Around the Balkans in 20 Days – Part 9

The streets below were quiet as we woke up on our last morning in Belgrade. I was up like a dart, knowing I had planned a tight regime for us to be up and out within 30 minutes. It was 7am, so John was less inclined to be rushed. We showered, gathered last minute bits for the small backpacks that will travel alongside us, and packed our remaining items into our large traveller backpacks.

We were ready 5 minutes before the scheduled arrival time of our minibus. Yesterday, I confirmed the details with the travel company via email. I was still a little disappointed that we wouldn’t be repeating my journey by train 5 years ago, but at least I would get to see a different route through the rough terrain to Bosnia-Herzegovina’s federal capital.  After 10 minutes of peering down from the window, I noticed a white minibus pull in underneath up. Surely this was ours. So, as we gathered our things and began to lock up, the driver called me. I said that we would be down momentarily. We posted the keys into the mailbox in the lobby as instructed, then pulled the door to. The driver clambered out of the van and said hello, whilst motioning us to the back of the minibus. We bundled our luggage into the back, and got in, joining a woman in her 30’s who must have been the first to be picked up. The van had two seats up with the driver, three in the middle, and three in the back. We opted for the back seats, with the person we joined occupying the middle row. We drove off uphill towards Trg Republika and stopped moments later outside a hotel where we picked up another person. We then drove from there, across the eerily quiet town, to Trg Slavija, picking up another fellow traveller from a side street; and an older woman in her 70s.

We then dashed downhill along the tramlines, from Trg Slavija towards the railway station, turning left and then merging right on to the east/west motorway. I was still a bit drowsy and unaware of my surroundings, but within 15 to 20 minutes, we were out of the city and into flat agricultural land. We coasted along the motorway in near silence, the chatter between the older woman and the driver having died down – perhaps saving themselves for the long haul.

We turned off at an unassuming junction and pulled in on a dusty slip road. My curiosity was piqued, but I was not concerned. It appeared that we were picking up two further people, who seemed to have had a relative bring them here to be taken onward on their journey in our minibus. A rather odd location to be picked up from, I thought. The drama in my head saw the scenario play out as a body-in-the-bag, criminal gang exchange farce. Happily, that was not the case. The man sat up front with the driver, and the woman was in front of John. With the last of our passengers on board, we travelled away from the motorway in a south-westerly direction towards Sabac.

The high speed and relative calm of the initial journey took a sharp turn (only to be superseded later on) as we moved away from motorway/bypass type roads to rural ones. These ones had ditches on either side most of the time that aided the irrigation of the fields that lay all around us. The driver had obviously done this route hundreds of times, and wasted no time nor any opportunity to overtake cars, trucks, even tractors. Blind corners, for John and I seen as death traps to overtake at, were taken on with either arrogance or faith. Neither reassured us. And to add to my discomfort, the day was getting hotter and the seats were made of leather! I had no chance of getting to the end of this journey dry as a bone.

As long and slender villages passed by, broken with the odd larger town here and there, we took a petrol and rest break. We arrived at a small, modern petrol station that had a shop-cum-café attached to it. To confirm the driver’s frequent use of this route, as he entered he was greeted by the staff as a familiar friend. In-between trips to the loo, we scoffed at warm cheese and ham croissants and milky coffees, and then purchased a couple of extras for the rest of the trip. As we had access to Wi-Fi, I looked up the route we had just taken, and possible routes we were about to take. It seemed that the border with Bosnia was not that far away, a mere 1,000 meters.

After 25 minutes the group was back together in the minibus and off we sped. Minor personnel adjustments were made, with the motorway couple swapping places. The roads were a bit quieter now as we travelled towards Loznica and the nearby border post. Out of view, but nearby, was the Drina River, which we would have to cross to get into Bosnia. A small wood to our right cleared and revealed a wall of hills seeming to indicate geographically a different realm. Indeed, as we approached a junction to turn right, the border posts on either side of the bridge confirmed that these hills were indeed those of Bosnia.

And what a quiet crossing it was. On the Serbian side, pseudo-Heraldic flags, long and slim, hung down from tall flag posts. We gave the driver our passports, with the other passengers providing less formal National Identity cards. We stuck out like a sore thumb. Once on the bridge, which had similarities to ones an army would erect, we waited in a queue of 4 cars before getting our documents checked. The flag poles on this side mirrored those we just passed but had two different flags on them, the familiar blue and red flag of the Republika Srpska entity and the yellow and blue of the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation. We drove off into Bosnia within a matter of minutes.

The geography was certainly different. We followed the river south for a short while, before turning west towards the centre of the country. We meandered between the hills and mountains, through the steep and beautiful gorges where the roads we were travelling on could only be built. Many turquoise lakes with short-lived vistas lay along the route, providing relief from suffocating cliffs we ran alongside. In between appreciating the views, I had a novel on the go since we started in Skopje and was 80-100 pages from the end, so I decided to try and finish it before we reached Sarajevo in order to start my next book.

