Travelogue 8: Sarajevo, Travnik and Mostar

Three weeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina gave me the chance to discover a beautiful country, very different from the rest of Europe I know, with an open wound that is clearly still far from healing. It is a place I definitely recommend visiting, although it may not be for everyone.

First impressions

Arriving at Sarajevo Airport gave me my first impression. It is a very small airport, probably one of the smallest I have ever been to. For the capital of a country, it felt far too quiet and deserted. Immigration was quick and easy: not a single question, they simply looked at our passports and stamped them. Apparently, ours was the only flight arriving at the time. We had done some research and understood that Bolt, an app similar to Uber, operated in Sarajevo, but when we opened it we got an error saying that Bolt had not yet reached the city. We decided to look for one of those standard airport taxi desks where fares are fixed by zone, you pay by card, and someone either takes you to a taxi or tells you where to find one and hand over your payment receipt. There was no such desk. We stepped outside the terminal to look for directions to a bus or some other form of transport, but there was very little information.

I should clarify something here: we normally avoid taxis, especially airport taxis. Taxis often operate like mafias, and airport taxis also tend to charge extortionate prices, so we prefer other options. That was why we were looking for another way to reach the city centre.

I am going to take this opportunity to say a little about the attitudes and manner of some of the Bosnians we met, since they shaped my first impressions. I do not mean this so much as criticism, but as a way to set the scene, explain what was going through my mind, and convey how the experience felt. Every interaction was in English. People did not speak it very well and had a strong accent, like the Russians in films. Again, I say this not to criticise, but to add colour to the story.

So, we were trying to reach the city centre. At the tourist information office, a woman was talking on the phone at her desk. I went over to ask what transport options were available. I could see the annoyance on her face as I approached; she said something to the person on the phone and hung up to deal with me. I asked what transport options there were. You take taxis outside, she told me. Okay, but are there buses or any form of public transport? The bus, across the street. I asked whether we could pay for the bus by card. No, cash only, she replied. Aren’t there apps like Bolt or Yandex Go? I asked. No, no, only taxi only bus only cash.

We looked it up and found that the bus cost 5 marks per person. Taxis normally charged 25 marks to the city centre. We wanted to avoid taking a taxi, so we decided to try the bus.

Accustomed to paying for everything by card, we resigned ourselves to having to withdraw cash from an ATM to get into the city. I tried one of my cards, but the transaction was declined. Then I received an email from the bank saying that my PIN change request had been successful. Why did the bank think I was trying to change my PIN when I was attempting to withdraw money? I have no idea; perhaps it was the bank’s fault, perhaps the ATM’s. I later discovered that the bank had indeed interpreted the transaction as an attempt to change my PIN, leaving that card unusable. Nydia tried one of her cards at another ATM and managed to withdraw cash. We took out 100 marks, equivalent to 50 euros. Since we were planning to take the bus, we needed change. I tried to buy a soft drink in a shop, but when I went to pay, the person saw the note, simply said no, no, and gestured that they would not accept that denomination. I tried a second shop and managed to get change.

