Mostar: Part 3 of The Balkans

A Magnificent Rebuilt Bridge, Chilling War Damage and Neretva Trout

24/05/2012

Sarajevo to Mostar

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sarajevo to Mostar is only 120km, but the journey took all morning; mountain roads never make for fast travelling. We were on one of the fourteen daily services between the two cities, with frequent stops en route, but the fifty seat bus rarely had more than a dozen passengers.

From Sarajevo to Mostar

The journey was largely through green alpine meadows, small towns and smaller villages, the tall thin minarets of mosques incongruous amid the essentially European scenery. Less attractive were the occasional shattered and abandoned farmsteads and the burned out buildings on the outskirts of every village. There was new building too, new houses to replace those lost in a war which passed through over ten years ago, but whose marks were still too clearly visible.

From Sarajevo to Mostar

Road signs were in both Roman and Cyrillic characters. Unlike in Wales, where bilingual signs give towns different names in the same alphabet, these were the same names in different alphabets. Like Wales in the 1970s, though, activists had been busy with green paint, 'Мостар' having been almost universally painted out.

As we neared our destination the mountains opened out and we drove through an area of vineyards and fruit farms.

Mostar

Arriving in Mostar

We arrived in sunshine. Mostar can be hot, the temperature had been in the mid-thirties the week before and regularly tops forty in July and August, but for us the sun’s warmth was moderated by the rain which had just passed and would soon return.

The Central Balkans with Mostar ringed in red

We trundled our case into town, crossed the Tito Bridge and found our hotel. Our vast room overlooked the Neretva River – fast flowing, deep and green – and on the far side the burned out hulk of another hotel. It was a typical Mostar view.

The Tito bridge and the burned out hulk of another hotel - A typical Mostar view

Mostar is the capital of Herzegovina (pronounced with a stressed ‘go-veen’, not a short ‘govv-vinn’). Throughout the Sarajevo posts I have referred to the country as Bosnia, but it is, of course, Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH for short. Although Yugoslavia fractured into more parts than most people knew it had (7 in total, though Serbia has yet to recognise the independence of Kosovo) the one split that never happened (and was never suggested) was between Bosnia and Herzegovina. Herzegovina has been an integral part of Bosnia as long as there has been a Bosnia, or indeed a Herzegovina. BiH remains split between the two ‘entities’ of the 1995 Dayton accord (the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska) but there is no meaningful division between Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Old Bridge, the Crooked Bridge and a Neretva Trout

Mostar’s main attraction is the old bridge, indeed Mostar means ‘bridge keeper’. We walked down the pedestrian street on the left bank of the Neretva and into Kujundžiluk – Goldsmith’s Street – which is the heart of the old town and leads up to the bridge. Kujundžiluk no longer sells much gold, though if you need a fridge magnet, a Bosnian football shirt or a small model of the bridge, this is the place to be. Mostar is perfect day-trip distance from Dubrovnik which explains why Kujundžiluk becomes very crowded in the afternoons and why all prices are quoted in euros, Bosnian marks and Croatian kuna (in that order).

Kujundžiluk, Mostar - busy in the early afternoon

The old bridge, (the Stari Most), was commissioned in 1557 by the Ottoman Emperor Suleyman the Magnificent to replace the wobbly suspension bridge that had been frightening Ottoman traders for over a century. Finished in 1566 it was a perfect arc of a circle, a ‘petrified moon’, gliding gracefully across the Neretva gorge between two medieval towers. An architectural and engineering masterpiece, the bridge survived over four hundred years and withstood two world wars before being destroyed in November 1993. The current bridge was built in 2004 to the same design, with stone from the same quarry and using Ottoman building techniques wherever practical. The new bridge is undoubtedly beautiful, but the stone lacks the mellow weathered look of the surrounding towers. In time it will become indistinguishable from the old one, but it can never be more than a replacement.

Mostar bridge

Beyond the bridge a side stream enters the Neretva down its own small gorge. The area around the confluence is much quieter than Kujundžiluk but is perhaps the most scenic part of the town.

Beyond the Stari Most

The Crooked Bridge (the Kriva Ćuprija) over the side stream is similar to the Stari Most but much smaller. It was built in 1558, allegedly as a practice for the bigger bridge. Weakened by war-time shelling it was washed away by floods in 1999. The government of small but wealthy Luxembourg financed the rebuilding of the small but beautiful bridge.

The Crooked bridge, Mostar

At night the day trippers return to Dubrovnik, those on Balkan Coach tours have meals provided in their hotels, which leaves the old town to the locals and the ‘independents’. We dined at Sadrvan, a restaurant between the two bridges. Sitting outside - it was just warm enough - I resorted to the Balkan staples of vegetables stuffed with minced beef, while Lynne went for the Mostar speciality, Neretva trout. She had two of them, simply grilled and served with chard (a popular vegetable in Bosnia) and boiled potatoes. They were, she said, excellent.

Neretva trout, Sadrvan Restaurant, Mostar

Mostar in the Bosnian War, 1992-5

Before the war the city’s population was, 20% Serb, 40% Bosniak and 40% Croat. Serb forces were repulsed after a siege during which the (Serbian dominated) Yugoslavian National army destroyed the Catholic Cathedral, the Franciscan monastery, the bishop’s palace with its valuable library, and 14 mosques. After they had gone the Croats responded with true Christian spirit, demolishing an Orthodox monastery and three churches, including the cathedral.

