Sarajevo

at the hostel i was staying at in Belgrade, they had a van service to Sarajevo. i figured it would be a lot easier to get that than but up with another hellish train journey. and it ended up being really good. the scenery wasnt that pretty, and the bus driving kept calling me Aaron, i think when he looked at my passport he thought my middle name was my first name, no matter how many time i said my name was Trent, to him, i was always going to be Aaron. on the bus i met Dunja and Nemanja, a Serbian couple who were also on there way to Sarajevo. Dunja was studying law and her boyfriend Nemanja was studying violin. we got on really well we ended up hanging out quite a bit in Sarajevo. they were here to visit Dunjas step brother, Ogi. because he lived here, he knew the town better than all of us so him and his girlfriend came along for drinks too. first thing i noticed about Ogi was when he spoke english he spoke with an American accent. it turned out that he had got a scholarship to play basketball for a college in Philadelphia and lived there for 4 years. it was pretty funny to hear him speak because i think if you closed your eyes you could've sworn you were talking to a black guy, every second word was "Dawg" and would finish was "ya know what i'm sayin'?". Nemaja was telling me that Ogi plays basketball professionally over here and is one of Bosnias best players. it was really great having locals taking me around. i found Ogi was a quite an interesting guy, he told me a little bit about the war and how his father is Muslim. but during the war, to escape, his father and mother had to pretend that all there paperwork (ie passport or birth certificate) was burnt or destroyed so they could change there names, then they pretended that they were Jewish so they could flee the country, the way i'm telling it doesn't give it much justice, it was quite an amazing story when he told it. its really good to speak to people that live in a place because they can honesty tell you what life is like here, so often, as a traveler, i feel you can sometimes just float in over the top of a place and not really get a full understanding of it. Dunja and Nemanja have invited me back to Belgrade in the summer so they can show me around Belgrade and see it from there perspective, hopefully i get back there, i'm sure it would be interesting.

Sarajevo and interesting history seem to come hand in hand. it was here in Sarajevo, not far from the old town and just across from the river, that Franz Ferdinand (not the band, the guy the band got its name from) was assassinated, it was this and a chain of events that eventually triggered WWI. originally they had foot prints in the pavement of where the assassin stood, but they were destroyed in the war and were never replaced.
Of course, Bosnia is known for the Bosnian War in the mid 90's. i was in a book store here and they had a book on Sarajevo full of photos of what it was like during and just after the war. the place was such a mess, it was a little hard to believe it was the same place, today you do see quite a few reminders of the past like bullet holes, boarded up buildings, some even missing half there sides etc but when i compared it to the photos, Sarajevo is looking pretty good. well the main centre anyway. the further out of town your go the worst it is. the hostel i'm staying in is a house in the old town. the owner was telling me the upstairs area, which is where i'm staying was bombed with grenades on 9 seperate occations. he was saying this house and the surrounding area only looks this good because everybody help each other out, otherwise it would still be a mess. he told the libary in the old town was hit with a bomb and something like 3 million books were lost, some of which cannot be replaced. something i've noticed while walking around here, they fill some of bomb blast holes in the street with red cement which are called 'Sarajevo roses', i later found out that its probably the place where a number of people may have lost there lives so i guess its kind of a mark of respect for the innocent lives lost.

something quite interesting is during the war they built a tunnel under the airport so people could smuggle in supplies and ammunition into Sarajevo without getting caught. The entrance to the tunnel was hidden in the house of a civilian, the guy, whose house it was still lives there, and hes created the downs stairs areas into a museum. i found the tunnels really fascinating, originally they went for about 800m but these days the majority of it has collapsed, but you can still walk about 30m of it, it was really small probably only about 1m wide and 1.5m high, i had to duck my head the whole way, i can only imagine what it would've been like to walk the whole way carrying supplies, the tunnel would also leak so you would have to contend with the water too.

Sarajevo is a tucked away at the bottom of a valley. in spite of what has happen here, the old town is the closest I've been to stepping back in time. it looks taotally different to Belgrade with its stone roads, small shops with people making, what looks like, copper teapots and plates all by hand and they have heaps of thrift shops here so thats kept me pretty entertained. but i think ive been entertaining the locals too. i bought a toffee apple because i hadn't had one since i was a little kid. problem was i forgot how messy those things are and i got it all over my face and hands, people were looking and laughing at me and i think i nearly lost a tooth in the process. it was SO sticky, but i think thats half the fun of eating a toffee apple.

this place is probably a lot more multicultural than other cities, and I've heard at times it can be quite a tense place because of the different religions here but i didn't witness anything. I've noticed that there are a lot of mosques here, and something i haven't experienced before was in the morning, noon and nightfall, they have a call to prayer, where an Arabic voice sings over a loudspeaker for about a minute or so, the first time i heard it, i didn't know what it was, it was quite loud and no matter where you are, you could hear it. i have to say, even though I'm not into religion i did enjoy hearing it.

