(no subject)
digitalfriction mentioned that I haven't posted any of my travel photos for a very long time. He's right!
Two friends and I rented a car and traveled south from Hungary through the Slavonia region of Croatia and into northern Bosnia & Herzegovina. We were curious and eager to visit Bosnia - me, because my hometown of St Louis has the largest community of Bosnians outside of Bosnia, and John and Angela because, well, we're all adventurers. (For those of you claim that I choose my vacations based on the U.S. travel advisories, we did think twice about traveling through Bosnia but ultimately decided that nah, our only real risk would be landmines. Our destination was Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea, but Bosnia intrigued us. Its horrors -- and its promise of hope and recovery -- are still with me.
When the border guard, who spoke no English, waved at our vehicle imploringly and yelled something that we thought was "S-Force 4!", we said "Yes, we know of the UN team that's here, yes" and pressed on. What we later decided he said was "Stay on the road!" The fate of other commuters was all too apparent - the shredded metal carcasses of what were once cars and trucks littered the roadsides, unlucky victims of landmines.
The journey south through Bosnia to the city of Sarajevo was a nightmare. The landscape was dotted with villages, as haunting as ghost towns. Not a house left standing unmolested by mortar shells and gunfire. The people had long ago fled or perished.
Northern Bosnia appeared to have suffered the most fierce of the fighting. Vegetation was sparse, with great expanses of land were little more than fields of mud. Trees were charred to a man's height. We sped past a ramshackle market, plank boards ribboning the ground so the shoppers (god knows from where they came - squatting in the ghost villages?) could step without fear of exploding to death from ordnance.
I've never seen such sadness. It is the closest that I have come to a war, and this was only the sad aftermath.
Welcome to Sarajevo - one of the many scarred homes and buildings that littered the Bosnian countryside.
A neighborhood in Sarajevo. The streets were pockmarked with wounds from falling mortars. Gravestones filled every available space - from the city parks to the islands between busy streets.
One the cemeteries overlooking the cityscape. Sarajevo lost 10% of its population to ethnic cleansing within the first few weeks of its war.
Notice the holes left from bullets and mortar blasts. There wasn't a building in Sarajevo that didn't bear such scars. Whole neighborhoods were leveled, while others were relatively unscathed. The people were clearly picking up the pieces of their lives and rebuilding where they could.
One of the completely bombed out neighborhoods.
I'm told this was once the headquarters of Sarajevo's daily papers - victim to one of the Serb's early attacks.
The Princip Bridge, from which Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serb nationalist, assassinated the Archduke Feridnand and his wife, and thus began World War I. The story goes that the Serbs positioned a number of men on the bridge and around the square to shoot the Archduke. One by one, none of the men carried through with the plans. Princip, a lone wolf with an axe to grind, fired the fatal -- and apparently surprising -- shot.
The National Library, whose collections were burned, destroying an entire history of Serbo-Croatian texts.
Bosnia wasn't full of ugliness. Beauty could be found here too -- and in beauty there was hope. The people of Sarajevo walked through the streets at dusk, arm in arm, smiling at the few tourists brave enough to go there. I've never met a stronger and more resilient people - they'd been through hell, and they were still here, slowly working towards making things better.
This is a shot of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque, the most important and well-known mosque in Bosnia & Hercegovina. Built in 1531, taking up an entire city block, with minaret and clock tower, the mosque is also perhaps Sarajevo’s most prominent building. The grounds are also home to a fountain covered by an ornately carved wooden canopy, a baths complex, and smaller outbuildings for harems and tombs, including that of Gazi Husrev Beg himself.
The fountain on the grounds of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque
Commonly called "Brass Alley." Sarajevo is well known for its brass-making. I bought a little pot and a pen fashioned from bullets. Does anyone like brass tea sets? They're everywhere.
A mountain range south of Sarajevo that nearly claimed our lives. John, who was driving, sped down the highway with Angela and I screaming and pleading for him to "OHMYGOD SLOW THE FUCK DOWN....!"
We stopped at a dilapidated petrol station to refuel, where we discovered that we didn't have enough Bosnian marks between the three of us. The attendant refused to accept US dollars or euros (wtf??), so John left in search for an ATM. The old man wanted collateral to ensure that we'd return to pay him. "Leave the girl," he said, pointing at Angela, who looked as if she might suddenly burst into tears.
