We are in the chaotic metropolis of the capital of the former Yugoslavia, a buzz of students and cafés, giant cement block architecture and swaggering policemen, every Ramones album ever made together for sale on one MP3 CD from a briefcase in an shady alley, Serbian pop music chanting into the streets, as well as political protest alternative music, post-party early morning battles of wit with transit police, Orthodox temples that stood unfinished through the 45 years of socialism, and the feeling of the whole region converging on this 2 million strong city, and we love it.
It has been a while since we got a chance to update, but that is usually a good sign as that means we have been too busy exploring (or being taken exploring by our hosts more accurately) to find an internet café to reflect on it all. We left the crystal clear Adriatic waters of the Croatian island of Korcula 18 days ago, sad to turn our backs on its sun and forests and terraced sandy scrub mountain steppes of olive groves, pomegranate trees, lime and grapefruit and almond and fig and kiwi trees, and tangled vineyards. But we had other countries to explore, and it was a surprisingly easy hitch to Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) with an old Sarajevo taxi driver in a black beret, with whom we spoke no common languages, but he still had us laughing at his stories. BiH is famous for its hospitality, and we were prepared (and not disappointed) for the immediate offers of tiny strong cups of Turkish coffee in a home or an outdoor umbrella’d cafe which often capped off a lift we received from a Bosnian. What we weren’t prepared for was the scenery through the countryside, which felt most potent on the drive to Mostar, but this could have been because it was our first day in this heart-shaped country. The landscape began very rocky and sand-colored, and the autumn changing tree-covered mountains grew larger as we drove further into the center. As in so much of Europe, the countryside is littered with houses and tiny villages every few kilometers, but we were shocked by the state of some of the villages: normal brick or cement block houses stood with a woman tending a garden in front, or children playing in the yard, and next door was a house being constructed, and next door to that was a house that had had a bomb dropped through its roof or a shell explosion at its side ten years ago, with huge gaping holes in the walls where the wind blew through (often more hole than wall), or chunks of cement hanging precariously off rebar, or the shingles of a collapsed roof sliding to the ground. But we were determined that while we were here to learn as much as we could about recent events, what we wanted more was to learn what Bosnia Herzegovina is, as well as the whole former Yugoslavia, framed by their culture and history and traditions, and not only in the context of the war.
Mostar was one of the most beautiful, and most haunting towns we have visited; a city now split into Catholic and Muslim sections. The heart of the town, towered over by Muslim mosque minarets sparkling with Ramadan lights, and the chanted calls to prayer pouring into the streets five times daily, and Catholic church steeples and their great bells chiming out mass times and the hour, is medieval cobblestone lanes lined with Turkish cafés and tiny shops, meandering to the beautiful arched stone bridge over the green river that was only recently rebuilt after being bombed in the war. We stayed there in the first (and so far last) private accommodation in the home of an old Muslim professor who recommended the best walks around the town and good places for local food. While we were out for a stroll gazing at the religious places and the great holes bombed into many buildings that sometimes sported signs that read “Dangerous Ruin. Do Not Enter”, we were surprised at one occurrence that has been repeated at least six times all over the former Yugoslavia: a very old man stopped his bicycle next to us and asked us where we were from, said that he had worked in Canada for some time, and wondered what we were doing in his country. The response “Just visiting Bosnia, we are tourists,” is always met with surprise and delight, and followed by questions about our family and our travels and enthusiastic handshakes and wishes of good luck. It is so nice to be welcomed by total strangers in the street!
The hike out onto the highway to hitch to Sarajevo was a little nerve-wracking, squished between chaotic traffic on one side, and the ditch with three dead cats and the tangled brush fields that we weren’t sure if they contained landmines or not. We visited the Mine Action Centre in Sarajevo later and received a map of the mine locations (that they know of), and so much of the country was covered in red dots and yellow flashes – it was really heartbreaking to realize that we couldn’t read the map names of some towns due to the concentration of dots – we stuck to asphalt the whole time in Bosnia. But within a couple of minutes an extremely friendly journalist and radio station reporter pulled over, excited to see our Canadian flag patches and eager to welcome us to his country. He took us to Sarajevo and told us all about his family and work and his opinion of his country as we drove through the steep mountain valleys “Bosnia is beautiful …and crazy.” he told us painfully in memory of the recent conflict.
We stayed in Sarajevo for six days with an HC host, Zoran, who introduced us to his city and many friends. We spent a lot of time at his abandoned warehouse turned art gallery and artist squat where we hung out every evening eating pite (pastry pie filled with cheese or potato or pumpkin or spinach, and washed down with yogurt) and played table tennis and watched underground art develop and learned about the capital city and its history. His girlfriend, Elma, took us for a great traditional meal and gave us a fabulous tour of the old town and the important architectural elements: within a few blocks of each other are a cathedral, an Orthodox church, a synagogue, and a mosque; Sarajevo is known to be a microcosm of Europe and the place where the east met the west. We learned a lot about the nearly four year “siege of Sarajevo” when the city was under attack in the 1990’s, and a secret tunnel that had to be dug under the airport runway to bring food and electricity and communication with the outside world. The frequent shell marks in the pavement known as “Sarajevo roses” that now collect rain water as puddles and we had to maneuver our borrowed bicycles around, and the semi-repaired holes in the sides of so many buildings, even in the residential suburbs, were a shocking reminder of this time when park trees were cut down for firewood and when these were depleted, other materials were burned to cook on, the best being shoes, and snipers were in the hills of the city, and everyone who could escaped to other countries. This is the first European country we have visited where everyone knows where Edmonton is, as everyone knows someone who went to Canada as a refugee. Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics just before Calgary held them, and we got a city map that showed the Olympic event locations, overlaid with the siege frontlines from less than ten years later. We had heard that Sarajevo was a really cool, cultural place, and we really enjoyed our days there, walking in the parks, cycling, museums, discoveries of Bosnian sweet shops, coffee pit stops that now frame our days and all the great people we met. We are sure that tourism is going to really expand in the coming years as the city is being rebuilt.
