The following is a selective account of David Snyder and Patty Trott’s observations on their travels
through Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in September 2001.
Croatia
It was a gray, cold and rainy day on Rab, the pleasant Adriatic isle on the Croatian coast. We were with our friends
Zoli and Judit, from Hungary. It seemed to be a good time to venture inland, to the Plitvice Lakes National Park,
about 100 kilometers away. Although the distance seemed short from my American perspective, it would last three
hours, and the landscape would change even more than that distance would seem to allow. The only things that
wouldn’t change were the limestone and the language. The limestone of which nearly all of southern Europe
consists and the language was Croatian - or Serbian or Bosnian, which are all the same, only the names change.
It must be explained that the coast of Croatia is an extremely pleasant place to visit. The weather is good (usually), the
state of the economy and the infrastructure are reasonable for this part of the world, the food is quite edible, if not up
to the same standards of Italy. This was the Croatia we had gotten used to. Any thoughts or indication of the recent
civil war were virtually nonexistent.
We drove in Zoli’s car further south down the heavily indented rocky coast before turning left to ascend the
intimidating slopes of the Velebit Range, the beige colored mountains that rise directly from the seal along this part of
the coast. It was a slow but scenic drive as we ascended the serpentine road up to a high pass. Within a few
kilometers we had changed landscapes from a scrub Mediterranean landscape to one that seemed almost alpine in
nature, albeit somewhat drier than the Alps of Austria that I has passed through last week.
No longer were the houses white stucco with red roofs, the predominant style of the coast, but now more wood was
used and everything seemed less colorful. I felt at this point that I was back in Eastern Europe, and that the relative
prosperity of the coast was really an anomaly in these parts. Our location was truly made clear to us upon reaching
the depressing town of Gospic. The highway took us right through it and it seemed like any other Eastern European
town until we reached the center. Gradually it dawned on us that the chips we had seen in the plaster walls werenâ
€™t just from lack up upkeep, but were in fact bullet holes. In the town center probably half the buildings had walls
that had been peppered with the violent spray of machine gun fire, and a few buildings even exhibited the large blasts
from tank or rocket shells. It speaks well for the construction of these brick buildings that while the blast had
obliterated the outer layer of plaster, the red brick that lay behind was mostly intact, creating the appearance that a
giant tomato had been hurled against the wall.
The most ominous sign of what had really happened here occurred on the way out of town. Numerous houses
showed signs of obvious attack. They sported bullet holes, shell blasts or were completely gutted by fire. The houses
of their neighbors, however, were often completely untouched. The damage was clearly not made by the shifting of
military frontlines back and forth, which would have obliterated everything, but rather was created by brutal ethnic
cleansing. One can only assume that here it was the houses of the Serbs that were destroyed and the families forced
away, while those of the Croats remained intact. Doubtless the situation occurred in the reverse fashion in other
regions of the former Yugoslavia.
I tried to imagine the situation on the ground at the time that the destruction occurred, which would have been 5 or 6
years ago, but I found it impossible. Were people killed? Or merely threatened? Did they fight back? Judging by the
fighting in the city, they must have. Were there armies here? Or just local who had acquired weapons? These
answers will have to remain unknown to me. I could ask a local, but the answer would most likely not be the entire
truth, and even if they were completely honest, the situation was probably so confusing that they wouldn’t have
know what was truly going on.
The Plitvice Lakes were like a haven of civilization amidst the half ruined countryside. There seemed to be no war
damage here whatsoever – probably because there was no one to ethnically cleanse here, and even on a cold day
such as this it w as filled with Croatian tourists enjoying the spectacular setting. For me it was hard to imagine that
these people had just experienced a brutal war, in which they were both the victims and the perpetrators. They must
be used to the feeling by now. For me it was all new. The lakes were a beautiful turquoise color and were set upon
several cascading layers of limestone bedrock that deepened into an impressive canyon the further down the cascades
one progressed. The nature here seemed relatively pristine for Europe and one can walk along the reeds and cliffs on
narrow boardwalks while enormous trout swim beneath your feet in the shallow water.
