Belated Balkaning it Up: Sarajevo
4 August, 2007: Sarajevo
I must admit that it was with some relief that I left Majda and headed on to Sarajevo. Don’t get me wrong, it was a perfectly nice place and it was nice of Majda to let me have her bed last night, but not so nice to charge me extra without telling me beforehand. It wasn’t much and I would’ve been ok with it (I actually am), but it feels a bit, I don’t know. Not dishonest, maybe underhanded? Or maybe she just honestly forgot to tell me, but I’m now rather wary after Dubrovnik. Anyway, this morning I was woken up bright and early, but for some silly reason decided to take the later bus to Sarajevo. Majda drove me to the station and I had just enough time to buy a ticket and get on the bus before it started. The ride was beautiful and gave me ample time to think, which is dangerous when you have a rather active imagination.
Bosnia stands halfway between the ruins and reconstruction-for every newly-restored building, five bombed out ones remain. In one town, everything had been rebuilt, except the mosque whose lonely minaret stood out from the weeds in the empty lot like a lost thing. I remembered reading about Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb forces who would take over towns, expel the Bosniaks, destroy the mosques, and then pretend that the town had always been Bosnian Serb or Bosnian Croat. Looking at the lonely minaret, I thought of the burnt-out synagogues in Poland, monuments to vanished people.
Sarajevo is a brooding city, particularly in the fog, and I cursed as I got of the bus. It was gray and cold, making me long for the coast. No matter, I am a Poland girl at heart: I love gloomy gray cities with tortured histories. Having a sweater in said gloomy gray cities with tortured histories makes things all the better as well. The tram moved slowly and I kept seeing places that were vaguely familiar to me from watching the news with my parents or sneaking Newsweek to read another story about the genocide. The cheerful yellow Holiday Inn where the journalists and Bosnian government stayed throughout the siege stands over bullet-scared Sniper Alley, where Serb forces in the hills would pick off civilians running from shelter to shelter. I wished I had Anthony Lloyd’s fantastic book with me to read the different passages at the various places.
I got to the hostel without too many difficulties, though there are fewer signs here than there were in Bucharest (how that is humanly possible, I do not know) and gave the German side of me a headache. After changing into some slightly more weather-appropriate clothes (why didn’t I bring that fleece? Silly me), I went for a walk. Just down the hill from the hostel is a sprawling cemetery of war dead, one of many that dot the city. I wandered through, reading headstones and listening to the rushing water in the small channels that drained the crescent-shaped pool that almost surrounds a memorial tomb. One young soldier stands at attention in front of it, while directly across the pool another young soldier stands and wipes away tears. I wondered with the guilt of someone whose country dithered around and watched this city and country go up in flames because it was not politically convenient to take action at the moment who he was crying for-his family, his friends, himself?
And me? Why am I here reading names of people I never knew? I think of Milosz’s poem “Dedication”:
You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.
…What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
That you should visit us no more.
Maybe that’s all it is, just another Westerner with a guilty conscience, trying to apologize for her nation's slothful neglect. I wonder how top policy makers sleep at night. I hope that when they do, they see the faces of the people they chose to wring their hands over rather than save. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Chechnya…we let our leaders and diplomats dither and then deliver hollow apologies at the sides of mass graves with the engines of their waiting jets throbbing in the background, ready to take them away as quickly as possible.
Milosz again:
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.
Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.
Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.
Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.
Czeslaw Milosz: “Child of Europe”
We are always able to say the right words before, during, and after the fact. Especially after the fact when it is so easy to pay a visit, lay wreaths, make a pretty speech, and then leave as quickly as possible. We talk and talk, but never back up our words. We see it over and over again and never learn how to break the pattern. I personally don’t think it ever can be broken. We never can learn.
I walked on thinking about Sarajevo in 1994 and Warsaw in 1944 and proceeded to get hopelessly lost.
Once someone pointed me in the right direction, I wandered to Bascarscja and poked around their fabulous bazaar and then tried to find something to eat. I ended up in a deli-restaurant and the waitress helped me select several small slices of delicious, delicious burek-cheese with potatoes and onions (burek ruskie?), spinach, and meat. I ended up eating on Pigeon Square and felt a lot better about things because it reminded me of Krakow a little. Then I discovered I’d been nailed on the arm by a pigeon. A year in Europe and this is the only the second time, but I was annoyed. Fortunately, I had baby wipes and water to get most of the mess off. To comfort myself, I bought a few gifts for people and ended up in a café called Planet drinking Bosnian coffee and eating the most delicious cake in the world. Then, I went to the Latin Bridge to see where the Archduke was assassinated and found a cool little museum with all sorts of pictures and multimedia displays in the window. Unfortunately, it was closed, but I decided to come back first thing the next day.