Although Bosniaks and Croats mostly co-operated, there were Croatian elements who favoured a Bosnian Croat republic along on the lines of the Republika Srpska. This idea never gained wide acceptance, but caused serious problems in Mostar. Bosniaks were expelled from Croat areas on the west bank of the Neretva, many fleeing to the Muslim east bank. The Bosniaks held onto a thin strip of land on the west bank and a front line developed to the west of that. From 1992 to the end of the war the two sides periodically lobbed shells at each other. All Mostar’s bridges were destroyed, the old bridge being targeted by Croatian artillery in November 1993 in an act of wanton vandalism*. All but one of the 13 Ottoman era mosques that survived the Serb onslaught were also destroyed.

The old town at night, Mostar

The old town was reduced to rubble and films of the time show bewildered looking people moving through a landscape that resembled Dresden in 1945.

25/05/2012

A Walk along Mostar's Front Line

In the morning we walked along the front line; the nearest point being only 50m from our hotel. The buildings were in many different states of repair. In one the ground floor had been fully restored and was serving as a fast food restaurant while above it was burnt out ruins.

A fast food restaurant on the ground floor. The former front line, Mostar

In a line of apartment blocks three had been restored (courtesy of the Danish government) while the fourth was still waiting.

Apartment blocks, some restored, some waiting. The former front line, Mostar

People were living in parts of the seriously damaged block.

Occupied war damaged apartment blocks, the former fron line, Mostar

Meanwhile, other buildings were being reclaimed by nature.

Buildings being reclaimed by nature, the former front line, Mostar

The Mepas Mall and Central High School

There were signs of a new Mostar rising from the ashes. The trouble with the Mepas Mall is that it could be anywhere. I suppose its existence is good for the local economy and it should therefore be welcomed, but neither of us felt the least desire to go in and have a look.

The Mepas Mall, Mostar

There are also signs of the best of the old Mostar recovering. The central high school had been badly damaged but the handsome building has now been fully restored. The school was holding an international dance festival while we there.

Central High School, Mostar

The Franciscan Church

We finished our front line walk at the rebuilt Franciscan church, its tall thin campanile an obvious challenge to the minarets across the river. The church is not open to the public but as we arrived the door opened and a party of Italian pilgrims emerged. We thought there was just a few, but like a tsunami they kept on coming until dozens of them were eddying around outside the church, each one sporting a red baseball cap and a badge of the Virgin Mary surrounded by clouds.

The church of the Franciscan Monastery, Mostar

We smiled at the Franciscan monk by the door. He smiled back. ‘Cinque minuti,’ he said, standing aside for us. Whether he thought we were Italian too, or just addressed everybody in Italian as a matter of course we had no idea.

Five minutes was enough. Although the exterior is finished the church is a concrete shell. Inside, there is an altar at the front, the Stations of the Cross round the side, and a great deal of gloomy space.

Medjugorje Pilgims and Bridge Jumpers

We thanked the genial monk and walked on towards the bridge. We soon caught up with the Italians - it takes a while to get a group that size across a busy road. The object of their pilgrimage was Medjugorje, some 25 km away where, in 1981, the Virgin Mary appeared to six children. She allegedly appeared daily for several years and still communicates on a monthly basis with two of the visionaries. The Catholic Church is officially non-committal and unofficially sceptical, but that has not stopped Medjugorje becoming the third most visited apparition site in Europe (after Lourdes and Fatima) receiving over a million pilgrims a year. In the second Sarajevo post I admitted to not understanding the military mind, now I have to admit to similar problems with the religious mind. I find it difficult to comprehend how rational grown-ups can believe this.

When we reached the bridge a man was standing on the parapet threatening to jump. He was not, apparently, suicidal but a member of the Mostar bridge divers club. Since 1664 (the date of the first recorded plunge) the young men of Mostar have been demonstrating (and temporarily shrivelling) their manhood by diving or jumping from the bridge into the cold, fast flowing river 21m below. There is a diving competition in July, but generally the divers dive and jumpers jump when a sufficient quantity of marks have been placed in the plastic bucket carried by the diver’s mate. A large group of Italian pilgrims was just what was required to drum up the necessary cash. I dropped in our contribution and we watched as the man jumped from the bridge and plummeted downwards. The Neretva at Mostar is on the cusp between mountain stream and regular river. It is deep, which makes the jump safer, but looks extremely cold. Once he resurfaced, the jumper wasted no time in getting himself out of the water.

The jumper jumps, the new Old Bridge, Mostar

We popped into a small shop beside the bridge to buy some scented soap as gifts to take home. The shopkeeper asked where we came from, and then said, ‘I want to thank you so very, very much.’ We probably looked surprised, such heartfelt thanks seemed an over-reaction to a 6 euro purchase. ‘Great Britain was the first to open its doors to the Bosnian refugees, you helped us very, very much,’ he explained. I am glad we did though I was not aware of it at the time and can hardly claim any credit. It makes a change, though, from ‘you people put my grandfather in jail.’ I decline to take the blame for that, too.