We went outside to find where to catch the bus. Some taxi drivers approached us, and I decided to ask how much it would cost. They asked for the address; I showed it to them. 50 marks. No, thank you. Another driver approached and asked why I had refused the taxi. I told him they wanted to charge me 50 marks and that I thought it was expensive. In many places it is common for taxi drivers to negotiate the fare, and since there were no fixed zone-based prices like at other airports, I thought they might want to bargain. I dislike doing it, but I am willing to. We looked for a bus stop and found absolutely nothing, only the airport car park and a drinks stand. I asked at the stand and was told that it was on the street beyond the car park. Tired and carrying our suitcases, we crossed the airport car park, but saw no stop and no sign of anyone waiting for a bus. As I mentioned, it is an airport with very little activity, almost deserted whenever a flight is not arriving—and flights seem to arrive about once an hour. There was nobody else for us to follow to see whether they were taking a bus or what they would do; by then everyone from our flight had left. Most seemed to be locals who had been picked up, while the few visitors had taken taxis. We headed back to the tourist information office to ask exactly where the bus stopped, dragging our four suitcases and backpacks with us. On the way, a third taxi driver approached me. I thought he had been watching us search for the bus. He asked why I did not want a taxi. Because of the price, I told him. How much do you want to pay? he asked. I said 25 marks. Of course, come, come, he said, and I thought: ah, okay, finally a taxi driver who will charge the usual fare. Then he turned around laughing and said, you’re crazy, 25 marks is far too little; you come to Sarajevo and expect everything to be cheap. We continued towards the terminal while the driver stayed behind swearing. It was not that we expected everything to be cheap; we had simply researched the fare online and people said the average was 25 marks. That was what I wanted to pay. Had he said 35 marks, fine, I was willing to pay a little more. But rather than negotiate, he chose to mock me and remain without a fare. And he did remain without one: for the next hour, while I waited for the bus, I could see him standing outside the airport door, waiting for people to arrive—because, as I said, flights arrive roughly once an hour. Incidentally, nobody coming off the next flight took his taxi either. So he spent at least two hours doing nothing when he could have earned 35 marks and perhaps even found another passenger afterwards.

We returned to the tourist information office to ask where the bus stopped, since we could not find it. This time, besides the first woman, there was a younger woman who spoke better English and was able to explain it more clearly. We had to cross the car park and reach a street on the other side. When we got there, there was no visible bus stop. There were a few car-rental offices, so I asked inside one of them. They pointed to a post about 100 metres away: that’s it. We stood beside the post and, sure enough, there was a small sign with the bus timetable; it ran approximately once an hour. About ten minutes after the scheduled time, we saw a bus approaching. We breathed a sigh of relief and got on. It was an ordinary public bus, but one that ran from the airport to the centre. The stops were not announced, so I watched our location on Google Maps and we got off at the stop closest to the flat we had rented.

Our arrival was a little confusing and strange, but that is part of the experience.

The people

The first impressions I described above were more or less what I had expected. I had an idea of what people in the Balkans might be like, and it matched my experience on arrival fairly closely. I will try to explain how people in Bosnia and Herzegovina came across to me, based on the three places we visited over a total of three weeks.

As everywhere, there are friendly people and people who are cold or indifferent. Only the proportion changes. My feeling is that people in this country are generally more indifferent. They are far removed from the feigned friendliness of North Americans—which I appreciate—but also from the genuine warmth of the French. Perhaps they are similar to Brazilians: indifferent, but with the minimum degree of cordiality needed to provide a service.

People do not smile much; I understand that this is simply part of their culture. Some might interpret it negatively, but I did not; it merely caught my attention. Every so often you meet someone friendlier, though there are not many. In Sarajevo, a waiter heard us speaking Spanish to each other and tried out the little Spanish he knew. He seemed excited to have a chance to practise it. I invented a whole story in my head in which perhaps he was taking a Duolingo course and never had anyone to practise with. He mixed Spanish with a couple of words in Portuguese and French, but we understood him: “Disfruten su comida, bon appétit, obrigado.”

In Mostar, a waitress also began speaking Spanish to us when she heard us. Unlike Sarajevo, we did hear other tourists speaking Spanish in Mostar. She spoke it quite well. Nydia asked why she had learned it, and she said it was because she was in love with Latin America and wanted to live there for the climate. I suppose we all exoticise and long for what is far from us.

When we checked in for our flight out of the country, the person assisting us switched from English to Spanish when he saw our passports. He seemed excited too. Not many people from Mexico—or Spanish speakers in general—travel to Bosnia.