In the evening, I ended up watching Die Hard 4 with some people and chatting almost until midnight.
5 August, 2007: Sarajevo
My alarm is officially the most annoying thing ever and I thought everyone was going to kill me when it went off this morning. After breakfast, my friend Cynthia and I walked around town looking at the sites. She’s very smart and is ripping sections out of her Lonely Planet to make it more portable. I think this is brilliant but don’t have the heart to do it to my brand new copy. We grabbed lunch at a burek place and then went to see the mosque, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and some other interesting things. The museum near the Latin Bridge was open when we got there, and was pretty interesting for such a small place. It was only one room and covered the city’s history from the Congress of Vienna to WWI. I liked the photos, but the best part was an overdone ‘80s film about the assassination of the Archduke. The only redeeming quality of the melodrama (complete with a doe-eyed Princess Sophie making eye contact with the potential assassins in slow motion) was that the actor playing Cabrinovic was HOT. After reading the somewhat inaccurate and biased account in Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, I rather like Nedja. I think this mostly has to do that he was the worst assassin ever (couldn't hit the broad side of an Archduke with a bomb) and also didn't sport that ridiculous moustache like Princip did.
We also went to this fantastic handicrafts store run by women who lost their husbands during the war and knit and crochet things to make money for themselves as well as several charities for refugees. It was a little more expensive, but the clothes were so gorgeous and it was for a good cause, so I didn’t feel guilty. After cake and coffee at Planet, we wandered back up to the hostel. This was where the drama began. The four Australians I met in Mostar were there and were having some serious disagreements about going to Albania. This made my head spin. Cynthia and I ended up going to dinner with them at To Be, which was fantastic. I had a yummy pepper steak with grilled veggies and some very nice house wine. One of the guys and I left early to go to the internet café and start looking for things for Montenegro (they leave tomorrow and I planned to join them the day after). Lord, lord the drama! Everything was full and Tim was trying to all the work for three people and also tried to see if I could be added in the next day, etc. etc. Anyway everyone was getting so snappy and stressed, so I checked out. These people were getting way too flaky for me and so I booked a room at a place in Kotor just in case, but I’m not crazy about that. The snarking and indecision continued among my potential traveling companions and I was just tired of it all and decided that I’d just do my own thing and avoid dealing with it. Too bad, as Tim seems cool, but the others not so much. It’s a dynamic I can definitely do without.
6 August, 2007: Sarajevo
I woke up before my alarm, so I decided to take advantage of the empty shower and beat the line. My only complaint about this hostel is that there is only one shower, making for long lines at convenient times or having to get up early. Not that I’m complaining much, as that means I have the whole day to myself.
A bunch of us went on the hostel’s city tour, which is done by two of Haris’ friends. They were both awesome and knew a lot about the city even though they were just students like us. We sang and bounced around in the van as we drove through the city, heading first to the Tunnel Museum out by the airport. To get there, we drove through the Serb part of Sarajevo and Alma (one of the girls) explained that everyone came to this area to do their shopping because everything was so much cheaper there…even petrol! This used to the be the capital of Republika Srbska (RS) until it was moved by the more moderate government to Banja Luka following Radovan Karadzic’s resignation as president of RS. Karadzic is a war criminal who remains at large today, living as a folk hero among Bosnian Serbs, and several UN manhunts for him have ended in embarrassing failure. I have nightmares I’ll end up meeting the guy in a bar or something, because that would be just my luck-drinking with a war criminal.
Anyway, the Tunnel Museum. During the Siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnians dug a tunnel from the city center out to the UN-controlled airport as a way of smuggling in humanitarian aid, as well as weapons and soldiers. Refugees also used the tunnel to escape into the mountains and make their way to Croatia. The UN was against the tunnel’s construction because of the (extremely stupid) arms embargo that it had placed on the Croats and Bosnians and also because it was still more evidence that they were not in control of the situation in Bosnia like they claimed they were. The Bosnian army wasn’t about to listen to the UN, and so construction proceeded and the tunnel was completed in 1992. It was 800m long, with just enough space for a small rail cart. People walked through it single file, carrying up to 80 kg of food on their backs, crouching so they didn’t smack their heads on the support beams. This would be like me picking up Alex “Red” Gordon (Vanderbilt’s starting point guard, for those not in the know), slinging him over my shoulder, and carrying him across slightly more than 7 football fields. Keep in mind that I weigh about 55 kg.
