I had been looking forward to this day for
sometime. On the one hand it was going to be a sombre day, as the places we
were visiting had witnessed some of the most harrowing scenes of the Bosnian
war. On the other, we were going outside the city and in into the countryside
of one of the countries I have been fascinated by for a number of years.
We pre-booked the car for 9am, so woke up
relatively early, skipping breakfast, in order to catch the tram to a
destination half way across the city. We left with a backpack each of limited
supplies and all the paperwork under the sun. We stopped at the bakery on the
corner before purchasing our tram ticket from the kiosk at the tram stop. We
hopped on to a busy tram, standing most of the 25-minute ride from Alipasino
Polje, our stop for the car hire place. We jumped off at the central
reservation of the road where the tram runs, and observed brutalist housing to
our left and sparse land of former industrial buildings to our right. We walked
back on ourselves for 5 minutes to get to the EuropeCar lot. 15 minutes after
entering reception, including a meticulous check of the hire car, we departed.
John was in the driver seat first, as I was
nervous about driving abroad anyway, and wanted to be out of the city before I
attempted it. Lucky too, as the road was three lanes in each direction. He
managed to navigate across the road, doing a u-turn on a side street, before
getting back on to the main road, driving east. The sat nav was a real help to
calm nerves, even though the road was straight. 15 minutes later we squeezed
through the now narrowed road between the old town and the river, and were out
of Sarajevo.
The effective division of the country soon
hit us when we immediately saw the ‘Welcome to Republika Srpska’ sign a few
minutes outside the city limits. The road was on the side of a ravine, the
river below being the Miljaka. We climbed up rather steeply for a good 20
minutes before reaching our junction to turn north-east. The road was single
lane each way and empty of traffic.
5 minutes after we turned we stopped at a
lonely-looking petrol station. A couple of staff members were in the cramped
shop as we bought crisps, sweets, gum and water; the cashier appeared unbothered
with us being visitors as his oral exchange was rather muted. Back on the road
we ascended some more for 25 minutes or so when we levelled out onto Romanija.
The scenery was beautiful. On the horizon
were the tops of spiraling mountains, dominating the vista and almost taunting
the green rolling hills in the foreground before us. This was very much like
driving along the hinterland roads of north Wales – bleak yet pastoral. The sky
was overcast somewhat, but the sun broke through in shards of light to further
illuminate the green-yellow fields around us. We had still only seen individual
homes dotted along the road, often at some distance between them. This was to
last for 20km or so.
We had reached the edge of the plateau,
arriving at the first of the mountains that were to make this journey all the
more protracted. In addition, we were stuck a few cars behind an old, grinding agricultural
truck – seemingly from the latter Tito-era. We slowly drove up and over the mountain; one or two cars did
the daring maneuver of over-taking on rather short bouts of road between the
bends. We stayed firmly in line. After our descent, we drove through similar
terrain as before, but this seemed to be covered more in forestry. We meandered
in the direction of Podromanija, again having the road to ourselves.
At this
point, we came across a police car in a lay by to our right, with a police
officer stood leaning against it. The next moment he is beckoning us to pull
over. My heart leapt to my throat. John smoothly applied the brakes in order to
slow down, and turned into the lay by behind the police car. I scrambled to get
our papers from the glove box, so as not to seem inefficient. The officer began
walking towards us as we slowed down to a stop, and approached my side of the
car. I literally had no idea what to expect. Did he speak English? Was this a
common occurrence? It was our first police sighting.
I wound down the window and, as he came to
the door, I belted out “Doberdan. Hello”. It was with the second word that he
must have immediately come to the decision to not bother with us. I offered the
International Driving licenses, and had our UK licenses to hand, but he merely
waved his hands to shoo our documents away, and then turned to walk away,
waving his hands from behind for us to drive off. I wound my window back up;
John checked his mirrors and then pulled out. Only once we passed out of view
of the police officer, did we then speak – fearing he may hear, I assume – and
shared our mutual fear of what we expected might have unfolded.
After continuing for 15 minutes or so, we
turned off towards Sokolac. This town may have served as a market town in the
past. Its main high street was on a one-way section of a gyratory road system.
