05-07-03 Sarajevo (Bosnia i Herzegovina)

We are now in Sarajevo, … I am sad that I only get to see the Sarajevo destroyed, from what I heard and I see, it must have been a very beautiful city. We arrived there and somebody was waiting for us… In Mostar the person where we were staying had family in Sarajevo. So even if we didn’t ask, he called and she was waiting for us at the bus. She is making it a business of it. She has different apartments that she is renting and things have to roll. She became a tourist guide for us, we went with her to see what is left of the tunnel that was used to supply the city while it was siege. She even brought us breakfast every day, some Turkish pastry with a kind of cheese, it was good! So we are in a flat relatively close to the centre and really close from sniper were is the famous Holyday inn. What is the most troubling with this town is the way they preserve their past. What I mean is that some holes that were made by mortar, were filled with a red plastic, and those that were with asphalt, you can still see the scar. In Sarajevo, we met a guy from England, he is now travelling a lot because he is an “electrical engineer for embassy”. We had great time with him. We went out in clubs and bar, it was quite refreshing to talk with him, he was really open-minded and had an opinion to share on about anything. Talking about people that we met. I can’t talk about everybody that we met, but I remember two other a guy and a girl from Australia, to say that a lot of Australian are travelling. Later, other people arrived in our flat. A group of American arrived and were in an other room. They were really nice. In fact some of them were working in Prague, teaching English and writing in a magazine. So we went out in Sarajevo with them, we had also nice time with them in our flat. Also in Sarajevo we discovered Turkish coffee, so delicious, but don’t drink the end of it, it is full of grinded coffee. Some bad stuff happened to us in Sarajevo. We were attack buy stupid teenager defending “their” territory. We happen to cross the river and we were going to see a stage were later will be performing some musical event. We were on our way to leave when a small boy arrives and try to talk to us in Serbo-Croatian, of course we didn’t understood. Then other teenager that were on the stage arrived and starting to say that we hit the little boy and they even called us “Nigga” which on the spot I found really funny, I was than but not that much… and then they started to fight, we fought back a little bit as we could they were outnumbering us and we manage to fled without being harm. We then saw soldier from the UN and we ask them if this was an area were tourist are not welcomed. They were from Germany and they were with an interpret, but they say no, it should be all right. So we were fine but a little bit shock. I decided to shave, I was letting my beard grow but I decided, I am better to shave it… It put some shadows over our stay but generally we liked it. Now the post war effect. It is incredible how those people are putting back what started the war and now are working together to build a new Bosnia & Herzegovina. Especially young people and even more girls, I don’t know why but I could feel still the man angry, walking in the streets and you could see that they are still preoccupied and that the scar of the war, only from five years, is still open a bit. But usually, the attraction of European union, I think, is driving them to make big steps to put the country back on its feet.

We decided that since we still have a lot of time, we will make a big loop, so we are going to Bulgaria, Sofia!