Wednesday 24 April 2024
Highlights: The mountains of Bosnia, Exploring the history of Sarajevo

Today we left Belgrade at 8.30 am for a long travelling day to Sarajevo and visiting a new country Bosnia and Herzegovina with a complex and bloody history with their neighour in Serbia.

We boarded our bus for the expected 8-9 hour travelling day at 8.30 am. We had a rest stop just before the border. The area we were driving though was very countryside / farming. We arrived at the Serbian side of the border at 11.25, waited on the bus while border offical took our passports and at 11.44 we had officially left Serbia. By 12.05 we had enter Bosnia and Herzegovina, all up only 40 minutes at the border.

We slowly started going up mountains one in Bosnia. For lunch we stopped at Zvornik which had a beautiful view of a large lake. The weather switched between overcast, rain, and even snow at one point on this beautiful drive.

We arrived at started checking in at our hotel (Hotel Sahat) around 4.40 pm. You could still see bullet and shell holes in Sarajevo almost 30 years after the nearly 4 years siege of the city from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996.

After a quick break Nadya took us on an orientation walk of Sarajevo. We started at the assassination spot of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that occurred here on 28 June 1914. This assassination set off a chain of events that lead to World War 1. The first assassination attempt was a failure.

There should never have been a second attempt but bad luck saw the Archduke’s car take a wrong turn and then stall right in front of Gavrilo Princip who didn’t fail a second time.

This assassination occurred just accross from the Ottoman-era Latin bridge which runs over the river Miljacka.

We then headed off to the anicent city seeing architecture from 400 years of Ottoman rule and 100s of years of Austria-Hungary rule. There is an actual dividing line.

Having been in Turkey 12 month ago the Ottoman side seem very familar to me.

We visited the Cathedral of Jesus Heart which has a status to Pope John Paul II who played a role in attempting to bring peace to Sarajevo during the 1992 to 1996 siege. It was hear I saw up close a Sarajevo Rose, this is bullet and shell holes painted red for the victims of that conflict which saw almost 12,000 people (mostly civillans) killed.

We then returned to the Ottoman sector and visited the Clock Tower of Sarajevo which hits midnight when the sun rises as the start of the day.

This was across from the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque. Gazi Husrev-beg was an Ottoman governor in Sarajevo who made many structural development of Sarajevo in 1500s as is well remembered.

We also visited the water fountain that all visitors to Sarajevo used on arrival. In the Muslim religion being clean before prayers (5 times a day) is very important so there are many fountains to clean yourself in this city.

During our walk we also visited a nice indoor market, saw a public toilet operating since 1530 (Sarajevo had advanced plumbing before the rest of Europe), and looked into various local shops making products to sell.

We finished the long day at a small local restaurant and afterwards walked back to the hotel in mild rain.