Speed Running Sarajevo

The Balkan humor is less present here. The lack of smiles and wry laughter I’ve come to expect from a Balkan country is jarring. It appears here and there, but on a particularly sensitive day last Friday I already felt like my time here was up. I was coming up on full of whatever darkness and inat coiling its spring around the valley and the country, World Cup wins be damned.

That is not everywhere and that is not everyone. Compared to a Belgrade or a Zagreb, Sarajevo is simply not easy, reminiscent of my early 2000s visits to Russia. I made wonderful contacts at the university, and our conversations were, I would hope, mutually energizing. Local stalwarts of the punk scene were as open and dedicated to the lack of gatekeeping as punks anywhere.

The heat had abated with my arrival, but it has slowly been building, and by yesterday it had regained its full magnitude. Belgrade will be worse, suffering temperatures I’ve certainly never experienced, but climbing into the 90s under a blistering E. European sun here in Sarajevo is already its own endurance test.

I began the day two days ago in search of a house that is a holding of the City Museum of Sarajevo, the last preserved traditional Ottoman-era house complex in Sarajevo. Svrzo’s House is perhaps my favorite of such house-museums that I have visited anywhere, and it was a bonus that it was not far from the apartment where I am staying. The building was beautifully restored and preserved. I couldn’t help but compare it to the structure of a traditional Japanese household, with courtyards for receiving outsiders, the more peaceful and more ornately decorated interiors where none but family may enter, the attention to detail. I felt at peace on quietly observing the modest geometry of a bygone life.

My next stop was the Sarajevo 80s Museum. This was an apartment on two floors with rooms reconstructing aspects of daily life in 1980s Socialist Yugoslavia. Every cabinet and drawer was packed with artifacts, clothes hung on the wall, posters hung over children’s desks, and you could calmly look back into sorely-missed world from which these people had been violently separated, never to be reunited. As Damir Avdić sang, “Bratstvo i jedinstvo je završilo na dva flora, u masnovnim grobnicama i koncentracionim logorima.” No return. With war the inconceivable becomes possible. Against all odds and while staggering belief, through war you can rob a people of both their past and their future. As Americans guarding our speech from one another for fear of meeting someone lobotomized by misapprehension of invisible, but somehow innate differences, I think we can relate to something like a premonitory shadow of what this must mean.

From there I went to visit the permanent collection of Bosnian artists at the National Gallery.

After wandering around and changing my destination a few times, I happened upon the ICAR Canned Beef Monument.

An internationally public display of inat, the culturally constitutive spite that renders the dignity of the individual adamantine in Balkan cultures, this sculpture is a giant replica of a can of beef such as was supplied by the World Food Program during the siege of Sarajevo instead of guns or military support. Inedible canned beef (and occasionally reportedly also pork - in a city with a large population of Muslims) dating back to the Vietnam war instead of help. The plinth reads “from the thankful people of Sarajevo.” Its location and its repeated vandalism attest to what you are supposed to read between the single line.

Interestingly, the Bosniaks were aided in the war against Serbia and Croatia and internal Bosnian ethnic breakaway enclaves of Serbs and Croats by Mujahedeen originally trained and supplied by the US and China to fight in Afghanistan to weaken the USSR. Some contend that one such group, led by a fellow named Osama Bin Laden, was denied the opportunity by their US sponsors to continue onward from Bosnia to wage jihad into Kosovo. They took their jihad to the US, instead. What happened then?

I also visited the Despić House museum, another preserved historical home. the interesting fact about this home was that, in addition to serving as the first theater in Sarajevo, it was built in two phases in two styles. The downstairs was built after Ottoman fashion, and the upstairs was built some time later after Austro-Hungarian fashion. East and West in one house.

I began the day yesterday by making my way to the Yellow Fortress, so named for the color of the stones that were used to build it. The structure stands near the walled village of Vratnik (now a contiguous neighborhood of Sarajevo) and the area called Jekovac and its reservoir, and it overlooks the complex of the Sarajevo Memorial Center monument to the defenders of Sarajevo. The Yellow Fortress was built to expand the protection afforded by the older White Fortress in defending against Austro-Hungarian incursions.

I continued on to the White Fortress.

Speaking of inat, I then popped over to the Inat House to get a picture.

The story of the Spite House is that when Austro-Hungary took control of Sarajevo away from the Ottomans, they began aggressive construction and civil engineering projects, such as the construction of the City Hall and the geoengineering of the Miljacka River. This house stood on a spot affected by both projects, so Austria-Hungary attempted to tear the house down though eminent domain. The owner of the house refused, however, and entered into lengthy negotiations, at the end of which the government was required to move and reconstruct the house brick-by-brick on the opposite bank of the river. It still stands there today as a monument to personal dignity and middle fingers. Now it is a restaurant serving local specialties.

I then saw the smokestack of the Sarajevsko beer factory jutting up over some buildings, and remembered there was a little museum attached to it. Off I went.

It’s a pretty dense and concise retelling of the story of the brewery, with artifacts dating from inception to present. Even 100+ year old vintages of beer in sealed bottles, if the staffer is to be believed. It was a really well-done display. COVID restrictions seem to have killed factory tours permanently, however. No matter, I still imbibed a liquid souvenir in the adjoining beer hall.

From there I meandered up to the ropeway. That is to say, I climbed the many steps to the ropeway, and then road the cablecar some 5-10 minutes up the hill to the former winter olympics complex. The hills above the city were occupied by Serb forces besieging the city, so most everything is now ruins. I walked down the ruins of the bobsled run, which is now an open canvas for graffiti artists. One was even working on a tag when I was there.

The colors are bright, but there is something darkly funny, perhaps more inat, in turning the ruins of your own society into a tourist attraction. We’ve got you here, and now you will not look away.

At the bottom of the track I became confused, as I thought it would lead back to civilization somehow. I somewhat foolhardily followed after some Italian guys I overheard saying it would only take 5 minutes to get… somewhere by going down the hill on the adjacent road. It was 5 minutes to these ruins where a Bosnian flag is planted. It was a further 30+ minutes down the impossibly steep, but paved, back roads into town.

I certainly saw more of the city than I ever expected, as the hill gave way from forest to suburb to circuitous and narrow roads ever downward. I’m thankful for the chance to see how many Bosnians live, which I wouldn’t have if I had stayed on the straight and narrow, but it’s probably important to assess whether you can sustain several hours under 90+ F temps and sun before embarking on such a journey.

Be kind to one another.