Because of the limestone there were several caves, lots of little waterfalls and a couple of enormous ones pouring over
the cliff edges. Sinkholes were scattered in the surrounding forest. A this was typical of a karst landscape, which was
of interest to me as a geographer, but probably not so interesting to others.
We enjoyed ourselves there, even thought the moist cold bit right through our clothes. The way back to Rab lead us
again through the landscape of vacant houses, poor villages and more war damage. We discussed the question as to
why any of these people would still want to live in some of these locations. With the exception of some agriculture
there seemed to be little in the way of an economic base here. Zoli did create a tiny ripple in the economy by
purchasing a block of smoked cheese at one to the dozens of roadside stands all selling the exact same things –
homemade cheese and honey. Nothing else seemed to be produced in these mountain valleys.
It felt good to return to Rab and leave the unpleasant thoughts of the war-torn Croatian countryside behind. There
were more days to spend mindlessly at the beach.
Bosnia
The mindlessness didn’t last for too much longer, however, for it was time to head down the coast by ferry to
Dubrovnik and then inland to Sarajevo.
As an aside, it was on the ferry to Dubrovnik that we first heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. We had heard the Croatian news on the bus to Zadar, where we were catching the midnight ferry, but I
only made out the words “Osama bin Laden�, “terrorismus� and strangely, “Giuliani� – but I
didn’t think too much about it. We met some Australians on the ferry who gave us the horrible news, which at
that time was very hard to believe. I hardly slept that night and in the morning we were able to see some Croatian
newspapers that the crew had picked up in Split, but we couldn’t read the text, only look at the pictures. This
made us feel quite helpless and confused. Dubrovnik did have some internet cafes, so we were able to check the
news to clear up exactly what had happened. It didn’t help our mood at all. We didn’t see any video footage
until we reached the home of our friends Marc and Judit Ellingstad in Sarajevo. I confess that we spend half of our
time in Sarajevo in front of the television – but since we had heard about it everything else became exceedingly
difficult to enjoy anyway. Even Dubrovnik, which is truly one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, became a bummer
of a place to hang out. In any event, we spent a day there and then caught a bus the next morning to Sarajevo.
The Bosnia and Herzegovinian border lay just the east of the Croatian town of Metkovic where we took a 10 minute
break. The border was like any other border I had seen between poorer countries. Trucks lined up, small shops
selling food and changing money, etc. What made this one different was the presence of French and Moroccan troops
as part of the UN mission. Across the border we stopped at a small middle-of-nowhere café for 45 minutes. We
bought a coffee for Patty and I asked if they took Croatian Kuna. “Of course,� the waitress replied. While this
may make some sense because this half of Bosnia is populated mostly with Croatians, the Croatian Kuna is not fully
convertible, whereas the money they use in Bosnia now it known as the Converitble Mark, which is pegged to the
Deutschmark and is, as the name implies, fully convertible. Perhaps ethnicity trumps convertibility in this place. So
much for the economic theory of rational choice.
The first part of our journey seemed uneventful, just mountains and rivers and villages, until we neared the city of
Mostar. The whole countryside around Mostar was torn up, buildings were destroyed, and the city itself seemed to
be a depressing mess with numerous semi-collapsed apartment blocks. Bullet holes were everywhere, naturally.
There seemed to have been serious fighting throughout the broad valley in which Mostar lay. We had not even seen
this much destruction in the hinterland of Croatia. Indeed, we found out that the frontline between the Bosnian
Muslims and the Croats had raged across this whole valley as they fought for control of the city. We never heard
much about the struggles between the Bosnian Muslims and the Catholic Croatians at home, but by the looks of it it
seemed every bit as serious as the fighting between those two groups and the Serbs.
It was shortly after passing Mostar that we had a chat with a Bosnian fellow from Sarajevo who was sitting in front of
us. He expressed his deep sympathy for the recent tragic events in the States. He noted that he had lived in Sarajevo
for the 3 awful years of siege and wouldn’t wish that sort of destruction upon anyone.