I could not say that I came away with either an overly positive or an overly negative view of the people. They are different, and once you understand that, it is easy to interact without expecting the same responses from them that you might elsewhere. One detail illustrates this—and remember that this is only my personal experience. When leaving a restaurant, I usually make eye contact with the waiter, or whoever is behind the bar or by the entrance, to thank them and say goodbye. They would respond, but often seemed puzzled: why is he still talking to me now that our transaction is over?

Ethnic groups or identities

To understand the identities and ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we need some important historical context. The country was part of Yugoslavia, a communist federation that eventually broke apart into several countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo—the latter recognised by half the world as independent from Serbia and not recognised by the other half.

Although the vast majority of Yugoslavs were South Slavs, which many might regard as their ethnic group, they actually held a variety of identities linked to cultural and religious factors: Bosniaks, associated with Ottoman Islam; Serbs, associated with Orthodox Christianity; and Croats, who are predominantly Catholic.

The pronounced cultural differences—not necessarily religious or national ones—among these three ethnic groups became the pretext for wars and at least one genocide, which I will discuss later.

Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina contains these same ethnic groups: Bosniaks (bošnjak), Bosnian Serbs (Срби Босне и Херцеговине) and Bosnian Croats (Bosanskohercegovački Hrvati). Understanding the distinction among the three is difficult for those of us who have not experienced living there, since they all share the same nationality and most are Slavs. The distinguishing factor is not religion alone, but culture: customs and ways of life.

This combination of identities gives life in Sarajevo a unique character, most visibly in the city’s historic district. There is a point—actually marked on the pavement—where the district divides in two: the western, Austro-Hungarian side and the eastern, Ottoman side. Crossing that point truly feels like moving from one city into another: Ottoman mosques in place of Orthodox or Catholic churches, different architecture, and different kinds of restaurants, shops and cafés.

The groups do live together normally. It is common to see groups of young women walking and chatting in the street, some wearing hijabs and Muslim-style clothing, others without hijabs and dressed in a more Western style. Yet the differences among the groups can be felt and are reflected in the city.

For example, the football World Cup was about to begin during my visit. In the street it was common to see merchandise from the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team for sale, but you could also find merchandise from the Croatian national team. I imagine that Bosnian Croats support that team even though their nationality is Bosnian.

The country’s political division is also something of an enigma. Essentially, it is divided into three confederated entities. One is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which we might call the central part of the country. Another is Republika Srpska—the Serb Republic—which occupies the sides of the country, wrapping around the first entity like a sandwich. The third is very small: Brčko District, which operates as an independent entity although it officially belongs jointly to the other two. As you can see, the division of identities is reflected in the country’s political division. Republika Srpska is clearly dominated by Serbs, while the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to a combination of Bosniaks and Croats. Many Croats live in Herzegovina, but Herzegovina is not a confederated entity; it is more of a historical and cultural region divided between the two large entities.

If you feel confused after reading this, imagine how I feel writing it and trying not to make any historical, political or geographical mistakes.

Tourism in Sarajevo

Sarajevo receives a certain amount of tourism. I do not think its infrastructure and services are particularly well prepared for it—at least compared with tourism powerhouses such as Mexico, and of course any comparison with Paris or London would be impossible—but neither is it an inhospitable place. You do not need to be Indiana Jones to visit it.

We discovered that the vast majority of tourism in Sarajevo is Muslim. This is very apparent from the number of women wearing hijabs, although their clothing, styles and use of colour reveal that they come from different countries. Some are from elsewhere in the Balkans or from Turkey; others come from the UK or the Emirates, and some are probably from Pakistan, and so on.

It makes sense, because Sarajevo offers two things that are surely high priorities for them when travelling: mosques and halal food. Without launching into a complete religious, theological or anthropological explanation, let us say that for Muslims some things are halal—good—and others haram—bad. They observe certain dietary restrictions, so when they go to a restaurant it needs to be halal: for example, it does not serve alcohol or dishes containing pork, and even uses ingredients certified as halal. It is similar to kosher food for many Jews.

