…about priorities
We woke up at 4:30 in the morning: me, my pounding head, my racing heart, and F. I had a dry mouth, and a slight nausea, and the glass of water which I drank didn’t help. I was feeling terrible. I rolled out of the bed, put on my shoes with a significant effort, while F did the same. She was feeling slightly better than me.
It was too soon to be up, but we had to catch a bus. I hated myself for drinking the whole bottle of wine last night, as if I didn’t know this was coming. This morning would’ve been terrible even without poisoning myself with rotten grapes.
When we finally got to the the airport, I was still feeling terrible. I ate a disgusting, cold sandwich, which at least calmed my stomach down. Soon after, I found myself sitting in the half-empty plane next to F, holding her hand, calming her down. She’s not particularly fond of flying. I don’t mind it. Neither her feelings towards the flights, neither the flights as they were. When we were finally in the air, I fell asleep. I woke up when we were ready to land, feeling a tad bit better than before. Just good enough to get into the rental car, and drive 4 hours to Banja Luka.
Irresponsible? Definitely. Stupid? Maybe. The nap in the plane and the disgusting breakfast helped, and I was confident in my driving abilities. We bought a burek in the first bakery we found, which put me pretty much on the baseline. I was still a bit tired, but other than that, it was business as usual.
As soon as we reached Banja Luka, we went straight to the appartment, and slept for five hours. That’s for spending roadtrip time effectively.
…about humanity
History of Balkans tends to be bloody. Bosnia is not an exception. No wonder this whole thing was weaved through our trip. At first, we visited Jasenovać, the brutal, yet almost forgotten death camp from the 2nd World War. Thousands of Gypsies, Serbs, Bosnians, Jews, and other “lower” humans died there. Maybe the numbers didn’t reach the heights of Auschwitz, Dachau or Birkenau, but the savagery certainly did. The prisoners in Jasenovać did not die in gas chambers, no. They were mercilessly murdered with cold weapons, beaten with hammers, slaughtered with axes. Newborn babies were thrown against the walls, old people had their necks sawed off. Children drowned in the adjacent river, adults burned alive.
The site is empty today, a vast green field with a huge concrete memorial in the middle is what speaks of the attrocities. This, and the atmosphere. The subtle chills which intensify with each step closer. Even if you didn’t know anything, you could tell. Blood soaked land still breathes the pain and suffering.
When you return to the present, to the village of Jasenovać, your hopes for solace from the suffering vanishes. Before the thoughts about the brutality of mankind can leave your mind, another take their place. As you look at the houses in the village, you can see bullet holes everywhere. They mark the most recent history of the land, the disollution of Yugoslavia. The war, in which former friends killed each other. Were they even friends to begin with? The war in which humanity crumbled under ethnic tensions. We can still see it today.
When we headed to Mostar after all that, we hoped to find refuge in it’s Mediterranean atmosphere. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The five hour long drive took us through windy mountain roads. Along the way there were many settlements of just a few houses scattered around, some of them usually only ruins. It took us through moon land, with craters not from meteorites, but from bombs.
Once in Mostar, we saw a lot of buildings which were decorated with bullet holes. They could’ve been hit just yesterday, and you wouldn’t know. We visited the musem of the Bosnian war. We were in a desperate need to know more. An hour long movie about the siege of Sarajevo left us speechless and grim for the rest of the day. Imagine this – you are a young person, maybe you’ve just started a family, or you’re an actor, or a plumber. Just a normal, a most ordinary human. You’re striving for a better life, you have friends, foes, loves and tears, just like anyone else. You’re just living your life, in your hometown. You know that on paper, your neighbors are Serbs, Croats, Bosnians; muslims, christians… But it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter. You are neighbors. You are friends. You are just people who live in the same city. One day though, everything changes. There’s an army besieging your city. But not a foreign army – your army! They don’t allow you to leave. They want you dead. This goes on for a few years. You have to run accross the streets, because snipers hunt you down from the hills. You hear the shot, and then you count. You know you have 5 seconds until he reloads. In the winter, you have to burn your furniture so that you don’t freeze to death. In the spring, you gather dandelions, because that’s some of the last food left in the city. You’re no longer a human, at least in their eyes.
The ghosts of war are still visible in Sarajevo. The city, although beautiful and modern, wears the grim suit of war. All in all 1425 days, it experienced the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. We spent two nights in a small ground floor appartment, which was more like a converted basement. It was strange. I’m not talking about the cigarette stench in the walls and sheets, nor about the scary noises everytime somebody used the tap or flushed a toilette upstairs. I’m talking about the eerie feeling that you had there. The eerie feeling that you had on the way there. The eerie feeling that persisted throughout the whole city. Like thousands of people died there in a terrible way.
I don’t even know what I should say. It hurts just to think about.
…about myself
I’ve never really been one to shrug away painful feelings. From the outside, it sure may have looked like that, but I always kept them hidden on the inside, hidden away from the eyes of onlookers, acting all tough. Or sometimes, with people I feel comfortable with, I close up, and suffer in silence. Pretty inefficient.
In Sarajevo, it hit me hard – one evening, after a slight disagreement with F, I closed up. F being the sensible young woman she is, was trying to comfort me. I hated myself for that, but at the same time, I wasn’t able to act differently. Only when we were coming back to the appartment, we noticed a strange tag on the wall. It said: “Prečo si taký?” (Why are you like that?)
This brought shivers down my spine. First of all: Bosnian doesn’t have the letter y, not with the accent anyway. Second: this wasn’t written in Bosnian. Third: It was written in Slovak. Why would there be a graffiti in Slovak on a random building in the outter center of Sarajevo? On a building we passed just then on our way back to the AirBnB? Fourth, and most important: why was I like that, really?
…about this symbol
F first saw it on her Erasmus in Dubrovnik few years ago. Next, we saw it all over the place in Mostar and Sarajevo. We were not able to find it anywhere online though, and Reddit wasn’t useful as well. What the hell does it mean?
