Michelle arranged for us to have a two-hour tour of Sarajevo on Tuesday morning. We were five minutes late meeting our guide in Sebilj Square (a.k.a. pigeon square), which turned out to be fine because our guide was stuck in traffic himself. Instead we met his boss, who was there to pass along the message, and get us started on a historical overview of Sarajevo.
I've been postponing writing about this because there's so much to try to keep straight. As a disclaimer, it's very possible that my facts aren't correct or off by a bit, since we've packed in quite a bit since then and I currently don't have Internet access so I can't fact-check very thoroughly. Please forgive any mistakes. This is also probably way more detail than you want, but keep in mind that this is as much for myself as it is for you.
Sarajevo has a long, complicated history, involving a variety of cultures and religions sharing the same space and being dominated by various groups. Located on what was a major trade route between western Europe and Asia, it's been the meeting place of all manner of people. It's official founding date is 1462, although the area had long been inhabited. The most prominent cultures that are visible today are from when was part of the Ottoman Empire (15th through 18th centuries) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (late 18th century). The market in which we stood is clearly a product of the former; alleys radiate from it, each with a commercial purpose dictated 500 years ago: iron workers, tin craftsmen, leather artisans, you name it, each have their own street with cramped shops.
It was at about this point in guide #1's spiel that guide #2 showed up and took over. We left pigeon square and wove our way through the market, stopping at first at a stop selling the traditional Bosnian (a.k.a. Turkish) coffee sets and the braziers that once heated the central part of houses as well as beverages. Tradition goes that if you're expecting guests you're interested in spending time with, you warm up their coffee and stoke the coals; if you'd rather your guests take a hike, you remove the coals and let their coffee cool, still happily telling them to stay as long as they'd like.
We passed a faded, framed photograph portrait of Tito on one of the shop walls. You wouldn't believe how revered and mourned he is. Yugoslavia under his rule are the good old days, times when everyone had a job who wanted one, factories were built, the infrastructure was reinforced, etc. Now huge numbers of Bosnians are unemployed. Evidence of that is in how many people are out in the streets and in the cafes all the time.
From the market we walked to the National Library, which was originally the town hall, which is currently surrounded by scaffolding. It was intentionally bombed by the Serb army occupying the hills surrounding the city during the siege. Hundreds of thousands of books, many of which were priceless, burned. Now there aren't enough funds to rebuild it, so it's just sitting there waiting for an infusion of cash, which I doubt will be forthcoming anytime soon. All of the postcards we bought of Sarajevo are from the period before the war, when beautiful buildings like this were still intact.
We stood on one of the many bridges that cross the Miljacka River and our guide told us a fantastic story. The site were the library now stands was once the property of a private homeowner who refused to sell it to the Austrian government who wanted it for the new town hall. He figured that they'd eventually give up, but they didn't, so he said that he'd sell them the land but not the house; if they wanted the land so badly, they'd move his house to the other side of the river, thinking that would shut them up. Instead he found himself suddenly living across the river. His house's nickname is now loosely translate as the "house of spite" as is a lovely restaurant with a great view of the library.
We walked up the hill to the Sarajevska Pivara, a beautifully constructed building. It wasn't open at that hour, but our guide snuck us in for a peek at the coffered ceilings and dark-paneled woodwork. During the war the brewery was one of the few safe sources of drinking water, sitting as it does on a spring. The Serbs poisoned much of the water that they didn't just shut off. Down the street from the Pivara is the Franciscan monastery and church, which is constructed very similarly to the Pivara and is the same red color; our guide said that it wasn't uncommon for folks to head to church and end up in the brewery by accident.
After our guide discussed how the monastery had been bombed (I had asked if the Serbs spared the Catholics because at least they're Christian; the answer: nope), I asked him if he had been living in Sarajevo during the war. He nodded, so I asked if he would be willing to share his experience, but not to feel obliged to do so. He said that he was a child at the time, but that his family had been imprisoned by the Serb Army. Later he, his sister, and mother were released into the care of one of the aid organizations and relocated to Graz in Austria. His father somehow managed to survive. Our guide spent the rest of his youth in Graz before eventually returning to Sarajevo, hence his German accent; many Bosnian children grew up there but not all have returned. He kept apologizing for occasionally forgetting a word in his otherwise perfect English, having only given German tours for the past several months. When I explained how Americans generally speak one language well and barely learn another in high school and college, I don't think he could tell whether I was being serious or joking.
We passed the Careva Mosque, which I think is the oldest existing mosque in Sarajevo; even if it isn't, it's still one of them, having been founded in the mid-fifteenth century. The current building is a century younger, but still nothing to sneeze at. It was at this point that all my illusions were shattered and I learned that there's only one real, live muezzin out there calling folks to prayer, the rest of the calls being prerecorded and broadcasted on loudspeakers. Somewhere near here we also passed a brand-spanking-new mosque, which I correctly identified as the gift of the Saudis. They've been very generous with donating the construction of mosques to Sarajevo, always willing to provide places of worship. Folks here wish they would be equally generous with donating practical structures like factories.