The vast majority of restaurants in Sarajevo are halal, even outside the Ottoman part of the historic district, and there are a great many mosques. There are bars, naturally, most of them rather like pubs. But in the Ottoman part of the historic district they are not out in the open; you have to find them hidden down alleyways, which made the experience more exotic and entertaining for me.

I did miss having an ice-cold beer with lunch. We tried three regional dishes. Ćevapi are small grilled sausages made of minced meat and served with a bread called lepinja, which resembles pita. Kobasice are sausages rather like chistorra. And burek, sirnica or zeljanica is a kind of coiled filo-pastry pie filled with curd cheese. To picture it, imagine a coiled chistorra, except that instead of sausage it is a puff-pastry-like bread filled with cheese; other fillings are available too.

In the tourist areas, most people working in hospitality speak at least basic English, so it is possible to communicate. Away from the tourist areas, English speakers are less common, but gestures or Google Translate always make communication possible.

Some aspects of the tourist infrastructure could be improved, such as transport to and from the airport. I have already described the ordeal of arriving, but the return journey was an ordeal too. Google Maps told us to catch the same bus we had taken on arrival, but at a different stop that did not seem logical—and sure enough, that bus did not stop there. We began investigating where to catch it, but never saw it at the times when it was supposedly due. We started looking into all this a couple of days before our departure because the trip to the airport was making us nervous. On the day we left, we finally managed to catch it where we thought it would pass, but we took a much earlier bus just in case and arrived even earlier to wait for it, simply to make sure we did not miss it.

Another area that could be improved is connections with other cities and towns. Nydia and I planned to visit Mostar and wanted to take a train, but there was very little information online. There was no way to find the train timetable, let alone buy tickets online. We walked all the way to the station, about half an hour away, housed in a large Brutalist building. As we approached, we noticed none of the bustle or crowds normally associated with railway stations. We went inside and the building was completely empty; you could have heard a pin drop. I am not exaggerating: we were the only two people there. At the far end of the building we found the ticket office, where a friendly, solitary employee told us that trains to Mostar left only at seven in the morning and four in the afternoon, and that tickets could be bought no more than two days in advance. Since the times did not suit us, we decided to travel by bus instead. Bus tickets can be purchased online, although the process is rather complicated and confusing. We took buses to Mostar and Travnik, and in both cases they stopped constantly like city buses, picking up passengers along the way. On all four occasions when we had to show our tickets on a phone, the drivers looked as though they had never seen an online ticket before. In fact, we did not see anyone else use one; everyone had paper tickets bought on the spot. The drivers did not speak English, incidentally, so through a mixture of gestures they more or less asked how many tickets we had, and we more or less told them two. Rather than make matters any more complicated, they let us board.

Sarajevo’s main tourist attraction is the city itself and the blend of cultures you can see there. Yes, there are some monuments, museums, historic sites and a cable car, but honestly, all of that can be seen in a couple of days. One beautiful feature of the city is the hills surrounding it, covered in trees and small houses with pitched roofs. I think the most valuable part of spending several weeks there was simply observing the people. It also meant observing the highly visible scars left by the genocide. And now I have to talk about that.

The genocide

This is such a complex and sensitive subject that I would rather not address it, but it is impossible to avoid discussing one of the most important aspects of the country and the city. I have already provided some ethnic context; now I will try to explain, very briefly, superficially and probably incompletely despite my research, what happened.

We have to go back to communist Yugoslavia, which I mentioned earlier. Yugoslavia’s president, Josip Broz Tito—in practical terms, a dictator—ruled from 1945 until his death in 1980. As an interesting aside, there is a statue of him in Mexico City on Paseo de la Reforma. I have not researched him in great depth and would like to find a good biography. Like any dictator, he must surely have committed abuses of power and worse, but one positive thing he did was foster the belief that Yugoslavia was a federation with room for its various ethnic groups and that they should remain united. He therefore created a sense of unity that allowed greater coexistence among the groups. Apparently, he also introduced some gender-equality policies, so people still have some appreciation for him. You can even find souvenirs of him for sale in Sarajevo. Many people, it seems, remember that communist past as a time of unity and peace.

