Today was a race against time to see as much of Sarajevo as possible. We had to get our transfer to the airport at 1:15 and tried to do as much as possible before that. Highlights of the day include seeing some of the recent war sites, an exhibit in Srebenica, a walking tour covering much of the older sites, a long time in the Sarajevo and Belgrade airports and finally hiking the city walls in Kotor.
Before getting to the day in pictures, a few reflections on traveling through the worst hit part of the Balkans so close to the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre. While getting ready for this trip I read a few books on the area including the Cellist of Sarajevo (totally recommend) and I am currently finishing Love Thy Neighbor (really eye opening). As we travel the more I realize that Americans in general have no clue what is going on in the world. I for one had no idea how terrible the Balkans war was, or what a big role the UN had in allowing civilians to be killed and large cities to be held under seige like medieval times. Love Thy Neighbor and the Srebrenica exhibit are both heartbreaking stories of the war. I don't understand how not so long after WWII that we allowed so many people to be killed in such terrible ways. It is like we never learn anything from history. I also have a better understanding of the driving forces of Islamic fundamentalism. What mostly the Serbs did to the Muslims here is aweful and the world stood by and let it happened. While I don't condone violence I really can see how Muslims can look at the horrible things that happened and decide that the world doesn't support them. Maybe this time we will learn from history, but I doubt it. I am sure 20 years from now we will be going to another site (maybe Syria) and learning about another mass killing that the world made excuses to ignore.
Anyway back to happier pictures of the day
Zach leaving our hostel. It looks a little sketchy on the outside and it is totally dark once you get inside that outside door
We walked toward sniper alley to see sites from the Balkans war. On the way we passed reminders of how diverse Sarajevo is and was. This is a 15th century mosque
The mosque was sitting in the middle of this area full of Art Nouveux architecture from the 40 years of Austro Hugarian rule. Many of the buildings have been pretty much restored, but you can still see the shrapnel damage in places.
Memorial on the Romeo and Julliet bridge. This young couple was shot trying to cross the bridge and their bodies stayed there in embrace for 5 days because it was too dangerous to retrieve them
Memorial to the UN aid. I guess we dropped food aid for the trapped civilians. This included left over rations from WWII and the Vietnam war. Most of the food was not really identifiable. Since this was the only food the people got though, they ate it and this is their tongue in check thank you for the food aid.
The holiday inn on sniper alley where many of the journalists covering the war stayed.
We had a quick break for for Bosnian coffee and Baklava at Morica Han. It was very good, but the bottom of the coffee is really sludgy. (Still better than the nescafe we have often been served around here.
Sadly we only had 45 min to see this exhibit and there were no pictures allowed. If you have been to a Holocaust museum that is pretty much the atmosphere. They had the names of all the dead and showed pictures and movies of the events. They also had pictures of some Dutch graffiti. The UN soldiers did very little to help the people who were being murdered
Eternal flame monument that was actually from before the war.
Markale market (which today is still a market). Here a shell hit during the war and killed 68 people in 93 and another 43 in 95. The wall has the names of all the victims and they left the shell spot covered in glass
This is a Sarajevo rose. They are all over the city and indicate where a shell hit that killed at least 3 people
The big catholic church in Sarajevo
The Latin bridge where WWI started (ok only sort of). Franz Ferdinand was shot near the pink building
Old Ottoman market (16th century I think) that is now filled with shops
Oldest operating public restroom in the world. It is from 1530 and had to be seriously rebuilt due to the Balkans war
Gazi Husrev-beg mosque also from 1530 (and built by the same guy who built the toilet and library). We had hoped to go inside and climb the mineret but due to time we just had enough time to look in the courtyard
When we got back to the hostel the driver was already waiting for us. I thought he was going to kill us since he was texting the entire time and not really looking at the road. Luckily we made it to the airport in one piece.
It was a good thing that I stopped at the bakery on the way back because the airport had no food past security. We had this meat/potato pastery and a poppyseed cheese cake like thing
The plane from Sarajevo to Belgrade was small and we had seats right by the propellers. Good thing it was only a 40 min flight
Grossest sandwhich ever (but note that even on such a short flight they feed everyone). It was like rotten summer sausage, cucumbers and maybe olives. Gross!
Real lattes and cheesecake in the Belgrade airport. We had about 1.5 hours here to kill
Coming into Boca bay. The flight was a little scary coming in because it looked like we were going into the ocean, but that is just because it was a short runway
We got ripped off by a taxi again, although not as bad as Slovakia. Here they just charged us double the price it should have been. We went from Tivat where I flight landed to Kotor. Kotor is a smallish city on the bay with city walls...a little like Dubrovnik but way smaller
We arrived at old town hostel to have shots of some sort of fruit liquor. They invited us to shot night later, but we declined. Would have been great...like 10 years ago!
Our room was quite and away from the party. The entire hostel is in a 13th century renovated building
Catholic church and the mountains at sunset
What do we do when we see stairs? We climb of course. We didn't have enough daylight to hike the entire town walls but we made it up to the church overlooking the town for some great views.
More views hiking down
Dinner was at the Old Winery. The wine was amazing. The food was horrible. Maybe the worst pasta I have had in a restuarant and it wasn't very cheap either
View from our balcony in old town
Tomorrow we have a crazy 12 hour tour that takes us to much of Montenegro. Should be fun!
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