It Happened in Bosnia

I was only in Bosnia for a short time last spring, but it was long enough to know that I wanted to go back.  I told my students I was flying to Sarajevo on Thursday, and one of them said, "You go to all the weird places."  Maybe so. I can't explain it, but I am fascinated by the Balkan region.  

This blog is more-or-less a travel blog, not a political one. When you travel to the Balkans, though, it's hard to leave politics out of it. Before planning my last trip to the Balkans, I had a vague sense of what had happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Fighting broke out among the Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. They all hated each other, and had been killing each other for generations…and that was a good enough reason for the rest of us to stay out of it.  All sides had all committed atrocities; therefore, they were all equally guilty, right?

I don’t think so anymore.

At the beginning of the war, the rest of the world tried to help stop the war by refusing to sell or give any of the fighting parties weapons. Sounds good, right? No weapons, no fighting. The problem is that this left Croatia and Bosnia at a gross disadvantage; neither had a real army. The Serbs, on the other hand, had all of the Yugoslav arsenal at their disposal.  

When I heard of the war in the Balkans back then,  I was under the impression that fighting was all over. Not true. None of the actual clashes were in Serbia; some of the fighting was done in Croatia, and a lot of it happened in Bosnia.  Even twenty years later, many shelled buildings serve as a reminder.

      



Of the more than 100,000 killed or missing at the end of the war, over 68,000 of them were Bosnian Muslims*.  I believe it, too. I have never seen so many cemeteries –with such new-looking headstones—as I did all over Bosnia. 

part of a cemetery in Mostar; most of the people buried here died in 1993

During World War II, Croats murdered many Serbs; the Serbs used this as a reason to attack the Croats in the 1990s. The Serbs better hope that the Bosnian Muslims don't use the same reasoning in thirty years.

 

 Bosnia, twenty years after the war

 

 

 

 

*From The War Is Dead, Long Live the War, by Ed Vuillamy. The numbers come from a thorough analysis by two Polish investigators, Zwierchowski and Tabeau. They have been criticized by both Bosnians (who think the numbers are too low) and the Serbs (who think the numbers are too high).   

 

 

More of Croatia!

Wow, it's been a long time!  I have a lot to catch up on.  My last post was about Split and Dubrovnik, but that was not the only time I had been in Croatia. In October of last year I spent nearly a week on an island near Zadar.

I used most of the time in Preko to relax, but there was time for a little exercise. My friends were going cycling, and that's not really my thing, so when the girl at the tourist office suggested I walk up to the ruins on the hill, I thought, why not?  She said it was only a 30 minute walk.  My general rule is when someone from Europe tells me how long it will take to walk somewhere, I double it. So, one hour to the ruins wasn't bad.  It was more like an hour and a half on a windy road.  

Above: I probably should have known it would take more than an hour to get to the ruins; I couldn't even see them. Below: At that point, I thought I had to be halfway there--I wasn't...not on that windy road!)

Just when I thought I had made it...there was one last leg up to the ruins.

 

It was a little scary because there was NO ONE anywhere.  Occasionally I would hear a car or a plane, but that was it.  Once I got to the top, I turned my iPad to roaming, and posted a picture on facebook. I figured, that way, if anything happened to me, people would at least know where to start looking! It was worth it, though, because from the top I could see the other side of the island. 

 

 

While we were in Preko we took a day trip to Plitvice National Park. I remember thinking it was pretty when we were walking through it, but when I look back at the pictures I see just how amazing it is. Here are just a few:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Split

The last place on the trip before going back to Frankfurt was Split, Croatia.  Split was like Dubrovnik, only bigger, older, and (to me, at least) with more personality.

 

 



 

 

It was also hot.  It was supposed to get up to 70 degrees that day, but I think it was closer to 80...and I didn't have clothes for that kind of weather.  In Dubrovnik I had bought a Croatian national soccer team jersey for my brother, and I had to wear it in Split (Sorry, Will!). I was much more comfortable (some gelato helped, too), but I have never felt more like a tourist.     