After Tito’s death, Yugoslavia experienced an economic crisis and a resurgence of nationalism, which Tito had harshly suppressed. A separatist crisis began, with the different countries that made up Yugoslavia seeking independence. Each had its own government, but all formed part of Yugoslavia—perhaps a model similar to that of the Soviet Union. Serbia’s president, Slobodan Milošević—who would later become the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes—stepped up nationalist rhetoric, promoting the idea that Serbs living in countries such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, or even in Kosovo, would be in danger if those places became independent. The Yugoslav army was dominated by Serbian commanders. Croatia declared independence in 1991 and war followed. In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina also declared independence, and a civil war began, initiated by Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces and supported by Serbia and Yugoslavia’s military apparatus.

The aim of the war was to seize the country, and this led to the idea of ethnic cleansing: eliminating Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats. It was not only a matter of murder, but of destroying every historical and cultural trace of the other ethnic groups: demolishing mosques and churches, as well as remnants of Ottoman culture. Buildings and homes were destroyed; rape and murder followed.

Sarajevo, a city surrounded by hills, was under siege from 1992 to 1996. Its supplies were cut off and it was constantly bombarded with mortars; snipers positioned themselves in the hills, while artillery and machine guns fired on the city. It is estimated that more than 300 shells struck the city every day. Daily life became a struggle for survival under fire.

Nor was it only Sarajevo: many towns across the country suffered massacres, bombardment, destruction and rape. There are numerous accounts of what happened in different places, and every one of them is a horror story.

The war eventually ended, not because the conflict had been completely resolved, but because military and diplomatic pressure forced the parties to negotiate. The Dayton Accords were signed in 1995. They kept Bosnia and Herzegovina independent, but divided it internally into two large entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, inhabited mainly by Bosniaks and Croats, and Republika Srpska, with its Serb majority. The small entity I mentioned earlier, Brčko District, emerged precisely because the parties could not agree on that territory and decided to share it.

The war ended, but it left the country with an extremely complicated political structure, still marked by the ethnic divisions the conflict had deepened.

Today, when visiting Sarajevo, you can see the scars of the war. There are several museums about the genocide, as well as the “Sarajevo Roses”: marks in the concrete left by mortar explosions that killed civilians, subsequently filled with red resin. You can see them as you walk through the streets.

What is most striking is how many buildings still bear bullet holes. You can walk down practically any street in the city and see them. It is easy to wonder why they are not repaired; you would think nobody would want to see a constant reminder of such horrific events. After several weeks of seeing those buildings every day, an idea occurred to me. Genocide is a sensitive subject. Tension must still exist internally among the ethnic groups and externally with Serbia. Perhaps people deliberately leave the bullet holes as silent testimony. Constantly demanding redress for what happened would only increase the tension and could make matters escalate. Leaving the bullet holes in the buildings may instead be their way of saying: we will not forget. It is how new generations will learn what happened.

Away from the tourist district

Outside its historic district, Sarajevo is a very ordinary city. We lived in an area called Skenderija, an excellent location only a 15-minute walk from the historic district, while 15 minutes in the opposite direction brought us to shopping centres and large supermarkets. Our flat was one block from the Miljacka river, behind the Iranian embassy. The neighbourhood has restaurants, cafés, convenience stores and a few bars.

My running route followed the bank of the Miljacka, from Skenderija to Merkur Shopping Center on Prijedorska and back again. From Most Suade i Olge—the Suada and Olga Bridge, named after two victims of the war—the riverbank has a tree-lined section that is very pleasant for running. Along the way you pass several parks and many apartment buildings surrounded by generous gardens.

Some of the neighbourhoods and areas through which I walked and ran were Bistrik, Kovači, Veliki Park, Hastahana Park, Grbavica, Hrasno and Čengić Vila 2.