After crossing back over the river we paused, astonished, as we spied a Mexican restaurant complete with giant sombrero on top. We opted out of testing its authenticity, but were impressed nonetheless. Back in the market, we stopped by the Morica Han, where we'd had our coffee the previous day, to learn about caravanserai. I was pleased to be able to say that we knew what they were, having visited one in Granada on our trip to Spain. Still, it was pretty neat to hear about this one, learning about the system through which travelers didn't have to pay for their stays, otherwise boosting the economy with their purchases.
We retraced yesterday's footsteps down the Ferhadija pedestrian avenue to the Gazi Husrev Begova Mosque. This time we entered the courtyard and watched a woman prayed on one of the rugs carpeting the porch (I hate to call it that, because it's so big and attractive, but veranda is the only other word I can think of at the moment, and that just seems to much of a cultural contrast). Outside the mosque is a gazebo-like structure (there, I did it anyway) with a fountain for cleansing before prayer. The mosque itself dates from earlier than the Careva Mosque, in 1530. It's been destroyed a rebuilt several times, though. It's the most centrally located and popular mosque and apparently packed during prayer time.
We walked around the side of the mosque to see the crypt, where an important guy I can't remember and can't look up without Internet access is interred. There's also a cemetery, which prompted me to ask my question about why Muslim headstones look the way they do; I'd seen my first yesterday in the park, which were worn down but still kind of like swirled spheres. Turns out that they're designed to look like turbans, indicating where the head of the body lies. The side door of the mosque, the side where the women usually enter and worship, was open, so after slapping his baseball cap down on my head our guide ducked inside with us to allow us to see the incredibly beautiful, airy interior, blanketed by Persian rugs and capped by intricately painted ceilings. We then took a look at the madrasa across the street, which was founded about the same time as the mosque, and is responsible for the large number of students we saw in the Morica Han during our coffee break yesterday.
Literally steps away from there was what was formerly the Jewish quarter. When the Jews were driven out of Spain during the Inquisition, many of them ended up in the Ottoman Empire. The sultan welcomed them in to Sarajevo, not out of the kindness of his heart, but rather for selfish motives: he knew that having Jews around was good for the economy. Originally the Jews were integrated in the community a bit more, but apparently they had a hard time adjusting to Bosnian winters and ended up accidentally causing fires. That resulted in their own Jewish quarter, which was never a ghetto (I asked). The original synagogue was constructed in the 16th century and has been rebuilt several times. Now it's the Jewish Museum, which we returned to visit later that day with Michelle.
A few more steps brought us to the Catholic cathedral, which is absolutely tiny by European cathedral standards. The reason, of course, is obvious: there just aren't that many Catholics in a Muslim-dominated town. On Christmas Eve the church is too small to hold all who come to worship, and the masses spill out into the square in front of the church. Apparently the crowd includes folks from many different religions, because Christmas has become a big thing here.
Just a block away is the Saborna Crkva, the Orthodox church. It's very dark inside and filled with icons, as you'd expect. Since Orthodox Easter had just taken place, the usually private rooms in the back that only the priest ever enters were open to view. In the back of the church was a ginormous scaffolding, not currently in use because they ran out of funds to restore the cathedral after they built the mechanism by which to do it.
Having seen just how close these four very different religious groups live together, it's amazing to think of how melded the cultures were for so long and all the more understandable about why a war might break out along religious lines since all of the cannon fodder is right there. It's all the more tragic, though, to think of people living harmoniously one day and then having things break down the next. Michelle said that Marco's driver lived side by side with Serbs for decades, friendly and peaceful. The day for the siege they up and moved away without a word, and the next day the bombing began.
From the church we walked past the newly renovated (post-bombing) and reopened Hotel Europa then turned the corner to the place where in the spring of 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Archduchess Sofia (who was pregnant; I hadn't known that before) were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, kicking off World War I. I very clearly remember these names from memorizing them during AP Euro and thinking about Sarajevo then as such a far-off place, low on the list of places I wanted to visit, especially since in the late nineties the name was freshly associated with the recent war. And here I was, on that very corner. I had never known much about the assassination, but that morning I learned that the Archduke had been on a city tour and there was an initial attempt at murdering him by bombing at the town hall. After that he was royally pissed and called off the city tour. Apparently his driver didn't get the message, though, and proceeded along. When the Archduke realized he was proceeding, he had him turn the corner and stop. Their car pulled up right next to a sidewalk cafe where Princip happened to have a table. He pulled out his gun and killed them both. Austria attacked Serbia and war broke out.
Our tour was officially at an end at that point, but our guide invited us to join him in one of the traditional Turkish bars for a shisha (hookah) smoke. We declined the offer of the smoke, but said we'd like to have a drink, so we retraced our steps through the market, wending our way through alleys to a tiny little patio bar tucked between larger buildings. We grabbed a low couch under some trees and asked our guide to order for us. We ended up with something our waiter called "juice," but was made from flowers rather than fruit. Initially it was almost too sweet to swallow, but after a bit we got used to it and liked it. Our guide blissed out with his shisha pipe and we exchanged stories more casually. When we told him we were from Oakland his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped, making us laugh that Oakland's rep extends so far and someone who had survived Sarajevo under siege and Serbian prison would feel threatened by our city. When we pointed that out to him, at how folks back home had raised their eyebrows at our planning a trip to Sarajevo, he cracked up.
We then headed back home, where Michelle awaited us with sandwich fixings. After lunch we walked just a few blocks from her house to the Svrzina Kuca, Svrzo's House, which is a good portion of the original estate of a wealthy Turkish family who lived there as it currently is until the mid-20th century. It's traditionally set up as Bosnian families lived for centuries, albeit how they lived when they had loads of money. The curator was busy with a bunch of school-kids, so Michelle began our tour, showing us the "horse garage" (stable), the lazy susan in a cabinet that allowed the women cloistered on one side of the house to serve the men food without being seen, the personal fountain that they paid the town to allow them to install, the ginormous kitchen with coal-burning oven, and one of the many multi-purpose rooms. Each room in the house could be used for any purpose at any time; each one had a bathroom with shower (pot hanging from a hook with a drain in the floor), fireplace/oven with round ceramic facings to distribute heat, a closet for bed linens, a bench with cushions around the perimeter, and a brazier like the ones we saw in the market (I think the Bosnian word is magala; it's one of the only words I learned and it's killing me I can't remember it). You could greet guests, have a meal, or sleep in any of the rooms with only changing a few things around. Very clever.
The curator showed up around then and took us upstairs, showing us a couple of more multi-purpose rooms arranged in ways of possible use, like for a meal and for women's work (sewing). The rooms on the women's side of the house had latticework over the windows to allow them to see out but so no one could see in to look at them. This makes me think of how Bosnian women are now, which is an interesting combination of miniskirts and stilettos and an occasional minimal black drape that still shows off prettily made-up faces.
From Svrzo's house we walked down the hill to the Jewish Museum, the courtyard of which we'd been in earlier. The curator greeted us there also and answered our questions throughout our tour. As I mentioned previously, it's set up in the original synagogue, and it's much bigger than I'd originally though, about 3 or 4 stories tall. The first floor included a headstone from a Jewish Bosnian grave, which is different than any headstone I've ever seen, which is because they're unique to the location; someday we'll have photos to go along with this narrative. The first couple of floors showed the Jewish history in Sarajevo for the past five hundred years. The top floor was dedicated to the Holocaust in Bosnia. The photos of women walking arm in arm through the streets to hide their armbands with the Star of David on them were heart-breaking, although not nearly as much as the oversized book suspended from the ceiling that includes the names of the victims. The museum does an excellent job of personalizing the experience. It was a bit hard to handle after being in Dachau just a couple of days before, but well worth it.
We returned to the Ferhadija again for a stroll, stopping by the eternal flame that honors the victims of all the wars that have torn Sarajevo apart over the years. Michelle commented that when the Russians cut off the gaslines in winter and the eternal flame proved not to be such, a political cartoon ran in the paper with a space heater sitting on top of the flame's usual spot.
Michelle stopped to buy a recharge card for their second cell phone, which we were borrowing, but the Bosnian instructions proved impossible, so we decided to walk to Marco's office to see it and to have his admin fix up the phone for us. As we walked it started pouring down rain, so we were a bit bedraggled when we entered Marco's office. He has a corner office high up in one of the towers, so we got an excellent view of the city from this side, much further west than their home. From there we stopped by a cafe for what Marco's employees refer to as the best burek to be had anywhere. Burek and its sister dishes are basically rolls of phyllo dough lined with filling circling a pizza pan-sized dish, baked to a golden brown. They're cut like pizza also, in giant wedges. They were sadly out of burek itself, which is the meat-filled one, so we had zeljanica, which is filled with spinach, and krompirusa, which has potatoes and onions. Both were delicious but I preferred the latter.
Michelle had to head home to meet the kids at that point, so Drew and I set off further west on foot to see more of bombed-to-hell Sarajevo. We walked only a few miles but saw so much damage, so many buildings that have yet to be demolished and/or rebuilt. Some of them have trees growing out of them at this point; others are basically small garbage dumps. We crossed many "Sarajevo roses" on our route, the marks on the pavement caused by mortar fire filled in with red resin to mark when one or more civilians were struck down during the siege. We stopped inside the Holiday Inn, which has been rebuilt to its previously ugly early eighties architectural standards. Once we were thoroughly depressed and further away than we realized, we made the long walk home. Dinner with the family was very welcome.
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