The Eastern (Bozniak) Bank of the Nereteva

We wandered back down Kujundžiluk to the pedestrian street beyond and past Karađozbeg Mosque.

Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

Built in 1557, the war left it with a gaping hole in the dome and the stump of a minaret. It is now fully restored and open to worshippers and anyone else who wishes to pop in.

Inside the Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

From there we walked up to the main street of the Bozniak Muslim quarter, which had almost as many damaged buildings as the front line......

The main street on the east bank of the Neretva, Mostar

...and then to the Musilbegović House, now a boutique hotel, but in the 18th century the house of an important Ottoman family.

Inside the Musilbegović House, Mostar

We returned to the main street for lunch. A tiny café with a mainly local clientele served us burek, pellets of minced beef encased in a long tube of filo pastry wound round like a Cumberland sausage. It was pleasant enough, if a bit stodgy, but cost little and we washed it down with the cheapest half litre of beer we found in Bosnia. Pivo Točeno, draft beer, was one of the first (and few) phrases of Bosnian I mastered (who’d a thunk it?). The local language used to be called Serbo-Croat but these days they like to think of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian as being separate languages, though the differ as much as the English of London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Working steadily through a burek
Mostar

There is room for only a thin slice of town on the east bank between the river and the mountains. We walked uphill and under the by-pass before finding a footpath up to the site of the Orthodox Cathedral. There was, we had read, a fine view of Mostar from the ruins; what we did not know was that the reconstruction of the cathedral was in full swing.

Reconstructing the Orthodox Cathedral

Walking a little further up the hill we found a small Orthodox chapel, one of the few religious buildings in Mostar to be largely undamaged by the war – though some of the work on the tiny bell tower looks suspiciously new.

The small chapel above the cathedral

Dinner at the Bella Vista, in Sight of the Old Bridge

Several restaurants occupy the the sites of the old mills along the right bank of the river, and in the evening we allowed ourselves to be captured by a young lady touting for the Bella Vista Restaurant. Unoriginal as the name might be, it had the virtue of truth. After a day of sunshine and showers it was warm enough to sit on their terrace with fine views of the bridge....

A restaurant table with a view, Bella Vista, Mostar

...and the floodlit walls of the old town.

The old town, Mostar

It was my turn to eat trout – only one, but it was big - while Lynne chose grilled baby squids. Local open wine comes by the litre or half litre. We toyed with the idea of half a litre, but after several nanoseconds consideration decided on a whole one. Clean, fresh and well balanced, if not particularly fruity, it was a perfect accompaniment to the food. We finished with baklava. Given the quality of the food and the surroundings it should have been expensive, but Bosnia is generally cheap and the shortage of tourists in the evening helps keep the price down to a level our friend Hilary would call ‘bargainous’.

I was feeling mellow but the trout felt gutted

Good food and ample drink in beautiful surroundings give me a deep feeling of contentment and a rosy view of the world. I know I was sitting in a town that only fifteen years before had been largely rubble, but I desperately want to see that as an aberration. I really do want to believe that humans are essentially good; Mostar may have seen unimaginable horror, but now it is a city of hope..

Another view of that bridge

The following morning we made our way back to the bus station and set off for Dubrovnik. We were leaving a town that is beautiful, but where it is never possible to ignore the recent past. All three communities know that just a few years ago their neighbours were trying to kill them. It will take another decade to clear the war’s physical damage, it might take longer to heal the mental scars.

and one more, just to finish

The Bella Vista allowed this narrative to finish on a positive note, but two positive notes are better than one, so I will also mention the ice cream stall just across the bridge from Kujundžiluk. For the princely sum of 1 mark (40p), they sell some of the best ice-cream anywhere. We tried four flavours, I did not keep a note of them but I know I had pistachio because I always do, and each one was special. No one would go all the way to Mostar just to eat ice-cream, but having got there no one should leave without trying it.

*There was little strategic justification for the destruction. Harvard academic Andras Riedlmayer described it as an act of "killing memory", in which evidence of a shared cultural heritage and peaceful co-existence was deliberately destroyed.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination

Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Seige

Part 3 Mostar



Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM

Part 8 Skopje

Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi

  Part 10 Prilep and Bitola

Part 11 The Mariovo and Lake Prespa

Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia

Part 13 Ohrid to Albania, The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje

Sarajevo (2), The Siege 1992-95: Part 2 of The Balkans

A Life Saving Tunnel, Attrocities and the Vratnic Citadel

Bosnia and Heregovina

Sarajevo

After 'that assassination', the next time Sarajevo came to international notice was in 1984 when it hosted the Winter Olympics. The stadium where Torvill and Dean danced their Bolero is still there, but we did not visit it, we have seen ice rinks before and anyway my knowledge of and interest in ice-dancing are both vanishingly small.

