YOU GO SLAVIA! - Part 9: Sarajevo and Epilogue

August 22nd, Sarajevo:

We woke up in our Bosnian hotel, loaded up the car, and drove to downtown Sarajevo.

Outside of Jerusalem there are fewer cities with such a strong division of religions within major portions of the population. Catholics, Serbian Orthodox, Muslims, and Jews all have large communities in this city and they have existed mostly peacefully side by side for centuries.

However, when the dam of peace broke, it broke hard. Sarajevo suffered worse than any other city during the Balkan wars of the early 1990's. The Bosnian capital endured the longest siege of any city in the history of modern warfare, from 1992 to 1996.

Sarajevo is also an Olympic city (Winter 1984) and the city where the assassination of an Archduke led to World War I.

Needless to say, I was excited to see this place...

It was a beautiful day as we drove into the city passing all sorts of interesting buildings and sights.

One of the main government buildings for Bosnia & Herzegovina...

Every once in a while we would pass cemeteries full to the brim with new-looking headstones. We would also pass buildings that were still in their ruined state after being bombed out or shot up in the war...

We parked the car near the old town and got out for a bit of a stroll.

We first came to one of the main squares in the middle of a large and nice pedestrian area. The stately Serbian Orthodox church was there to see...

We explored the streets a bit and came to a monument with an everlasting flame for the victims of World War II...

I found Sarajevo to be a pleasant surprise of fancy architecture, pedestrian-friendly zones, attractive squares, plenty of greenery, and clean streets.

The Palace of Fine Arts...

Olympic symbol on one of the main squares from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo...

The Catholic cathedral...

One of the many mosques...

There was an extensive tourist bazaar, though it was still too early in the morning for the shops and kiosks to be open...

Walking by one of the mosques, one really felt like one had stepped into the Middle East...

We found a nice little restaurant where we got some Ćevapčići for breakfast...

We wandered around the bazaar a bit more as the shops started to open...

We then came around to the banks of the Miljacka river where we saw the site of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophia. This was, as you no doubt remember, the event that triggered World War I...

The scene of the crime...

And Nate just keeps on runnin (notice the bullet holes in the bench on the left)...

We came back around full circle to the Serbian Orthodox Church on the square where we began...

We passed by the National Theatre...

Still pock-marked with bullet holes from two decades before.

We only spent a few short hours in the city and I only saw a bit of the downtown area, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how much it had cleaned up. Other than the bullet holes and a few shelled-out buildings, you'd hardly know that this was such a dangerous place just 13 years ago.

We got back in the Green Machine...

...and headed north.

We passed by the highest skyscraper in the Balkans, the Avaz building...

Old communist apartments from the Yugoslav era...

We drove for several hours through beautiful hilly countryside. Occasionally we encountered some interesting sites...

An old nuclear plant...

Passing through many villages, we would often see the scars of war...

But more often than not the scenes were idyllic and peaceful...

After a few hours we arrived in Arizona.

Not the state, silly, but a huge discount shopping outlet. Basically a huge collection of small shops selling crap from China.

Peter and Janez spent some time shopping for sundry items. Myself, I bought a new pair of slippers.

We left Arizona and an hour later we were at the border with Croatia...

We passed into Croatia and were finally on a good highway again. There wasn't too much to see in Croatia's Slavonia region. But occasionally we would pass quaint villages and rolling fields. It reminded me quite a bit of Hungary (which is not far away)...

Before long we came at last to the Slovenian border. We were back in the EU...

You can see our route leaving Sarajevo in yellow (is that yellow?), then linking up with the highway that we had taken a week before in Croatia, and then leading back to Ljubljana...

View Yugobalkantrip in a larger map

We drove into Ljubljana just as a huge rainstorm came in. Our timing couldn't have been better. We went to a pizza place that the boys knew well and had our last meal together...

Of course I had to get my last Cockta Cola while in Slovenia. It was fun to joke around about all our experiences on our trip...

Janez drove us back to Peter's and Rok's grandparents' place where we said our goodbyes to Janez and the Green Machine.

The great Yugo-Balkan trip had come to an end...

I was able to check some emails and stuff before Peter drove me to the train station. Exhausted from a long day, I boarded the night train back to Munich around midnight. I found a compartment with a couple of Swedish guys coming back from Greece. They were cool and we were able to spread out relatively comfortably in the cabin in order to sleep.

I slept rather well as far as sleeping on trains go. I woke up a couple of times to see people asleep on the floor of the aisle outside my compartment; it was a full train.

Eventually I must have gotten into a fairly deep sleep because the next thing I knew I was waking up in a nearly empty train parked at the Munich main station. I don't know how long we had been there before I woke up. I woke up the Swedes and wished them well and then I took the S-bahn back to my apartment.

I was finally home again. I had returned with a new collection of priceless experiences, a few new rocks, and about 2250 photos to sort through and edit. It was good to be back.

View Yugobalkantrip in a larger map

Yes, it had been an incredible two weeks in the former Yugoslavia and Albania. The trip could hardly have gone better. From swimming the lakes and hiking the mountains of Slovenia, to driving through the Serbian countryside, to experiencing the craziness of Prishtina, Kosovo; to discovering the ancient rocky shores of lake Ohrid in Macedonia; to exploring forgotten castles and ancient ruins in Albania; to enjoying the pebbly beaches and warm Adriatic waters of Montenegro; to wandering the narrow streets of Dubrovnik, Croatia and symbolic bridges of Mostar, Bosnia; to witnessing the sites of terror and beauty in Sarajevo; I have been changed and improved by these experiences and am grateful for the opportunity I have had to do such wonderful traveling with some great new friends, who now feel like great old friends.

Thanks for following along. Since August I have had many more great experiences here in Bavaria so stay tuned as I continue to get my blog current with my life.

Hvala lepa!

...