Sarajevo and Belgrade

Capital Cities #16 and 17

Sarajevo

Sarajevo is like Christchurch. While walking through the cold darkness to our hotel along the long, straight road that leads towards the airport I felt like we were walking down Memorial Ave, or perhaps Yaldhurst Road. Sarajevo is mostly on a flat area, with a river running through the middle of town (if you can call it a river). So too in Christchurch. There are hills that overlook the city – in Sarajevo they're a little bit closer, and surround the city, so they didn't remind me so much of Christchurch as Dunedin, but we won't hold that against them. They've got a confusing bus system, which is perhaps more confusing than the one in Christchurch, although I've never used the one in Christchurch – I found it too confusing. Both cities have roughly the same population size. And, of course, both have had disasters in their recent history, although the nature of disaster was very different. Whether or not either city will completely recover is still an open question.

Our hotel in Sarajevo was pretty flash. We'd tried to find the closest one we could to the Istocno bus station, which for some reason is where many intercity buses go to. This station is close to the airport, while the other main bus station is in the city centre.

The next day we came downstairs for yet another complimentary breakfast. The bread buns were equivalent to the bread we had in France (delicious). Outside the window we could see bullet holes in the building next door that hadn't been patched over yet. There were many buildings which had a smattering of puncture wounds of various calibre throughout the city – and this is many years after the most recent wars.

It was my suggestion that we should go to Sarajevo, and pop through some of the Balkans. For my first Nanowrimo book (no, you probably don't want to read it) I set the events in this area in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and ever since then I've wanted to visit. While I know a little of the earlier history of this area, my knowledge of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia is sketchy. First up we visited the historical museum, which helped a lot in explaining the conflicts of the 90s, including the Croatian experience.

I'll not try to share my ignorance here, but basically there were smaller states which made up the federation which was called Yugoslavia, and when Tito (their communist dictator for life) died in the early 1980s, the federation managed to hold together for a few years before falling apart. The different states felt that Serbia had too much influence in their federation, and decided to go it alone, one by one. This is in the mid to late 90s, early 2000s. The states are very roughly based on ethnicity/religion, but some of them had very significant minorities who didn't necessarily want to secede, and who made their own militias and declared their own mini-states.

Sarajevo is right in the middle of this, and as the capital of the Bosnia/Herzegovina state, was under siege (sieges still happen, weirdly enough) for multiple years. Hence the bullet holes in the building next to our hotel. The UN controlled the airport, and so humanitarian supplies were able to get in (and there was a famous airport tunnel too, which we didn't see) but they weren't able/willing to intervene in any direct way. Remember how I said that the hills surrounded the city? Well, imagine snipers sitting on the hills around Dunedin, waiting for people to cross the street. It's harrowing stuff, and it's surprising how peaceful the whole peninsula is right now given its recent history.

Having seen the museum, and absorbed a little history, we hit the old town area.

Sarajevo has a whole bunch of mosques, which we probably could have visited, but neither of us knew the correct protocol for doing so. I think one of the daily prayers was happening when we walked past the fanciest looking one, since there were people who looked late running in, so I didn't want to interrupt. We intend to look it up before we get to Turkey, so we won't be committing some horrendous faux pas as ignorant western tourists.

Here's a picture of the outside though.

Actually this is the fountain outside.

The rest of the old town area was filled with people who seemed to be just wandering, like us. The shops were open, and it was more like an open market, with stalls selling clothes, trinkets, metalwork – mostly traditional plates and stuff, but also bottle openers made from the spent casings of .50 cal machine gun rounds, food, and a few tourist-inclined shops. It was Saturday, so we weren't able to go into a couple of the buildings that we might have liked to, but I enjoyed wandering around.

Then we get to the main event, at least in my opinion. Right there on that corner on the other side of the road, on the right. It's nothing spectacular to look at, just a particular piece of road on a relatively insignificant intersection. The place itself isn't exiting. It's the place where Franz Ferdinand was shot way back in 1914.

The shot heard round the world.