Dinner at Kibe, Sarajevo

On the second evening we had dinner at Kibe, a restaurant high on the head of the valley overlooking the city. Despite the setting and the obvious upmarket décor it was not particular expensive, even by local standards. Again we started with šljivovica with cheese, freshly baked bread and olive oil. Lamb's liver with onions and veal with mushrooms in a sour cream sauce were both excellent, as was the Mostar Blatina we drank with it, a little lighter than the Vranac but full of character. Bosnian restaurants offer the full range of what we usually think of as Turkish sweets – and they are as good as they are in Turkey. We just had enough room left to share a portion of Kadayif.

Lamb's liver, veal with mushrooms and a bottle of Mostar Blatina

The Republica Srpska and the Start of the Seige of Sarajevo

In 1992, just over a year after Bosnia’s first multi-party elections, a referendum was held which led to the declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. In protest the Bosnian Serbs, who had largely boycotted the referendum, set about creating the Republika Srpska. They were initially aided by the rump of the Serb-dominated Yugoslavian National Army.

There were many Serb majority areas but creating a Bosnian Serb republic required the removal – or murder – of thousands of non-Serbian residents. The concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’ has existed since humans first formed themselves into tribes, but it was in Bosnia that the term was ‘popularised’. The main victims were undoubtedly the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and the main aggressors the Bosnian Serbs, but all three communities, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks were, at different times, both the victims and the perpetrators of atrocities.

Being both the Bosnian capital and on the edge of the proposed Republika Srpska, Sarajevo became a focal point of the struggle. Serbian artillery and snipers occupied the hills that dominate the city and Sarajevo was to endure the longest siege in modern history.

I admit to having little understanding of the military mind – my instincts tend to be pacifist – but it is usually possible to discern the internal logic of a military campaign. I am, though, at a loss to understand the military justification for the siege of Sarajevo. When Bosnia declared independence it had no army and the hastily assembled militia were seriously under-equipped; the Serbs could have taken the city whenever they wanted. The well tried medieval tactic of starving out the defenders was abandoned when the Serbs ceded control of the airport to the UN. A constant stream of relief flights ensured that whatever dangers and privations the citizens of Sarajevo had to face, they might be hungry, but they would not starve. Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb commander now on trial in The Hague, was reported as saying: ‘Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Shell them until they can’t sleep; don’t stop until they are on the edge of madness.’ What a nice man. [Update: He was found guilt on 22/11/2017 of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment].

Surrounded by enemy controlled hills the only way in or out of the city was across the airport. This route not only compromised UN neutrality but was also dangerous - the open ground being a shooting gallery for snipers.

Sarajevo under siege. For reasons known only to themselves the publishers of this map decided to put South at the top!

The Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

In January 1993 volunteers started digging a tunnel under the airport from the village of Butmir. The 960m long ‘Tunnel of Hope’ was completed in 6 months and allowed armaments and humanitarian aid to be carried into the city. It has been largely filled in, but the Butmir end is now a museum and that was where we headed on Tuesday morning.

We had planned to take the tram to the end of the line and then a taxi to Butmir. Unsure where to buy tram tickets we asked at the hotel and discovered there were no trams, or more exactly, no trams running the full length of the line. Sarajevo’s venerable tram system was undergoing major refurbishment.

It was suggested we took a bus to the Dobrinja district and then seek further directions. In true Hotel Ada fashion the girl from reception walked down to the old town with us, showed us the (unmarked) bus stop, and when the bus arrived instructed the driver to tell us where to get off and then give us directions.

Dobrinja is a post-war (WW2 that is) suburb at the mouth of the valley, built at right angles to the rest of the city. The road heads south from the main drag hugging the mountains from where Serb snipers could shoot into Dobrinja at will. The Lonely Planet describes the suburb as ‘dreary’ with ‘dismal ranks of bullet-scarred apartment blocks’. Dobrinja has been largely patched up, but the place was built dismal and all the patching up in the world is not going to change that. Just before we reached the border of the Republika Srpska the bus turned right into the estate. We stopped on a wide, though largely deserted, road among the apartment blocks and the driver turned and gestured to us. As we got off he pointed down the road ahead and then indicated a vague right, as though he was showing us the emergency exits on a plane. It was not the most helpful of directions, but what more could we have expected?

We were close to where the eastern end of the tunnel had been. The museum and the surviving part at the western end were only a kilometre away, but were on the far side of the airport. The hills may no longer be alive with snipers, but wandering across an international airport was still not a realistic option.

Fortunately we had been dropped off right beside the Dobrinja taxi rank. We woke the driver in the first car, said ‘tunnel’ in fluent Bosnian and he drove us round the airport, past the tram terminus and into the countryside, dropping us off outside a very ordinary, if bullet scarred, house beside a narrow lane.

The rather ordinary, if bullet scarred, house that stands over the entrance to the 'Tunnel of Hope', Butmir

There is little of the tunnel left, but anybody who is anybody - Morgan Freeman, Michael Palin and Paddy Ashdown to name but three - has paid a visit, as their photograph collection shows.

A brief film tells the story of the tunnel. Over a million people passed through it bringing 20 million tonnes of food into the city; there is even film of a man leading a goat through the tunnel. Armaments were brought in as well and eventually rails were laid to allow the movement of heavier equipment. Telephone lines reconnected Sarajevo with the outside world and a power cable supplied electricity.

