Things to do in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Or Rather What I did in the City, In My Own Way
Sarajevo, a city whose pronunciation I had to confirm with my host. Sara-yevo. A city circumscribed by mountains, so that when Serbia laid siege in 1992, they surrounded them for four hundred days, stationing themselves on these very mountains, which are a mix of Alps and some other Bosnian range. The locals built a tunnel to go in and out and bring supplies. My host told me one kilogram of coffee was probably two hundred euros at that time.
It is an old city, probably mentioned for the first time in the 13th century. I am not sure. Ruled by Ottomans, Austrian Hungarians, and then by themselves. It was part of Yugoslavia once. Then broke apart to form an independent nation, but only to first fall under the greedy eye of Serbia.
I was told that now, probably more than eighty percent of people are Bosnian Muslims, and Serbians and Croatians are very few. They still have three presidents, one for each community. Recently, the presidents rejected the 180 or so conditions of the European Union(EU), which they had to agree with to be included in the EU. My young host, Nahid, told me that they would benefit from joining the EU in terms of freedom of movement.
“Do you need a visa to visit, let’s say, Paris?” I asked Nahid as he sat on the couch chair imprinted with blue and red leaves. The World Cup football match between Bosnia and Switzerland was being broadcast live on television. He had come to help me run the match because the remote hadn’t been working. We started talking, and after half an hour, when I couldn’t stand anymore, I sat down on the couch, and said, “I am sitting.” He sat down on the leafy couch chair, too. During the day he had chatted with me for more than an hour, never sitting down.