The bus continued through the beautiful mountains with alpine vegetation, some nice lakes and small towns that had
obviously not been too peaceful just a few years ago. Patty made the observations that the cafes were filled with men â
€“ as they had been in Tunisia two years ago. This indicates on one hand high unemployment – this was the middle
of the working day, after all, and that we had entered a Muslim region – otherwise there probably would have been
some women present. It’s not like the Bosnian Muslims take their religion very seriously (according to Marc), but
it’s probably a part of the culture inherited from the Turks who ruled this region for so many years.
We spent two full days in Sarajevo with Marc, so I’ll pass on a few observations. It’s clear how easy it was
for the Serbs to keep the city under siege for at least 3 years. Sarajevo is completely surrounded by mountains. The
Serbs controlled these ridges and it would have been very easy to pick out targets from up high. The Serbs never
tried to take over the city, they only wanted to force the citizens to flee so that they could then take it over. They
probably didn’t have enough manpower for the house-to-house fighting that would have had to take place, so they
just resorted to a form of terrorism.
Probably 90% of the buildings have at least bullet holes in them. Many have the tomato-splotches of shell blasts and
quite a few blocks of flats have entire sections that were gutted. A few buildings were completely collapsed. There
was often an interesting contrast where a colorful brand new ultramodern car dealer or shopping mall had opened up
next to a gray, communist-era block of flats that had been ugly when it was built and was now bombed out to boot.
The Turkish bazaar quarter was intact and looked nice. The local mosques were intact as well. Many had probably
been rebuild courtesy of the Saudis or other Muslim countries. In other parts of the city there were some brand new
enormous mosques that obviously had not been built with local funds. More conservative Muslims, male and female,
could also be seen on the streets here. They were definitely a small minority, but when I was here in 1987 I don’t
think I saw anybody who dressed as a traditional Muslim.
Marc’s belief is that this is not a functional country. Unemployment is officially 40%, yet no one is begging in the
streets, indicating the presence of huge untaxed black markets, which must be a major problem for the government.
Few Bosnians have any entrepreneurial skills and most are just looking for handouts from international agencies –
this according to Marc. The country itself is split into “the Federation� of Croats and Muslims who are
apparently willing to tolerate each other politically now, and the “Republika Srpska� of the Serbs. The border
runs just along the edge of Sarajevo, and while they are all in the same country, people don’t make a habit out of
crossing from one to the other. Somehow governmental duties are shared along ethnic lines, but separate militaries are
maintained. This situation will be impossible to maintain in the long run and I suspect Bosnia will have to really split
itself into two or more countries.
We drove to Pale one day, the nearby capital of the “Republika Srpska.� It was a depressing little town that
had no life or vibrancy to it whatsoever. The Serbs refer to it as Serbian Sarajevo, but that’s an unjust
comparison. The real Sarajevo at least had people on the streets, traffic, and stores with a wide variety of goods to
buy. The selection of goods in a store in Pale which we visited paled in comparison. It was almost like comparing
stores in the good old days of communism to those in the west.
While Pale hoped to encourage tourism with their excellent local ski resort that had been used in the 1984 Olympics,
Marc pointed out that the rock walls along the twisty road to the resort were spray painted with the particular heavy-
handed symbol of Serbian nationalism – somewhat akin to a swastika. This was not something that would
encourage the nearby large Muslim population of Sarajevo to visit their slopes.
On this same trip to Pale, after some effort, we found an obscure fish restaurant – it had no apparent name – that
Marc had been to with a couple of French guys. It lay down a tiny one lane dirt road next to a fresh mountain stream.
The restaurant raised their own trout right in the stream and the fish were taken directly from their ponds upon placing
your order. And they were tasty, too. It was a large establishment with various decks and terraces overlooking the
small stream. It was a beautiful set up and we were the only ones there to enjoy it.
On another day, we ventured across the “border� that lay in Sarajevo proper. While the buildings and other
scenery were more or less the same, one major difference was the sudden appearance of a plethora of bootleg CD
shops. Pretty much any kind of music could be bought here for about $5 per CD, nice color photocopied liner notes,
too. There was a nearby UN base and I can only assume that the soldiers stationed there provided most of the
business. These shops were crawling with American and French GIs looking for good, albeit illegal, bargains to take
back home. We jumped right in and did our part to undermine the American recording industry.