Franz was heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and since he was killed by a Serb nationalist, who may or may not have been instructed by persons in the Serb government, Austria-Hungary declares war against Serbia, which brings Germany into the conflict because of a treaty with Austria-Hungary, and brings Russia into the conflict because of Slavic solidarity (and perhaps a treaty with Serbia), which brings France into the conflict because of a treaty with Russia, which brings Germany to invade France via Belgium because it's quicker and they hope to be able to get it over and done with in time to turn around to face the slowly mobilising Russia, which brings Britain into the conflict because they'd guaranteed Belgian neutrality, which brings New Zealand into the conflict, since of course we'll follow the mother country. Such a mess. All of this happened 100 years ago this year, so I feel privileged to be able to be here at least in the centenary year. When we went to Serbia, we saw pictures of the assassin Gavrilo Princip on street corners and in shop windows – he's considered a hero there.

Christchurch and Dunedin put together can't boast that kind of history.

Anyway, for tea we had huge burgers for 2.50ish marks, which is about $2.10. They'd be much more expensive in Christchurch.

We left just as the early morning fog was burning off; from one of the hills overlooking the city we could see dozens of minarets puncturing the remaining low lying mist.

Belgrade

We arrived in Belgrade in the late afternoon – Sunday afternoon. There was no toilet stop on the 7-hour bus trip between Sarajevo and Belgrade. Just FYI. We had arranged to stay with Anna's childhood friend from her time in Kyrgyzstan, who is now living in Belgrade with her husband, working for a Christian student organisation. On Sundays we normally try to go to church, and we were able to go along with Rachel and Bojan to their church. Bojan was preaching, and Rachel kindly translated for us. It was encouraging to visit a church using another language, but worshipping the same Lord. And the initiatives planned by their student organisation, which Bojan mentioned as prayer points during the service, reminded us of some of Campus Church's work in Christchurch. We were made to feel welcome, in spite of the language barrier.

The next day we went into town with Bojan and Rachel – they live on the other side of the Danube, the side that used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was easier for us to stay in the student organisation office, and bus into town from there.

Belgrade is different from other places we've been in the Balkans – it's bigger, shinier, and much more like a modern city. It was nice to be able to understand the bus system. We didn't see much of an old town, but there were a few old Ottoman-era structures – the main one we visited being the Kalemegdan Fortress.

Unfortunately not a drawbridge.

Sort of reminds me of Age of Empires II.

The view over the river.

It's built on the Danube river, right on the border between where the old Austria-Hungary ended and the Ottoman Empire began, so it was a rather important place. Strategic.

We also saw this building.

Saint Sava's church.

Such an imposing architecture. It's an Orthodox church with a capital O, so once they've finished renovating it it will be decorated up to the nines, decked out in bejewelled mosaics and Han-Solo-in-Carbonite style Mary and Jesus depictions gleaming golden in the gloom, illuminated by votive candles, with overhead chandeliers wired up with flickering LEDs.

Perhaps this is my pseudoiconoclastic reformational bent showing through, but I thought that the building looked great with the bare walls.

That evening we found the McDonald's there does a reasonable flat white. I didn't expect to have one of those again until we got back to NZ. We were also able to be involved in one of the student organisation's meetings – with pizza and Bojan interviewing different people. Good times. Such friendly people.

The next morning we posted a box of stuff back to NZ, knowing that we'd be having to reduce our luggage weight since we were flying out the next day. We had to itemise everything inside the box before the dude would post it for us.

Hoping that we'd be filled in on some Yugoslav history, we went to the Museum of Yugoslav History. Instead, since the main part of the museum was closed, we went through an exhibit showing a bunch of gifts given to Tito from different world and regional leaders – this was the ethnographic museum. It was interesting enough seeing swords and knives, hats and bags and pipes, but while the labels on them valiantly tried to give us a context to put the artifacts in, it was more of an exercise in the comparative merits of different things. Which national costume looked the most ridiculous. Which blade the most lethal. Which gun would be best to have in an apocalyptic scenario.