"I'll stay," I said, bravely. "No, the girl," he said, more forcefully. Angela and I remained, watching forlornly as John drove away. We stood in the parking lot, staring at each other, wondering exactly when we should expect that I'd be shot and she'd be sold to the Turks. A group of teenagers soon appeared, just "hanging out" on the side of the gas station, kicking dust at each other and laughing. We moved to the other side of the gas station. They followed. This game went on for about an hour before John finally re-appeared, and Angela practically tossed herself in front of the car.
One of the rolling meadows outside of town. After our adventure through Sarajevo, we traveled south to Mostar, a city in the Herzegovina region which saw its famous bridge collapsed during the some of the fiercest battles of the genocide. We decided, at first, to take what appeared to be the most direct route. The maps, of course, didn't reflect the changes that had occurred during the war.
As we traveled south through the suburbs, people stopped to stare at us. Old women came out of their apartments and watched us suspiciously from their balconies. The watching reached such numbers that we noticed and grew concerned. A young policeman stood on the corner of the road at the edge of town, and we asked him if this was the road south to Mostar. His English was exceedingly poor, so all he could tell us was "yes but..."
Soon the road turned rocky and unkempt. Goats grazed at tufts of grass and stared at us balefully when we honked the horn. "Okay," we said, "Perhaps when herds of goats block your path, you are not on the highway to Mostar." So we turned around....
And that's when we encountered these guys... They're UN workers, prying landmines out of the meadow. At the time of our 4 day visit to Bosnia, 80% of the landmines had not yet been cleared. (By the way, the US manufactures 99% of the world's landmines, and Bush refused to sign the International Landmine Treaty, which would have banned the use of landmines in military operations in civilian areas. The lifespan of an activated landmine is 52 years.)
"What are those people doing?" asked Angela, as we sped past a couple of workers who were considerably closer to the car than the ones in the photo above.
WHAM!! Dust sprayed our car, and we all shrieked like little girls. The UN workers stepped back, knocked off balance, and wiped the mud from their shielded masks. We'd come perilously close to being blown to bits ourselves. A little warning, guys?!?!
Ever since then, I've been very interested in anti-landmine causes.
My favorite picture. It sums up Sarajevo in all its atrocities and charms.
Next up - travels south to Herzegovina and onwards to Dubrovnik, Croatia!
Two friends and I rented a car and traveled south from Hungary through the Slavonia region of Croatia and into northern Bosnia & Herzegovina. We were curious and eager to visit Bosnia - me, because my hometown of St Louis has the largest community of Bosnians outside of Bosnia, and John and Angela because, well, we're all adventurers. (For those of you claim that I choose my vacations based on the U.S. travel advisories, we did think twice about traveling through Bosnia but ultimately decided that nah, our only real risk would be landmines. Our destination was Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea, but Bosnia intrigued us. Its horrors -- and its promise of hope and recovery -- are still with me.
When the border guard, who spoke no English, waved at our vehicle imploringly and yelled something that we thought was "S-Force 4!", we said "Yes, we know of the UN team that's here, yes" and pressed on. What we later decided he said was "Stay on the road!" The fate of other commuters was all too apparent - the shredded metal carcasses of what were once cars and trucks littered the roadsides, unlucky victims of landmines.
The journey south through Bosnia to the city of Sarajevo was a nightmare. The landscape was dotted with villages, as haunting as ghost towns. Not a house left standing unmolested by mortar shells and gunfire. The people had long ago fled or perished.
Northern Bosnia appeared to have suffered the most fierce of the fighting. Vegetation was sparse, with great expanses of land were little more than fields of mud. Trees were charred to a man's height. We sped past a ramshackle market, plank boards ribboning the ground so the shoppers (god knows from where they came - squatting in the ghost villages?) could step without fear of exploding to death from ordnance.
I've never seen such sadness. It is the closest that I have come to a war, and this was only the sad aftermath.
Welcome to Sarajevo - one of the many scarred homes and buildings that littered the Bosnian countryside.
A neighborhood in Sarajevo. The streets were pockmarked with wounds from falling mortars. Gravestones filled every available space - from the city parks to the islands between busy streets.
One the cemeteries overlooking the cityscape. Sarajevo lost 10% of its population to ethnic cleansing within the first few weeks of its war.
Notice the holes left from bullets and mortar blasts. There wasn't a building in Sarajevo that didn't bear such scars. Whole neighborhoods were leveled, while others were relatively unscathed. The people were clearly picking up the pieces of their lives and rebuilding where they could.