One morning, not too early, the four of us headed out from Marc’s home and up the narrow Turkish streets to
climb one of the low mountains that surround the city. It didn’t take more than a half an hour to reach the edge of
town. The road turn to crumbled pavement and dirt, narrowed to one lane, and the houses thinned. What houses
had lain beyond the edge of town had been completely destroyed. Some of the buildings had “O.K.� spray
painted on them, indicating that they had been cleared for booby traps. We were entering the frontline area, the ridges
that lay beyond had been Serb controlled. It was from here that they had shelled Sarajevo for all those years. The
road was cut in to the densely vegetated hillside. Marc warned us to walk away from the uphill side, since heavy rains
still occasionally washed mine out of the side of the hill.
All of Sarajevo could be seen from the top of the ridge. It helped that many of the fir trees on top had been blasted
apart, allowing us to see through the otherwise dense forest. The most striking thing about Sarajevo was the size of
the cemeteries. Their acres of white stone markers contrasted sharply with the gray construction of the rest of the
city. These graveyards were present before the war, and were famous for being in the middle of the city, but it was
hard to not mentally associate them with the recent conflict. Just over the ridge, in a pastoral alpine setting lay a little
restaurant. We ate a little lunch there, just some small cevapcici sausages and beer, and went further along the road,
which ran just below the ridgeline.
There were a few random cows along the road and not much else. We crossed over the top of the ridge again, and
Marc and I wanted to follow a cow trail that lead back down into town, but Patty and Judit wouldn’t have it.
They were too scared of mines and wanted to take another path where people had been. I figured cows would have
set off any leftover mines as well as people, and we didn’t see any cow parts lying around, so it must be safe, but
the women won and we went back the other way. In retrospect, they made the right choice, not because it was safer
(in my opinion), but because the other path lead back through the forest and right through the old trenches. It was like
something right out of World War I. Collapsing trench walls, decaying sandbags, and the shell-blasted trees
overhead. There was also a small monument to a fallen Bosnian soldier in the midst of all this. It was eerie and
disturbing, too much in the present to be considered merely as unfortunate events of the past.
through Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in September 2001.
Croatia
It was a gray, cold and rainy day on Rab, the pleasant Adriatic isle on the Croatian coast. We were with our friends
Zoli and Judit, from Hungary. It seemed to be a good time to venture inland, to the Plitvice Lakes National Park,
about 100 kilometers away. Although the distance seemed short from my American perspective, it would last three
hours, and the landscape would change even more than that distance would seem to allow. The only things that
wouldn’t change were the limestone and the language. The limestone of which nearly all of southern Europe
consists and the language was Croatian - or Serbian or Bosnian, which are all the same, only the names change.
It must be explained that the coast of Croatia is an extremely pleasant place to visit. The weather is good (usually), the
state of the economy and the infrastructure are reasonable for this part of the world, the food is quite edible, if not up
to the same standards of Italy. This was the Croatia we had gotten used to. Any thoughts or indication of the recent
civil war were virtually nonexistent.
We drove in Zoli’s car further south down the heavily indented rocky coast before turning left to ascend the
intimidating slopes of the Velebit Range, the beige colored mountains that rise directly from the seal along this part of
the coast. It was a slow but scenic drive as we ascended the serpentine road up to a high pass. Within a few
kilometers we had changed landscapes from a scrub Mediterranean landscape to one that seemed almost alpine in
nature, albeit somewhat drier than the Alps of Austria that I has passed through last week.
No longer were the houses white stucco with red roofs, the predominant style of the coast, but now more wood was
used and everything seemed less colorful. I felt at this point that I was back in Eastern Europe, and that the relative
prosperity of the coast was really an anomaly in these parts. Our location was truly made clear to us upon reaching
the depressing town of Gospic. The highway took us right through it and it seemed like any other Eastern European
town until we reached the center. Gradually it dawned on us that the chips we had seen in the plaster walls werenâ
€™t just from lack up upkeep, but were in fact bullet holes. In the town center probably half the buildings had walls
that had been peppered with the violent spray of machine gun fire, and a few buildings even exhibited the large blasts
from tank or rocket shells. It speaks well for the construction of these brick buildings that while the blast had
obliterated the outer layer of plaster, the red brick that lay behind was mostly intact, creating the appearance that a
giant tomato had been hurled against the wall.
