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."