The weather is becoming colder as we journey further from the sea, and the day that we hitched to Novi Travnik to visit our next HC host, Sandra, chilled us to the bone. As always, we were taken out in a flourish of hospitality to sample the regional wine and beer, and for the local cevapi experience (grilled minced meat and grease in a spongey “bun” with yogurt), and for night time views of the churning river, traditional Bosnian houses and illuminated mosques and churches, always accompanied by lots of story sharing from all parties. Sandra and her friend were translators for EUFOR (European Union Forces) that have since taken over from the UN, so it was interesting to hear about working with the Dutch soldiers, and to realize that most other foreigners in Bosnia are here on some sort of assignment with EUFOR or NGO’s. We had a great sleep in her flat, only startled once by her sheep-sized cat, and were set on our way on the lengthy journey (by European standards) to our next destination of Tuzla.
Igor and Jasmina, university student HC hosts, were very excited to welcome us to their pretty town, and take us out to see the historical places and our first Bosnian live band that played their own tunes and covers of 1980’s Yugo-rock. It was cool to see a younger crowd’s enthusiasm for their town and the future. Next we visited a village close to Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian Republic, one of two entities that Bosnia and Herzegovina is now divided into, the other being the Federation. It was a bit of a shock as we crossed into the new territory and watched all the signs morph into the Cyrillic alphabet, the names of our destinations only occasionally recognizable by the shape of the word (a bit) if we squinted. But Mike is always good at picking up languages and bits like this, so he is nearly fluent now in reading Cyrillic, even if he can’t translate what he can read from Serbo-Croatian into English.
We visited Tamara and her family for three days here, and it was like a little enclave of Canada far from home, as she had lived in Winnipeg for seven years (she even had maple syrup!) and now works with NGO’s here in Bosnia. It was nice to take a couple of days off to relax, and we filled our first day with autumn walks through the village, watching the fields being harvested by horse-drawn ploughs. We were photographing three of the biggest pigs we had ever seen, when a very old farmer leaning on his gate waved us over. We thought we were in trouble for photographing his livestock, but instead he led us into his shed, lit a small fire, and demonstrated for us his blacksmith skills! He showed us how he makes chain links with all the traditional tools, then illustrated how if there is no money to buy matches, he can pound a nail till it turns red-hot and light his cigarette off this. We were well impressed. Then he took us on a tour of his farm, showing us his wood pile for the winter, new calves, chicks, and more squealing piglets. Then three guys from the village pulled up, two on a horse-drawn cart and one in his new car, and we learned how to shoe a horse! It was awesome to see this guy at work, and again no language skills were needed; then he motioned that the show was over, and we continued down the road to buy vegetables at the shop on the highway. I wonder what he was thinking, “Oh, a couple of foreign-looking kids are walking down the road, I will teach them how to shoe a horse.” But whatever his train of thoughts, we were grateful for the experience.
Tamara and her parents gave us a lot of context to our experience in BiH, we enjoyed exploring Banja Luka, and watched a couple of excellent films about the conflict: “No Man’s Land”, and “Warriors”. She even recorded sound bites of us for her radio station, Bosnia Express, so now occasionally Bosnian radio will cut out to our voices, and this brief experience gave us much more respect for the work that Karyn is doing. Then we set out for a new (to us) country of Serbia Montenegro.
Our first Serbian stop was in Novi Sad, a really pretty town where we met Marco, his family, and dozens of his biology student friends, and went out to his cottage for the weekend. The excursion was first presented to us as “bird-ringing at mine cottage”, which to us sounded like a hunting expedition on dangerous territory, but we teased out the meaning to be bird-tagging at his cottage. So there we were on the banks of a misty river, helping a string of Serbian biologists set up light nets that trapped swooping kingfishers, song thrushes, robins, and blue tits (along with all their jokes) so they could be examined, tagged, and placed into our eager hands to be re-released. The rest of the weekend was consumed by sitting around the picnic table in the crisp air, cracking open walnuts found in the grass, eating berries and sweet apples from the trees, fish caught by Marco’s grandpa in the river, learning the production process of (and sampling) “rakija”, Serbian brandy that…I can still feel warming my esophagus a week later, and being taught to identify owls by their hoots. The last day out on the riverbank a new tradition was instigated that involves finding a tangled field of pumpkins, forming opposing teams, and hurling them at each other, and hoping no one else’s aim has been perfected yet. It makes for some good photos.
And that (and a very kind hitchhiking lift) brings us to the big city of Belgrade, our host, Svetlana, and her protestor student friends who have toured us all over the best parts of the town. And it is true, that Serbs really know how to party (we are exhausted); the only potential rivals that we had the good fortune to be acquainted with were the Irish. Tomorrow we are off to Kragujevac, then Nis, and after that we will see which direction the road winds. But our final destination is still Ankara!
Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone at home! We are sad that we have missed this holiday two years in a row now, but Christmas is coming soon!
Ziveli! (cheers in Serbian, except with a totally different alphabet)