This must have been implemented in response to increased traffic through the
town, given that the strategic south-west/north east and north west/south east
roads passed through here. We drove past the usual array for convenience stores
and café’s, and noted the Serb bent of symbols dotted around. The town seemed a
bit tired, as if there was a decline in passing trade leading to a malaise in
its people. We passed through and continued. For the next 80 minutes we
followed the now monotonous country road heading north, then east from
Vlasenica (another sizeable town with a seemingly mixed population), turning
once again north at Milici, and then east on the road to Bratunac.
All along this route there was an
increasing frequency of villages that we passed, and a noted oscillation of who
lived there. As we drove through one, you would notice an Orthodox church in
the centre (usually newly built) and a Republika Srpska flag nearby. Half a
kilometer down the road we would then see a mosque at the centre of the village
(again, usually newly built) with the Federal flag. The area we were now
passing through evidently had a long established Muslim population, and I felt
a natural bias towards the Bosnian Muslims as they were so far away from the
Sarajevan sphere of influence. The fact that these communities still resided in
Republika Srpska surprised me, as would Serb communities living in the
Muslim-Croat entity. Thankfully, the ultimate goal of nationalist leaders on
all sides had not come to fruition; although the point of our journey was to
visit the place where some had tried, and had certainly erased a vast number of
these communities.
As we drove into Bratunac, I noticed it
possessed the same atmosphere as Sokolac. You could almost feel the resentment
to outsiders, like most places that exist on the periphery of a state and
experiencing economic and social neglect from larger urban centres. Here, you
are as far away from Banja Luka as you are Belgrade, with Sarajevo not that
much closer; which only compounds the sense of isolation and being left behind.
I sensed that the border with Serbia, only a kilometer away, might be acting as
a reminder that the Serb nationalists may have founded a separate republic in
all but name, but failed in it being incorporated into a greater Serbia. It was
at this point I pondered “Did people see the BiH number plate on our car and
suspect we were only driving through to visit the Potocari memorial?” I noted
that the car number plates here and for most of our drive were SRB.
Almost immediately were in a slim green valley
and had arrived at Potocari. The sunshine was complementing the landscape,
romanticizing it almost. Yet I felt that this betrayed the place where untold
human suffering reached its zenith. We pulled up near to the front gates and
got out. The temperature was a shock, as we had the air con on; the air outside
was dry and still. I was apprehensive as we walked into the compound, not
knowing how I would emotionally engage, as I had wanted to visit for a number
of years.
A green-roofed, brick built open-air mosque
stood at the centre of a plaza area yards away from the entrance. To our right
was a small glass booth with a visitor’s book inside. I left a short message of
condolence. A series of cream marble stones formed a crescent around the
mosque, and had inscribed on them the names of those men and boys who had been
buried here, including their dates of birth. The one that really stuck out for
me was Mehmed Varnica who was born in 1981 – only 14 years old when he was
murdered.
We walked along the crescent, and then up
the incline of the valley’s hillside among the headstones. The valley was
quiet, only the odd car passing by disturbed the peace. I then happened upon
the only headstone that was of a Christian. I wondered what the story of this
man was. Was he resisting the onslaught of the Serb forces, or was he caught up
by accident? We walked back down the hillside towards the exit, and crossed
over the road to one of the run-down industrial buildings occupying the east
side of the valley.
The vast, echoing series of halls were
where the Dutch UN Peacekeepers resided. Nothing really remained aside from a
few large pieces of industrial machinery and graffiti on the walls. Some of it
was rather disparaging to Bosnian women; those the UN were supposedly meant to
protect whilst ‘keeping the peace’. It gave off the impression too that the
soldiers didn’t really know why they were here.
In the middle of the largest hall was a
small exhibition. It contained photos and belongings to 20+ men and boys who
were murdered. Because the UN had inadvertently created a focal point for
refugees to gather, at the industrial site, the Bosnian Serb Army had a
concentrated population and could now action a plan to remove them. About the
time that the buses came to remove them, along with the women and elderly,
thousands of the men and boys took to the hills. Others were segregated for
dealing with, once the women and children had gone. Thousands of men and boys
were systematically murdered, or were teased out of the hillsides and killed on
the spot, over the following hours and days.
