Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

I spent the early afternoon yesterday visiting the Gazi-Husrevbey Mosque and Madrassa, Bosnia's most important Islamic institution. In the late afternoon I visited the Sarajevo Art Gallery, which houses an impressive collection of modern and contemporary Bosnian art. At dinner (fresh green salad, pepper chicken, and Montenegrin white wine), I met the European Union representative in charge of introducing Value Added Tax to Bosnia-Herzegovina and the US AID coordinator for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Both men were rather stuffy, and neither spoke a word of Serbo-Croatian, in spite of living here for years. But they were interesting dinner companions, sharing their professionally optimistic and personally pesimistic views on the future of the region. Both men assumed that the Republika Srpska would eventually break away from the Bosnian Federation and join with Serbia proper, especially if Montenegro votes for independence in its May 21st referendum and Kosovo manages to separate itself from Serbia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4768370.stm

This morning I visited the Serbian Orthodox museum attached to the old Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Michael the Archangel. Afterwards I visited the Svrzo House Museum (Serbo-Croatian is as vowel-phobic as Hawaiian is consonant-phobic) and was able to see how the Muslim elite of Sarajevo lived in the 18th century -- not too shabby! And finally I visited the Ashkenazi Synagogue, rounding off my tour of Sarajevo's Abrahamic communities.

After three days of beautiful blue skies and sunshine, it is overcast and chilly today. The mountain air is deliciously crisp and clean here, and one would never guess that Sarajevo was once Yugoslavia's industrial center and remains the region's major steel producer.

I can't get over how calm and peaceful this town is, especially given its recent past. UNPROFOR (the United Nations Protection Force that failed to protect anybody and never used force) was replaced by SFOR (NATO's Stabilization Force), and that has now been replaced by EUFOR (the European Union Force, that consists of Germans, French, Spaniards, several misplaced Turks and the occasional lost American). You see these EUFOR soldiers all over the place, but none of them are armed, and they appear to be little more than uniformed tourists. You also see Bosnian soldiers every now and then, but they too are unarmed. (I assume there is a moritorium against weapons in Sarajevo -- an excellent idea for any town.) Of course, the Sarajevo police carry side arms, but they seem like a good-natured bunch of local boys, too busy drinking coffee and flirting with the girls to be bothered with fighting crime -- if there exists any crime to fight.

Aside from Budapest, Sarajevo is the first place I've visited on this trip where I've felt I could live for a while -- months or years. Serbo-Croatian is much more gentle on my ears than its Northern Slavic cousins, and I really enjoy saying "da, da, dobro!" ("yes, yes, good!") when they bring me my beer. The people are kind and generous and funny, and very happy to see unarmed foreigners in their town. Really, you should think about visiting!

(Photo by Eric: Spanish EUFOR troops, Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina)