Sarajevo which started at 3.30pm and that we'd pre-booked places on - we emailed them and said we weren't going to make it and we'd try for tomorrow. 15 minutes ended up being closer to 45, and it seems the driver and the 3 serbian ladies up the front had all been having lunch together while Lee, Sasha and myself plus the lone Serbian male passenger had just been waiting for them to come back. After hopping back in the van we asked if they could turn on some air for the back of the van - it was definitely more pleasant for the rest of the journey.
Which still lasted another 3 and a half ours. I remember recognising the city of Zenica as we went past all its steel making factories, and recalled how the last time I had headed to Sarajevo (by train) that I had been happy to see this city as it meant we wouldn't be more than an hour away from Sarajevo - it was a good sign this time too! Sometime after this we passed a town with a name that started with V and Lee asked if we were going to visit the pyramid which is near there. I didn't know anything about a pyramid, but Lee told us about an ancient pyramid that was there and there were others in the same valley, all aligned with the stars and there's tunnels under and in them. Hadn't ever heard of that, and further on Lee points to a large hill and says that's the pyramid. Without question the hill did seem to have a triangle shape with corners, but it was covered in lush trees - that seemed a bit odd to me for a manmade structure like a pyramid. Traffic into Sarajevo was a bit of a crawl, but eventually we made it to the Square and we piled out. The driver said something to us we didn't understand - eventually we worked out he was asking if we were going back to Belgrade with Gea Tours and if so, suggest this spot to pick up from. We weren't, and said as much and he was very quick to be on his way! It was now about 3.45pm - it had taken far longer than we had expected or had been led to believe, but we were finally here. We said goodbye to Lee, who had been excellent company for the journey and wished her all the best for the rest of her holiday.
We'd booked a place near the old part of Sarajevo, which would give us a private room and private bathroom. The morning of our arrival I had a message from the accommodation - I had to write back asking for a bit more clarity of what they were trying to say as their English did not seem to be great but we got there in the end - they were overbooked and could not give us the room with the private bathroom, but could give us the same kind of room but with a shared bathroom. There would be a reduction in rate, but this was fine and we agreed to it - and told them we expected to arrive between 3 & 4pm. Walking from the square, we found the street but could not easily find the location - and of course there was no street numbers on anything. Eventually we worked out it should be in a side street, but nothing was signposted for our accommodation. We try messaging the accommodation, and then calling them - no response and the calls aren't being picked up. What's more - it starts to rain. We shelter under the awning of a nearby hotel, and after asking them and some others nearby we find out which door it should be. The door though is a gate - we knock, we press the doorbell multiple times, we call out. Nothing and no-one. I keep trying to text, and to call - its costing me money but we're not getting anything. Meanwhile, the rain is particularly chubby and we're wondering what the hell we're going to do.
Sasha and I take the knocking in turns in the rain, and eventually Sasha comes back and says "Grab the bags and go in". The gate is now open, a guy comes out but walks past us smiling and I'm not sure if we should keep going up - Sasha says keep going. At the top of the stairs beyond the gate is a lady, looking confused and she says "Can I help you?". I say yes, we have a booking and Sasha mentions we've been trying to message and call to be let in. The lady still looks confused, and asks for my name - and looks even more confused when I give it to her. She does wave us inside out of the by-now light rain, and asks for my name again - I tell her and say how we'd been told we would now have a different room than we'd booked. On her phone I can see a list and I point to my name, and said "That's us, that's my name". She talks to the younger lady who is setting up one of the rooms, and the younger lady then explains that they had someone come already who they thought was us but after looking at the room they had decided not to stay. I kind of felt relieved that ok, everything seemed clear and sorted now, but equally I felt rather annoyed that they had seemingly tried to give our room away to someone else without even checking whether it was us! what if that person had taken the room, what would have happened to us?
The room itself was quite spacious and the bed comfy, and it proved itself to be quite a decent place to stay - and very close to the old town of Sarajevo. But the entire time we were there, I couldn't get over that they had tried giving the room to someone else and also never bothered to check their phone with all my messages and calls coming through. Nice venue and facilities - staff and customer service definitely lacking!
One of the first things we did our first morning in Sarajevo was walk up towards the Yellow Fort for a view. Dion and I had come across it by accident the last time I'd been in Sarajevo - but it wasn't far from where we were staying. We were thinking of having a Bosnian coffee there but the cafe was under renovations, so instead we just admired the view over Sarajevo as well as patted a rather friendly cat.