A sense of suffocation came over me as I
read these stories, as we were literally in the middle of nowhere, the journey
here proving that. Tuzla, the main Bosniak-held town, was over 80km away. The
various ways in which each individual tried to survive was heartbreaking.
I left the hall looking for John, finding
him outside. We then returned to the car. I decided that we should go to
Srebrenica itself, just up the road, and hopefully buy some food in a shop. We
drove for 8 minutes and entered the town, parking up to the right on a fork in
the road where a supermarket was located. It was then decided that I should
drive for the next section. Fair do’s, John had been driving for three and a
half hours.
We grabbed some bread, meat and cheese for
sandwiches and some drinks. As we sat eating in the car, I looked around at the
small town. I would say it was more like a village. The buildings were a mix on
one hand of Austro-Hungarian style, painted in pastel colours; and the
brutalist kind we were used to seeing.
The supermarket was housed in a more modern construction. Only a handful
of the buildings looked war damaged. Not many people were about either.
After finishing our lunch, I then started
up the car, reversing around so as to point in the direction of Potocari. It
took me a good 30 minutes to get used to driving. I kept hitting the car door
to my left when I wanted to change gears, forgetful that the stick was the
other side. The sat nav was my best friend, especially as I came to the first
turning at Bratunac. I handled the right turn well, perhaps revving off too
quickly, as a car was approaching in the opposite direction.
I had soon settled in, and was rather
enjoying the driving through the repeated scenery of where we had already
driven. The drive back to Sokoloc was only eventful because a tractor had
overturned and caused a bit of a traffic jam. Other than that, within two hours
we were at the junction just south of Sokolac again, but this time turned left as
we headed to Visegrad.
The initial drive was a long, straight road
through flat, agricultural land. Easy-peasy. We then travelled alongside a
river within a ravine, passing in and out of tunnels, all of which had names on
sign as you entered them with the length in meters next to it. It then returned
to familiar green rolling hills before we arrived at the only major settlement
in the area, Rogatica. Driving through and taking in the town, it felt less
forgotten than the towns we had just passed through. It felt as though it still
functioned as a place to stay overnight before continuing with your onward
journey – something now long gone in the UK since the advent of bypasses and
motorways. Perhaps this town’s days are numbered, as a Belgrade to Sarajevo
road is being proposed with the route via Visegrad being one of the two
options. Its main road still had cafes and shops that were thriving, and a park
and tree-lined walkways with benches full of people. With Rogatica behind us,
travelling south then east, we then drove through one of the most dramatic
landscapes I had come across yet.
We had now met the Drina River again,
having done so as we crossed the border a few days before. But here, it had
gathered into lakes of luminous turquoise. I felt like I was in a James Bond
film, as the car drove level with the water, speeding in and out of tunnels
that were dug through the hillsides jutting out into the lake. This would have
been an ideal place to stay to hire a boat, and just paddle around exploring
the shoreline. About 25 minutes before we reached our destination, the river
began to descend. So we hurtled through evermore tunnels as we rushed alongside
the narrowing and deepening river. The final descent into the town saw us high
above the river, as it began to dominate the bottom of the widening gorge that
opened up into the town. To our right, as we navigated north into the east side
of the town, we saw the old bridge span the now emerald river.
We had to drive on and go over a new bridge,
and back on ourselves to get into the old town. We found a parking spot, paid
the fee, and marched immediately to the bridge. My need to visit here was only recently
developed. I had just read Nobel Laureate Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina. His novel
depicts the life of the residents of Visegrad over 400 years, all with a
connection to the Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic bridge built in 1577 by the Grand
Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The bridge is the silent witness to the goings-on
in the town. So to be here was to bring to reality the fiction that I had read.
We walked along the length of the bridge,
appreciating the gushing river below and the widening valley and hillsides to
the north. When we returned, we visited the nearby café so we could have a
refreshing soft drink, and to take in the bridge structure some more. Bosnia
would do well to advertise this hidden gem to international visitors. No sign
of bus trips from Sarajevo (or Belgrade for that matter) as we travelled
through, even! This would be an easy moneymaker.