Also on the grounds of the museum was the so-called House of Flowers which contains the graves/tombs of Josip Broz (alias Tito) and his wife. I'm unsure how I feel about Tito; he seems to be rather a mixed character. He came to power in a post-war election which was basically a vote between either Tito and Communism on the one hand, or the old regime, consisting of a king in who was in exile in London and whose family was placed in power by the victors of the First World War. Someone thought it was a good idea to put one sovereign over a conglomeration of nationalities and regions so variegated and disparate that the term Balkanise became a metaphor for fragmentation. Sounds like a fool's errand to me. Tito managed quite well though. On the one hand, he's obviously a dictator. On the other hand, he held everything together, breaking away from Soviet hegemony, forging relationships with famous and influential people all over the world, and as far as I can tell, making a good show of things. The displays in the wings of the House of Flowers paint the picture of an okay sort of guy, sort of a globetrotting Mafia Don, sharp dressing, and sociable. Not exactly the nicest man in the world, but then, I don't know of any influential world leader who would fit that description.

You can see why it's called the house of flowers.

We also visited the Konak of Princess Ljubica. Before going there we didn't know who she was, and after leaving, we still don't know. It's a house/palace set up showing different styles of decor, how the house might have been set up when people were living there. Each room had little informational plaques on the walls telling us what the rooms might have been used for, who lived there, and the style of furnishings, from some time in the distant Ottoman past until the late 1800s or so. Downstairs was a photo exhibition on Belgrade in the Second World War, with pictures taken by a former journalist, who risked being killed each time he took a photo, with photos showing the bombing, the invasion by Nazi troops, the occupation, the bombing again by the Allies, pictures of the resistance, and the street by street fighting when the resistance joined with the Red Army (who by this time was using something like 80% captured enemy vehicles) and the liberation of Serbia.

We now have at least some idea about the more recent history of the peninsula.

That night, after joining in on the English Conversation Club, we went out with Rachel and Bojan to a ridiculously popular place for takeaways. The details are hazy on what the place was called, and even what we had to eat. I had a kebap type wrap, that used a pancake-shaped piece of meat instead of those pancake-shaped pieces of bread to wrap some more meat. The thing probably weighed about a kilo, and was delicious. It's making me hungry right now. Anna had a more traditional wrap type thing, and we were able to see how popular the place was. From the outside it looked just like one of many other fast food kiosks, with a counter and a window that you order from, except that this place had people queueing outside it. During a short lull in customers, the ladies inside never stopped cooking, they were just getting ready for the next onslaught of customers.

We said goodbye to Rachel and Bojan that evening, since we had to leave the next morning before they'd be around. It was good to stay with them, and to have their input on the best way to get around the city, and some inside knowledge on Belgrade. 

The next morning we flew out to Athens.

Dubrovnik and Kotor

Dubrovnik

The bus ride to Dubrovnik was really rather strange. The bus takes the coastal route, so much of the trip we had a view like this:

Complete with dusty windows.

The coastline in this part of the world is a little strange too. To get to Dubrovnik there's a section of road that goes through Bosnia and Herzegovina (it goes through one of those anyway, but since they're one country, it's unclear right now which one it went through). As we saw when we went through Zagreb, Croatia has a policy of checking passports for every entry and exit from the country. This became a little kafkaesque when we had our passports checked and handed back to us when exiting Croatia and entering Bosnia and Herzegovina, and again less than five minutes later when exiting Bosnia and Herzegovina and entering Croatia again. It felt like something from The City and the City. Of course with a history like the Balkans have, it's no surprise that the border is less than logical.

Dubrovnik is pretty, although within the city walls it felt a little sterile to me. Everything is made out of stone: the walls, the roads, the buildings, the churches, the monuments, and some of the souvenirs. There was rather a lot of Game of Thrones paraphernalia as well, since Dubrovnik is the location for King's Landing in the TV series.

While we were there we visited a few churches, and had a look at the memorial for those who died in the relatively recent siege of Dubrovnik, where the old town was shelled by Yugoslav forces who didn't want Croatia to secede from Yugoslavia. It's kind of amazing that such things happened in our lifetimes, but then I suppose this period of relative peace in Europe is the anomaly rather than the norm.