Alma said that she went through the tunnel with her mother. They made it through, crossed the mountains to Croatia, spent some time in Slovenia, and eventually settled in Switzerland. She was 5 years old at the time. Her father remained behind to fight and they went for a couple of years without a word from him. He ended up surviving the siege and came to join them in Switzerland. When Alma opened the door, she didn’t believe that he was her father. She thought her father was dead. This reminded me of a much darker version of the story my cousin Eleanor likes to tell about her son Steve’s reaction to his father’s homecoming from the Second World War. “You can’t be my daddy,” said little Steve. “My daddy doesn’t have any legs.” He only knew his father from a framed portrait that showed him from the waist up.
We watched a film about the siege, images that I vaguely remember seeing flicker on the screen before my mother realized I was in the room and changed the channel. There were several clips of soldiers slogging through the tunnel, emerging blinking into the sunlight. One fellow still looked cheerful enough to wave brightly at the camera in a classic “Hi, mom!” gesture. I couldn’t help but giggle.
After our tour was finished, we piled back into the vans and bounced back to the city to look at some more sights. On the way there, we peppered Alma with questions, which she was more than happy to answer. I was especially interested to hear her say that she has no problem with Serbs (from Serbia proper) and has friends from Belgrade who study with her. She wouldn’t be opposed to dating one of them. Bosnian Serbs, however, are a completely different story. “How could you marry someone who tried to kill you?” she asks. Personally, I don’t blame her.
Our next stop was the Holiday Inn and Sniper Alley. The Holiday Inn became famous because it was the only place UNPROFOR effectively protected in the city, as it became the home of foreign journalists and the Bosnian government during the siege. Everyone else was fodder for the Serb snipers positioned in the hills. Sniper Alley runs along one side of the Holiday Inn down to the river and beyond. In his masterfully disturbing book, My War Gone By, I Miss it So, Anthony Lloyd describes watching people run from cover to cover, hoping to avoid bullets, and how he and a friend walked across Sniper Alley because his friend, a Bosniak, said that he “would not run for those people.” Me, I would’ve run like hell. People used to go down to the river to try and get water or try to swim across and escape the city that way. Most never came back. The first casualty of the siege was actually killed on the bridge going over the river-a young woman, a medical student from Dubrovnik, who was part of a peace march.
The Serbs battered the Old Town furiously, but also turned their guns on the Olympic Stadium (Sarajevo was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics). In a flurry of shells, the Olympic complex was destroyed, the first time in history that such a deed was done. This act, along with the destruction of the rest of the city, prompted the then-president of the IOC to visit the city during the siege in 1992. He gave his support to the city and pledged aid for reconstruction. I remember watching a fluff piece about this during the ’92 Olympics-the commentator (Bob Costas maybe?) walking among the ruins of the blasted stadium and pushing aside some rubble to reveal the shattered rings. Today, the facilities have been rebuilt and Sarajevo put its name in as a candidate for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Though they did not get the bid, I hope that someday they will. How hugely symbolic would that be?
After our tour of the stadium, we went for a quick lunch and looked at the Latin Bridge, the site of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and then went for coffee. My friend Rebecca and I then went in search of bus info and my quest turned into a disaster! It turns out that there aren’t really any buses to Kotor from Sarajevo and the travel agent explained that I would have to get off the bus at some town in Montenegro at 3am and wait to catch a different bus. I peered at her over the top of my glasses and asked, “And you think this is a good idea why?” She agreed that it was “a bit inconvenient” and so I went to the bus station to see if they had any leads. Naturally, they didn’t and I cursed up a blue streak on the tram ride back before hitting on a Brilliant PlanTM: why didn’t I just say to hell with Kotor and head straight to Ulcinj on the Montenegrin/Albanian border. The bus would get there around 5 am, but it would be light out and I could always go to the beach if I couldn’t find a place to stay that early. Then, I’d just hop on the bus to Albania. Since Montenegro was in the middle of a terrible drought, I figured this would be brilliant and so I bought my ticket and went home satisfied with both my plan and the fact that I got an extra day in Sarajevo.