 

via

 

 

 

 

24 Hours in Bosnia

After Dubrovnik, it was on to Bosnia. We stopped in Medjugorje, a small town that has become a pilgrimage site for Catholics. In 1981 several children from the area reported seeing the Virgin Mary on top of the hill; her message to the children was that members of all faiths are equal under God.  It makes perfect sense to me that Mary would appear and give that message to people in Bosnia; what I don't get is what those kids were doing up there.

I am sorry to report that I didn't make it to the place where the children saw the Virgin Mary.  I tried, but I went about halfway. Some of the rocks had sharp points, and most were slippery because of the rain.  I am a wimp.

I got this far...



...and then I stopped. You can see part of what I didn't climb below.

Next stop was MOSTAR.

 

Above: the famous Mostar Bridge; when it is warm, guys will dive off the bridge for money (the water was still too cold in April). Below: the marketplace in Mostar; it reminded me a little of the bazaar in Istanbul, but without people hassling you to buy stuff. 

We only had a few hours to spend in Mostar, because we wanted to get to Sarajevo before dark. We barely made it. By the time we checked in the hotel and made our way to downtown, the sun was going down, which is why I don't have many pictures of Sarajevo (Who cares about photos??? We had to buy stuff before the shops closed, and we had to eat!)  I can't explain it, but I just got a good feeling about the place...so much so that I have already booked a ticket to go to Sarajevo on a long weekend next fall. So, consider this a very short preview.

 

The famous bridge where Serb Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand and set off WWI. Its original name was the Latin Bridge, but after the assassination, it was named after the assassin, Princip! Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, it is again called the Latin Bridge.

 

 

 

 

I took a picture of the restaurant so I will remember it for next time.  We feasted on cevapcici, sudzukice, salata sopska, and kajmak--all for about four Euros per person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

downtown Sarajevo

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we were drove through the Bosnian countryside, en route to our last stop on the trip: Split, Croatia.

 

 

 



Dubrovnik

I was so excited to get to Dubrovnik! I had heard so much about the walled city that I was sure I would fall in love with it.

I guess I had heard too much.  Dubrovnik was beautiful, but was it more amazing than what I had already seen in Montenegro? I am not sure.

 

I think I had imagined Dubrovnik to be a lot larger than it was. We seemed to be walking in circles, asking, "Is this it?"  I was also wondering how where we were could be the "old town". Dubrovnik was shelled a lot during the war, but it has all been restored.  It may have been an old town, but it all looked pretty new.  Nothing seemed out of place; it was too perfect for me. I'd be willing to give it another try, though, if I had the opportunity. :)

The restored post office; the posters show what the building looked like during the war in 1991 

 

 

 

Montenegro

After Albania, we headed to Montenegro.  Our destination was the Bay of Kotor, but I didn't know for sure if we were going to make it that day. One reason: JG was agressively driving through the mountains and the rain; two, there were lots of narrow roads, some of which were under construction; three, it was so beautiful that we kept stopping along the way to look (and take pictures, of course).   

above: the coast on our left; below: mountains on our right 

short detour: Orthodox monastery on the coast near Petrovac



Above: Orthodox icon at the entrance of Budva...it's a little fuzzy because of the heavy rain. Thanks to the weather, though, we had the old town of Budva to ourselves!

Three of us were on this road trip, and all three of us had Montenegro as one of the highlights of the trip. That's pretty amazing considering it rained about 75% of the time we were there. Maybe it was because we had more time to relax there than any of the other places (we were in Montenegro for TWO days!), or maybe it was just that the whole country looked like a postcard. 

 view of the Bay of Kotor from our balcony in Muo

old town Kotor; at night the fortress in the mountains is lit up

more clouds than tourists in old town Kotor

On our way out of Montenegro, we still kept stopping to look. One place we stopped to look at more than once was Perast and its man-made island, Lady of the Rock.

above: town of Perast; below Lady of the Rock island, created in the 15th century