After the Yellow Fort we went and rode the Gondola up to the top of the hill. The Sarajevo Gondola has only just newly re-opened - almost a month before our visit. There used to be one up there, built in the late 1950's but the Gondola became one of the first casualties of the Siege of Sarajevo as it was where the Serb insurgents decided to base themselves to shell the city from (its quite the vantage point) and the attendant for the Gondola was apparently the first person killed in the action. We decided to ride the Gondola for a dual purpose - for the views over the city, but also because the terminus was very close to the 1984 Winter Olympic Luge track which still existed on the hill.
Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics for Yugoslavia, and in various places in the city are the buildings which hosted various events for it. The luge track though was one place I didn't get to last time, and was somewhere you could explore - walking along the former luge and bobsled track. There's some graffiti and graffiti art along it now, much like anything abandoned these days but it was quite a fun trip walking down the track. After reaching the bottom we took the road path back up to the Gondola rather than walk back up the concrete slopes. One thing about the Gondola - when we'd ridden up on it about 10am, it was practically empty and we saw only one other gondola car with someone in it. On the way down, every gondola car up was full and at the bottom there was a huge line to try and get tickets. It seems very popular (which is good!) but if you're going to do it, go early in the morning! Being one of the first casualties of the Siege, the restored Gondola is a symbol of Sarajevo's resurgence.
We'd missed being able to do it the day we arrived, but we managed to do it the next day. This was not just the ordinary around-the-city walking tour but one that specifically looked at and talked about the Siege and its effects, called War Scars and New Times. Our tour guide grew up during the siege, and spoke a lot about her own personal experiences of the time of the Siege living in Sarajevo. The siege is the longest in modern warfare - it was longer than the Siege of Stalingrad in Russia even. I already knew a fair amount about the Siege from the last time I was in Sarajevo, but I learned even more and a lot of them were things I'd never even considered. Before I confuse you moreso than I already have by talking about "The Siege", I need to do one of Dan's Brief Histories so you get some perspective on what I'm talking about.
So its 1991, Yugoslavia is falling apart. Slovenia declared independence, then Croatia, and Bosnia next. Both Slovenia and Croatia both largely have single "ethnicities" - both almost entirely Croat, but Bosnia is unique in Yugoslavia in having an almost equal mix of Serb, Croat, and Muslim ethnicities. In the Bosnian Parliament the Croats and Muslims want independence, but the Serbs want Bosnia to join Serbia in a new post-Communist Yugoslavia. Majority rules, Bosnia declares independence which is recognised by the world and the UN, but the Bosnian Serbs aren't finished and decide to try and take over some or all of Bosnia themselves. They get weapons from Serbia, set themselves up in the hills that surround Sarajevo, declare the creation of the Republika Srpska and begin shelling the city. The idea is to destroy morale and force the then-Bosnian government to surrender to them - which is based in Sarajevo, but the Sarajevo citizens dig in and won't submit - and neither does the government. Some days they fire a small amount of shells, some days they fire a lot - over 3000 one day. But they don't ever try and invade the capital - to do so would force intervention from outside. Elsewhere in Bosnia other battles are raging between the Serbs and the Croats & Muslims, so the people in Sarajevo don't have anywhere safe to escape to in Bosnia - in fact as perverse as it is, Sarajevo was seen as somewhat "safe" because the citizens never had to face the enemy, the enemy was just in the hills.
So the people in Sarajevo tried to go about life as normally as possible as they still could. But they would do other things to thumb their noses as the enemy in the hills. If the opera house or another music venue would get hit and damaged by shelling, some of the citizens would go in there at night and play music that could then be heard in the hills. The people took to dressing up in fancy clothes all the time - women would walk through the streets in dresses and heels, knowing they could be spotted by enemy snipers. This served a dual purpose - a way of showing the enemy that their spirit had not broken, but also if they were going to be killed they wanted to be wearing their Sunday best. In a city with no running water, no sanitation, no transport and no electricity, children still went to school, people still went to work (even if they were not being paid) and life went on as best as it could.