One of the completely bombed out neighborhoods.
I'm told this was once the headquarters of Sarajevo's daily papers - victim to one of the Serb's early attacks.
The Princip Bridge, from which Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serb nationalist, assassinated the Archduke Feridnand and his wife, and thus began World War I. The story goes that the Serbs positioned a number of men on the bridge and around the square to shoot the Archduke. One by one, none of the men carried through with the plans. Princip, a lone wolf with an axe to grind, fired the fatal -- and apparently surprising -- shot.
The National Library, whose collections were burned, destroying an entire history of Serbo-Croatian texts.
Bosnia wasn't full of ugliness. Beauty could be found here too -- and in beauty there was hope. The people of Sarajevo walked through the streets at dusk, arm in arm, smiling at the few tourists brave enough to go there. I've never met a stronger and more resilient people - they'd been through hell, and they were still here, slowly working towards making things better.
This is a shot of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque, the most important and well-known mosque in Bosnia & Hercegovina. Built in 1531, taking up an entire city block, with minaret and clock tower, the mosque is also perhaps Sarajevo’s most prominent building. The grounds are also home to a fountain covered by an ornately carved wooden canopy, a baths complex, and smaller outbuildings for harems and tombs, including that of Gazi Husrev Beg himself.
The fountain on the grounds of the Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque
Commonly called "Brass Alley." Sarajevo is well known for its brass-making. I bought a little pot and a pen fashioned from bullets. Does anyone like brass tea sets? They're everywhere.
A mountain range south of Sarajevo that nearly claimed our lives. John, who was driving, sped down the highway with Angela and I screaming and pleading for him to "OHMYGOD SLOW THE FUCK DOWN....!"
We stopped at a dilapidated petrol station to refuel, where we discovered that we didn't have enough Bosnian marks between the three of us. The attendant refused to accept US dollars or euros (wtf??), so John left in search for an ATM. The old man wanted collateral to ensure that we'd return to pay him. "Leave the girl," he said, pointing at Angela, who looked as if she might suddenly burst into tears.
"I'll stay," I said, bravely. "No, the girl," he said, more forcefully. Angela and I remained, watching forlornly as John drove away. We stood in the parking lot, staring at each other, wondering exactly when we should expect that I'd be shot and she'd be sold to the Turks. A group of teenagers soon appeared, just "hanging out" on the side of the gas station, kicking dust at each other and laughing. We moved to the other side of the gas station. They followed. This game went on for about an hour before John finally re-appeared, and Angela practically tossed herself in front of the car.
One of the rolling meadows outside of town. After our adventure through Sarajevo, we traveled south to Mostar, a city in the Herzegovina region which saw its famous bridge collapsed during the some of the fiercest battles of the genocide. We decided, at first, to take what appeared to be the most direct route. The maps, of course, didn't reflect the changes that had occurred during the war.
As we traveled south through the suburbs, people stopped to stare at us. Old women came out of their apartments and watched us suspiciously from their balconies. The watching reached such numbers that we noticed and grew concerned. A young policeman stood on the corner of the road at the edge of town, and we asked him if this was the road south to Mostar. His English was exceedingly poor, so all he could tell us was "yes but..."
Soon the road turned rocky and unkempt. Goats grazed at tufts of grass and stared at us balefully when we honked the horn. "Okay," we said, "Perhaps when herds of goats block your path, you are not on the highway to Mostar." So we turned around....
And that's when we encountered these guys... They're UN workers, prying landmines out of the meadow. At the time of our 4 day visit to Bosnia, 80% of the landmines had not yet been cleared. (By the way, the US manufactures 99% of the world's landmines, and Bush refused to sign the International Landmine Treaty, which would have banned the use of landmines in military operations in civilian areas. The lifespan of an activated landmine is 52 years.)
"What are those people doing?" asked Angela, as we sped past a couple of workers who were considerably closer to the car than the ones in the photo above.
WHAM!! Dust sprayed our car, and we all shrieked like little girls. The UN workers stepped back, knocked off balance, and wiped the mud from their shielded masks. We'd come perilously close to being blown to bits ourselves. A little warning, guys?!?!
Ever since then, I've been very interested in anti-landmine causes.
My favorite picture. It sums up Sarajevo in all its atrocities and charms.
Next up - travels south to Herzegovina and onwards to Dubrovnik, Croatia!