7 August, 2007: Sarajevo and the Big Honkin’ Bus Ride
Thanks to my Brilliant Plan™ I was able to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. I took my time because I figured this would be my last decent shower until Tirana, or more likely Ohrid. As I said before, Montenegro was having a dreadful drought and I’d heard more than one story from my fellow travelers about showers with barely a trickle of water. Albania is also having an energy crisis-what this entails, I do not know, but it is apparent that I am heading to the Third World Europe-style.
I wandered around Sarajevo one last time, saying goodbye to my favorite sites. At the Jewish Museum, I ran into a friend and we had lunch together. He’s a nice fellow, very laid back and easy to talk to. It was nice to tell him my fears about traveling to Albania alone and not have him laugh at me or brush me off as being a silly little bint. Instead, he reassured me that I’d be fine and he was rather jealous that I was heading that way. It’s a pity that he and some of the other fantastic people I’ve met here are heading onto Belgrade rather than Montenegro/Albania. What can I do though? I got some Euros (since breaking away from Serbia, Montenegro switched to the Euro) and then had one last delicious piece of cake at Planet. My waiter was very sorry to see me go. Then, I went back to the hostel to grab my things and ended up watching a bit of the Simpsons Movie before heading to the bus station. Once I got there, I waited around a bit and encountered the only rude Bosnian I’ve ever met-the lady at the info booth who roller her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes at me when I double checked my platform. And then I made a very big mistake by trying to use the bus station toilet. You know how in Trainspotting there is a scene with “the nastiest toilet in Scotland”? Yeah, I got the nastiest toilet in Sarajevo. I was Not Pleased, yet slightly amused because though the toilet had no paper, there was plenty of soap and hot water. Go figure and thank God for wet wipes.
Anyway, the bus ride was loooooooong, but I made friends with this Kiwi named Miles. I convinced him to come to Albania with me (he was making his way to the Greek Islands) and he showed me a couple of really cool videos on his laptop, including one he was making. We both tried to get some sleep, but it was very difficult because the ride was so bumpy.
I must admit that it was with some relief that I left Majda and headed on to Sarajevo. Don’t get me wrong, it was a perfectly nice place and it was nice of Majda to let me have her bed last night, but not so nice to charge me extra without telling me beforehand. It wasn’t much and I would’ve been ok with it (I actually am), but it feels a bit, I don’t know. Not dishonest, maybe underhanded? Or maybe she just honestly forgot to tell me, but I’m now rather wary after Dubrovnik. Anyway, this morning I was woken up bright and early, but for some silly reason decided to take the later bus to Sarajevo. Majda drove me to the station and I had just enough time to buy a ticket and get on the bus before it started. The ride was beautiful and gave me ample time to think, which is dangerous when you have a rather active imagination.
Bosnia stands halfway between the ruins and reconstruction-for every newly-restored building, five bombed out ones remain. In one town, everything had been rebuilt, except the mosque whose lonely minaret stood out from the weeds in the empty lot like a lost thing. I remembered reading about Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb forces who would take over towns, expel the Bosniaks, destroy the mosques, and then pretend that the town had always been Bosnian Serb or Bosnian Croat. Looking at the lonely minaret, I thought of the burnt-out synagogues in Poland, monuments to vanished people.
Sarajevo is a brooding city, particularly in the fog, and I cursed as I got of the bus. It was gray and cold, making me long for the coast. No matter, I am a Poland girl at heart: I love gloomy gray cities with tortured histories. Having a sweater in said gloomy gray cities with tortured histories makes things all the better as well. The tram moved slowly and I kept seeing places that were vaguely familiar to me from watching the news with my parents or sneaking Newsweek to read another story about the genocide. The cheerful yellow Holiday Inn where the journalists and Bosnian government stayed throughout the siege stands over bullet-scared Sniper Alley, where Serb forces in the hills would pick off civilians running from shelter to shelter. I wished I had Anthony Lloyd’s fantastic book with me to read the different passages at the various places.