Speaking of conflict, there's a great – if disturbing – exhibit of war photos. We saw everything from Maoist guerillas in Nepal to Congolese child soldiers, and of course the permanent exhibition with photos of the wars during the break up of Yugoslavia. The temporary exhibition is on the conflict in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Congo, which is neither a people's republic, nor democratic. It's so very sad that a country that should be so rich on paper, is so very poor, due in large part to the mineral riches that are there for the taking. The love of money has some 'splainin to do. As does the international community (whatever that is). Obviously the causes of this humanitarian disaster (I want to use a stronger word here, but the only one that comes to mind that sums up the situation is unsuitable for print) are many and complicated, and the solutions will be more complicated, but humans are good at complicated things... Sorry about the rant, I'll continue.

We wandered down the road a little way along the coast that afternoon, missing out on a boat trip to the island.

Stout as walls.

Bland streets.

Ornate churches

More walls

The walled city almost looks out of place here in the tropical surroundings.

Kotor

The next morning we took the bus, leaving Croatia behind, taking the long and winding road that leads to Kotor. Alright, it's not actually all that long, but it's winding. Kotor is another little walled town on the coast, this time in Montenegro. We were unsure how large it actually was, so made sure to book a place near the bus station. As it turned out you can walk across the city in about five minutes (the old town anyway). We were up about four flights of stairs' worth of stone steps, but I'm getting used to carrying the big bags up stairs. Since it was still the early afternoon we went to have a look at some of the sights.

We saw a couple of Catholic and eastern Orthodox churches, and then decided to go have a look at St. Ivan's fortress. I'm not sure who St. Ivan was, but he must have had great aerobic fitness. It was a 45 minute stair climb up to the top of the hill where his fortress was. We're no slouches either (I think I'm probably fitter than I've been in years – so much walking!) but it still took us the whole 45 minutes that the tourist book said it would. We paid 3 euros each for the privilege, and for views like this:

Actually the view from our window.

Another cruise ship, complete with cetacean-emulating exhaust system.

Parts of Kotor - not including the old town

Refreshing to be able to run around the ruins without safety restrictions.

Some old derelict church.

I'm not sure why a saint would need a fortress; maybe he was like one of those warrior monks.

Kotor was cool, and seems to be an up-and-coming place. Just after we arrived that cruise ship you can see in the photos docked, and like Jonah's whale spewed forth a belly full of cruise ship tourists, many of whom were walking up to the fortress at the same time as us. The tourist book suggests that Montenegro is trying to market itself as a more upmarket destination, and while we were in Kotor we noticed pretty flash shops, which didn't seem to be doing much by way of sales. Admittedly, we weren't there in the height of the tourist season.

The next morning we tried our luck at getting to Sarajevo. Unfortunately there wasn't a bus that went at an appropriate time for us directly from Kotor – we had to take a bus to Podgorica, and then on to Sarajevo. Unfortunately, again, it's really rather difficult to find information about the bus system in the Balkans, so we found out as much as we could about getting to Podgorica in time for what we hoped was a bus to Sarajevo. Podgorica isn't a place that I would normally talk about, but it felt different from Kotor. It was much much less tourist-oriented. It's not on the coast, it doesn't have a quaint stone city enclosed in crumbling walls; it does have a bus station though, and at that station we had this meal for just over 5 euros.

If that's the price at a bus station restaurant, I don't know what to expect in the rest of Montenegro. I imagine that in the non-tourist parts of Montenegro for a small price you can live like a king - a king with arteriosclerosis.

The rest of the bus ride to Sarajevo took us through the mountains, up through the mountain roads – some of which were unpaved. While the roads were in better condition than some of the ones we've been on in Canada, it's probably the worst road that goes between major cities in neighbouring countries that we've been on. Some parts of it are only wide enough for one vehicle at a time, so when we meet other cars we have to pull over and let them pass. As I'm typing this up now, there's a curious mix of 80s hair metal, 90s top 40, and what I assume are Balkan folk, and electronic dance songs on the speakers. The bus stops at random locations in the middle of nowhere to drop people off, who then stalk into the darkness beyond the reach of the warm bus, off into the inky blackness of the starless Balkan night. The laptop is running out of battery. I'm enjoying this part of our adventure.