The most ominous sign of what had really happened here occurred on the way out of town. Numerous houses
showed signs of obvious attack. They sported bullet holes, shell blasts or were completely gutted by fire. The houses
of their neighbors, however, were often completely untouched. The damage was clearly not made by the shifting of
military frontlines back and forth, which would have obliterated everything, but rather was created by brutal ethnic
cleansing. One can only assume that here it was the houses of the Serbs that were destroyed and the families forced
away, while those of the Croats remained intact. Doubtless the situation occurred in the reverse fashion in other
regions of the former Yugoslavia.
I tried to imagine the situation on the ground at the time that the destruction occurred, which would have been 5 or 6
years ago, but I found it impossible. Were people killed? Or merely threatened? Did they fight back? Judging by the
fighting in the city, they must have. Were there armies here? Or just local who had acquired weapons? These
answers will have to remain unknown to me. I could ask a local, but the answer would most likely not be the entire
truth, and even if they were completely honest, the situation was probably so confusing that they wouldn’t have
know what was truly going on.
The Plitvice Lakes were like a haven of civilization amidst the half ruined countryside. There seemed to be no war
damage here whatsoever – probably because there was no one to ethnically cleanse here, and even on a cold day
such as this it w as filled with Croatian tourists enjoying the spectacular setting. For me it was hard to imagine that
these people had just experienced a brutal war, in which they were both the victims and the perpetrators. They must
be used to the feeling by now. For me it was all new. The lakes were a beautiful turquoise color and were set upon
several cascading layers of limestone bedrock that deepened into an impressive canyon the further down the cascades
one progressed. The nature here seemed relatively pristine for Europe and one can walk along the reeds and cliffs on
narrow boardwalks while enormous trout swim beneath your feet in the shallow water.
Because of the limestone there were several caves, lots of little waterfalls and a couple of enormous ones pouring over
the cliff edges. Sinkholes were scattered in the surrounding forest. A this was typical of a karst landscape, which was
of interest to me as a geographer, but probably not so interesting to others.
We enjoyed ourselves there, even thought the moist cold bit right through our clothes. The way back to Rab lead us
again through the landscape of vacant houses, poor villages and more war damage. We discussed the question as to
why any of these people would still want to live in some of these locations. With the exception of some agriculture
there seemed to be little in the way of an economic base here. Zoli did create a tiny ripple in the economy by
purchasing a block of smoked cheese at one to the dozens of roadside stands all selling the exact same things –
homemade cheese and honey. Nothing else seemed to be produced in these mountain valleys.
It felt good to return to Rab and leave the unpleasant thoughts of the war-torn Croatian countryside behind. There
were more days to spend mindlessly at the beach.
Bosnia
The mindlessness didn’t last for too much longer, however, for it was time to head down the coast by ferry to
Dubrovnik and then inland to Sarajevo.
As an aside, it was on the ferry to Dubrovnik that we first heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. We had heard the Croatian news on the bus to Zadar, where we were catching the midnight ferry, but I
only made out the words “Osama bin Laden�, “terrorismus� and strangely, “Giuliani� – but I
didn’t think too much about it. We met some Australians on the ferry who gave us the horrible news, which at
that time was very hard to believe. I hardly slept that night and in the morning we were able to see some Croatian
newspapers that the crew had picked up in Split, but we couldn’t read the text, only look at the pictures. This
made us feel quite helpless and confused. Dubrovnik did have some internet cafes, so we were able to check the
news to clear up exactly what had happened. It didn’t help our mood at all. We didn’t see any video footage
until we reached the home of our friends Marc and Judit Ellingstad in Sarajevo. I confess that we spend half of our
time in Sarajevo in front of the television – but since we had heard about it everything else became exceedingly
difficult to enjoy anyway. Even Dubrovnik, which is truly one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, became a bummer
of a place to hang out. In any event, we spent a day there and then caught a bus the next morning to Sarajevo.