I got to the hostel without too many difficulties, though there are fewer signs here than there were in Bucharest (how that is humanly possible, I do not know) and gave the German side of me a headache. After changing into some slightly more weather-appropriate clothes (why didn’t I bring that fleece? Silly me), I went for a walk. Just down the hill from the hostel is a sprawling cemetery of war dead, one of many that dot the city. I wandered through, reading headstones and listening to the rushing water in the small channels that drained the crescent-shaped pool that almost surrounds a memorial tomb. One young soldier stands at attention in front of it, while directly across the pool another young soldier stands and wipes away tears. I wondered with the guilt of someone whose country dithered around and watched this city and country go up in flames because it was not politically convenient to take action at the moment who he was crying for-his family, his friends, himself?
And me? Why am I here reading names of people I never knew? I think of Milosz’s poem “Dedication”:
You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.
…What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
That you should visit us no more.
Maybe that’s all it is, just another Westerner with a guilty conscience, trying to apologize for her nation's slothful neglect. I wonder how top policy makers sleep at night. I hope that when they do, they see the faces of the people they chose to wring their hands over rather than save. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Chechnya…we let our leaders and diplomats dither and then deliver hollow apologies at the sides of mass graves with the engines of their waiting jets throbbing in the background, ready to take them away as quickly as possible.
Milosz again:
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.
Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.
Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.
Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.
Czeslaw Milosz: “Child of Europe”
We are always able to say the right words before, during, and after the fact. Especially after the fact when it is so easy to pay a visit, lay wreaths, make a pretty speech, and then leave as quickly as possible. We talk and talk, but never back up our words. We see it over and over again and never learn how to break the pattern. I personally don’t think it ever can be broken. We never can learn.
I walked on thinking about Sarajevo in 1994 and Warsaw in 1944 and proceeded to get hopelessly lost.
Once someone pointed me in the right direction, I wandered to Bascarscja and poked around their fabulous bazaar and then tried to find something to eat. I ended up in a deli-restaurant and the waitress helped me select several small slices of delicious, delicious burek-cheese with potatoes and onions (burek ruskie?), spinach, and meat. I ended up eating on Pigeon Square and felt a lot better about things because it reminded me of Krakow a little. Then I discovered I’d been nailed on the arm by a pigeon. A year in Europe and this is the only the second time, but I was annoyed. Fortunately, I had baby wipes and water to get most of the mess off. To comfort myself, I bought a few gifts for people and ended up in a café called Planet drinking Bosnian coffee and eating the most delicious cake in the world. Then, I went to the Latin Bridge to see where the Archduke was assassinated and found a cool little museum with all sorts of pictures and multimedia displays in the window. Unfortunately, it was closed, but I decided to come back first thing the next day.
In the evening, I ended up watching Die Hard 4 with some people and chatting almost until midnight.
5 August, 2007: Sarajevo
My alarm is officially the most annoying thing ever and I thought everyone was going to kill me when it went off this morning. After breakfast, my friend Cynthia and I walked around town looking at the sites. She’s very smart and is ripping sections out of her Lonely Planet to make it more portable. I think this is brilliant but don’t have the heart to do it to my brand new copy. We grabbed lunch at a burek place and then went to see the mosque, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and some other interesting things. The museum near the Latin Bridge was open when we got there, and was pretty interesting for such a small place. It was only one room and covered the city’s history from the Congress of Vienna to WWI. I liked the photos, but the best part was an overdone ‘80s film about the assassination of the Archduke. The only redeeming quality of the melodrama (complete with a doe-eyed Princess Sophie making eye contact with the potential assassins in slow motion) was that the actor playing Cabrinovic was HOT. After reading the somewhat inaccurate and biased account in Black Lamb and Gray Falcon, I rather like Nedja. I think this mostly has to do that he was the worst assassin ever (couldn't hit the broad side of an Archduke with a bomb) and also didn't sport that ridiculous moustache like Princip did.
We also went to this fantastic handicrafts store run by women who lost their husbands during the war and knit and crochet things to make money for themselves as well as several charities for refugees. It was a little more expensive, but the clothes were so gorgeous and it was for a good cause, so I didn’t feel guilty. After cake and coffee at Planet, we wandered back up to the hostel. This was where the drama began. The four Australians I met in Mostar were there and were having some serious disagreements about going to Albania. This made my head spin. Cynthia and I ended up going to dinner with them at To Be, which was fantastic. I had a yummy pepper steak with grilled veggies and some very nice house wine. One of the guys and I left early to go to the internet café and start looking for things for Montenegro (they leave tomorrow and I planned to join them the day after). Lord, lord the drama! Everything was full and Tim was trying to all the work for three people and also tried to see if I could be added in the next day, etc. etc. Anyway everyone was getting so snappy and stressed, so I checked out. These people were getting way too flaky for me and so I booked a room at a place in Kotor just in case, but I’m not crazy about that. The snarking and indecision continued among my potential traveling companions and I was just tired of it all and decided that I’d just do my own thing and avoid dealing with it. Too bad, as Tim seems cool, but the others not so much. It’s a dynamic I can definitely do without.