This state of affairs lasted for 4 years - from 1992 until 1996.That's a huge amount of time, especially when you're the likes of our tour guide who was 6 when the first shell hits and is 10 years old when its all over. A few things brought the Siege to a close - the Republika Srpska forces had been doing some atrocious things but had stepped things up a huge notch with the Srebrenica Massacre (more about this later). While before the world could sit somewhat uneasily by but not convince itself to intervene because it was a civil war, after Srebrenica they sat up and got heavily involved and no longer had their blinkers on to the Serbian involvement - to the point where the UN was asking NATO to do targeted airstrikes to bring the Republika Srpska forces to heel. The US then negotiates the Dayton Accords which formalises peace in Bosnia, although its a strange state of affairs - Republika Srpska gets to keep its captured territory, but is not allowed to amalgamate it with Serbia like it wants. Instead it becomes a constituent entity of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina - the other constituent entity being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the previous state which declared independence. Both run themselves as kinds of independent states, under a larger governing body which has 3 co-Presidents - one Serb, one Croat, and one Muslim.
Our guide gave us the quick rundown of the breakup of Yugoslavia and how Sarajevo came to be under siege, and then we started moving around the city to see various places. In Sarajevo there are such things as the "Sarajevo Roses" - red splatters of paint on the pavement, where the red is painted in the marks of where a shell hit the city and exploded, killing one or several people. We saw a few of these but we also saw the remnants of a shell explosion in the marketplace. This was remarkable for two reasons - one, it unfortunately killed over 60 people at once, and two, the shell which exploded is still embedded in the pavement and is clearly visible. Our guide explained also that the shelling was indiscriminate - I'd never really thought about it before but in the hills are Bosnian Serbs firing shells into the city killing people, mainly trying to kill Croats and Muslims. But they are killing the people of Sarajevo - some soldier might fire a shell from the hills, and it might end up killing a family member who is otherwise trying to go about their life in the city. Not all Bosnian Serbs supported the efforts of the Republika Srpska, and certainly many Bosnian Serbs stayed put in Sarajevo and fought alongside all the other Sarajevo citizens to keep their city. Our guide too highlighted an important point which I hadn't really taken on board before - you can't tar all the Bosnian Serbs with the same brush for the crimes committed by some, and likewise you can't blame all of Serbia for what was done by a few. Its too easy to blame and be angry, but it takes more time and understanding to process and move on. "Oh Well" was the often repeated phrase of our tour guide - this happened, it was awful, but Oh Well. Its not happening anymore and that's the main thing. Some people got punished, the country has been at peace although the political situation is seen as confusing and somewhat stifling, and we were told that overall things are getting better. In Sarajevo Serbs are still friend with Croats and Muslims and all are friends with each other and they often forget they have these labels.
There were some rather awful tales to learn - such as those of the couple who were killed on what is now known as Romeo & Juliet bridge, killed by a sniper as they were on their way to be evacuated out to the airport and spirited out of the country; or somewhat amusing tales such as the UN food which was supplied, which was not great and the rice often had dead worms in it (our guide was convinced the food was all old stores from WW2!) but the worms were still protein so they ate them. She noted it was a sign how things were improving after the siege was over when you could complain that your food had worms in it, rather than be thankful you had food to eat in the first place. The tour ended by the Canned Beef memorial - which is a tongue-and-cheek thanks to the UN for the food they supplied during the siege, as apparently the tins of Canned Beef were the worst and not even animals would touch it!
Two other things stuck out which I will mention - one is the Bosnian Flag. As far as flags go, its fairly modern looking and quite refreshing, I kinda like it. Turns out, the flag has an interesting history - post War, Bosnia didn't have a flag and no one could agree on what the flag should look like. Things came to a head by 1998 - Bosnia was going to the Winter Olympics and needed a flag, so one ended up being chosen for the country by the High Representative - a European Union representative (don't ask me why they are EU and not UN) who oversees that the Dayton Accord peace treaty is being adhered to. Nothing on the flag has any historical connection to Bosnia so as to not upset anyone and the colours, yellow, blue and white are not associated with any of the ethnicities. Its kind of a flag which doesn't represent anything - in fact if you look at it, it could have been a reject design for the EU Flag that they decided to just repurpose! The other thing to mention - while walking between stops on the tour one of the tour members was talking to the guide about the role of the UN peacekeepers and how they are viewed as they helped keep the people fed in the city but basically didn't intervene with the fighting or warfare. Our guide said to him that overall the citizens are grateful for the role the UN played to keep them fed and watered even when the food might not have been much good, but they often found it frustrating that the UN wasn't able to do more - "We didn't need peacekeepers but peacemakers". I feel that one sentence sums up a lot about the UN peacekeeping efforts in both Bosnia and to an extent Kosovo which followed - the UN wanted to help, but struggled with how and while promising the people of Bosnia help, they couldn't really deliver them the help they needed most - an end to the war.
