Ciao, ciao Sarajevo

We are packing our bags and eating all the cevapi and paprika sir (it's young cheese stuffed into light yellow peppers) we can find. Our time in Sarajevo is coming to an end as we leave for 5 days in Austria on Tuesday, then home. As always, it's bittersweet to leave a place we have lived for over 3 months.

We joke that there is a rut in the sidewalk between our flat and the Ferhadija, the main pedestrian walkway that feeds into the Old Town, and where we have walked pretty much every day.

Three friends along the Ferhadija; they kept stopping to make a really good point in the conversation, before continuing their walk.

 That's the heart of Sarajevo - the place for the best people-watching: young women in short skirts and high, high heels, old men solving the problems of the world, babushka-clad country women selling woolen socks, tourists from everywhere contributing to the Tower of Babel effect. And coffee, coffee, coffee. I wanted to count the coffee places on the Ferhedija but it's impossible. They are tucked into every teensy space, as well as sprawling along the street.

I have, however, been saving a few quotes and sayings that perhaps reflect on our life here. Here they are:

• "We will improvise." (Said by Fikret after hikers ask how the heck we will cross the torrent of water rushing down the hillside - and many other times! This is now a standard saying in our house - "How will we ever fit everything in these suitcases?" "We will improvise!")

We ran into a concert in the Old Town one day ...

• "It's always something: cold weather, hot weather, war, after the war." (Said by a goldsmith on a hot, hot day in the Old Town when everyone was complaining and dripping. Uh, yes. Always something ...)

• "I'm glad you don't know. I hope you will never know." (A very nice man in an  Ottoman house that is now a tourist attraction mainly spared during the war. We were talking about the chaos of the city and incredible damage done, and I asked him how the bombs could reach so far from the surrounding hills.)

• "I call this the 'i' tunnel." (The country here is Bosnia & Herzegovina; the word for "and" is "i" and it is mainly abbreviated as BiH. There is a long tunnel connecting the Bosnian north and the Herzegovina south. A Fikret-ism.) 

•   "[Someone] is a waste of human flesh." Hmm, some people working with us can guess whose statement this is. And another, "Montenegro is organized crime masquerading as a country."

• A sign on a building we pass every day (translated): "Association for birds, pigeons and aquarium fish." ("Just shows," says translator Magdalena, "There is something for everyone.") Bill passed this one day when pigeons were carefully being transported into cages - probably to be freed somewhere appropriate. People are very nice to the pigeons.

And in a dress shop, one woman playing the piano and another on the violin.

• "War tourism." Hmm, can't remember where this came from, but it is prevalent. And true: yesterday we visited the tunnel dug to get people and goods out of the city under siege. And there are tons of bullets made into toys, etc. Some people hate that Sarajevo is known more for the war than its true nature - a cultural center where you can find an impromptu concert anytime. We have been to 6 concerts at the National Theater - many absolutely amazing. And many, many that we stumble across. There is always something going on.

• Another Fikret-ism: "We always come back with the same number of hikers we started with - sometimes we have to pick up a few villagers, but always the same number."

• "We never ate arugula before the war, it was a weed. But then we discovered we could eat it." A young woman in conversation about one of our favorite greens and how surprised we were to find it here.

• "Here come the dobar dans." This was our saying for ourselves. We were so bad at speaking the language that pretty much all we could say with confidence was "Dobar dan," meaning good day. It's the usual greeting. But I kept thinking that when the market vendors, or anyone else, saw us coming they'd say, "Here come the dobar dans!"  (We can also say a few other things, including "ciao," goodbye here.)

A young artist adding to the neighborhood decor ... no one seems to mind the graffiti, and it is pretty amazing.

 
The roses as big as dinner plates, the bridges stair-stepping along the river, the Palma with its espresso sa slagom (cream that is seconds away from butter), the cafes filled with smokers, the frizerski salons, the graffiti - and, yes, the stories of the war from those who remember it like yesterday ... we will miss it.

