From Belgrade, we took a long drive to Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Some pretty views along the way…
I needed to do some laundry and didn’t want to enumerate my socks and pay more at the hotel, so I did some research. I discovered “Tito’s Iron Fist” a laundry shop run by Kristoffer, not just a fellow Californian, but a UC Santa Cruz graduate! More than just washers and dryers, his shop is a museum, library, and store of socialism (not without some irony – or ironing!). More soon!
I ran back to the hotel to catch our tour of Sarajevo. Among other things, this batch also depicts the influence of Gazi Husrev Bey, who was an Ottoman Bosnian sanjak-bey (governor) of the Sanjak of Bosnia, and built a mosque, madrasa, and had a strong positive influence on the town. This batch ends with his tomb…
More from our walk around Sarajevo…
Due to the Siege of Sarajevo (please take time with this link!), there are many shells from bullets & bombs. These are now used to make art! Here’s some, and some highlights of the city, including the site of the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, which is known for triggering World War 1. Our tour guide was particularly good – informative and welcoming…
The next day, we took a trip to Mostar which started with a visit to Tito’s Bunker, rather one of them. The bunker is huge, was expensive, and is now not just a museum, but an art exhibit.
I hadn’t known enough about Tito, but thanks to Kristoffer’s Laundry and this visit, I learned more about his profound, and largely positive, influence on the former Yugoslavia…
More inside Tito’s Bunker…
From there, we drove on to Mostar, stopping for lunch on the way, and taking in some beautiful scenery.
Mostar is famous for the river that runs through it, and the Old Bridge over it, which was bombed but rebuilt.
If you look very carefully at the last shot, you can see a guy falling who had jumped off the bridge (its a thing!)…
The next day in Sarajevo was free so some of us walked up to the Yellow Fortress for the view. And I went back to Tito’s Iron Fist, not just for more laundry, but for some merch and a longer chat with Kristoffer…
In Sarajevo City Hall, there’s an exhibit of what happened during the Siege and the Bosnian War. Hard to imagine that people do not have vengeful thoughts about what the Serbs did during that time? This batch includes a little more of the city, etc…
Happily, there was a concert in the street just a couple of blocks from our hotel…
The next day we were off to yet another country in the Balkans – Montenegro…