Sarajevo: The City Of A Thousand Sights

          This trip happened because of a gift. When my counterparts daughter went to Sarajevo she gave me a bejeweled spoon. I was a bit surprised by that so I put it into my drawer and forgot about it. Once the semester started I would have my morning coffee and mix honey in it. Wouldn't you believe it but that spoon is the perfect shape for dipping out the honey and mixing it in my favorite coffee mug. While stirring my coffee I would wonder about the place that spoon had come from. I only knew that Sarajevo was the capital of Bosnia, that Archduke Frank Ferdinand had been assassinated there and it had been attacked in the mid-1990's. So I did some research and discovered it was layered in history and culture. I decided to go during my winter break over New Years Eve and told my Peace Corps friends Dave and Abby about my plans. We briefly looked into Budapest but decided on Sarajevo. I had no idea that I would discover a hidden city that's such a unique blend of Muslim history, Austro-Hungarian organization and Balkan cuisine all infused by it's citizens resilient attitude.

          However, we had to get there first. We took the overnight from Skopje to Sarajevo and it was not a comfortable bus ride. Why? Well, the driver and his assistant smoked, with the windows up, for half the trip. I was in the front and couldn't escape the fumes but that's the way it goes sometimes. Yes, it was miserable until they stopped.
           Yet once we got to Sarajevo we called our B&B owner, Marjam, so her son could pick us up. Props to Abby for finding our B&B because it was in the oldest part of Sarajevo, called Vratnik, with the most hospitable owners. Of course after dropping our bags off we went to Marjam's house for coffee and conversation. The first thing I noticed when I walked into their home was the smell of the house. It was nearly identical to my grandmothers in Upper East Tennessee. Looking left, my eyes landed on the Islamic lunar calendar hanging next to the kitchen. Pausing, I looked at it because how many times have I hung my own calendar in a similar spot or checked the Orthodox calendar back at my Macedonian home or walked by the Christian one in my neighbors house back in the States. Stepping into her living room I noticed all of the shelved books and framed art. As I soaked it all in for those few seconds I realized I was absentmindedly talking to Marjam in Macedonian and she could understand me. So I sat down and snapped into the present. Later her other son would come in and we all conversed in English about Sarajevo, their home, and New Years Eve plans. I instantly felt at home in such a warm and friendly place.

The view from our B&B overlooking Sarajevo. 

A typical Bosnian coffee tray.

Homemade coffee and pastry. 

Goofs. 

An old family Kuran. 

          That night being New Years Eve we headed out to see the Bascarsija, the Turkish marketplace, wander  around, snag a bite and let the night come to us.

Picture in picture.

We finally made it.*

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The white markers are graves from the siege. 

*Delicious borek.

Following the siege there were plenty of shells left over. Those that weren't scrapped have been turned into pens. It gives a deeper meaning to the term, "The pen is mightier than the sword." Or in this case the bullet.

**Built in 1462 and located on the bank of the Miljacka River, Bascarsija is the cultural heart of Sarajevo. Filled with craft shops, sweet shops and restaurants it's the place to first explore.

The coolest bar in Sarajevo, Zlatna Ribica.

It was the definition of eclectic. 

I don't know either Dave.

*Winter break has begun.

*It's never dull with these two.

*"Yes, I'll have the supreme without anchovies."

          One thing I don't have a picture of is us in McDonald's. Now, I could try and act like we weren't excited to eat American fast food but we were. It was nice to just chow on a massive Quarter Pounder or as it's known in Europe a "Royal Burger".

*Look closely and you'll see the golden arches. 

Santa Claus band.

          The next morning while Dave and Abby slept I went and enjoyed a breakfast prepared by Marjam. We chatted a bit about New Year's Eve, walking around the center and the food I was eating. After I was finished she brought out some delicious looking sweet dates, sat them in front of me and said, "Probe"! I looked up at her in confusion before we both busted out laughing. She meant to say "try" in Bosnian, which is "пробати". Instead she said it in English and it came out as "probe". Her son's girlfriend was also in the kitchen and she laughed along with us.

          I enjoyed passing by all of the craft shops, seeing the same cuisine my Macedonian town has just with a Bosanian twist. There was a Catholic church, the third largest Jewish synagogue in Europe, a mosque and an Orthodox Church all within a block of one another. I was quite impressed with the many examples of centuries of multi-ethnic and religious coexistence but also how the 92-95 siege only strengthened that attitude.

Proper breakfast. 

*The old trams were a staple of traffic. 

The line where the Bascarsija ends and the Austro-Hungarian part begins.

Pigeon Square. If you drink the water then you'll return to Sarajevo.

The Cathedral of Jesus' Sacred Heart.

*The interior of the Cathedral.

Gazi Husrev-beg's Mosque. Built in 1530 it's the most important mosque in the country. 