The city has shopping centres with large supermarkets; I visited Sarajevo City Center, Alta Shopping Center and BBI Centre. You can find some international brands and fast-food chains such as KFC, Burger King and Taco Bell. One day we decided to eat at KFC and, to our surprise, the chicken was completely different from what is served elsewhere in the world, with a different coating. We then reasoned that perhaps they had to use a halal fried-chicken supplier, which would explain the difference. There are Zara and H&M stores, but they do not have the same décor or design as in other countries. It is strange: they look like “low-cost” versions of the shops, although the clothes appear to be the same. The supermarkets where we shopped were Konzum and Bingo. You can find almost the same things as elsewhere, whether the very same brands or local alternatives. I noticed that supermarkets did not sell alcohol or pork products and that many products carried halal certification.

A short visit to Travnik

We made a day trip to this small town, about an hour and a half away by bus. There is not much to see, but it is pretty. We ate Ćevapi and walked along the steep streets of the surrounding hills. We climbed to Travnička tvrđava, a medieval stone fortress with beautiful views of the hills and the houses covering them. Afterwards, we went down to Plava Voda—blue water—a spring that forms a little stream about 350 metres long. Along its banks are a couple of restaurants where you can eat something, have a coffee and, surprisingly, a beer.

Three days in Mostar

Mostar is a small city in Herzegovina, about two and a half hours from Sarajevo by bus. It may be the most tourist-oriented city in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dubrovnik, Croatia, is nearby, so many visitors to that city take the opportunity to visit Mostar as well. The road there amazed me. I had never seen a more beautiful journey: climbing and descending mountains and hills covered in trees, passing small villages of storybook houses, and travelling alongside rivers and lakes filled with crystal-clear blue water.

The Neretva river flows through Mostar. It too is an incredible shade of blue, and the city has several bridges, the most famous of which is the iconic Stari Most. This bridge is in fact the reason for the city’s name. Stari Most means Old Bridge, and Mostar was named after the mostari—the bridge keepers—who charged people to cross it. The present bridge is a reconstruction, since the medieval original was destroyed in 1993 by the Croatian Defence Council during the war. I know this may seem confusing: when discussing the genocide, I said that Serbs were trying to kill Bosniaks and Croats, and Bosniaks and Croats did indeed ally at one point to fight the Serbs. Later, however, a Croat faction tried to do the same thing as the Serbs by taking control of Croat-inhabited areas such as Herzegovina during the Croat–Bosniak War. Because the bridge was of Ottoman origin, they destroyed it with around 60 tank-shell strikes. The bridge was, and remains, so important to the city’s historical and cultural identity that I cannot imagine how its inhabitants felt when it was destroyed—or when they saw the brutality of its destruction. It was rebuilt and reopened in 2004.

The historic area of Mostar around the bridge has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is truly beautiful, with little streets and other bridges, stone buildings and mosques.

Tourism here is very different from Sarajevo. Most restaurants are not halal, and there are more bars and terraces openly serving alcohol. You can eat well and drink well. The city has a very pleasant atmosphere overall.

We took some time to walk around the non-tourist part of the city, because we always like to see how people live in the places we visit. My impression was of a pretty, peaceful city. We saw an attractive park called Zrinjevac, quiet, well-kept streets, and a shopping centre called Mepas Mall: a pleasant city.

Conclusions

I had read about the war and the genocide long before this visit; in fact, that was what motivated me to come. Seeing the remnants of what happened was painful, but seeing people from different ethnic groups living together normally every day—talking, walking and laughing together—was also hopeful. I discovered a very beautiful country, inhabited by people with a past that is extremely difficult for those who lived through it to remember, and important for those who did not to learn about. It was definitely an interesting visit. Not for tourists who want everything to be easy, perhaps, but certainly for those who want to experience something different and dismantle the ideas and stereotypes we tend to have about Europe.