Lynne inside the Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

There was other footage from the siege; people hiding from sniper fire, a car driving down a road and being narrowly missed by a mortar shell. All this happened so recently and to people who look like us, dress like us, drive cars down streets like we do that it feels very immediate and deeply shocking. Perhaps we are more used to victims looking different from us because such events happen far away or long ago. Intellectually I know it makes no difference, human beings are human beings, but my response to the pictures came from somewhere which did not involve intellect.

Novo Sarajevo, The War Museum and 'Snipers' Alley'

After we had walked through the remains of the tunnel, the museum owner phoned us a taxi. The cab took us back round the airport and down the same main road as on our arrival. We stopped in Novo Sarajevo, the area east of the Austro-Hungarian town, to visit the Sarajevo war museum.

The War Museum, Sarajevo

The museum is in a war damaged building deliberately left unrepaired. It tells the story of the siege in photographs and in the artefacts people cobbled together to make life possible. Six weeks earlier we had seen photographs of the worst that human beings can do to each other at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. The photographs of the siege involved different people with a different backdrop but the same horrors. 11,500 civilians – including 1500 children – died. Snipers and random shelling killed and maimed indiscriminately. Not a single building remained undamaged. Food was available, but fuel for cooking and heating during Sarajevo’s savage winters was hard to find. People smashed up their furniture, took off the doors of their rooms and went out into the city’s parks to chop down trees.

Makeshift wood burning stoves, Sarajevo War Museum

A photographer working for Colors magazine was shooting the wartime artefacts. I was pressed into service to hold the end of a makeshift shopping trolley. He said he would remove my hand from the photo later – so there goes my bid for fame.

I become the assistant to a real photographer, Sarajevo War Museum

The museum is opposite the Holiday Inn, which was the only functioning hotel in Sarajevo during the siege and the base for all the foreign correspondents. The road between the museum and the hotel, the main thoroughfare into the city, was the notorious 'Snipers' Alley'; to cross it was to invite death. It has six lanes and a tramway in the middle, hardly anybody’s idea of an ‘alley’, but few journalists would let the truth spoil a memorable phrase.

The Holiday Inn across 'Sniper's Alley', Sarajevo

We dropped into the Holiday Inn, partly out of curiosity, partly in search of an ATM. It was basic and battle scarred during the war but is now a luxury hotel again. It has, though, always been this gruesome colour midway between custard and hepatitis; apparently people had choices and someone chose this!

Behind the Holiday Inn are Sarajevo’s twin towers. Much smaller than New York’s, they were set ablaze by artillery fire. They were burnt out shells for many years after the war but have now been rebuilt exactly as they once were.

Sarajevo's twin towers

We walked in the drizzle from Novo Sarajevo past the Alipašina Mosque, built in 1561……

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo

….and into the Austro-Hungarian quarter.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Markale is Sarajevo’s main food market. It is not one of the world’s great markets, but with strawberries at 3 Marks (£1.20) a kilo – and excellent strawberries they were too – a little dowdiness can be forgiven. On the 5th of February 1994 a mortar attack on the crowded market killed 68 and wounded 144. The siege had slipped from the front pages of the world’s newspapers but the massacre put it right back. International outrage was, however, not sufficient to stop it happening again. In August 1995 five more mortar shells hit the market killing 37 people.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The second massacre brought an immediate military response from NATO. After Belgrade was bombed the Serbs forced their Bosnian cousins to the negotiating table and the resulting Dayton Accord, signed in December 1995, ended the Bosnian War.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Accord acknowledged the existence of two ‘entities’ within Bosnia-Herzegovina – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. With many of its former leaders on trial in The Hague, the Republika Srpska has followed a more moderate path. There are no longer check points between the two entities, they now have the same currency and a unified army. All of which makes Bosnia more normal and blurs the distinction the war was fought to create. So why was it fought in the first place?

The Vratnic Citadel and the Grave of Alia Izetbegović

On our last evening we walked up to the wall round the Vratnic Citadel. The two restored towers are now a museum to the memory of Alia Izetbegović, independent Bosnia’s first president, war leader and afterwards Bosniak representative in the tripartite presidency. He died of heart disease in 2003. Unlike some of the Serbian leaders, Izetbegović was not a war criminal but I find it hard to believe he was as saintly as the museum makes out. Few (if any) national leaders are without faults and attempts to present them as such make me uncomfortable.

Restored tower on the Vratnic Citadel, Sarajevo

Alia Izetbegović is buried in the vast Muslim war cemetery below the citadel. After his death there were suggestions that the airport should be renamed in his honour. The Serbs objected and Paddy Ashdown, the international High Representative, decided the move would be divisive, so the airport remains plain Sarajevo International.

The grave of Alia Izetbegović, Kovači Martyr’s Cemetery, Sarajevo

On Wednesday morning we left Sarajevo for Mostar. The destination boards in the bus station - Banja Luka, Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica - were a roll call of 1990s headlines.