The National Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I liked the large structure with the Art Deco statues.

          We wandered around some more heading towards the Latin Bridge. The Latin Bridge was an unassuming location to be so historically significant. It was there that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were assassinated by South Slav Nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28th, 1914.  The Austro-Hungarian empire quickly declared war on Serbia and then because of alliances between countries, the dominoes leading to war fell into place and the Great War began. Click here for a more detailed analysis. 

I couldn't get over that I was standing at the spot where one act led to WWI, the deaths of millions and ended the Old Guards Monarchial rule of Europe.

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Standing in front of the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was bombed and burned during the siege and it's reconstruction was completed last year. It's a beautiful building without many books. 

The Academy of Fine Art.

Inside the restaurant Inat Kuca or "House of Spite". The owner refused to sell his home to the A-H so they met his demands and payed him a sack of gold whilst the house was rebuilt brick by brick on the opposite bank of the river where it stands today.

The restaurant is to the left of the bridge.

More delicious coffee.

I was ready for the national dish, cevapi. 

Two great traveling companions.

*Beautiful shot by Dave.

          All throughout my visit I was blown away by the impact of the siege. It lasted for 1,425 days, the Serbian paramilitary killed 11,000 civilians, including women and children. We went on a tour to the D-B tunnel that's under the airport. Our guide was 18 years old when he helped build the tunnel and then guarded it as a policeman. He was quite honest about his experience and how it shaped him.

In front of the house that hid the entrance to the tunnel. It was never discovered by the Serbians. 

Another Red Rose.

It took four months to construct but the tunnel kept Sarajevo alive.

The tunnel was 800 meters long, one meter wide and 1.70 meters tall. So it was eight football fields long, three feet wide and five and half feet tall at most. 

          It was humbling to see the Red Roses around the city. Each one symbolized not just where a mortar shell exploded but also that a person(s) were killed by that shell. They really gave me perspective on how life was for children growing up then.  During that same time I was watching TMNT, Legends of the Hidden Temple and enjoying being outside.  They were going to school in basements, without heat, and they certainly weren't playing outside due to the snipers and landmines.

One of the larger Red Roses.

This is a statue to the canned pork that was airdropped by the UN during the siege. The canned goods were expired and so the people built a statue mocking it's effectiveness. They're cheeky. 

A building that hadn't been touched since the siege ended.

Each obelisk is a marker, or grave, for someone who died during the siege.

          After chatting, listening and observing the people there I've come away with the understanding of how honest they are about life. They know that it's valuable and can be lost without warning. They respect that people are different from them but just focus on living amongst one another, not hating one another. They aren't going to forget the siege nor do they care if their honest descriptions of it make you feel uncomfortable. Both are lessons we too must apply back home. Erasing the realities of the past only allows for them to be recreated.
         Moving on, it was a tale of two cities since a snowstorm blew in halfway through our visit. NYE was cold but crisp, the buildings and landscapes blended into the clear sky. Once it snowed everything became uniformly distinct. Each hillside home was seen, each building seemed to stand alone but none in despair but with pride. 

Sitting at our B&B's owners coffee shop.

First snowfall of the year for me.

The Orthodox Cathedral.

Sarajevo transformed into a different city after a fresh snowfall.

          One thing though is that everyone, everywhere smoked inside. My coat still smells like a pack of cigarettes. There's also much more to Sarajevo then what I saw.  For example, Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics but we weren't able to see the old bobsled course. The pictures of it are remarkable.

Dave and I were impressed that the coffee vending machine worked.  We would need that coffee as it took nearly 30 hours to get back home.

Morning cigarette with a moving ashtray. 

          I went to Sarajevo not knowing what to expect and I left it filled with substantial appreciation for it. The history, culture, and people were a joy to discover.  Remember the entire idea for the trip came from a unique gift by my counterparts daughter. If she hadn't given me that spoon I don't know if I'd ever had visited such a wonderfully unique, practical, beautiful and resilient city.

*Photo by Dave Strouse
**Photo by Abby Nelson

Fall Beauty and Thanksgiving Dinner

My home away from home.

          Hey there, it's been a while since I've written and that's because I've been focused with work, my daily routine and the perfect Fall weather we had.  I took complete advantage of the weather and hiked, ran, exercised or biked in or around the mountains all month. However, last week Winter began its march from the North and has come to stay. 

Shooting hoops between classes.

Daniella made avjar while the cats helped.  

Spectacular.

This is a little nook underneath the church in the previous picture.  It's a great spot to chill at.

These students live in a smaller village near mine on the way to Ohrid. Every time I ride through I slow down so we can chat and high five. 

The first slava of the season. 

The key to surviving a slava is pacing yourself. Eat slowly, chat often and try not to breath in the cigarette smoke.

