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.