Spring snow in beautiful Sarajevo

Despite the conspicuous exceptions different religions have generally co-existed here rather well.

The Old Turkish style Market from Ottoman days

Cemeteries fill spaces left by houses destroyed in the war.

Even on a cold day the faithful overfill the mosque for Friday prayer.

Where Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke Ferdinand

SARAJEVO
Where East meets West


The capital of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Sarajevo is divided between a Serbian side and a Croatian (Catholic) and Bosniak (Muslim) side. A long bus ride from Belgrade took me to a station in the Serbian side. Getting to the other side was as simple as a cab ride.

An old Turkish merchant’s district remains at the heart of the old city. Mosques all around call the faithful to prayer five times a day. Sometimes the minarets are so close together they are in apparent competition, as neighboring adhans echo against each other and the hillsides. Friday Jumaa prayers at noon accommodate overflow crowds and mats are laid out in the courtyards. Turkish soldiers among the SFOR army pray next to men missing limbs, all evidence of the recent wars. In another grim reminder cemeteries are filled with bodies young and old who died in the mid-nineties.

War damage is not hard to find. Bombed and burned buildings are not quite everywhere, but you’ll see them; and shrapnel-torn holes in the sidewalks, filled with red rubber, are called Sarajevo roses. Still Sarajevo is a peaceful and sometimes beautiful city. In the old center, one can simply turn one’s head and the view changes from Turkey to Central Europe. In early March the surrounding hills are covered with snow, and the city extends from the center along the river valley and up the hillsides. Hiking up into a residential neighborhood I see more Islamic cemeteries with dates conspicuously clustered in the mid-nineties.

A woman passes by completely veiled in black, even her face hidden. Otherwise, as in Morocco and Turkey, I see Muslim women with hijab and without. At a college of Islamic studies I chat with a teacher whose hair is modishly streaked and her lips coated with a lipstick that could be loganberry frost. Back in town girls in scarves chat at the Mosque’s gate with girls whose heads are bare.

Guidebooks point out the spot, otherwise unmarked, where Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Sarajevo understandably takes little pride in its historical role as the birthplace of World War I.

Across the river from the old Town Hall, the “National Restaurant” offers great meals at prices that are a bargain for Americans. The outside looks like an ordinary box of a building, but the inside is warm refuge from the snowy outside, and soups and stews combine middle European and Turkish flavors.

Closer to the center there are very modern cafés, some obviously in fashion and crowded with young people. Others, quiet, but clean, friendly and elegant as anything in Paris or Berlin. In a public square middle-aged men play a game of chess on a giant board with pieces almost as big as the men moving them. Open stalls are selling scarves, CDs, food items, underwear.... An old Ottoman caravanserai has been modernized to provide very up-to-date shops on the ground floor and comfortable office spaces upstairs.

Bosnia remains poor and isolated, which doesn’t seem to disrupt local trade. The old Turkish district hawks souvenirs and restaurants offer cevapi (seasoned links of ground meats served in a kind of pita bread) and borek (pastries filled with meat or vegetables.). But trains to Sarajevo are few and far between. And only one line connects it to Zagreb. The bus depot where I arrived was also a bit desolate. Flying in and out of Sarajevo is relatively easy though. I only found out by talking with a travel agent there that Bosnia could not sustain its own air control, a responsibility which is now divided between Croatia and Serbia, who reap payment for that service. In other ways one can see that the no-longer-hostile neighbors who entirely surround Bosnia were still managing to keep it poor, isolated and dependent. I hope to return to beautiful Sarajevo to find the situation improved, at least for their sake! As a visitor, I found nothing to complain about.

Perhaps because of the effort to get in and out, Sarajevans are very welcoming to their visitors. Go see it for yourself! It’s well worth the effort!

Sarajevo is also accessible from Dubrovnik, a much more beautiful city than Belgrade. In fact, a tour of Split, Dubrovnik, and Sarajevo would make a wonderful vacation! Croatia and Bosnia are relative bargains while the Dollar is low and the Euro high.

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