#sarajevo NOW

SARAJEVO, Bosnia

The café on the Ferhadija Street is called REVOLUCIJA 1764 & I was just thinking what type of revolution could have taken place in Sarajevo that year... considering I know my Ottoman history... could not come up with a decent explanation, so I went for the other solution: ask a friend; or a waiter, in this case! Turned out to be the right & the most inspired one, too - because the very talkative and friendly waiter told me the name of the industrial-type cafe was referring to the Industrial Revolution in general... a "Modern Times" or Metropolis kind of hint on the wall would have set me into the right direction, but it was better this way! I started to chat with my new companion at a temporary lack of customers & got the following question, my actual reason for wanting to check out Sarajevo: "How did we (Sarajevo) do in comparison with the other Ex-Yugoslavian capitals?"

I loved Belgrade and the flair of the centre, not to mention the Kalemegdan fortress & the breathtaking view of the Danube and Sava confluence... in Skopje I found 2 centres acutely divided one from the other - the Ottoman one, with the fortress & the bazaar-like old town, fractured by the new architectural initiatives - the cardboard neoclassical buildings erected in the last few years, watched by a myriad of statues evoking the Macedonian past... Ljubljana was actually the first ex-Yugo capital city I've visited - the Austrian architecture plus the alpine landscape  were sublime, but not really Balcanic, I must confess... I got the same impression in Zagreb - a totally unusual Western-bound city, given its history & cultural background - as well as my expectations, surely... Podgorica, the former Titograd paled as beauty compared to Kotor or Budva... But SARAJEVO was somehow the ideal illustration of I had called a Balkan city - from all points of view!

Baščaršija - the Ottoman old town on the riverbank (Miljacka) centred around and dominated by the 3 mosques (Ferhadija Džamija, Gazi Husrev Bey & Baščaršijska Džamija, the Central Mosque). The Sebilj, the 18th century Ottoman fountain places right in the middle of the old town square brings the numerous intertwined narrow bazaar streets to a hold - everywhere artisans, cafes, tea-shops, pastry shops & the pride & joy of Balkans fans: several buregdzinica & cevabdzinica. A Croatian acquaintance of mine told me the best Burek of the Balkans comes from Bosnia - I must confirm that allegation! Whether it's a historical place or not, the burek is a sheer pleasure, which goes for the cevapi or the Eastern European cream cakes (so difficult to find in Western Europe) or Oriental pastry... as for the local cuisine (while I'm at it), you can locate by tracking down the Nacionalna Kuhinja spots, I can only use superlatives and offer some comfort to the interested: it is to be found in all ex-Yugoslavian countries, as well as in my own, Romania (thanks or because of the Ottoman rule, naturally).

Leaving the welcoming low cafés & traditional restaurants (frequented mostly by locals) & following the Ferhadija boulevard, one enters another epoque - the Austrian-Hungarian one, with 19th century buildings and churches meant to "scar" the city for eternity.

Right after passing by the Saint Isusova Cathedral & the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity, an Orthodox Church (St. Mary's Birth) on the other side, as well as innumerable cafes, shops & the city market hall, there is a monument that surprises by the contrast between its location and its signification: Viječna Vatra (the Eternal Flame)... it goes without saying that it commemorates the victims of the ‘92-’95 excruciating war…

The Maršala Tita Boulevard takes the visitor right out the Austrian period and guides him to the communist epoch speckled with glass/steel contemporary buildings (such as the 2 shopping malls & the Avaz Tower).

Sarajevo took me by surprise exactly thank to its uniqueness… it absorbed the past & went on with its life - among the chic bars & cafes of the centre is hard to think it went through Hell only 20 years ago… the river, the stone bridges & the mosques almost symmetrically situated on both riverbanks (on the Southern one, the beautiful Careva mosque), all of it surrounded by the Dinaric Alps… the landscape, the fresh air... in the East, it all starts with the eclectic, but mostly Oriental-looking Town Hall & the INAT KUĆA, whereas in the West, the city gets lost between the communist prefabricated slabs (I can't help being familiar with) and the modern (far from aesthetic) institutions and old tiny houses…

Still, one of the symbols of the city is for me exactly this INAT KUĆA (the Spite/Stubbornness House), which had to be moved brick by brick to the riverbank across from the present Town Hall, the prerequisite for erecting the mighty construction on that spot…

I like to think this stubbornness is what made people push through & go on living all through the Balkans region - in spite of occupations, oppression, enemies, wars, communism or chronic corruption… life goes on, problems take only one part of people's thoughts, whereas the rest of them is directed to defying the irony of life and the full half of the glass… I'll return to Sarajevo - it felt like home.