Pestilog

Sarajevo, Bosna i Hercegovina

That's right. We forced a spring break on ourselves. And it was good.

Well, it was mostly good. We left Budapest with 7 people, made it to Sarajevo with 5, and came home with 6, so it was definitely eventful if nothing else.

(for the exceptionally curious, Monica got turned away at the Bosnian border cause Romanians still need a visa, and Tyler went home with her, and we found a Michigander who decided to come back to BP with us and is allegedly at my apartment right now fixing our shower...)



We trained in from Budapest, which took nearly 12 hours. The scenery was gorgeous. The route took us through Hungary by way of Pecs, then down through the northern end of Croatia, and then through central Bosnia to Sarajevo.





On the train, we slept on and off all day, and watched the towns go by. In Bosnia, we saw a couple of men chasing a giant pig around a yard that had escaped from its pen, and it made us all laugh out loud. We also met a few sketchy dudes who asked if Kendra would mind offering them an official invitation to the US and inquired as to her marital status once or twice.

But anyway. Once we got to Sarajevo, the hostel met us at the train station and taxied us to our room, which was right in the center of the old city. Right across the street from this actually:


Sarajevo is an unbelievably beautiful town, nestled in a valley between two mountain ridges.



We climbed the hills on the first day to get a view of the whole town. We ran across some beautiful old houses and the first Muslim cemetery that I have seen.



We also walked down what is called "Sniper Alley" on the way to Novo Sarajevo. In this area, the 6-700 year old cobblestone roads gave way to the stark efficiency of communist architecture, and the buildings and even the sidewalks still had huge chucks and pits missing from mortar shells and bullets that had been shot into the city from the surrounding hills. I am told that Sarajevo suffered the longest siege in known war history, lasting over 1060 days.



Some of the mortar blasts have been filled in with a bright red epoxy, to mark the remnants of the war. These are scattered throughout the city, and are what is referred to as "The Sarajevo Rose."


We also saw the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot by members of the Black Hand. Behold:


And I, being almost wholly ignorant of most of European history, did not realize that Sarajevo is a predominantly Muslim city. (makes sense, though, right? Duh, Jen). Sarajevo is interesting in that it has large populations of Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim persons. There were beautiful churches and temples and mosques everywhere. But the mosques were by far the most numerous.



We were totally unprepared for it when we woke up on our first morning there. We stepped out of the hostel into a brisk sunny day, with busy streets and birds flying in unbelievable numbers overhead, gorgeous mountains all around, hearing the call to prayer ring out from minerets all around us. Here's a brief snippit of some that came in through our window on Saturday:


It was an amazing trip. I can't tell you what a time we had. If you want to see the whole album from the trip, you can see it on flickr.com here. Lots more pics from the train and of peeps that went with us are there.

Now that I am back, though, I totally have my work cut out for me. I got invited to a student conference in L'viv, so now that paper that I told them that I had written about comparative drug policy and disease narrative in the EU and Ukraine...well, I have to write that now. In the next 48 hours. screw. Good thing I'm so capable at bullshitting right? But yea, papers papers papers then another 13 hour train to Lviv on Wednesday night. Who's excited? I think I am. I'm not sure. Its a little much.

Just thinking about it makes me want a nap. AND its going to suck to be buying things all weekend because my bank card fully SNAPPED IN HALF today. wtf, mate? and it will be May before I get a replacement. boo.

Oh, but I get de-mulleted tomorrow by Cristina in the Econ department. It will be glorious. Im so pumped. I'll let you know how it goes :)

Labels: bill, bosnia, grad school, kendra, photography, photos, procrastiation, sarajevo, Stephen, thin justification for my existace, travel, ukraine, video

posted by Veruka2 @ 8:47 PM