So we leave, as the linden trees along the river are in bloom, their sweet scent forever the smell of Sarajevo for us.

Roses in June - they seem to get no care, but bloom like crazy.

What we like about travel

One of the things we really like about traveling is the people we meet along the way. For example, when we were in Istanbul a few weeks ago, we went on a Bosphorus cruise on a ferry. The ferry took us past some beautiful old Ottoman style buildings, and then to a little village where we had lunch at a fish restaurant.

All of us on holiday in Istanbul ...

On the way back, we happened to sit on a bench across from a bunch of young men, also obviously tourists. Of course, we started trying to talk with them, with great hilarity as none of us spoke a common language. One of them had enough English that we learned they were from Iraq,engineers attending a conference in Istanbul. We talked about Bush (they don't like him, said with lots of head shakes and obvious emotion), Obama (mixed response), the war ("I'm sorry," was all I could say), and the topple of Saddam Hussein (which they loved!). Pretty soon we were posing for photos as if we were family.

Geography lesson

They wanted to know where we were from, so I drew a map of the US, with a little star by Seattle. They looked a little blank, so I added Vancouver (still blank) and Hollywood ("Ahhh ...). Then one of them drew a map of Iraq to show us where he was from. Funny how little we know about a country we have been so involved in as a nation. And funny too how little they know about us.

So maybe this is how diplomacy really should work. A couple of not-so-young Americans having spirited, if language-challenged, conversations with five young men. Kind of nice to know that somewhere in Iraq there are photos being shown of Bill and me, vacationing from Bosnia, surrounded by engineers from Iraq, on a ferry in Turkey.

Bosnia’s Brigadoon

Ever since we got to Bosnia (and even before) we heard about this mystical-sounding highland village called Lukomir. It is the highest and most isolated village in Bosnia, inaccessible most of the year because of deep snow.

People talk about the “toothless old ladies who will try to cheat you” (that’s our friend Hawley) as they sell tourists their wool sweaters and socks, supposedly made from wool that they still spin with a drop spindle. Guidebooks say the people there wear the old-style Bosnian clothing and live pretty much as they have for centuries.

Bill heading toward the peak

Because it is so inaccessible, Lukomir was spared during the war. Other villages were burned, but Lukomir was left alone. (We were told that the residents were pretty upset after the war during reconstruction when the other villages got all new buildings and they were left with the old ones!)

 We’ve been bugging Fikret to plan a hike there since we arrived three months ago. There was too much snow earlier, but now it’s melted so last Sunday 8 hikers (including us) climbed some 4 hours up and down valleys and peaks toward the high village. (There is a rough and hard-to-find road to the village now that is passable for cars, but what fun would that be?) The hike was stupendous – wildflowers everywhere, the ubiquitous clear drinkable water spurting from hills, views of all of Bosnia from the top of Mt. Obalj (6220 ft.).

Pretty, pretty hike. Buzz-off shirt for a few mosquitoes.

 From the peak, we could also look down and see – gasp – Lukomir! Dots of little buildings shimmering in the sunshine on a flat plateau with sheer drops on three sides and mountains for a backdrop. Fikret pointed to “the downtown”: a water spout, a red truck and a cow. 

We're coming, we're coming! Get ready, Lukomir!

 We walked down, down, down 1400 feet along cow tracks to the village. “I feel,” Bill said, “like we are approaching the Holy Grail.” We joked about whether the residents could see us coming and were running to get into their traditional garb, setting up sock stands and preparing coffee.

And then we were there. A couple big stecci (medieval  gravestones)  lined the path, and pretty quickly we met an old lady carrying – yes! – knitting needles and a half-made sock. I was hoping to buy yarn and then make a hat using the Bosnian motif designs I’ve been collecting. So I pointed to the loop of yarn I had tied on my wrist (obviously I don’t know the word for yarn) and one of the old ladies seemed to say, “Of course.” Then we saw another old lady – yes, again! – also knitting socks. And another sitting in the doorway of her hut wearing a strange-looking ducat on her forehead – double yes! This obviously was the real thing. She asked for 1 KM (convertible mark, about 70 cents) for taking her picture, but her family was killed in the war, etc. and jeez, why not? We were in Lukomir!