For most of its 550 years Sarajevo pottered along as the small, quiet capital of an obscure province of a distant empire. Twice, though, in the 20th century it became the focus of international attention, and the second time brought the city close to annihilation. It is now well into the process of recovery and there is no sign that any side wants to reopen the old wounds. It is a small, cosy city as capitals go, with a beautiful setting. The setting though is a curse as well as a blessing; it brought the Winter Olympics and it also brought the siege. What Sarajevo needs now is a prolonged period of peace and growing prosperity, and there are grounds to be optimistic that it is getting exactly that.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination

Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Siege 

Part 3 Mostar

Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM

Part 8 Skopje

Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi
Part 10 Prilep and Bitola
Part 11 The Mariovo and Lake Prespa
Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia
Part 13 Ohrid to Albania, The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje

 

Sarajevo (1), The Old Town, The New Town and the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand: Part 1 of The Balkans

Ottoman Sarajevo, Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, and the Spark that Ignited the First World War

First Impressions

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sarajevo

The sun was shining as we left the terminal at Sarajevo’s small airport and found our way to the taxi rank for the ritual ripping off of the new arrival. ‘Fixed fare to the Old Town,’ the driver said when I naively suggested he might switch on his meter. 30 Marks (£12) may or may not have been the correct fare but it was, we would discover, expensive compared with other local taxi rides.

Sarajevo lies along a narrow valley with mountains surrounding it on three sides and the airport on the fourth. The drive to our hotel, a hundred metres uphill from the Old Town, took us the length of the long thin city as we journeyed back in time from the modern airport, through the 1960s' apartment blocks – some of outstanding ugliness - through the turn of the last century Austro-Hungarian administrative area and round the pedestrianised Ottoman heart of the Old Town. Sixteen years had passed since the end of the longest siege in modern military history (April 1992- Feb 1996) but buidlings in every district were pock marked with bullet holes, while some bore the scars of more serious damage.

War damaged buildings, Austro-Hungarian quarter, Sarajevo

Two Millenia of History in 150 Words

The earliest Balkan civilization was Hellenic, the area being known as Illyria from the 8th century BC. The Romans duly took over and when their empire fractured the region was absorbed into the Byzantine Empire. In the 6th century AD Slavic tribes started to arrive. Bosnia emerged as an independent kingdom as the Byzantine Empire disintegrated and from about 1180 to the mid-15th century it was a power of some importance.

The expanding Ottoman Empire swallowed Bosnia in the 1460s, and that was the end of independence (until 1991). Sarajevo was founded in 1461 as the administrative capital for the new Ottoman province. When the Ottoman Empire declined, Bosnia became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when that fell in 1918, it joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - later Yugoslavia.

Ottoman Sarajevo

The Ada Hotel, Sarajevo Old Town

We checked into the tiny but excellent Hotel Ada and, after complimentary tea and cakes, took the short walk into the Old Town. Baščaršija Square, known as pigeon square for obvious reasons, is surrounded by cafés. The centrepiece, the Sebilj, looks Ottoman but is actually a drinking fountain erected by the Austrians in 1891.

By the Sebilj, Baščaršija Square, Sarajevo

Narrow alleys lead off the square, each devoted to a single craft.

Metalworkers Street off Baščaršija Square, Sarajevo

The Gazi Husrev-beg Buildings

Not far away are the Gazi Husrev-beg buildings, constructed in 1530 by the Ottoman governor of that name. There is a madrassa, an imposing mosque….

The doorway of the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque,Sarajevo

…a covered bazaar, which still houses stalls selling linen and second hand books…..

Gazi Husrev-beg Covered Bazaar, Sarajevo

…. and, unusually for a mosque, a clock tower which could be Italian but for the Arabic numerals on the clock face.

The Gazi Husrev-beg clock tower, Sarajevo

The Old Orthodox Church

Gazi-Husrevby may be the oldest but it is certainly not the only mosque in the Old Town. In fact it is a surprise to find a church in such essentially Turkish surroundings. The Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, usually called the Old Orthodox Church, is a 1740 rebuild of a medieval original. Although austere on the outside, the inside is anything but. The church is wider than it is long so has room for a huge iconostasis which is jewel encrusted and festooned with icons. There was also a relic of Saint Thecla and an icon in a glass case that all the other visitors when we were there thought it necessary to kiss.

Orthodox Church, Old Town, Sarajevo

The Yellow Bastion, the Victims of the Siege and the Origin of the Bozniaks

One evening we walked further up the hill behind our hotel. In 1697 the Austrians rampaged across the Ottoman Empire, trashing Sarajevo as they went. In response the Ottomans built the Vratnik citadel, enclosing 50,000 m² at the head of the valley. Part of the wall has recently been rebuilt, but we left that for later and continued to the Yellow Bastion, a crumbling grass-covered stone structure giving magnificent views over the city.

I intended this narrative to follow the history of the city rather than the random wanderings of our visit, but the past is not so orderly. In the foreground of every photograph taken from the Yellow Bastion is a massive Muslim cemetery containing the graves of eleven hundred victims of the siege of Sarajevo, 1991-95.

Sarajevo from the Yellow Bastion

All across the city pencil-slim minarets pointed to the heavens. As dusk fell we heard multiple calls to prayer; the familiar clipped Arabic syllables sung to notes more than usually attuned to the European ear.

