After the Tunnel Museum we piled back into the car and headed into Sarajevo proper. There's only one main road into the city center (or "Centar," as it is so conveniently in Bosnian) and that road is probably the one of which you've seen photos. It's a wide multi-lane boulevard with a tram (one of the first electric ones in the world) running between. The buildings lining it still pockmarked from the attack on the city just over a decade ago provided a reminder, if having seen Welcome to Sarajevo recently wouldn't have done the trick, that we were very close to what was the front line of the war.
We drove past buildings that have yet to be rebuilt and aren't much more than rubble and the Holiday Inn, constructed for the Winter Olympics, that housed journalists during the war. We passed Marco's the Unitek towers, in which Marco now has his office, which had been fired upon and burned. There was plenty of new construction, much of which is quite recent (Michelle remarked on seeing new buildings since her last trip on one of our routes) and much of which they've seen happen over the course of their two years here. The signs of revitalization are inspiring, but the remnants of war are just plain devastating. Just before we turned the corner to head into the old town where they live, we passed the National Library, which was intentionally targeted and burned during the war, destroying many thousands of books. It's now surrounded by scaffolding but isn't being worked on continuously because of lack of funding.
Michelle and Marco live a few blocks above the Baščaršija square, where pigeons flock near a fountain that's provided the locals with water for hundreds of years. We stopped by their house to drop off our stuff and then set out on foot through the bazaar that sprung up during the rule of the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called Dveri, a cozy place decorated to feel like you're outside on a patio even though you're not. We were the only customers at that hour and enjoyed having the space to ourselves. Michelle ordered us kajmak and ustipak, which I could call cheese and bread but it wouldn't do either justice. I'll quote what kajmak is from our guidebook (the Bradt guide by Tim Clancy): "The most difficult of all cheeses to translate. It is the top layer skimmed from milk, creamy and extremely tasty." He's right. Ustipak is like a giant cinnamon roll without the cinnamon or icing. Put them together and ohmigod. We had a giant mound of the stuff for the table, and it was all gone by the end of the meal, mostly courtesy of Michelle and me (I spread it on my bifstek, which had to have been from a very recently deceased cow it was so fresh, and she ate what was left with her spoon). I'm still full from dinner tonight but now I could go for some kajmak. We were horrified to hear that folks here make pizza with ketchup and kajmak, which is about the only time I could see kajmak being ill-used.
Stuffed to the gills, Marco said it was time for coffee, at least for him and me. We walked a bit to the Morica Han, now a cafe and rug shop but formerly the hotel for all the visitors during Turkish days. Folks could stay for free if they didn't have enough money. We settled down in the comfy chairs surrounded by students filling the air with the smoke from their cigarettes (Everyone smokes here; why worry about lung cancer when you've survived a war? I'm serious; that's the justification.). Marco ordered the two of us "Bosnian coffee," which is the equivalent of Turkish coffee, but you can't tell a Bosnian that. It arrives in a shiny copper pot with a tiny cup like an espresso cup in a matching copper cupholder (as I termed it), to keep it hot. Accompanying it are lumps of sugar and Turkish delight (also don't call it that). You gently stir your coffee so that the grounds don't get too mixed in, then pour it in your cup. You then dip in your sugar cube and slowly eat it, sipping coffee along the way. The Turkish delight tastes a lot like rosewater, which I've decided makes sense because making food out of flowers is common (so I learned later). Properly drinking Bosnian coffee can take hours, but we didn't linger quite that long. I was lured over to the shop with Michelle pretty quickly; I plan to head back there tomorrow.
We returned to the house for a couple of hours and then Drew and I set off again on foot. We started off in Baščaršija again and joined the Sarajevans on their evening stroll, although to be fair there are always masses of people walking the Ferhadija, which is a pedestrian zone. It starts in the Turkish section and then moves through the part of town with the distinct Austro-Hungarian stamp on it. It's fun for people-watching and to see how thoroughly melded all the cultures and religions are here. You pass a mosque and then a church and then a mosque. We ended up in a hillside park where centuries-old gravestones compete with the new cemetaries that have necessarily sprung up all over the country. More than 11,000 people were killed in the city during the war.
We headed home for dinner and spent the evening hanging out with the family, hearing the muezzins from the many minarets all over the city call folks to prayer. I was enchanted by the sound, never having heard it before; I was disappointed not to have in Tangier. Since Sarajevo has almost 200 mosques and it lies in a valley, the sound echoes off the hills. It's really something. I was deeply disappointed the following day to find out that modern technology has long since reduced the number of actual muezzins making the call to a mere handful, but it still sounds neat even over the loudspeakers.
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