Our Sarajevo visit continues! I sincerely apologise to the people who follow me for the one day break in this series, but I was too busy working on one of my translation jobs yesterday. In Part IV of our Yugoslavian Adventure Series, we visited the main Christian cathedrals of Sarajevo and talked about the history of the city's various religious communities. We also visited the Lion Cemetary and its different Christian and Muslim segments.
Today is going to be a bit random in terms of sightseeing. I am going to show you some different places I couldn't present in a coherent segment so far, but we are also going to take a cab out of the city and visit a wonderful nature park. So, let's go!
Here and There
I hope we have plenty of American readers on this blog, because o, say can you see – the American embassy building. On the hill behind it, you can also see the Hum Tower – a telecommunication structure that used to be famously featured on many war photographs from Sarajevo.
Now, what is so noteworthy about the American embassy? It depends on how you look at it. The building is just outside the city center, so it enjoys a pretty prominent location. And it is, in my opinion, quite massive and overshadowing. I noticed this "style" in other American embassies as well. Many of them look like some sort of high-security prison. Very imposing and "imperial".
The Greek embassy, on the other hand, is a nice little house with these beautiful mosaics of ancient noblemen and mythological figures on its wall. Quite the contrast.
As we discovered in Part III, Sarajevo is still pretty scared by the Yugoslavian War. There are still bullet and shrapnel holes on many houses, but some are also mere shells – like this one. Now, these are very rare in Sarajevo, but if you drive through the Bosnian countryside, you can actually see many bombed out villages with dozens of houses that are completely abandoned. Not everything had enough time to heal yet.
And this building is the Bosnian Central Bank. The Bosnian currency is the Bosnian Marka and it used to be pegged to the German Deutschmark. Since 2002 it is pegged to the Euro. Overall, German and Austrian businesses and banks have an overwhelming presence in the Balkans. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the Russian Sberbank also has a solid presence in Bosnia, but as my local friend ironically remarked, it is also headed by a German (Herman Gref).
As you can see, I took this picture in front of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which I have no memory of because the building isn't very remarkable. But what is the significance of the sign? It's the languages.
Some linguists call Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian by the all-encompassing name of Serbo-Croatian, because all of these languages have only slight differences in vocabulary (and Serbian also uses the Cyrillic script in addition to Latin). Yet, Bosnian and Serbian are treated as the two official languages of Bosnia and Serbian is always written in Cyrillic.
There is quite a lot of political activism going on in Sarajevo at all times and I was told that Bosnians are fairly prone to violent riots when new corruption scandals are brought to light every once in a while. I can't tell you much about this stand other than one of the signs reads "Solidarity is our weapon" and that the flags look pretty cool, don't you think?
Vrelo Bosne
Now, before we finally conclude our visit to Sarajevo (this has taken much longer than expected), we should see some of the wonderful nature. And what better way to do this than to visit the mountain spring of the River Bosna?
I was told, or, you could even say, almost violently instructed, to visit the Vrelo Bosne park by the people I was traveling with in the bus from Germany. They told me it is The Face of Bosnia and that I must visit it before I leave. Obviously these wonderful people only had my best interests at heart and they were absolutely right.
The park features a big forest enclosure, green meadows, a wonderful mountain view and painfully cold, fresh water directly from the mountain spring. The more romantically minded people can also go on a carriage ride around the area.
I absolutely loved the water, but it is so painfully cold that even on a blazing hot summer day I had to use my willpower and force myself to keep my feet in it for a couple of minutes. It is great once you get used to it, so don't shy away.
It takes about 20 minutes to get there on a cab and the cab was about €15 if I remember correctly. So back and forth that's €30, but it was absolutely worth it. However, there are also regular buses that go there, so you might want to research that. I simply didn't have the time to do it, because I went to the Vrelo Bosne a few hours before my bus to Belgrade departed. Also, if you go there by cab, there usually are always a couple of cabs near the park, which can bring you back to the city. However, I very much benefited from knowing enough Croatian to communicate with the cabbies, because most of them don't speak English.
TO BE CONTINUED
And that's finally it! Our stay in Bosnia is over, but don't be sad. In the upcoming Part VI of our Yugoslavian Travel Series, we are going to take the bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade, see a bit of the Balkan landscape and visit the Saint Sava Cathedral. I hope you stay tuned for more and follow me on my travels. If you enjoy my content, please consider to resteem it. :)