Leaving Olovo, good-bye kind and hospitable Emir and Dino, we continued our way to Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia. Emir was not joking when he warned us about the coming uphills, 15 km to be precise. We just climbed up slowly from one hill to another hill, until the first wheel of Péter's bike made some weird sound and we had to stop to check it. Seemed like we went too slowly, therefore the force was not distributed equally through the spokes to the rim and after 2 hours of truing unsuccessfully, we had to keep moving in hope that we would find a bike shop at the next town.
 |
| The first technical problem of the trip |
Overcoming the 15 km uphills, we received a gift as a compensation for our efforts, a 20 km downhill and easily arrived at a town which was 10 km to Sarajevo for our lunch break. Until then, Péter's bike seemed better even though no bike shops were found along the way. A good lunch raised our mood up as we thought that the damn hills were over and we would arrive to Sarajevo on a super duper flat road. Nah, it was a hell of ups and downs, together with impatient drivers who didn't miss a tiny space of the traffic jam to move on and never cared about cyclists like us. The narrow roads and the nonstop honks brought us terrible headache and panic as we didn't know what was coming from behind. Finally, we arrived in Sarajevo! The first interesting spot of the city was the bazaar at the main square, a colorful and unique place that you could not find anywhere else in Europe. The handicraft shops are next to the restaurants, teahouses and bakeries with Turkish sweets and spices from Oriental kitchen. They made a harmony from the chaos, where all the cultural values integrated in a market, that we couldn't stop returning during our 3 days in Sarajevo.
 |
| A small corner of the main square bazaar |
Sarajevo is a special city, maybe the most special European city as it was the witness of history, where the First World War was triggered, leading to the World War II. More than 102 years ago, right at the river bank of Miljacka, the car of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg was attacked by the Black Hand group (5 Serbs and 1 Bosniak). The assassination resulted in the death of both and the declaration of war with Serbia from Astro-Hungary, the First World War with almost 19 millions death. The war ended with the depression of Germany because they lost part of their land and had to pay a huge amount of money as the loser. The support of German people for a new person, Hitler, who promised to take back Germany's pride leaded to the Second War World, where about 73 millions people died, resulting in the cold war between Russia (USSR) and the USA as well as the bloody wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
 |
| The peaceful Miljacka river bank today |
Sarajevo is the Jerusalem of Europe, the only major European city to have a mosque, Catholic church, and synagogue within the same square. We saw here the Muslim women with only their eyes showed sitting in the same Cafe with women in T-shirt. The kids of different religions were playing peacefully with a hundred of pigeons at the main square. They are too young to be told about the bloody war in 1992-1995, where people in the name of God and Saints killed people of another religion just to be the only one to exist. Almost 33000 Bosniak Muslims were killed by the Serbs in only 3 years. To see the white tombs in the cemetery with different birth years but the same death period 1992-1995 made me down. War is too rough and the border line between friendship and feud is too slim.
 |
| The main square in Sarajevo |
The war vestiges are still there on the walls, watching the city changing day by day. The people we talked to still missed the past, when everyone was friend in peace, when there hadn't been any wars, when people were all Yugoslavian. The war was the story of more than 20 years ago, but its consequences are still on the shoulders of the remaining people. Their businesses were destroyed, their kids can't find any jobs and many people have to emigrate to Western countries in hope of a better life.
 |
| A wall full of war vestige |
 |
| The Fine Arts Academy of Sarajevo is located in the new part of the city |
Leaving Sarajevo behind, we both still had heavy thoughts about what we heard and saw here in this holy European city. We had to continue our journey even though our minds were still there. We didn't know that the natural border between the continental climate and Mediterranean climate was just some tens of kilometers after Sarajevo. And that's how one of us got to visit the hospital for the first time on this trip...
(To be continued...)
Linh
No comments:
Post a Comment