Plitvice and Split

Travelling from Napoli to Plitvice was a long-ish process. Train to Rome, train to Ancona (unexpected bus from Ancona ferry terminal to the place where you collect the tickets and then back again), through passport control, across the Adriatic via ferry (overnight, in the hold of the ship; we slept well enough). By then it was morning, and we'd arrived in Split, only to sit in the bus station waiting for a bus to Plitvice. Breakfast had been included on the ship, so we filled up on bread, cereal and coffee. Yum.

Plitvice Jezera is a National Park in Croatia. It's got waterfalls and lakes, and slightly more expensive accommodation. I suggested that we skip it. We're nearing the end of our time in Europe, and we're finding that travelling in this part of the world isn't as straightforward as it was in Spain or Italy. The railways aren't really in use, and it's hard to find information about buses on the internet. Plitvice was – as far as I could tell – too difficult to get to, given that we'd have to travel for a half day each way to get there.

We hopped onto the bus, and paid our 20 kuna for luggage (luggage is extra in this country – 20 kuna is about NZ$4).

Driving through the countryside I thought, rather profoundly: I like this country. Having come from Italy, where everything is covered in graffiti, it's a nice change to have graffiti the exception rather than the rule. There are little clusters of abandoned stone buildings scattered over the scrub-stippled hills, the infrastructure is in need of improvement, and we're beginning to see signs in the exotic Cyrillic script. Andalusia felt exotic in a Mexico-meets-arabian-nights kind of way. Croatia is exotic in a different kind of way, like a post-apocalyptic backwater, where things are falling apart, but everyone is getting on with their own business. It's also surprisingly touristy, but in a chilled out kind of way; even the people meeting you and asking if you need accommodation for the night as soon as you step off the bus just shrugged when we told them we already had a place to stay.

We ascended into the mountains and a problem became apparent. It began to rain, and then we entered a bank of fog and never left. This is a problem when you're planning on seeing things more than 20m away. We had been hoping to do a bit of that.

Anyway, we arrived in Plitvice, checked into our really rather flash hotel, and suited up to go outside again.

Did I mention that it was cold?

It was cold.

We walked out to get tickets (which we never actually seemed to need) for entry into the park and saw that the lower lakes were closed due to flooding. Perhaps this is why our tickets were half price.

The lakes area is set up quite well for walking tours. There are boats that normally take you across the lake to other trails:

Here's what the boat area looked like:

They had these bus/train things that can take you overland if you're not into walking 3-5km before starting your 3-5km walk. The problem was that the signs in the park didn't say which of the lakes were the lower ones. We made a few educated guesses, and took one of the bus/train things to where we might be able to do a walk from.

We wandered along the boardwalk at the beginning of our walk and managed to squeeze past a group of package-tour tourists, and off into the mist and drizzle.

Some sights:

Waterfalls

More waterfalls

The path was flooded, but like life, we uh, found another way. (Yes it's a butchered quote from Jurassic Park.)

That's a fire salamander enjoying the drizzle. At least someone got some kicks out of it.

There was a bunch of fish valiantly trying to jump upriver, but you probably can't see them in this picture.

The next day we had another complimentary breakfast (too much scrambled eggs and bacon and sausages and weird quasi-yoghurt and toast and cereal for me), stashed our bags, and went to see if we could see anything else.

The day was much clearer!

That's a walkway that was closed down there - but of course there were people down there still. Scofflaws gonna scoff.

It was still rather cold.

We managed to do a proper wander round before hopping on a boat (that was actually running today!) that we hoped would take us to one location, but which ended up taking us back to the beginning near our hotel. Lame.

View from the boat. We got on last, so were right in the middle of a sea of brightly coloured people.

We waited in the cold for our bus to Split, and the weather began to clear enough for a couple of patches of blue sky. At least we got some fine weather in Plitvice, even if right at the end. I'm glad we went, even though the weather didn't work out very well for us.

The bus back to Split was uneventful. Our booking.com host picked us up at the bus station (this was unexpected) and told us we looked tired (this was also unexpected).