Sarajevo hasn't always been attached with doom and gloom, which i think sometimes people forget. this year was the 25th anniversary of Sarajevo hosting the winter Olympics. i didn't realize it was on and heard what sounded like gun shots, it scared the living day lights out of me, but it wasn't until i looked out the window i saw fireworks. its crazy but because of Sarajevo's history i instantly thought it must be gun fire. but in truth I've never felt so safe, and not only here, but in Belgrade and Zagreb, i was actually bracing myself for this part of the trip but its been a pleasant surprise.

while i was here i tried lots of great local foods, like Cevapi which is slices of meat in a roll, with cheese and raw onion which was pretty good, and there was this swirly pie thingy made or pastry and meat in the centre, that was pretty good too. i tried some Bosnian coffee while i was here too, i was worried i would be up for the next 3 days because of the amount of caffeine they put in it, but it ok. something i found out about the coffee is there are different types for different times of the day or occasion. theres even one that politely asks you to leave the house. crazy! i found a lot of there stuff is very sweet, which i imagine is the Turkish influence, its like everything is made with sugar! i wouldnt be surprised if i left this place a diabetic.

while i was here i has 'Miss Sarajevo' by U2 in my head, i dont really like U2 that much except for a couple of there songs, mainly because i think Bono is a wanker. anyway, the song is about the Bosnian war. i did a bit of research and found that the song was written for a Doco, also called 'Miss Sarajevo', that was made about the Miss Sarajevo pageant that was held during the war. i did get thinking about what daily life during the war would've been like, it turns out that to keep some sort of normality in the peoples lives that not only did they have a Miss Sarajevo pageant they had bands that played quite often too, it sounds a bit crazy that people would just carry on like that, but i suppose it was a good thing too, something to look forward too.

i met a brother and sister traveling duo while i was here in Sarajevo, Jamie and Kirsty were from Wellington in England and were making there way across the globe to Wellington in NZ. get it? they are also doing a travel blog so click here to check it out. they were pretty cool and we got on quite well. we did a day trip out to Mostar which was pretty eventful. we had to catch a train at 6:45am to get there because there aren't many trains that head out there. i feel asleep and slept the whole way, it was amazing that i wasn't touched up by a gypsy. anyway, Mostar is pretty similar to Sarajevo, just a smaller version really, there main feature here is the Stari Grad which is a bridge that was built back in the 1500's, during the summer local boys jump off it into the water below for tourist, well, maybe not for the tourists, more likely for there money. you wouldn't catch me jumping off it, its roughly 30m above the water, which isn't so bad, its the water that scares me, it flows VERY quickly and i don't think my doggy paddle would be enough to save me. funny story about the bridge, the architect that built it never saw its completion, he did a runner towards the end because the King said that he would be killed if the bridge collapsed, so the architect didn't hang around to find out. it actually wasn't his handy work that made the bridge fall, it was a bomb from the war. but it was a no-brainer decision to rebuild it after the war had finished.
but it wasn't the stari grad that was my favorite attraction of Mostar, not by a long shot. it was the bronze statue of Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee. now your probably wondering 'why is there a statue of Bruce Lee in Bosnia?' and to be honest, so was i. there are a couple of stories floating around. the first is that Mostar is quite divided by religion and originally they wanted to put a statue of religious figure in the spot but they couldn't make a decision so they asked everyone who was someone that they all liked and they came to the agreement of Bruce Lee. the second is he was chosen by the organizers as 'a symbol of the fight against ethnic divisions', huh? i'm pretty sure Bruce Lee just used to kick the shit out of everyone. anyway, in the end i didn't see the Bruce Lee statue because vandals had pulled it down, i was pretty shattered, i don't think my life will ever be complete.

I enjoyed it here in Sarajevo, not only did i see some really interesting stuff but i met some really interesting people too. now i'm off to Dubrovnik, more when i get there.