The Bosnia and Herzegovinian border lay just the east of the Croatian town of Metkovic where we took a 10 minute
break. The border was like any other border I had seen between poorer countries. Trucks lined up, small shops
selling food and changing money, etc. What made this one different was the presence of French and Moroccan troops
as part of the UN mission. Across the border we stopped at a small middle-of-nowhere café for 45 minutes. We
bought a coffee for Patty and I asked if they took Croatian Kuna. “Of course,� the waitress replied. While this
may make some sense because this half of Bosnia is populated mostly with Croatians, the Croatian Kuna is not fully
convertible, whereas the money they use in Bosnia now it known as the Converitble Mark, which is pegged to the
Deutschmark and is, as the name implies, fully convertible. Perhaps ethnicity trumps convertibility in this place. So
much for the economic theory of rational choice.
The first part of our journey seemed uneventful, just mountains and rivers and villages, until we neared the city of
Mostar. The whole countryside around Mostar was torn up, buildings were destroyed, and the city itself seemed to
be a depressing mess with numerous semi-collapsed apartment blocks. Bullet holes were everywhere, naturally.
There seemed to have been serious fighting throughout the broad valley in which Mostar lay. We had not even seen
this much destruction in the hinterland of Croatia. Indeed, we found out that the frontline between the Bosnian
Muslims and the Croats had raged across this whole valley as they fought for control of the city. We never heard
much about the struggles between the Bosnian Muslims and the Catholic Croatians at home, but by the looks of it it
seemed every bit as serious as the fighting between those two groups and the Serbs.
It was shortly after passing Mostar that we had a chat with a Bosnian fellow from Sarajevo who was sitting in front of
us. He expressed his deep sympathy for the recent tragic events in the States. He noted that he had lived in Sarajevo
for the 3 awful years of siege and wouldn’t wish that sort of destruction upon anyone.
The bus continued through the beautiful mountains with alpine vegetation, some nice lakes and small towns that had
obviously not been too peaceful just a few years ago. Patty made the observations that the cafes were filled with men â
€“ as they had been in Tunisia two years ago. This indicates on one hand high unemployment – this was the middle
of the working day, after all, and that we had entered a Muslim region – otherwise there probably would have been
some women present. It’s not like the Bosnian Muslims take their religion very seriously (according to Marc), but
it’s probably a part of the culture inherited from the Turks who ruled this region for so many years.
We spent two full days in Sarajevo with Marc, so I’ll pass on a few observations. It’s clear how easy it was
for the Serbs to keep the city under siege for at least 3 years. Sarajevo is completely surrounded by mountains. The
Serbs controlled these ridges and it would have been very easy to pick out targets from up high. The Serbs never
tried to take over the city, they only wanted to force the citizens to flee so that they could then take it over. They
probably didn’t have enough manpower for the house-to-house fighting that would have had to take place, so they
just resorted to a form of terrorism.
Probably 90% of the buildings have at least bullet holes in them. Many have the tomato-splotches of shell blasts and
quite a few blocks of flats have entire sections that were gutted. A few buildings were completely collapsed. There
was often an interesting contrast where a colorful brand new ultramodern car dealer or shopping mall had opened up
next to a gray, communist-era block of flats that had been ugly when it was built and was now bombed out to boot.
The Turkish bazaar quarter was intact and looked nice. The local mosques were intact as well. Many had probably
been rebuild courtesy of the Saudis or other Muslim countries. In other parts of the city there were some brand new
enormous mosques that obviously had not been built with local funds. More conservative Muslims, male and female,
could also be seen on the streets here. They were definitely a small minority, but when I was here in 1987 I don’t
think I saw anybody who dressed as a traditional Muslim.
Marc’s belief is that this is not a functional country. Unemployment is officially 40%, yet no one is begging in the
streets, indicating the presence of huge untaxed black markets, which must be a major problem for the government.
Few Bosnians have any entrepreneurial skills and most are just looking for handouts from international agencies –
this according to Marc. The country itself is split into “the Federation� of Croats and Muslims who are
apparently willing to tolerate each other politically now, and the “Republika Srpska� of the Serbs. The border
runs just along the edge of Sarajevo, and while they are all in the same country, people don’t make a habit out of
crossing from one to the other. Somehow governmental duties are shared along ethnic lines, but separate militaries are
maintained. This situation will be impossible to maintain in the long run and I suspect Bosnia will have to really split
itself into two or more countries.