When the Ottomans arrived the people of Bosnia were overwhelmingly Christian; Catholic Croats who used the Roman alphabet, and Orthodox Serbs who spoke the same language, but wrote it in Cyrillic, though the orthographic distinction was of small interest to the largely illiterate peasantry. Under Ottoman rule there were distinct advantages in being Muslim and gradually, beginning with the administrative classes, Bosnians started to convert. Eventually there were three distinct communities in Bosnia; Muslim Bosniaks (now 48% of the Bosnian population), Orthodox Serbs (37%) and Catholic Croats (14%).

Dinner Under the Lindens

The first night, we dined at Pod Lipom (Under the Lindens) a restaurant in the Old Town. Observing the other diners, we started with a glass of šljivovica, the fiery plum brandy popular all over the Balkans, accompanied by plate of full flavoured local cheeses. For the main course we chose a mix of local specialities; Bosnian cooks like stuffing vegetables – onions, peppers, vine leaves - with minced beef and covering them with a sauce based on sour cream. A bottle of Montenegrin Vranac, a dark wine with a powerful smoky nose, but lighter palate, was a fine accompaniment. After starting with brandy and cheese we could have eaten our entire meal backwards by finishing with soup, but only in Hanoi have we ever encountered a ‘dessert soup’, and anyway we were too stuffed even for a slice of baklava.

The next two days were drizzly and cool. At home we would have been basking in a late spring heat wave; meteorologically we were definitely in the wrong country.

Bjelava and the Srvzo House

After an hour in the Old Town on Wednesday morning we returned to our hotel for more and drier clothing. In typical Hotel Ada style, no sooner had we reached our room than the proprietor appeared at the door with a tray of tea. Refreshed and more appropriately clad we walked through the rain to the Bjelava district which sits on the lower slopes of the mountain immediately north of the Old Town. It is a mixed residential area with apartment blocks and new brick houses among some old Turkish style dwellings.

The Bjelava district in the rain

The Svrzo House (vowels sometimes seem an optional extra in the Balkans) is the oldest house in Bjelava and, according to the Lonely Planet, ‘the best preserved Ottoman-era courtyard townhouse anywhere in the Balkans.’ With an inner and outer house, wooden balconies, a fully furnished dining room with traditional bench seats.....

Ottoman style dining room, Svrzo House, Bjelava, Sarajevo

.....bedrooms..........

Bedroom, Svrzo House, Bjelava, Sarajevo

...bathrooms and kitchens it gave an insight into the very Eastern lifestyle of the well-off in the Ottoman era

We made our way back down to the old town down streets which sometimes turned into stairs.

Down to the old town on streets that sometimes turn into stairs, Sarajevo

Finding a Beer and a Sandwich

We were heading for a café we had earmarked earlier. Lunch, we had learned on Tuesday, can be a problem in Sarajevo. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cafés, but coffee is all they sell, with maybe a cake or an ice cream. There are doner kebab stalls – which are every bit as appetising on their home turf as they are in England – and Čevabdžinica, cheap eateries whose specialities, which include ćevapi (grilled cylinders of minced beef) and burek (much the same but encased in filo pastry) are a touch heavy for a light lunch - and they only serve soft drinks. There are bars for those who just want alcohol, but finding the equivalent of a beer and a sandwich required perseverance.

We had spotted a suitable place for lunch an hour or two earlier, before the rainstorm that drove us to change our clothing. Nearby, we had sipped coffee sitting on the carpet covered bench seats outside a typical Ottoman coffee shop on the boundary of the old and the Austro-Hungarian towns. We looked east…..

Looking right into Ottoman Sarajevo

Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo

….and then looked west, both actually and figuratively.

Looking left into Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo

Immediately after I had taken this photograph the light drizzle turned into steady rain, which was good news for the umbrella salesman (bottom left) if for no one else.

The Ottoman Empire frayed at the edges long before it crumbled at the heart. Rioting by starving Bosnians peasants after a disastrous harvest in 1875, sparked off a series of revolts across the Balkans. Three years later the Congress of Berlin invited the Austro-Hungarians to occupy Bosnia to calm the situation; occupation was followed by annexation in 1908.

Many Muslims emigrated to Turkey; those left behind started, for the first time, to develop a Bosniak identity. Sarajevo had quietly prospered under the Ottomans and did as well under the Austro-Hungarians. The city acquired a selection of solid and imposing buildings as the new rulers set out to make the city a modern European capital. Sarajevo had electric street lighting before Vienna (better to test such dangerous new technology in a remote part of the empire) and the first electric tramway in Europe (and the second in the world, after San Francisco).

Two Cathedrals and a Synagogue

Central European neo-Classical Sarajevo remains a city at the juncture of three cultures; it still has mosques, but also churches, including an Orthodox Cathedral…..

The Orthodox Cathedral, Sarajevo

.…and a Catholic Cathedral….

The Catholic Cathedral, Sarajevo

…..and even a pair of synagogues.

The Ashkenazy Synagogue, Sarajevo

And let us not forget the brewery, whose products we enjoyed several times.

Trg Oslobodenja (Liberation Square) has a peace monument, which is in poor repair (fortunately the same cannot be said of the peace) and a giant chess board. Whenever we passed there was always a small crowd watching – and advising - the players.

