Sarajevo, Bosnia

Bosnia is a very interesting place because of the war in 1992-95, and my trip to Sarajevo was very simillar to my time in Northern Ireland, where most of my time was spent learning about the recent conflict from people who remember the conflict. I find this a very rewarding and responsible way to spend my traveling time.
The main divisions are Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, I found it increddibly interesting that's the way it is decided, 2 races and a religion. And there used to be large Jewish population that came from Spain in 1492 but they either died in WWII or left soon after for Palestine. There are also a decent number of Roman Catholics, and I went to evening Mass on Sunday at the cathedral.

After getting oriented and taking a morning nap, I grabbed a delicious lunch (I'm going to like Turkish food), and went on a tunnel tour.
Tunnel (¨tunel¨) tour - trip out to a small farm house in the suburbs that was the entrance to a tiny tunnel under the airport (where the UN sat) that kept the people alive and fighting inside the city. My guide was born in the war hospital in 1993, in Sarajevo in the middle of the siege. He hates the 'Serbian Fascists,' and while he is careful to point out that his vitriol is directed at only the fascists, he believes that currently 90% of modern Serbian still supports the Fascists. He also has nothing but negative things to say about the UN and their complete ineptitude in preventing the slaughter in Bosnia. He was a good guide, but his views were clearly biased, and it would have been nice to hear a Serbian perspective, or at least a 3rd party view, as he placed all the blame on the fasicsts and their goal of a Greater Serbia and a '3rd Riecht' of the Balkans.

I followed this up with a free walking tour. Same guide, so got to listen to his lecturing again, but also joining me were an older couple, the man was British and the woman was Austrian, who were both converts to Islam, and it was very interesting talking to them during the entire 2 hour tour. They talked about about the various forms of Islam, and how they like the Bosnian tradition, which takes after strongly from Turkish Islam, and is far more relaxed than Arab Islam. The highlight of the tour was being let into one of the Mosques and climbing the very narrow spiral staircase up the minaret for view of the city.

After Mass I grabbed a solo dinner and headed back to the hostel, and stayed up until 2am playing cards and hanging out with the fellow travelers.

I ended up decided that I wasn't going to be able to squeeze in a trip to Mostar, despite the fact that everyone I talked to had been to Mostar. But if you are coming to or from the Dalmatian Coast, it is the most logical stopping point on the way to Sarajevo, and with coming from Prijepolje and heading to Sofia next, I do have a highly irregular travel schedule.
And with this irregularity, I am in for a long bus ride. In Serbia the transportation network is set up with Belgrade as the hub, and I really don't want to go back through Belgrade, so I'm taking the token night bus out of Sarajevo to Nis, Serbia, and then a rather short 2 hr bus ride on to Sofia. It would have been nice to spend more time in Bosnia, but that's simply not the schedule that I have.