6 August, 2007: Sarajevo
I woke up before my alarm, so I decided to take advantage of the empty shower and beat the line. My only complaint about this hostel is that there is only one shower, making for long lines at convenient times or having to get up early. Not that I’m complaining much, as that means I have the whole day to myself.
A bunch of us went on the hostel’s city tour, which is done by two of Haris’ friends. They were both awesome and knew a lot about the city even though they were just students like us. We sang and bounced around in the van as we drove through the city, heading first to the Tunnel Museum out by the airport. To get there, we drove through the Serb part of Sarajevo and Alma (one of the girls) explained that everyone came to this area to do their shopping because everything was so much cheaper there…even petrol! This used to the be the capital of Republika Srbska (RS) until it was moved by the more moderate government to Banja Luka following Radovan Karadzic’s resignation as president of RS. Karadzic is a war criminal who remains at large today, living as a folk hero among Bosnian Serbs, and several UN manhunts for him have ended in embarrassing failure. I have nightmares I’ll end up meeting the guy in a bar or something, because that would be just my luck-drinking with a war criminal.
Anyway, the Tunnel Museum. During the Siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnians dug a tunnel from the city center out to the UN-controlled airport as a way of smuggling in humanitarian aid, as well as weapons and soldiers. Refugees also used the tunnel to escape into the mountains and make their way to Croatia. The UN was against the tunnel’s construction because of the (extremely stupid) arms embargo that it had placed on the Croats and Bosnians and also because it was still more evidence that they were not in control of the situation in Bosnia like they claimed they were. The Bosnian army wasn’t about to listen to the UN, and so construction proceeded and the tunnel was completed in 1992. It was 800m long, with just enough space for a small rail cart. People walked through it single file, carrying up to 80 kg of food on their backs, crouching so they didn’t smack their heads on the support beams. This would be like me picking up Alex “Red” Gordon (Vanderbilt’s starting point guard, for those not in the know), slinging him over my shoulder, and carrying him across slightly more than 7 football fields. Keep in mind that I weigh about 55 kg.
Alma said that she went through the tunnel with her mother. They made it through, crossed the mountains to Croatia, spent some time in Slovenia, and eventually settled in Switzerland. She was 5 years old at the time. Her father remained behind to fight and they went for a couple of years without a word from him. He ended up surviving the siege and came to join them in Switzerland. When Alma opened the door, she didn’t believe that he was her father. She thought her father was dead. This reminded me of a much darker version of the story my cousin Eleanor likes to tell about her son Steve’s reaction to his father’s homecoming from the Second World War. “You can’t be my daddy,” said little Steve. “My daddy doesn’t have any legs.” He only knew his father from a framed portrait that showed him from the waist up.
We watched a film about the siege, images that I vaguely remember seeing flicker on the screen before my mother realized I was in the room and changed the channel. There were several clips of soldiers slogging through the tunnel, emerging blinking into the sunlight. One fellow still looked cheerful enough to wave brightly at the camera in a classic “Hi, mom!” gesture. I couldn’t help but giggle.
After our tour was finished, we piled back into the vans and bounced back to the city to look at some more sights. On the way there, we peppered Alma with questions, which she was more than happy to answer. I was especially interested to hear her say that she has no problem with Serbs (from Serbia proper) and has friends from Belgrade who study with her. She wouldn’t be opposed to dating one of them. Bosnian Serbs, however, are a completely different story. “How could you marry someone who tried to kill you?” she asks. Personally, I don’t blame her.
