taste bud delights . I don ’ t like riding in cities . It ’ s just that if I have a choice , I ’ d rather not have to concentrate on what the traffic is doing in a strange land , whilst being surrounded by all the fascinating things I ’ ve come to see . With this in mind we set up on a camp site a few kilometres outside of Sarajevo . That ’ s not strictly true though . A cabin with a bathroom was just a euro more than the combined cost of a tent pitch and extra for electricity . After a couple of weeks in our tent it felt quite strange to go to sleep under a roof .
Part of the image I had of Sarajevo in my mind was a war-torn , battered city whose walls were pockmarked by rashes of bullet and shell holes . The last visual connection I ’ d had with the city was from television reports way back in the 1990s when the Balkans war had the city surrounded and under siege . To give the siege some perspective , it was three times longer than the siege of Stalingrad during World War 2 , and during this time it was hammered with gunfire by people with a political agenda and no respect for buildings with fine lines . No respect either for the estimated 14,000 people who were killed in the city .
Another part of my preconceived idea of how the city would be came from my school history lessons . Sarajevo is where the First World War began and it did so in a way that perhaps 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip , the perpetuator of the assassination of Austria ’ s Archduke Franz Ferdinand , had never dreamt of . With just a couple of bullets on June 28th in 1914 he started the world into a radical and never-ending change . In fact , WW1 , WW2 , the Cold War , and the Balkans war can all find roots stemming from those two bullets .
One hundred years of unrest hit Bosnia Herzegovina . WW1 tugged the region all ways and at the end of WW2 , when along with other
Balkan lands Bosnia Herzegovina was ‘ adopted ’ into the new country of Yugoslavia , it ceased to have any element of independence . During his dictatorial rule , the country ’ s premiere Tito had been strong enough to keep this eclectic Balkan mix of countries together . With his demise , the various countries chased for independence , but each had its problems . Bloody wars followed ; ethnic patriotism and greed setting to work .
Current times in Bosnia are far more positive but there is , naturally , a cautious uneasy air in some places . Sarajevo seemed to have a very positive open-minded attitude , and that impressed us . I mentioned being fascinated by history and geography . For me , the ride is the key part of any journey , but it ’ s these two things that add the depth and texture to where I ’ m travelling . Knowledge of both gives me the chance to understand and appreciate more of what I ’ m seeing . Over the next day ’ s Birgit and I wandered the streets of the city and as usual we headed into the back roads . Sometimes , cities have an upfront glitz that a few streets back transforms into the reality for the local people . This also gave me the chance to ponder a thought that had been bubbling in my mind . With the city ’ s century ’ s long history of tolerance to all , would that nature have survived into current times ? The devastation of the siege and the war must surely have scarred more than the buildings .
Most of the people we came across in Bosnia had stern expressions , much like the statues from Tito ’ s communist era , but they had me thinking . People who have had such a troubled history would frown for good reason . But the smiles of the people in the city gave our first real insight into their resilience ; Sarajevo has a wonderfully relaxed air . I think you
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