She's carrying her knitting!

After coffee at the mountain hut run by an actual young person, we looked for the yarn, but unfortunately, the old lady only wanted to sell socks. So we bought them – yes, Hawley, we got cheated but it was Lukomir! Who cares? (The socks are very intricate, almost a bit too much so, says my skeptical nature. I mean she was carrying white yarn and knitting a plain sock, and they do sell these intricate ones in the Old Town in Sarajevo...)

Home sweet home, Lukomir style

And then we left. Four old ladies in faded sweatpants and traditional scarves, a few decrepit if picturesque old huts (some sporting the old vertical cherry-wood shingles), one young man running the coffee place for his mother (and he looked pretty much like he would be running home to Sarajevo that night). The cow.  That was it. Pretty darn quiet in Brigadoon.

We hiked down along the top of the canyon through a pretty valley of yellow buttercups and anemones, a stream meandering quietly through it all. And another 2 and a half hours to drinks at another hut and home.

Were we disappointed? Oh, no. The hike was wonderful, the day lovely, the company interesting. And Lukomir? Does it really exist?

See Fikret’s pictures of the hike. 

 

One of the residents watching the sock-selling process

We didn't start it!

Yes, we were in Istanbul last weekend, and, yes, we did see the protests. But we managed to steer clear of the tear gas ...

Ferry loading protesters

We were with our friends David and Mary Jo, and the four of us went to a part of town called Kadokoy via ferry. When we arrived, we saw huge crowds of people on the dock; they were yelling and waving red flags and singing cheering-type of songs. So at first we thought it was a football match - they seemed to be sending off a bunch of people on a big ferry. As the ferry was leaving, young men were climbing the railings, leaping onto deck at the last minute, everyone in a big state of excitement.

We went on our touristy way, but then saw something on TV that looked familiar, so we asked some men about it.  They didn't speak English, but in true Turkish style, they wanted to accommodate us so they waved over another guy who apparently spoke two words of English. But all he could tell us was "Taksim" and "kaput."

Vendor selling flags.

So we were no further ahead except now we had figured out it was political. After seeing the fish market and having some kebabs for lunch, we headed back to the dock. The crowd was still there - vendors were frantically selling flags with Ataturk's picture on them. One ferry left, piled high with flag-waving people. I thought it looked like a scene from Les Miserable and had that song stuck in my head the rest of the night. Little did I know it was close to that. We barely made the next ferry, also crowded with flag-wavers, and at the dock on the city side the vendors were selling gas masks along with the usual t-shirts and mosaic coasters. We decided to go the other direction from the demonstrators. Contrary to our journalistic tendencies - but we felt we really had no place there.

Loaded ferry leaving

Back in the tourist center, everyone we talked to was concerned. There was a lot of opinion about who was right, but everyone agreed that the police reacted too violently, and one young man, who seemed at first to oppose the protests, said that it was good for the prime minister to get the message that the people wouldn't stand for his heavy-handedness.

Istanbul is a lovely city, and more prosperous than when we were there 8 years ago. All we can do is hope for peace and that the government listens to the people. Maybe when that call to prayer happens everyone could just stop and think for a second ... but then, that seems not to be the way it works in the world.

Midnight at the Blue Mosque, white doves circling

We arrived back in Sarajevo. Our woman taxi driver immediately started yelling about how horrible life is here, her husband had both legs shot off in the war, and then died, she has five kids, etc. Ahh, Sarajevo. We're back "home."

Sampling the culture

Since we've been back from our travels we have been exploring more of Sarajevo and the surrounding areas.The weather is now great so we don't feel the need to flee to the coast!

The weekend before last we went to the museum here about The Siege. It's a small museum, but it makes up for its size in drama. It gives the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina from before Ottoman times. You can see how in previous days there were Bosnian kings and even a Bosnian religion. And how the country has been the object of attack from early times.

