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.