A very eye opening, sobering but utterly fascinating tour and I would highly recommend it to anyone if you visit Sarajevo.
This is something I had done last time I was in Sarajevo. I'd only gotten my head around a basic history of the siege the night before, but I had not known anything about the massacre in Srebrenica. This museum covers both - and it really blew me away to the extent that I was really having some trouble keeping it together when I left. I knew it was something I would like to do again because I had been overwhelmed by it last time and would like to see if there's any more detail I could absorb - but also for Sasha to get an appreciation of seeing photos and video of the Siege, but also learn about Srebrenica. We'd heard Srebrenica mentioned in our walking tours and a few other things, but I had deliberately not told Sasha much about it yet. To understand Srebrenica is to understand the extent of how awful the war in Bosnia had been - and to me there was no other place to learn this than going to Gallery 11/07/95.
I don't expect you to know what Srebrenica was off the top of your head. Most people don't, in fact most people probably never heard of it. The Republika Srpska forces had been doing a lot of awful things - raping women and then putting them in camps so they would have babies, terrorising the Croats and Serbs or outright killing them. There wasn't many places the Bosnian population could flee to in the country, but Srebrenica was one of them - in fact, it was the first place the United Nations declared Safe Zone in Bosnia, with a French UN peacekeeping unit stationed in the town. Naturally, Bosnians if they can start making their way to Srebrenica and the town becomes hugely overcrowded. The French troops get subbed out and replaced by a Dutch unit, who move their camp away from the centre of town to an old factory on the outskirts.
The Republika Srpska forces start taking towns in the area and soon word gets through to the people in Srebrenica that the forces are on their way to capture the town. Most of the women and children head for the UN camp at the factory, while a lot of the men decide to try and make their way to the free town of Tuzla across the hills as there will not be any room for everyone in the UN camp and none of the men believe they will be treated nicely by the Republika Srpska forces. The town arrives at the UN camp, the Dutch let in 5000 people - mostly elderly, ill or women who are pregnant, while the rest can do nothing but stand outside. The Srpska forces take the town, then arrive at the camp. They start taking the people away - separating all the men from the women, separating children and the Dutch forces that evening tell those 5000 in the camp that they have to leave. Meanwhile, the men trekking to Tuzla are spotted by the Srpska forces who then start shelling the hills, and send troops up to capture and kill the men. As for those rounded up in Srebrenica and outside the factory - all the men are loaded onto buses, driven to one location and killed. The first the world knows of any kind of scale for what went on in Srebrenica is a few days later when the men who have survived the multi-day trek across the hills arrive in Tuzla, and when in a state fit to do so tell their story to journalists. It is only after the war that the scale of what happened is confirmed with the discovery of the mass graves - but the Serbs have moved bodies from mass grave to mass grave a few times in an effort to hide the evidence, so a full and complete number of victims may never be confirmed.
Srebrenica was shocking - both for the boldness of the Republika Srpska forces to just outright start mass-murdering people, but also because it happened in a place the United Nations of all people had declared a safe haven. Not only that, but the Dutch UN forces just stood by and let it happen - and even handed those 5000 people in their base to the Srpska forces. Why didn't the Dutch do anything and intervene? call for back-up? do something? Reading what I can it seems like the Dutch didn't really want to be there - the soldiers thought their peacekeeping duty there was boring, didn't connect with the Bosnians and understand their plight, and when the Republika Srpska forces showed up I think it was simply they found themselves out of their depth, scared, didn't know what to do and more importantly weren't willing to put their lives on the line to help defend the Bosnians. They froze and hoped the problem would go away. Granted - there was no possibility of any kind of help coming in time to help re-inforce the Dutch and protect the city once it was realised the Srpska forces were on their way to take Srebrenica. But what if the UN forces had met the Srpska forces on the outskirts of town and told them to leave it alone or else? Would the Srpska forces really have taken the UN forces on head-to-head? I'm sure they only did what they did because they found the UN forces basically let them unchallenged, and that emboldened them.