The early start, rising heat, and constant swaying of the minibus along the windy roads must have conspired to send me to sleep. I awoke as we were climbing our way up the last mountain, beyond which Sarajevo hid. Evidently we had passed over into the Muslim-Croat entity some way back, and were now passing through an overtly Bosniak town. Vogošca had a number of mosques with the green flags of Islam hanging from their minarets. All public signs were in the Latin script, and government buildings were easy to spot with their sole flag flying, that of the federation. There seemed to be a chain of towns along this road, the scene changing from shops and transport hubs, to housing and schools, and back again; all the while continually rising in altitude. The peak seemed to be reached at the same point where a brand new mosque, the largest seen up to that point, dominated a hillside spot looking over the descending hill from which we had just climbed. We curved around its grounds and then began our descent into Sarajevo proper.

Given the drivers’ erratic abilities at the wheel, we seemed to ‘land’ in Sarajevo, hurtling down a main road that soon flattened into the main valley floor in no time. The train station appeared on our right, the same direction in which we then turned, as we sped off west in the opposite direction to our BnB.

We ran parallel to the main east-west road that ran through the city, and turned into a high-rise estate in anticipation of our first fellow traveler leaving us. The young woman, who was first in the van, and the older woman began talking. The gist I got, from the fragmented bits of conversation I could transliterate into English, was that the older woman was quizzing the younger one on why she lived here and not in Grbavica – a stone’s throw away across the river. The response I couldn’t decipher. But the brushing off nature of it by the younger woman wasn’t what surprised me, but the reason for asking the question in the first place did. To some, it seems the question of where you lived is still linked to your ethnic/national identity, as Grbavica was the extent of Serb inroads into the city during the siege. We then departed to drop off the rest of the passengers before arriving at the Baščaršija to be dropped off ourselves.

In the narrow streets, lined with track for the characteristic tramline, the minibus pulled up and hogged half of the road. A small commotion was made of our arrival, but we grabbed our belongings, thanked the driver for getting us here (alive), and then I led the way to our BnB. A mere 100 steps away, John observed for the first time the open space of the Baščaršija where the Sebilj is located, ringed by a platoon of pigeons. The Sebilj was the historic centre of the old town where those who travelled through the city would congregate and quench their thirst at the water fountain. We were now at a T-junction, the centre of which had a small water pipe (lots of these are dotted all over the city), where we now turned right and up a steep incline turning left into a makeshift car park almost immediately.

This was our place of rest for the next few days, and had not changed one bit from my previous visit. The décor was still kitsch, containing a collection of paraphernalia gathered over the years with what looked like ethnographic examples of rug making. Our room was a twin and in keeping with the theme at reception; carpet from the early 1990’s (in the UK at least) that had an almost regal theme to it. I believe it was the exact same room I stayed in when I was there 5 years previous. What a coincidence.

We decided that after our long journey we needed showers, bearing in mind it was still in the early 30s temperature wise. As I showered with the window open for the breeze, the old town below was buzzing with the noise of people and cars. This reminded me that when I was last here, alone, I didn’t travel outside of my comfort zone. With John as my comrade in arms, I felt eager to explore a lot more of Sarajevo and Bosnia during this visit. I was really looking forward to hiring a car in a few days time to travel east to Potocari and Visegrad – different reasons for both.

We left once ready and went straight to the old town to have a wonder. The place is all ground floor level shops with glass fronts and terracotta-tiled roofs. The only buildings taller here were the mosques and newer additions such as hotels that stood mostly at the perimeter of the old town. The streets were slab-paved, with water gulley’s to disperse the rainwater into the Miljacka River nearby. We sought refuge in a canopied courtyard surround by the backs of the shops where I ordered Bosnian coffee and water. The shade was a welcome escape from the searing heat.

After this we walked the ‘History Route’ as I call it. This pedestrianized segment runs the middle of a loop of road making up the main east-west road through the city. At first it encompasses the old town with its Ottoman Turkish and Islamic heritage. It then immediately stops, and turns to Austro-Hungarian architecture with pastel plastered buildings soaring to 3 or 4 storey’s high. Along this stretch are a myriad of 19^th century religious buildings of two of the four major faiths - Catholicism and Orthodoxy. We pondered these, then I pointed out to John the Sarajevo Roses and the symbolism of these to the siege. Even here, the streets were narrow and sort of suffocating, with the tops of the hills to our left, on the south bank of the river, lurking over us.

Once we merged with the westbound car traffic, noting the eternal flame monument to mark the freedom of Sarajevo during World Ward Two, the buildings changed to have an earlier 20^th century, modernist feel before breaking into brutalism as we approached the Presidency building. It was at this point we looped back and followed the eastbound main road back to the old town alongside the river.

At newly renovated City Hall, I was keen to push on but I think John had enough at this point in the day. Yet, I persuaded him into climbing up the side streets to the Yellow Bastion to take in a view of the city. As we climbed up the steep hill alongside one of the cemeteries that serve as reminders of the war, the heat and sun really began to beat us down. I had to stop a number of times to either catch breath or wipe my brow of sweat, guzzling water when I could. However, the prize at the top of the hill was the splendid view across the valley westward as the sun hung low in the sky. A smattering of tourists were with us, on this unkempt rampart from Ottoman times. After a short while, we made the return journey with ease, and decided to rest for a few hours.

Not wanting to stay out late, we dressed and went off for dinner. I recalled the restaurant I visited last time that served chocolate steak (or chicken) as a specialty. We sat out in front of the narrow and intimate restaurant, with the now famous poster of a Cellist in the ruins of the City Hall looming behind John. We ate a meal washed down with wine and returned to our BnB after our exhausting day.