Our next stop was the Holiday Inn and Sniper Alley. The Holiday Inn became famous because it was the only place UNPROFOR effectively protected in the city, as it became the home of foreign journalists and the Bosnian government during the siege. Everyone else was fodder for the Serb snipers positioned in the hills. Sniper Alley runs along one side of the Holiday Inn down to the river and beyond. In his masterfully disturbing book, My War Gone By, I Miss it So, Anthony Lloyd describes watching people run from cover to cover, hoping to avoid bullets, and how he and a friend walked across Sniper Alley because his friend, a Bosniak, said that he “would not run for those people.” Me, I would’ve run like hell. People used to go down to the river to try and get water or try to swim across and escape the city that way. Most never came back. The first casualty of the siege was actually killed on the bridge going over the river-a young woman, a medical student from Dubrovnik, who was part of a peace march.
The Serbs battered the Old Town furiously, but also turned their guns on the Olympic Stadium (Sarajevo was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics). In a flurry of shells, the Olympic complex was destroyed, the first time in history that such a deed was done. This act, along with the destruction of the rest of the city, prompted the then-president of the IOC to visit the city during the siege in 1992. He gave his support to the city and pledged aid for reconstruction. I remember watching a fluff piece about this during the ’92 Olympics-the commentator (Bob Costas maybe?) walking among the ruins of the blasted stadium and pushing aside some rubble to reveal the shattered rings. Today, the facilities have been rebuilt and Sarajevo put its name in as a candidate for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Though they did not get the bid, I hope that someday they will. How hugely symbolic would that be?
After our tour of the stadium, we went for a quick lunch and looked at the Latin Bridge, the site of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and then went for coffee. My friend Rebecca and I then went in search of bus info and my quest turned into a disaster! It turns out that there aren’t really any buses to Kotor from Sarajevo and the travel agent explained that I would have to get off the bus at some town in Montenegro at 3am and wait to catch a different bus. I peered at her over the top of my glasses and asked, “And you think this is a good idea why?” She agreed that it was “a bit inconvenient” and so I went to the bus station to see if they had any leads. Naturally, they didn’t and I cursed up a blue streak on the tram ride back before hitting on a Brilliant PlanTM: why didn’t I just say to hell with Kotor and head straight to Ulcinj on the Montenegrin/Albanian border. The bus would get there around 5 am, but it would be light out and I could always go to the beach if I couldn’t find a place to stay that early. Then, I’d just hop on the bus to Albania. Since Montenegro was in the middle of a terrible drought, I figured this would be brilliant and so I bought my ticket and went home satisfied with both my plan and the fact that I got an extra day in Sarajevo.
7 August, 2007: Sarajevo and the Big Honkin’ Bus Ride
Thanks to my Brilliant Plan™ I was able to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. I took my time because I figured this would be my last decent shower until Tirana, or more likely Ohrid. As I said before, Montenegro was having a dreadful drought and I’d heard more than one story from my fellow travelers about showers with barely a trickle of water. Albania is also having an energy crisis-what this entails, I do not know, but it is apparent that I am heading to the Third World Europe-style.
I wandered around Sarajevo one last time, saying goodbye to my favorite sites. At the Jewish Museum, I ran into a friend and we had lunch together. He’s a nice fellow, very laid back and easy to talk to. It was nice to tell him my fears about traveling to Albania alone and not have him laugh at me or brush me off as being a silly little bint. Instead, he reassured me that I’d be fine and he was rather jealous that I was heading that way. It’s a pity that he and some of the other fantastic people I’ve met here are heading onto Belgrade rather than Montenegro/Albania. What can I do though? I got some Euros (since breaking away from Serbia, Montenegro switched to the Euro) and then had one last delicious piece of cake at Planet. My waiter was very sorry to see me go. Then, I went back to the hostel to grab my things and ended up watching a bit of the Simpsons Movie before heading to the bus station. Once I got there, I waited around a bit and encountered the only rude Bosnian I’ve ever met-the lady at the info booth who roller her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes at me when I double checked my platform. And then I made a very big mistake by trying to use the bus station toilet. You know how in Trainspotting there is a scene with “the nastiest toilet in Scotland”? Yeah, I got the nastiest toilet in Sarajevo. I was Not Pleased, yet slightly amused because though the toilet had no paper, there was plenty of soap and hot water. Go figure and thank God for wet wipes.
Anyway, the bus ride was loooooooong, but I made friends with this Kiwi named Miles. I convinced him to come to Albania with me (he was making his way to the Greek Islands) and he showed me a couple of really cool videos on his laptop, including one he was making. We both tried to get some sleep, but it was very difficult because the ride was so bumpy.