Then you enter the room that focuses on life during the war of 1992-1995. There are examples of weapons used by the Bosnian army to defend Sarajevo made out of scrap metal (they had no weapons against the Serbian army, which had all Tito's old weapons). And a model of how a typical family lived during the war: a little room with a makeshift wood stove, a little wagon with jerry cans for hauling water, UN plastic tarps covering bombed-out windows and roof. In the corner is a blanket with toys on it - the family slept in the kitchen because it usually was the safest room in the house. It shows the supplies brought in by the UN - but noted that often the people didn't actually receive them. A can of beef might contain who-knows-what by the time it reached you, for example. There is actually a piece of art outside the museum of a giant can of World Food Aid beef; we can't tell  if it is sarcastic or just art. Or both.

There are lots of more traumatic things there too - pictures of an almost empty main market (where a grenade killed a lot of people), a photo of a soldier kicking a body in the street, etc. Things you don't want to know, but can't help but look at.

The National Theatre in Sarajevo

That night we went to the National Theatre to see Carmina Burana. We had never been to the theatre here before, though we had often walked by the lovely building. We had read at the museum that theatre culture is such a part of things here that during the siege there were over 200 concerts held - despite the danger of getting there under sniper fire. (Yes, there was a picture in the museum of the real cellist of Sarajevo.) The opera was wonderful - 200 people on the stage, and a child's choir in the balcony too.


This past weekend we stopped by the theatre in the morning, this time to get tickets to a musical review. (We were hoping for Bosnians singing "Oklahoma.") As we were buying tickets , we saw that there was a small concert called "Voice, Piano and Chocolate" starting in about 5 minutes. We plunked down our 8 KM (about $5) and went in. It was amazing - a basso and a tenor accompanied by a gorgeous young pianist. The concert was in a small lobby, and it was crowded with people of all ages. (And chocolates in little baskets.) I swear the very cute tenor was singing directly to me, though Bill said all the women there were thinking the same thing. But what voices - goosebumps all around.

After which we climbed for half an hour straight up the hill to one of our favorite lunch places, called Kod Bibana. It's on a hillside of apple and cherry trees, and though it is in Sarajevo, you feel as if you are out in the countryside (which, actually, you are - it's a very small city). It's always full of locals, sipping Sarajevsko beer, or rakija, the grappa-like brandy. People always tell us, "You can't walk there, it's too steep." But we figure we need to earn our lunch of polenta drenched in cheese and cream.

Orchard at Kod Bibana, with Sarajevo view

 That night, after the musical show, we walked through the Old Town. It was around 11 p.m. and every single table in the hundreds of sidewalk cafes was full. If we had wanted to sit down to have a coffee, we would not have been able to! It was a scene - young women were tottering down the cobblestones in heels 6-7 inches high. They had to cling to a more rational friend, in some cases. And the short skirts - let's just say they were barely there. Young men hung around in clumps, probably scared to death of the young women. Or maybe that's just our take on it!

This Sunday we tromped up and down mountains once again, led by the indomitable Fikret. On all the hikes you see remains of war - hidden cemeteries, hills where once mouflon sheep roamed but are no more.We emerged from this hike with torn hiking pants - they are now at the tailor down the street, and they will be ready either by Wednesday or next year (my language skills are still not there!). We also emerged with wild sage, rosemary and thyme, great bunches to make Mountain Tea, which I am sipping as I write.

This must have been before the "boulder hike" up the dry stream bed ... I still look conscious.

Bill at the Bivac - a climber's hut. Rakija apparently helps with the hike down.

You can't help but marvel at what the people here have been through, especially those of a certain generation. At the theater, I kept looking at women my age or slightly younger and thinking what their lives were like during the war. I can't imagine it from my perspective as a Seattle native growing up on Capitol Hill, where the most difficult thing was perhaps having to walk to school in the rain. 

Depressing? Maybe, but after our Days of Culture, we see it more as amazing that their spirit endured. Sounds like a cliche, but it's very real.

