Welcome to Sarajevo

Posted by Emily

The night train to Sarajevo was quite an interesting experience as it involved late night border crossings and ticket checks, and a train change (this was unintentional...one of the cars broke down in the middle of the night and since we were the only 9 people going to Sarajevo, they transferred us to a first class car. It was not really different than the regular compartment). We arrived to the city very early in the morning and took a tram to the center of town where we were picked up in a tiny car by one of the owners of the hostel that we stayed at. It was quite comical to watch him load our huge bags into the little car! The hostel was at the top of a very steep hill so it would have been nearly impossible for us to make it up there carrying our own luggage.

After settling into the hostel for just a bit (we didn't want to stay too long or we might have fallen asleep and missed the city!) we walked down the hill over cobblestone streets, past bakeries and little shops, past a huge graveyard (probably for victims of the war...there are random graves all over town because during the war they buried people wherever they could) and finally down into a central square, aptly called "pigeon square" because of the SWARMS of them there. We had breakfast at a local bakery where they serves a pastry called burek (just like Jon!), which is a flaky pastry filled with meat, cheese, potatoes or spinach. Kind of like Greek spinach pie but much better. It was the perfect thing to fill our tired bodies.

We spent the rest of the morning walking around the town looking in little shops and just generally getting a feel for the city. It's quite strange to be in a city that has gone through a war so recently. It seems quite surreal and hard to imagine. Later in the afternoon we were taken on a tour of the city by one of the owner's of our hostel. He and his family decided to stay in Sarajevo through the war so he was able to give us a first-hand perspective of what happened and what the people went through. Quite inspiring. Unfortunately, he saw that we were all quite tired and cut some of his usual stories short. However, we stopped at a pub along the way and I listened to my chatty mother ask him questions. That was the most interesting part. We also saw the place where Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand (not just a band!) and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, all of which began the chain of events that resulted in World War I.

Overall, Sarajevo was a beautiful city set in the mountains with lovely old streets, a church, mosque and synagogue (quite unusual) and an amazing, resilient history. I was very glad that I got a chance to visit with this tour because I'm pretty sure it's a destination I would never decide to go on my own.