After days of waking up at 5 and running to stations, I spent the morning with a calm breakfast and some planning for my next days. I finally decided to go to Zagreb instead of Belgrade. Although it interests me less, I thinm Serbia deserves a more extent and intense visit with more time in the future instead of rushing through it for one day. I booked a hostel in Zagreb so I couldn’t change my mind anymore and then headed out for a walk along the river. It took me towards the part of the city with higher buildings, the university and a mix of old and super modern city scape.
I came by the National History museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina and decided to go in. This was not about historical facts anymore, nor about stories of tortured soldiers, but about the life of civilians during the war. Starting with a photographic exhibition of before-after pictures of Sarajevo the expositions got more intense with ever room.
One part was about children born because of the war and their mothers – children stamming from war related relationships, mainly rape by opposing party soldiers or humanitarians. I hadn’t even thought about this group of people before reading these stories and seeing the photographs of mothers and their daughter and sons. They have not only be deprived of a normal childhood and a father but also of having any sense of identity. People my age, with very complicated childhoods and family relationships, discriminated and marginalized, trying to find a way of defining themselves and getting accepted by society. Mothers having to accept a child that reminded them every second of the moment in theirs lives they wanted to forget most. Stories between love and hate and shame and pertaining and forgiving. There was one girl with a Norwegian father and nationality, having to explain to everyone why she had never been to Norway, didn’t speak the language, getting discriminated by the Bosnian state and society as well as the Norwegian. Others that had been rejected by both their parents right after being born.
A different room exposed artifacts of daily civilian life during the war, like hand-crafted stoves, food from humanitary aid, cans of oil marked with “USA – do not sell or treat”, pieces of newspapers, socks, water canisters etc.. Next to the artifacts, war photographs with short subtitles. Some of them I wished I had not seen.
Walking around in the streets afterwards, I saw people, especially those my age or older, differently. What had upset me in form of a photograph was their reallife past. What were their stories? How often would they remember their traumatic experiences in everyday life now? How many friends and family-members had they lost in sniper-fires? How long does it take to forget, to heal, to continue, to forgive? Probably one lifetime is not enough.
Thinking of a modern European capital that had recently hosted the Olympic games being destroyed just like that, children being shot dead on the street, people living in their basements for years, made me sad and angry.
Thinking that something similar is happening right now makes me even more sad. Seeing how people like me, white people with German passports – a.k.a. probably the most privileged people in the whole world – are rejecting people that have lost everything they had, trying to send them back, burning their provisional tents and houses, triggering hatred and discrimination, is very upsetting and hard to believe. Why can’t humankind ever learn from history?
After getting out of the museum, I walked upwards to the neighborhood of Kosevo where I went to a all-gluten-free bakery and bought everything I could eat.
After having my lunch in a park, I went back to the center to join the free war walking tour together with Abishek. It was an extremely good tour which took us around some important war-related places in the center and explained the story from a very personal perspective full of humor and positivity. I had never been to a walking tour with so many questions, which underlines how interesting the recent history of this city is. She gave us a very informative introduction which made me understand much better the circumstances under which this war started, how Milosevich thought he had the right to have 30% of Bosnian territory if there were 30% Serbs in the country, how Bosnia was the most divided and complicated country with many different ethnic and religious groups living in it and therefore the country which was hit hardest. After Yugoslavia had begun to crumble, the first country to claim it’s independency was Slovenia and the process was rather quick and easy. Croatia had decided to leave next but when Bosnia became independent it lasted only one month until the war began. Serbia didn’t have a huge army regarding the number of men but was very well equipped with weapons. Within little time, all the mountain area around Sarajevo was full of mortars. The war began when the government building was bombed but no one in Sarajevo thought it would last very long or get so much out of hands. Our guide said that maybe people kept up so well because everyone always thought it would all end soon. Nobody expected it to last for 4 whole years of living in the basement of canned UN-food, burning their furniture. She also told us that life went on during the war. I somehow cannot imagine very well how life is during war, we all think it is pure chaos all the time but of course there has to be some kind of everyday life. Kids would continue to go to school, people would continue to go to work, the national theatre would have functions on the weekends which really helped people survive by giving them something to look forward to, even if it would be starving actors with poor equipment. The marketplace would be running during the whole war period and we visited the place which is still a marketplace. Surrounded by buildings, people would feel safe there but one day a mortar would hit it and kill 68 People and wound 144. This is where the biggest of the many “Sarajevo roses” is. These roses are holes in the floor created by mortar shells that killed someone in their very spot and that are now filled up with red resin.
We also visited the monument for the children of Sarajevo. A total of 1505 children were killed during the war, which represents the cruelty with which this war was fought, treating everyone equally, without mercy even for children.
We then walked across “Sniper alley” where you can see many roses and bullet holes in buildings that stam from machine guns killing anyone who would cross the road.
Our guide talked about all the tragedy but always maintaining a positive attitude, focusing on the hope people never lost, the society which survived by helping each other and the few things they had.
The war ended 1995 after the genocide of Srebrenica when the international community couldn’t ignore the successions any longer. People are having very mixed feelings about the UN and NATO. Many can’t believe how long they stood watching, UN is sarcastically called “United Nothing” but our guide also underlines that they couldn’t have survived without the food and supplies UN sent even if it was not the best material. She told us an anecdote about a big humanitary package full of Malaria medicine, expired in 1974 that arrived one day in Sarajevo, where obviously no one ever had Malaria. The last monument we visited was a gigantic tin can of the most popular humanitary food aid that arrived during the war: canned beef, half liquid gelatiny stuff with a terrible taste and unclear procedence or ingredients. The monument is an ironic thank you from the “thankful citizens of Sarajevo” to the UN. Funny enough that the United Nations have just opened a big office right in front of this monument.
When NATO finally ended the conflict in 1995, peace was conceived by a very strange compromise which was probably thought to be a temporary transitional stage but still remains. Three different presidents still rule Bosnia, one representing the Serbs and the Srbska region of the country, one Croatian and one Bosnian. They can only take decisions and do things if all three agree. This has happened twice in the last 4 years, which is why nothing ever happens.
Standing in front of the – btw completely unprotected and unspectacular – building from where these three presidents work, we also learned about the funny history of the Bosnian flag. The blue flag with the yellow triangle and the white stars has no symbolism at all. After the war, the country had lived without a flag for 4 years. It was only thanks to the Olympic games that they finally got a new flag (it would have been very awkward for the athlets to carry a stick without a flag). The design was proposed by the EU after many other designs had failed because someone always saw a symbolism of any opposing party in the colors or shapes that had been proposed. The current design was okay for everyone because it didn’t represent or mean anything at all. It isn’t even completely fixed. For example, if you draw a Bosnian flag you can use an arbitrary number and size of stars (between 5 and 8).
After the tour, I went to see a photo exhibition with Abishek about photographs taken by the drummer of Iron Maiden, who is also a really good photographer. Iron Maiden gave a free surprise concert during the war in 1994 in Sarajevo, made a documentary about it (Don’t cry for me Sarajevo) and maintained a special relationship with the city. The photographs showed people and moments with short stories from his travels through Africa, Brazil, Cuba and Sarajevo.
We walked back in the middle of a broad alley that is closed every afternoon after five for people to bike, skate, walk and run and came by a square where old men were playing life-sized Chesss. Back in the old town, Abishek and I had to finally say goodbye, hoping to see each other again someday in some parts of the world. I spent the rest of the evening in a cafe in the old town, processing these days informations and impressions before returning to the hostel at night.
One Comment
Jon Saenz del Castillo
The pastries look sooo good!