Yes, that's the "trail"

We are NOT foodies!

Foodies are obsessed by food. That’s not us, or so we told ourselves as we ate our way through several countries this past week. It was the May Day holiday and everyone here took off, and so did we. We flew to Ljubljana in Slovenia, then drove to Trieste (Italy) and Istria (Croatia). A truly wonderful trip. 

But about the food …

 I think Bill was joking when he said we went to Trieste to buy some Italian coffee. We like the coffee at the cafes here in Sarajevo, but we have yet to find one that tastes good in our drip coffee maker. Sooo, we thought, Trieste, home of Illy! And off we went.

It was only as we loosened our belts after a day in Trieste – one single day – that I tallied our intake:

• Breakfast at our hotel, the Victoria (James Joyce wrote here!): A huge spread of fresh juice, eggs, prosciutto, fruit, yogurt. Oh, and Italian cheeses. And mortadella. Also tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. Croissants, cappuccinos. Cakes, cakes and more cakes.  (Okay, I admit to having a cream puff, they looked so good and who cares if it’s breakfast.)   

• Espresso mid-morning at Urbanis Café, one of the oldest in Trieste. Came with shortbread cookies.

Buffet di Pepe, Trieste. Lotsa pork

•  Lunch, Buffet di Pepe: Mixed pork plate (pork cheek sausage, a thousand kinds of prosciutto and pancetta, roast pork, little knuckly things), topped with fresh grated horseradish, all  accompanied by a big plate of sauerkraut (for Bill), and then a cheese and olive plate. Bread and mustard.

• Mid-afternoon: Gelato! “A day without gelato is a day without sunshine,” that’s our motto in Italy. Two scoops each, mine limonato and fragola, Bill’s stracciatella and some other (he didn't keep track, can you imagine?!).

Little deli in Trieste with a prospective customer figuring out ettos

• Post gelato: Prosecco in the square. Served with olive bread and mustard, and chips. For some reason, in Trieste they won't serve you a drink without food.

• Dinner: Ristorante Strabacco. For starters, Bill had beef tartar (raw hamburger) topped with burrata (pretty much butter posing as cheese), I had a modest dish of pears filled with goat cheese, and all drizzled with dark, local honey; then Bill had grilled lamb straight off the fire, and I had tenderloin, ditto off the fire. We were restraining ourselves. We started dinner at 8:30 and left at 11. Wine, sure. No grappa.

 That’s all! For that day …

Best meal we had: Spejza in Ljubljana. Five-course fixed-price dinner. Bill’s favorite was the scrambled egg with truffles. Mine was giant squid stuffed with black ink risotto and cuttlefish. Yum.

Worst choice of meal: Good traveler, trying the local Slovenian cuisine at a mountaintop chalet, I ordered the buckwheat ravioli. It was stuffed with lard. Yes, lard. It reminded me of my childhood for some reason. I’ll have to check with the siblings about why. I didn’t want to insult the cook, who of course was watching, so I choked it down. Lard.

Buckwheat ravioli on the right. Bill's more sensible gnocci "rolls"

Mainly, we had many wonderful meals, but we weren’t obsessed. Oh, no. They just happened. It was wild asparagus season, and we saw lots of people clutching bouquets of freshly picked asparagus fronds as they walked along dirt roads. It tastes more bitter than the usual asparagus, but is really yummy with prosciutto.

And we had a lovely lunch in a hill town in Istria. We had walked 6 miles to Zavsje where locals shook their heads when we asked about a café. We were starving (probably because of the stretched Trieste stomachs). Finally, a man understood our plight and pointed 1 km uphill to an agriturismo in Montizel where we indulged ourselves in wonderful pastas, insalata, local wine - all out in the sunshine surrounded by olive trees and wildflowers. (Since it was Istria, everyone spoke a mix of Italian and Croatian, very odd.) Then a very difficult 6 mile hike back to Groznjan where we were staying.