We drove to Pale one day, the nearby capital of the “Republika Srpska.� It was a depressing little town that
had no life or vibrancy to it whatsoever. The Serbs refer to it as Serbian Sarajevo, but that’s an unjust
comparison. The real Sarajevo at least had people on the streets, traffic, and stores with a wide variety of goods to
buy. The selection of goods in a store in Pale which we visited paled in comparison. It was almost like comparing
stores in the good old days of communism to those in the west.
While Pale hoped to encourage tourism with their excellent local ski resort that had been used in the 1984 Olympics,
Marc pointed out that the rock walls along the twisty road to the resort were spray painted with the particular heavy-
handed symbol of Serbian nationalism – somewhat akin to a swastika. This was not something that would
encourage the nearby large Muslim population of Sarajevo to visit their slopes.
On this same trip to Pale, after some effort, we found an obscure fish restaurant – it had no apparent name – that
Marc had been to with a couple of French guys. It lay down a tiny one lane dirt road next to a fresh mountain stream.
The restaurant raised their own trout right in the stream and the fish were taken directly from their ponds upon placing
your order. And they were tasty, too. It was a large establishment with various decks and terraces overlooking the
small stream. It was a beautiful set up and we were the only ones there to enjoy it.
On another day, we ventured across the “border� that lay in Sarajevo proper. While the buildings and other
scenery were more or less the same, one major difference was the sudden appearance of a plethora of bootleg CD
shops. Pretty much any kind of music could be bought here for about $5 per CD, nice color photocopied liner notes,
too. There was a nearby UN base and I can only assume that the soldiers stationed there provided most of the
business. These shops were crawling with American and French GIs looking for good, albeit illegal, bargains to take
back home. We jumped right in and did our part to undermine the American recording industry.
One morning, not too early, the four of us headed out from Marc’s home and up the narrow Turkish streets to
climb one of the low mountains that surround the city. It didn’t take more than a half an hour to reach the edge of
town. The road turn to crumbled pavement and dirt, narrowed to one lane, and the houses thinned. What houses
had lain beyond the edge of town had been completely destroyed. Some of the buildings had “O.K.� spray
painted on them, indicating that they had been cleared for booby traps. We were entering the frontline area, the ridges
that lay beyond had been Serb controlled. It was from here that they had shelled Sarajevo for all those years. The
road was cut in to the densely vegetated hillside. Marc warned us to walk away from the uphill side, since heavy rains
still occasionally washed mine out of the side of the hill.
All of Sarajevo could be seen from the top of the ridge. It helped that many of the fir trees on top had been blasted
apart, allowing us to see through the otherwise dense forest. The most striking thing about Sarajevo was the size of
the cemeteries. Their acres of white stone markers contrasted sharply with the gray construction of the rest of the
city. These graveyards were present before the war, and were famous for being in the middle of the city, but it was
hard to not mentally associate them with the recent conflict. Just over the ridge, in a pastoral alpine setting lay a little
restaurant. We ate a little lunch there, just some small cevapcici sausages and beer, and went further along the road,
which ran just below the ridgeline.
There were a few random cows along the road and not much else. We crossed over the top of the ridge again, and
Marc and I wanted to follow a cow trail that lead back down into town, but Patty and Judit wouldn’t have it.
They were too scared of mines and wanted to take another path where people had been. I figured cows would have
set off any leftover mines as well as people, and we didn’t see any cow parts lying around, so it must be safe, but
the women won and we went back the other way. In retrospect, they made the right choice, not because it was safer
(in my opinion), but because the other path lead back through the forest and right through the old trenches. It was like
something right out of World War I. Collapsing trench walls, decaying sandbags, and the shell-blasted trees
overhead. There was also a small monument to a fallen Bosnian soldier in the midst of all this. It was eerie and
disturbing, too much in the present to be considered merely as unfortunate events of the past.
