A Double Dose Of Franz Ferdinand

Sarajevo immediately endeared itself to me. I’m not sure what exactly it was about the city but it just had this welcoming feeling to me. Maybe it’s because the city is a little gritty and this reminded me of my hometown of Tacoma. I’m not sure, but there was definitely something. Sarajevo is a “young” city at about 500 years old. Established by the Ottoman Empire and under Ottoman rule for about 400 years, there is a large Turkish influence on the city. The events that Sarajevo is most well known for however all came after Ottoman rule. Those three events are the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the 1984 Olympic Winter Games, and the Bosnian War from 1992-1995. As the tour guide on my free city tour noted the city is known for two bad things and one good thing. He thinks they should host another Olympics.

The free tour was very interesting and informative. I learned a lot more about the specifics of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. All I had really known about the assassination before was that it had occurred in Sarajevo and that it was the trigger that started WWI. I didn’t know anything about the assassin or that there had actually been several assassins and that the archduke was shot only after a bomb had failed to kill him earlier in the day. I also learned that the term Serb does not mean someone from Serbia, nor does Bosniak mean someone from Bosnia, nor Croat mean someone from Croatia. These are terms for ethnic groups not nationalities. A Serb is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, a Bosniak is a Muslim, and a Croat is a Roman Catholic. Which explains how in the Bosnian War from 1992-1995 the city of Sarajevo was under siege from Bosnian Serbs. They were people from Bosnia who were upset with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s decision to separate from Yugoslavia and wanted to cut out a portion of eastern Bosnia and keep it as a part of Yugoslavia. Around the city there are war memorials called Sarajevo Roses. A Sarajevo Rose is a location of a mortar shell explosion that was filled in with red resin. After talking about the war, the guide told us about Sarajevo since the war and the way that the city is viewed by foreigners. It very much echoed my frustration in the post that I had just put up about my stay in Kosovo.   There is a false perception of Sarajevo as a dangerous city based on the very limited knowledge that people have of the city’s past rather than actual facts about the present. Another thing that was pointed out to us on the tour was this building:

It was built for the Olympic Games in an effort to show that communist architecture could be fun and attractive and apparently is judged by most everyone in the city to be the ugliest building in Sarajevo.

I only ended up going to one museum while I was in Sarajevo, the Musej Sarajevo 1878-1918 covering the period in which the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a small but interesting museum.

I spent a large part of one day just walking along the river that runs through the city. There is a great walking/running path beside the river just past the Old Town leading out of the city that is really pretty. After walking to the end of the path and then a bit further I finally turned around and walked back a little ways before sitting on a bench and enjoying the beautiful weather and surprising warmth as I took in the beauty of the landscape.

Looking for something interesting to do one night I found a jazz club that was supposed to have live shows. The information online was very hard to follow as one place said they had live shows on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and another spot said Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately, Friday had passed, but since it was Saturday I decided to go check it out. They didn’t have a show that night but I was told they would have one the next day at around ten. I returned on Sunday a little before ten and waited around until they finally began the show a little after eleven. Oh, the Balkans. I have very mixed feelings about jazz in general. There is some jazz that I really can’t stand, but a good upbeat live jazz show is always a lot of fun and fortunately that is what this evening delivered.

The hostel I stayed at in Sarajevo was bigger than any of my previous hostels and as a result, despite the fact that there were a few other people in the hostel I had a room all to myself. Unfortunately, the common area was more of a hotel lobby than a fun place to hang out, so I didn’t really get a chance to hang out with anyone in the hostel, but I was really glad that there was nobody in the bunk above me as I have in several of the hostels had to come up with creative ways to plug in my computer because my charger is quite heavy and fits very loosely into my outlet adapter. I don’t know how I would have got this one to work if I wasn’t able to put my scarf in the bed above me.

Sarajevo was a great stop to follow up my food disappointment in Dubrovnik. I spent my first day in Sarajevo as a work day, spending the day writing and getting my laundry washed before finally going out to dinner. I found a place nearby that advertised having Italian food as well as local food, but when I arrived they only seemed to have the Italian food. Fortunately it was really good Italian food. I started off with tuna spaghetti and some wine and was still famished when I finished so I ordered a large pizza and another glass of wine. I was still starving so I then ordered a banana split and a third glass of wine. I was still hungry after I finished that but I wasn’t completely ravenous anymore at least, so I decided to head back to the hostel. I had burek three times, twice with meat filling and once with cheese and spinach, with yogurt sauce.

Drool.

I also had cevapi a couple of times once with just kebab sausages and onion in lepinja bread, but the other time there was also a cream cheese filling which was a brilliant addition. At the cevapi restaurants I also always saw pljeskavica on the menu. I had no idea what it was but I decided to order it. It turns out that it is basically cevapi, except the meat is in patty form, and it and the onions are served alongside the lepinja bread rather than inside of it. I haven’t had too many dessert items since I have started this trip. I like sweets, but I am definitely more of a salty and savory guy so I usually reserve my money for items along these lines, but I guess I must have had a bit of a sweet tooth while in Sarajevo because in addition to the banana split I also went to a little café and had tufahija which is an apple stuffed with crushed walnuts that is stewed in sugar water and topped with whipped cream which I accompanied with a Bosnian tea.

I enjoyed it so much that I returned to the same café later that night and had baklava with a peppermint tea. Sweet tooth satisfied.

The final little interesting thing that I did while in Sarajevo was listen to Franz Ferdinand on my iPod while standing in the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, because how could I not.