Then there was rakija (like grappa) with our hosts at our stone “villa” while they showed off their son’s chess trophies. And rakija “from the house” at the restaurant in Groznjan (and many others).

And local olive oil, which we poured into miniature swimming pools on our plates and sopped up with the fresh bread everywhere we went. Sometimes the waiters actually laughed, but they liked it too.

Sladoled in Istria and Ljubljana. A day without sladoled is a day without sunshine. (Look it up.) Multi-layered Austrian tart, couldn’t miss that. 

Oh, yes. We came to Sweet Home Sarajevo with 3 bags of Italian coffee.

Coffee, giant oranges, pecorino and prosciutto under the Istrian trees

Food for the soul in Ljubljana. Wisteria was growing wild in the fields, scenting the air everywhere!

Land use planning?

Odd-looking bike surreys for rent on Wilson's Lane

There are plenty of things in Sarajevo that make you recall its socialist past. Our Grbavica neighborhood, for example, has tons of high-rise, cement apartment buildings, all covered with colorful graffiti. That they are decorated with pockmarks from shrapnel adds to the rather dreary appearance. The buildings are usually some color (yellow like ours, pinkish or green), but the color is usually faded, the cement chipping away to grey.

We saw recently that there is a hoopla in our hometown, Seattle, about turning a parking places into space for tables along the streets. This puny effort  made us laugh a bit.

About halfway into our stay in Sarajevo, we are coming to realize how much open space there is here. Between the dreary buildings there is almost always a little garden area, sprouting rosebushes that someone mysteriously maintains. And there are benches, this time of year almost always occupied.

On my way to the market the other day I walked through a little park, walled on each side by apartments, and it was filled with children on dilapidated see-saws and swings; a band of pre-teen girls looking at someone’s new smart-phone (reminding me of Maggie, of course!); old ladies sitting on the benches in the sun, one holding a sprig of lilac from a nearby wild tree.

Don’t think of these parks as manicured, they aren’t. The thick grass and love-me-love-me-not daisies grow wild, and the dogs – Sarajevo is full of stray dogs that hang out in packs, sleeping in the parks. (They sleep during the day – Bill never fails to say, “Let sleeping dogs lie” when we walk by them. Then at night they bark. It’s like they have their own nocturnal society.) But the little pockets of green are everywhere, sometimes only a bench under a tree, but a park still.

Lazing dogs and cafes

 There is also  “Wilson’s Lane” ("Vilsonovo setaliste") near us. It’s a riverside, tree-lined street that is closed every day from 5-11 p.m. The street is bordered by two sidewalks that are also very wide, so after 5 it seems the whole city is strolling in and alongside the street. Bikes, people on rollerblades, walkers and – notably – what we call “young love” on every bench along the river. The displays of, shall we say, intense ardor make us smile – I am planning a web album on “young love” if I can figure out the zoom lens (though, as Bill says, they wouldn’t actually notice the camera anyway).

One of "our" cafes.

Then there are the coffee shops. With the sun now out (80 degrees all week!), tables and umbrellas are sprouting. Where you could swear there was no room last week, suddenly there is a café full of people. “You could throw a stone in any direction and hit five cafes,” Bill says. They are so much fun: middle-aged ladies with their red hair, long-legged beauties in short-shorts, macho guys with ever-present cigarettes dangling - all sipping coffee.

Most of the time everyone drinks Bosnian coffee in little cups (like espresso but with sludge on the bottom) – very cheap, around $1.25 each (cappuccino is about $1.50). You can sit all day for about a dollar. A friend here tells us you can go whole days just seeing friends for coffee and never going home! Often, they are eating sweets as well. The coffee shops are called Slasticarna, meaning “patisserie.” It’s very tempting, the cheesecake at my favorite place, Palma, is really good, as is the “sladoled” (ice cream).

Palma: We might have to roll ourselves home when the time comes

The openness has a few dangers; e.g., speeding bikes on the sidewalks. But the leafy and lively open spaces fit perfectly with the gritty elegance of the city. Hmm, talk about ardor; maybe we are falling for this place.