Sarajevo
Trip Start
Apr 01, 2011
1
35
73
Trip End
Jan 26, 2012
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
For me, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Sarajevo is, "host city of the 1984 Winter Olympics," which it was, back when it was a part of Yugoslavia. Like Calgary, who hosted the next Winter Olympics in 1988, Sarajevo is still quite attached to the Olympic legacy. Their Olympic mascot, Vučko the wolf, can still be seen in a number of places around the city.
Unfortunately, Sarajevo has had a few other things going on since the Olympics in '84 that have overshadowed those couple of happy weeks 27 years ago. Between the spring of 1992 and the end of 1995, Sarajevo was the site of the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Artillery and mortar placements in the hills above the city regularly bombarded the buildings during the siege and snipers took shots at the inhabitants as they tried to go about their day. Throughout the city you can see memorials in the pavement called “Sarajevo Roses.” These memorials are made of red resin that fills in the shrapnel holes in the street in locations where people were killed by artillery or mortar attacks. It was strange to be walking down a busy street in the downtown and see these embedded in the street, reminding us that not long ago, this very street was a battleground. During the siege, the inhabitants of the city were able to get food, electricity and fuel into the city, as well as bypass a weapons embargo and bring weapons in to the city. They did this by digging a 700 meter long tunnel that went under the neutral UN safe zone of the Sarajevo airport, and ended up in the basement of the garage at a small house on the other side of the airport runway. This tunnel was dug entirely by hand and was started at each end with the diggers meeting right underneath the airport runway. Most of the tunnel has since collapsed but a small part of it is still open and we were able to walk through it. It was slow going as the tunnel was only 5 feet tall and has wooden beams reinforcing the ceiling. I could not imagine walking the entire 700 meter length pushing a small mining cart of supplies or carrying a 50 pound pack on my back but thousands of trips were made through this tunnel doing exactly that. It was because of the tunnel that the city was able to hold out for so long during the siege.
One of the other infamous events in Sarajevo's history happened much earlier in the 20th century, back in the early summer of 1914… Throughout history, Bosnia has belonged to different empires and in 1914, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was a significant world power in those times. Not everyone in Serbia was happy with Bosnia belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire though and wanted to send a message to the Austro-Hungarian emperor about their displeasure. One fateful June day when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were driving through Sarajevo, a group of Serbian sponsored assassins were waiting for them along the planned motorcade route. As the motorcade was driving through Sarajevo, a bomb was thrown into the Archduke's convertible but it bounced out of the car and injured a few people in the car behind them, leaving Franz Ferdinand unharmed… Later that day, a second assassin was waiting for the Archduke to finish his speech and continue along the planned motorcade route. The Archduke was not expected to pass the location where the second assassin was waiting for another half hour so the assassin ducked into a deli a block down the street for a bite to eat. Unbeknownst to him, the Archduke cut his speech short and decided to go to the hospital to visit the people injured in the earlier assassination attempt. On the way to the hospital, the Archduke’s driver took a wrong turn and when the driver tried to reverse the car, he stalled the engine, directly in front of the deli where a young man named Gavrilo Princip was walking out the door with a sandwich in one hand and a gun in the other hand. A couple of quick shots and the Archduke and his wife were dead, sparking a battle between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia which through a series of military alliances with other countries, quickly turned in to World War I.
We went on a walking tour of Sarajevo one afternoon and learned a few interesting things about the city. Sarajevo had been called “The Jerusalem of Europe” because in the past people from numerous different religions peacefully co-existed in the city. A good example of this is, in the small core of the old town, two Muslim Mosques, an Orthodox Christian Church, a Catholic Cathedral and Jewish Synagogue are all within a couple of blocks of each other. Although a lot of that historical tolerance seems to have been damaged during the most recent war, the buildings are all still there hopefully awaiting the day when everyone is able to live together again in peace. During our tour of one of the Mosques, we passed through a Muslim cemetery and learned that each grave has two markers, one to mark the head end and the other to mark the foot end of the grave. The bodies are placed in the graves on their sides, facing Mecca and the markers for the head end of male graves have a turban on them. One thing that our tour guide was very excited about explaining to us was that Sarajevo was a very advanced city during the middle ages. Shortly after Sarajevo was settled, when the rest of Europe was still "wallowing in shit" Sarajevo had public baths, sanitation and clean drinking water available for everyone. There are still many public drinking fountains around the town, and in the main square of the old town there is a very large public drinking fountain that has water flowing out of taps on two sides of it. There is a legend that says anyone who drinks water from that fountain will return to Sarajevo in the future. I drank some water from it and then watched some dogs and pigeons drink from the fountain while I pondered the fact that the basin on the fountain was the perfect height to be used as an impromptu urinal… I don’t yet know if I will return to Sarajevo in the future but if I do, I think I’ll skip drinking from the public fountain. Sarajevo was also the first city in Europe to have a regularly scheduled electric tram system and the second city in the world, after San Francisco, to have an electric tram.
The day after we arrived in Sarajevo was the opening day of the annual International Folk Dance Festival in Sarajevo. We attended the opening ceremonies and watched performances of traditional folk music and dancing from different areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as many other countries in Central and Eastern Europe and even an entry from Saudi Arabia.
Comments
I am really enjoying following along on your journey! I am also learning things about places I would never have considered visiting, except you guys are making it sound so fascinating :) Thanks for writing all these entries and posting pictures.