This is my store I made during a shopping lesson. Clearly, I wanted to have a coffee and eat breakfast.

Julia had a more diverse store. Many of the students did too.

Alright, these two brothers couldn't be more different but every now and then they have matching outfits.  

I told my coworkers that I wanted to clean off the Halloween decorations and make some Thanksgiving ones. They took the idea and owned it. 

They only wanted me to write Happy Thanksgiving. I loved their enthusiasm so I wasn't offended at all. 

          As you'll see the weather was perfect for nearly the past six weeks. People repeatedly told me that it's been the best Fall in 15 years.

Nearly everyday I was in the mountains behind my village.

I ran, exercised and was never bored with the beauty surrounding me. 

This monastery, built in honor of St. Nedela, is one I ran into. It's between my village and the Ohrid's sister city, Struga.  The word to describe being there is serene.

Here's Ohrid Valley. I've never breathed air this clean nor seen skies so clear for weeks on end.

Petar and I watched Planet Earth together and this is his mountain goat impression.  

I met up with my coworkers to listen to the school director's husband band play. (Say that 10x fast). They were good and everyone sang a bit too.

All that clean mountain air sprouted a burly mountain beard. 

I enjoy shopping and chatting with the people in the bazaar. Monday is the best day to go and I snapped this before heading in.

I teach at two schools. My main one is in my village and the second one is the Central School three miles down the road. This is my sixth grade class playing on their break.

          Obviously I enjoyed just working and getting outside but at the end of it was Thanksgiving. No matter how you spin it, it hurts being away from family.  In lieu of that there was a Thanksgiving Dinner hosted by the American Corner in Struga.  I've been going to the American Corner every Tuesday for Gina's, another PCV, painting classes.  When I found out about the dinner I immediately offered to cook the turkey.  I really enjoy cooking and also made some brownies. Also, on Thanksgiving we the Ohrid area volunteers got together for our own Thanksgiving Dinner. 

No turkey can be made without basting it with butter.  

It was quite the feast and had the youth from the GLOW club and YMLP sit down together. For most of them it was their first experience with Thanksgiving. We made sure to go around the table and say what we're each thankful for.

Just like camp.  

On Thanksgiving Julia and I had a lesson on Thanksgiving and showed them how to draw their own hand turkeys.  

The next day I went to class and found this. 

The end of Fall. Winter is here and has already brought snow to the mountains. 

          All in all, it was a good month and ended well with Thanksgiving. I hope you too had a nice Thanksgiving with friends and family. 

Halloween!

"Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'awl's neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell."

          The past month was the busiest I've had since joining the Peace Corps and there's no sign of it slowing down.  Halloween is a non-Holiday here in Macedonia so I wanted my students to enjoy Halloween while giving it the same build up that we do back home.  Thus, for the entire month of October I incorporated Halloween themes into each lesson for every class in some form or another. Sometimes, it was nothing more than the students creating scary or funny stories from Halloween vocabulary. Other times, they listened to Halloween music or watched film clips from movies.  They all especially enjoyed Michael Jackson's Thriller!

          In my 9th grade English Reading Clubs, they watched Goosebumps, wrote creative stories and shared their favorite treats. By the end of October the kids were ready for a fun Halloween party, so we made masks, listened to music and ate some candy.  They seemed to really enjoy it and I was ready to just chill after a month of preparing each lesson.  

The master craftsmen, and women, at work.

There were zombies, princesses and ghosts.

I could not figure out what the block masks were.

One of the kids brought his Italian Renaissance mask.

I'm always game to have a laugh with them.

The 9th graders made smaller but really detailed masks.

These sixth graders were quite creative.

Afterwards some of the classes wanted to take their masks home and others wanted to hang them up in the classroom. Either way they were proud to show them off. 

          That also applied to celebrating Halloween.  With it being a non-holiday here in Macedonia  many PCV's traveled around to celebrate but I just traveled to Ohrid.  Jones and I watched the Rugby World Cup Final between New Zealand and Australia. (Which was a well earned repeat by the All Blacks) and then met up with Kait and Victoria. Kait was hosting an event for her GLOW club so we helped her get some games started so the girls would chat and relax. Afterwards we went to our favorite pub for a drink and chat. After going full throttle for my kids I was happy to tone it down this year.

Clark is always looking for any excuse to undress.

Victoria was the Ohrid Sharknado.

Dammit Clark keep your clothes on!

I live in Eastern Europe why wouldn't I find an antique gun in a bar.

          Lastly, the new group of Mak 20's were told their site placements last week and, surprisingly, none will be coming to the Ohrid, Struga areas.  Honestly, that means Peace Corps Macedonia was able to put them in areas all over Macedonia and not just near the bigger cities. It's a good thing and gives them all an excuse to visit next summer.