We departed soon after, as we needed to get
the car back by 7:30pm. I wanted to drive again, so I hopped into the driver
seat. I think John was glad too because, 25 minutes later, he was fast asleep.
I had wanted to go back via Gorazde and Pale – the former another of those “safe
havens” of the past; the latter the wartime Serb capital – but got confused
when I approached the junction, so I just returned on the route we arrived by.
The hilly and mountainous terrain meant that even in the height of summer, from
6:30pm onwards, it started getting dark in the valleys and along the roads
overshadowed by nearby looming summits. John woke up as we made our descent from
Romanija into Sarajevo.
We darted through the busy old town and
onward to Alipasino Polje. We parked in the car park, and a security guard in a
small office came out to relieve us of the car. We hadn’t had time to put in
petrol, and were late by 30 minutes, but it seemed later that they only charged
us for the petrol at £20. Not bad. We walked over to the tram stop and noticed
that some car accident had occurred in one of the lanes heading into the old
town. We played the usual nosey onlooker until our tram came. A number of
people on the tram were dressed up, ready for a night out. Although not
necessarily tired, we were weary from the long drive, so we both had showers as
soon as we got back to our room. Once changed, John wanted to see what Trip
Advisor recommended for food, and after 10 minutes of scrolling decided upon a
place called Dveri. We wondered out, and walked 3 minutes to its approximate
location. Only for a photo on the app showing a board at a discreet doorway, we
would never have found it.
We walked down a narrow, covered pathway
before we hit upon a glass doorway. The décor was dark browns and greens
accompanied by exposed brickwork, with plants descending from the roof. It was
one of those places that gathered allsorts over the years and placed them
everywhere. A guy welcomed us, and sat us near the door. We were in a gangway of
3 tables, similar in width to the alleyway we entered by, and two rooms came
off the wings of this containing 4 tables in each; Very cosy and intimate. For
my meal, I decided upon a form of battered sausage with peppers, tomatoes and a
jacket potato. John had a meat and bean stew. The friendly waiter suggested a
good bottle of red to go with it, which we obviously approved of, even if it
could have possibly been rank. As it turned out, the red wine and the meal were
delicious. We spent a good time there catching up on the day’s travelling, and
made plans for the week until we finished the wine. We had to settle by cash,
which hit the wallet a bit but was worth it, and left a sizeable tip for our
attentive waiter.
We wanted to find this supposed ‘gay
friendly’ club, so walked towards the river. As we did, a huge display of
fireworks lit up the sky. We presumed that it was in honour of the annual
Sarajevo Film Festival that was also taking place this week. After they
finished, we carried on by turning right down a road that had a few pedestrians
on it but was quieter than the parallel main shopping street. We thought we had
now found the vague location of the building. We had the street, and the nearby
property numbers. The building here, part of a row of buildings forming a block
that was 500 yards in length, had a bit to the right that contained a door to
go up to the apartments and a small shop. To the left was an open space that
led to behind the building. We moved shakily through it. No one was about, and
faint lights above us lit our way. Soon enough we were out at the back, in a
semi public plaza area. I looked up and noticed that we happened upon the
office of Oslobodenje, the city newspaper. As we circled around, we could not
see any sign of a club. As we walked back I heard faint music. It seemed to
come from beneath us. I noticed an unassuming door to my right. It had on it
Podrom, the name of the club, and the street number we had been looking for. We
rang a buzzer, and in seconds it buzzed out inviting us to open the door.
We descended into the basement, unsure what
to expect. The one thing that did hit us was the cigarette smoke. Vile. We
walked into a familiar basement bar set up, and walked over to the bar. No
indication that any of the few patrons present were gay. But it seemed harmless
enough. We ordered two beers and sat near the bar. We made conversation, all
the while trying to eye the room looking for potential ‘gay signs’ of the venue
or even for people who seemed cool. After a polite second beer and 45 minutes,
we decided to leave. The day had by now taken its toll on us, so we went back
and crashed.
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