Not Sorry We Came to Sarajevo

On the sage advice of some friends – to whom we are now greatly in debt – we put Sarajevo on our itinerary. Coming off a three week excursion through four countries and eight towns (including day trips) with my parents*, we pinned our hopes on Sarajevo to be a nice place to just sit in cafes and sip coffee. In fact, we’re sitting in Sarajevo’s Old Town sipping filter coffee (AKA regular ol’ coffee as opposed to an espresso-based beverage) right now, finally having a good stretch of time to manage our accounting in Quicken, process photos, finalize the logistics for the remainder of our journey, and put some entries in the trip diary.

Since I had only a vague idea of Sarajevo and its history, knowing only that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated here, I really had no expectations. And now that we’re on the ground and getting more familiar with the city and the region’s history, I can say that this is one of the most fascinating places we’ve been to on this trip. There is a diverse blend of Muslim, Serbian Orthodox Christian, and Catholic people all intermingling and just being together. Squat, brick buildings from Sarajevo’s Ottoman era (15th – 19th c.) bump up against the much larger, ornate, “wedding cake” buildings of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg era (1878–1918). And buildings from all eras still bear the clear scars of bullets and bombs from the Bosnian War and siege of Sarajevo.

Holy heck is Sarajevo cheap. A cafe creme in Paris is 4-5.00€, Americanos a little less. Here in Sarajevo, an Americano is 2.50-3.00 Bosnian Marks, which is about 1.50€ (or $1.80). And with no major art museums to see, Sarajevo really fits the bill as a place to just sit back and relax in an interesting corner of Europe.

It’s a little difficult to portray Sarajevo in pictures because of its architectural and cultural diversity, but here are a few shots that I think convey some of it.

*That report forthcoming