Playing Chess, Trg Oslobodenja, Sarajevo

The River Miljacka and the Despića House

The River Miljacka, which flows through the whole length of Sarajevo, may be small but frequent, often devastating, floods led to it being canalised in 1891. Consequently the buildings along its banks are entirely Austrian.

Beside the river Miljacka

The riverside Despića House was owned by a wealthy merchant family who also formed Sarajevo’s first theatre company. The ground floor dining room could have been in the Svrzo House - bar the paintings on the walls - but the upstairs salon is pure 19th century Viennese. The room across the landing, decorated with icons, was more eastern orthodox.

Viennese salon, the Despića House, Sarajevo

Understanding the politics and tensions that led to the Balkan Wars of the early 20th century is beyond the scope (and ability) of this blog. However the events of the 29th of June 1914 that thrust Sarajevo into the world headlines for the first, though sadly not last, time in the 20th century are easier to explain- though not to understand - and happened only 50m from the Despića’s front door.

The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914

Nationalist factions in independent Serbia hoped to shake Bosnia free from the Austro-Hungarian empire and incorporate it into a greater Serbia – much the same ambitions caused the 1991-5 war. To this end they planned to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, while he was on a well-publicised visit to Sarajevo.

The plot involved the deployment of six potential assassins along the route of the Archduke’s motorcade from the station to the town hall. The first two failed to act, the third threw a bomb which bounced off Franz Ferdinand’s car and exploded under the following vehicle injuring 20. The failed assassin attempted to kill himself by taking a cyanide pill and jumping into the River Miljacka, but the cyanide pill only induced vomiting and jumping into the Miljacka is more likely to break an ankle than cause drowning.

The Miljacka - in places as much as 10 cm deep!

After the attack the motorcade proceeded at high speed and the remaining assassins, including Gavrilo Princip, were unable to act.

The Royal party lunched at the Town Hall, which later became the National Library and was destroyed during the siege. It is currently being rebuilt and from what we could see through the scaffolding, was once a great building and will be again.

Me and the largely rebuilt National Library and former Town Hall, Sarajevo

Abandoning the planned programme, the Royal Party set off towards the hospital to comfort those injured in the morning’s bomb attack. General Potiorek, in charge of security, decided the royal car would be safer to follow the river all the way rather than go through the city centre. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell the driver.

By the Latin Bridge the driver turned into Franz Josef Street. General Potiorek, who was travelling on the car’s running board, stopped him, ordering him to reverse. The driver stalled the engine and locked the gears.

The Latin Bridge with turning into Franz Josef Street next to the museum

Believing his chance had gone, Princip went into a bakery on the corner of Franz Josef Street - the building that is now a museum. He came out to find Franz Ferdinand right in front of him in a stationary car. He fired two shots, killing Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophie, though he later said he intended to kill Genreral Potiorek , not the duchess. He was not a good shot as he next attempted to shoot himself and missed.

There used to be footprints on the pavement marking the point where Princip had stood. That seemed a little frivolous after the siege so they were removed and the point is now marked only by a plaque.

The plaque on the wall of the museum

Inside, The museum tells the full story of the assassination and also has Princip’s gun.

The lower gun is the one used in the assassination

The conspirators were arrested and tried. Some were hanged but several, including Princip, were minors so were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment.

Baldrick was bemused as to how the murder of an ostrich called Archy Duke in a place he had never heard of could have started a World War. It remains a good question. A month to the day after the assassination Austria declared war on Serbia, the next day Russia mobilised, followed by Germany on the 30th of July and France on the 1st of August. On the 4th Great Britain declared war on Germany. Princip could scarcely have imagined the far reaching consequences of his actions. The whole of Europe, it seems, was spoiling for a fight and perhaps if Princip had not provided the spark, another excuse would have been found. Whether or not he was truly responsible, Gavrilo Princip did not live to see the end of it. He died in prison from tuberculosis in 1916.

Despite Princip’s efforts many Bosnians fought for Austria-Hungary in the war. When it ended Bosnia joined the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, soon renamed Yugoslavia.

Sarajevo and World War II

Bosnian involvement in World War II started when the axis powers invaded the Balkan Peninsula in 1941. Temporarily absorbed into the puppet Croatian fascist state, the city of Sarajevo avoided most of the horrors of the war though Bosnia saw its share of fighting in a three cornered war between fascists, communist partisans and Yugoslav monarchists. The defeat of fascism, and those who died defeating it, are commemorated by an eternal flame outside the Finance Ministry (is it just me, or is that an odd juxtaposition?) We missed it when we walked past on Tuesday (could the ‘Eternal’ Flame have gone out?), but passed it again on Wednesday when we took this photo.

The eternal Flame outside the Finance Ministry

After World War II, Sarajevo carried on quietly as the capital of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Marshall Tito’s Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. A friend who visited in the 1970s was impressed by a multicultural city where everybody seemed to get on so well with everyone else. We know now there were tensions below the surface, but no one would have predicted the horror that was to come.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination

Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Seige

Part 3 Mostar



Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM

Part 8 Skopje

Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi

  Part 10 Prilep and Bitola

Part 11 The Mariovo and Lake Prespa

Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia

Part 13 Ohrid to Albania, The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje