My alarm clock rang at 5 o’clock, by the time the first call for prayer sounded from the close by minaret. I had recently found out that there was one working train in Bosnia since last year, connecting Mostar with Sarajevo and I had decided to take it. It left punctual at 6:40 and was one of the best trains I’ve ever been in. There was so much space that my feet could barely touch the footrest. Even a very tall person could travel very comfortably in this new Talgo train.
It took me through incredible landscapes, always next to the river, while the sun was rising over foggy villages and high mountains that were reflected in the still water.
Apart from the landscape outside, the TV-program of the train also had a special surprise for me. The moment I looked up to the screen I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; two very familiar faces looked down at me: Jonan Alonso and Joseba Usabiaga – I was seriously watching “Handia” with Bosnian subtitles!
I arrived in Sarajevo after only 2 hours and took the old and shaky but very cool tram to the city center. I had looked up a hostel online but, as it had happened before, my backpack got too heavy and I just checked into the first place I could find. My new transitory home is very basic and not very nice, I have to learn to prepare this stuff and then stick to the plan, I think.
I strolled through the city center for a bit during the morning and got to know the bazaar area with its little shops where people would sell Turkish coffee sets, other things made of copper, decorated table linens and different souvenirs made out of bullets. This area is very oriental-Turkish, there are coffeeshops, Döner and Shisha places everywhere and the whole Bazaar is covered by a smokey cloud smelling like grilled meat. When this setting is combined with the Adhan sounding from the city’s minarets, it’s very hard to believe you are still in Central Europe.
After spending the whole day here, I have to say that Sarajevo is one of those cities I cannot easily built up a clear image or feeling about. I had expected to see more destruction, more bulletholes and signs of the war but the damage was much more visible in Mostar than in Sarajevo. It is also more Muslim that I had expected, even if I don’t know why I hadn’t expected this and it is also smaller than I had expected. There are Mosques, some churches, old houses, very beautiful buildings, very ugly buildings, new houses, houses with cupulas, houses with wooden roofs, houses with flat concrete roofs, grey houses, colorful houses, fancy shops, shabby mini-markets… short: my first impression of Sarajevo is that it doesn’t fit in any categories, it’s mixed and diverse.
One of the first places I came by and one of the most impressive buildings of the city is Sarajevo’s town hall and I decided to visit it. The building was erected in 1894 during the Austro-Hungarian period and is designed in a pseudo-moorish style with beautiful painted decorations and ornaments everywhere in the in- and outside. It had been destroyed during the war, together with almost the whole inventory of the Bosnian National library which it accommodated when bombs and fire hit it. It was recently reopened in 2014 and is used in its original function as town hall again. Many of its rooms are open to the public and work as a museum, telling the history of Sarajevo, the successions that led to the first World war, the different historical episodes that affected Bosnia and Herzegovina and the most recent war.
Just to compare, this is what it looked like in 1994:
In the afternoon, I met my Indian friend Abishek, whom I had met in Albania and who is currently living in Sarajevo. We decided to take the cable car to enjoy the views from mount Trebević but it turned out to be closed because of maintenance works today. It had just been reopened last year after its destruction during the war.
We decided to walk up the mountain and met two Germans who joined us on the way. Our main destination was the old bobsleigh that had been used during the Olympic winter games in 1984 here in Sarajevo and that is now covered in Graffiti.
With destroyed feet and tired from two consecutive very short nights, my day ended in the hostel with some awkward conversation with the weird guys that are staying there.