There are a few things to do in Split – and a few to do in the surrounding regions. We had one day, so confined ourselves to Split.

Diocletian (whom you may remember as a persecutor of Christians, or perhaps as the first Roman emperor to retire) grew up along the Dalmatian coast, so it's understandable that he'd retire here also. It's also understandable when you see the view. The story goes that he retired to grow vegetables, but having seen his palace, I think it's more likely that he retired to supervise others growing veggies. The palace is/was so big that after he was long gone the town/city of Split grew up inside its walls.

Part of a church

Entrance into the palace.

Not sure what this is, perhaps the other side of the church.

Gate.

We got to see the underground levels of Diocletian's palace though, since it's being excavated. It's not really worth the price of the ticket to get in to see it, especially not when you can see parts of it for free.

Under the palace.

After this we took a walk up the peninsula. There's a hill overlooking the town.

Part of the town. It's quite a cruise ship destination.

Islands off in the distance.

There were a few old stone churches scattered along the peninsula, including this one.

Later that day we popped into the archaeological museum. It's pretty small, but we saw some interesting stuff.

Mosaic. (As an aside, I've always felt it's strange that pictures made from small tiles are called mosaics, but things related to Moses are also called mosaic.)

As a whole, Split is alright. It's kind of like some parts of Auckland with its waterfront area, and kind of like Spain, with the arid landscape surrounding an old town area. If we had more time we might have taken a boat trip to one of the islands, but we didn't, so we didn't.

The next day we headed off to Dubrovnik.

Three ruins

South of Rome is a place called Napoli. That's Naples to any of you still clinging vainly to the anglicised version of the name.

As soon as we arrived in Napoli I wondered if it was a mistake. It seems that the further south you go in Italy, the worse the unemployment rate becomes, and the more like a third world country it seems. On every corner there were people selling things – phone covers mostly for some reason, but also pirated designer handbags, cigarette lighters, and other things I can't remember. Everyone crosses the road by just stepping out into traffic – not that the traffic stops for them at all. There are zebra crossings, so we used those when available, but when in Napoli... It felt more like Jakarta than anywhere else on our trip.

The whole point for going there though was to visit Herculaneum, and Pompeii, both of which are just a short train trip away from Napoli. We went to Herculaneum the day we arrived, and spent the afternoon wandering around the ruins.

I'll assume some knowledge of history here, but broadly speaking, both Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by Mount Vesuvius in an eruption in 79 A.D. Herculaneum was buried in a different way to Pompeii, and so was preserved better. Pompeii is much larger, and was a much more important place than Herculaneum.

When I use the term ruins I use it rather broadly.

Check out the paintwork in this house. It's 2000 odd years old, and looks like it's from the '70s.

Just like Napoli, minus traffic.

This reminded us of Christchurch. It's in the baths. They had a raised floor, with underfloor heating. The floor partially collapsed in the earthquake associated with the eruption, but the mosaic stayed together.

... speaking of mosaics

Pompeii is the more famous ruin, and is so much larger. It's also the place where casts of people were made by the falling ash, so we can see the shapes of the people who died, mostly from the deadly gasses that the volcano spewed forth.

Plasterwork in the baths. Pompeii had a bunch of baths. This reminded me of Versailles or Schonbrunn.

Mosaic copy of a famous painting. This is Alexander the Great, as far as we can tell.

Mount Vesuvius

Many of the houses in the city were blocked off for restoration/preservation, so we could only look at some from the door.

These are wheel ruts worn into the stone.

Some of the houses had their gardens restored to what they would have looked like. I'm not sure how they know. Presumably by looking at the plant remains.

Of course like any self-respecting Roman city they had a theatre,

and an amphitheatre for gladiatorial fights.

Both Pompeii and Herculaneum are well worth the visit. Both are easily accessible via the train. The audio guide is good value at both places, although we did get a little tired of the audio-guide-man telling us we could learn more about the fourth style by pressing 108. 

In case you're wondering, yes, Napoli is the third ruin. Neither of us liked it at first, but it was beginning to grow on me by the time we left. You could say it's hectic and crowded and seedy, although dynamic, bustling and restless could also be applied.