Of course, the massacre at Srebrenica had huge ramifications. The UN had promised it was safe - yet the people there got slaughtered. The world could not stand by and let anything more happen - when the war started out in 1993, George Bush Snr was President of the US and declared the US would not intervene in a civil war because "America is not the world's Police". But by 1995 Bill Clinton is now president and he now gets actively involved trying to draw the war to a close. The UN has peacekeeping forces but not an Army or an Air Force - so the UN asks NATO for help, and the US supplies most of the NATO artillery and planes which are used in targeted airstrikes to bring the Serbs to the negotiating table. The US works on brokering the peace agreement, which is agreed to in Dayton, Ohio. Srebrenica was both the lowest point in the Bosnian War, but it was the event which caused the turn of the tide - the Serbs went too far and the world couldn't tolerate sitting by anymore. As for the UN - the events in Srebrenica highlighted in the worst way possible the deficiencies of the organisation as an active intervention force. Too many chiefs with different opinions on what to do, and they told people the forces would be there to protect them and then failed to deliver. Its probably quite telling that following the Bosnian War and the Kosovo War after it, you don't see the UN marching into war zones with white tanks and peacekeeping soldiers with blue helments anymore. As a body, the UN has not proven suitable for direct involvement in wars to protect the people. Imagine though if those UN Dutch soldiers had stood up to the Srpska forces and had told them to go away - either the Srpska forces would have gone around Srebrenica or attacked the Dutch, but at least the UN could have been seen to be keeping its word to defend the Bosnian people and its prestige would have been so much greater. Instead, it looked humiliated and full of empty promises.
Going to the gallery is very confronting and a difficult way to learn such a history - but its almost unbelievable, yet you watch it unfold before your eyes. A lot is first hand footage - taken by the Bosnians, taken by the Srpska forces themselves, and even that taken by the Dutch UN soldiers. People have been tried and sentenced for the War Crimes of Srebrenica, including the guy who became the first president of the Republika Srpska. He got 40 years for his role - he's 70, so he'll never leave jail but is 40 years enough for helping engineering the massacre of over 8000 people?
Oh well.
Our first night in Sarajevo we had Cevapi - which is the same thing as Cevapcici, except it seems to be called Cevapi in some places and Cevapcici in others and I don't know what the difference if any is supposed to be. Lee had told us the name of the restaurant and said it had been recommended as having the best Cevapi - Sarajevo is supposed to be the best place for it out of anywhere in the Balkans. It definitely was good! Breakfast was from our supplies, and for Lunch we went to Chipas - the same place I went to with Dion the last time I was in Sarajevo. We went there last time because it was cheap and they did good food, this time we went there for those reasons and it didn't do Cevapi. They do Pasta and Chicken, and it was tasty enough and certainly well priced - we even got a substantial dessert for almost next to nothing. Our last night in Sarajevo was one of our "wine and cheese" picnics but eaten in our accommodation room.
Perhaps the biggest things to note on the drink front was being able to try the Schweppes Tangerine orange fizzy drink again (just as refreshing as last time) and also the coffee. Bosnia does coffee. It is Ottoman style, but its developed on its own somewhat. We had a really nice Bosnian coffee at a coffee house near our accommodation - and it was different to what I had before. The coffee was the same, but there is always a bit of a ritual with the coffee and this was a bit more elaborate. The coffee house's owner, with brilliant white flowing hair and an immaculate dress style gave us the coffees and also a glass of sherbert - two sips of coffee then one sip of sherbert. It was really nice, but there is definitely not only a presentation art to Bosnian coffee but a drinking art too!
Sasha and I also visited the Latin Bridge where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated - but as Sasha discovered there's not really much to do in this regard other than have a look at the bridge, see the spot where Gavrillo Princip stood (not well marked unless you know what you're looking for) and then piece together the series of events. There is a small museum across the way about the assassination but it is very small, it costs to go inside and you probably don't gain much from it.
On our last night in Sarajevo, we bumped into Lee from the transfer again while wandering the streets. We traded stories of what we'd been up to, and as she had 2 more days in Sarajevo we gave her some tips and recommendations on what we'd done if she wanted to do any of those things. She'd also tried the Cevapi from the restaurant, and had thought the Gondola was ages away - not a 5min walk from her accommodation. We had a good chat and it was good to see her again!
Summing Up
I had for some reason expected that I would only need a 2nd visit to Sarajevo and that would see me done in this city. However I came away feeling like I need to go back - just like last time. I did more, I saw more than I did last time and saw all the extra things I wanted to see. But I didn't feel like I managed to soak up enough of this city's vibrancy and culture. So for Sarajevo at the least, I will someday be back.
There was more of Bosnia for us yet to see though, and I will sum up the whole country in the next post - which will detail our stay in Mostar!