Eastern Europe chapter 5: Hello Sarajevo

I was a little drunk when boarding the bus from Beograd to Sarajevo so I quickly fell asleep. As always we were woken up several times to show passports and tickets, but we were nonetheless able to sleep a little more in the bus than in the trains. When we woke up, the morning had just broken, and we saw a city covered in fog and surrounded by mountains. That was Sarajevo.

 Not knowing where to go we shared a taxi with two Dutch guys to the city centre where we sat down for a coffee and a 'what-do-we-do-know'-discussion. We discovered that we were quite close to our hostel, and after a nap we were ready to explore.

Sarajevo meant serious traml-love. The city is full of other countries' rejected means of transportation, and it's lovely.

 It's been almost 20 years since the civil war in Bosnia, and Sarajevo was by far the city on our trip with the most visible war wounds. Almost all houses had gunshot holes in them, and some were merely skeletons.

 But the city was also very beautiful, and it was magical each time a narrow street ended in a scenic view of the mountains.

 We lived in the old town which was surprisingly touristic. Made of small wooden houses it was very cute but we quickly grew tired of the tourists and went off-road.

 We climbed one of the surrounding hills and ended up in a little cemetary. I like the simplicity of the graves, the white stones reaching for the sky. It was very quiet, and we had the most spectacular view of the city. All of a sudden, all the mosques started calling for prayers, and the silence turned into a choir of calling male voices. Very beautiful.

 Unlike our other somewhat busy days, we took everything very slowly in Sarajevo. So we went into this little beauty shop and had our nails done - my first time. The two girls didn't know much English, but we had lots of fun in their little, seriously pink parlour.

While we were there, the Ramadan started. When walking down a narrow street we noticed a long line of people in front of a little window in a building. A guy told us they sold very special bread here that was only available during the Ramadan. We bought one and felt a little bad when eating it because it was before night fall.... But it was  a m a z i n g.

The whole day had been a slow one so it was only fitting that the night consisted of eating cevapcici (not exactly a favourite) and a little writing at a café looking at skanky tourists before calling it a night, appreciating that we were able to sleep in actual beds.