Graham Smith Photography

Hello and welcome once again to the Blog section. (The other sections will one day appear, I’m sure.)

Sarajevo was a really interesting trip, and the first few days I was there I really immersed myself in the Sarajevan culture.

Traditional Bosnian coffee, served with water.

It started off with a tour from the Hostel’s son, Arijan “Call me AK” Kurbasic, who really has a great story to tell about the history of the city – about the mosques, the churches, the synagogues, as well as the Franz Ferdinand, the World Wars and the time as part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia and the war in 1992-1995 which has left such a large impact on the city. If you’re ever in Sarajevo for a couple of days, I would heartily recommend a tour from AK, he’s a really nice guy, tells a great story and knows the best places in the city to visit.

We walked past the beer factory (I’ll talk about the brewery in more detail later on – great beer, great food), to the Franciscan Church, then past Franz Ferdinand’s old house, to the site of a school children massacre at the hands of the Serbs in 1993. We looked in a mosque, walked along the river to the site of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, and all the while listening to AK’s story unravel, empowering us with all this knowledge about what the city has been through and why it has turned out like it has. We went to one of the traditional cafes in Baš?aršija, the old Ottoman part of town with its beautiful cobbled streets, and to a more modern bar for a Sarajevsko beer. Fantastic.

This is the one of the streets in the Baš?aršija

Later on in the day, I adventured around the city, trying to find the Holiday Inn hotel… Only in Sarajevo would that be a tourist attraction – it’s where the journalists stayed during the war. I remember watching a documentary a few weeks ago about the photographer Robert King (the documentary was called Shooting Robert King); he’s a fantastic photographer and renowned for his war correspondence the world over. I’m happy I got to the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, and I had a Coca-Cola, just as Robert King did 17 years ago.

I walked along Snipers Alley, walking past countless mortar imprints in the ground – some were filled in with the red acrylic, and this changes the name of a mortar imprint to a Sarajevo Rose. These roses highlight where somebody was killed as a result of the mortar going off, and everywhere you go in Sarajevo you can find roses. Both the ones on the floor, and the rose flowers, in every colour shape and size. Some of the roses get walked over on a regular basis, and so get covered in dust – taking them from blood red to a dusty grey, the same as the rest of the pavement. AK told us – and we later saw – that when it rains, the dust and dirt is washed off the roses and they become bright red once again, as if the rain is a tear from the heavens and those who lost their lives as a message not to forget what happened in Sarajevo some 15 years ago. Why are the roses red? Red is the colour of blood, pain, sin and anger, but also of love and sacrifice, of warning and serves as a perfect reminder of why we should work and play together, not fight and cause conflict between cultures.

Another day I went for a really really really long walk up the other side of the valley from the Hostel I was staying at. It was awesome. It was about 38 degrees, really humid – just fantastic summer weather. However, I didn’t have with me any sun cream and I may have got a little burnt. However, venturing just outside of the city I got to see some rare views of rural Bosnian life, animals and farms, and the views from the surrounding mountains.

I went to the Tunnel Museum. A tunnel museum, I hear you ask? Well, during the war, the whole of Sarajevo was under siege and the only way for goods, food and eventually weapons to get into city from Free Bosnia (the area in Bosnia not under siege from the Serbian forces was through a tiny tunnel under the runway of the airport. The airport was being guarded by the United Nations and would not allow safe passage of food, goods or weapons as they could not be seen to influence the war, so a group devised a plan to construct a tunnel and transport contraband.

I quite literally walked and took photos while I travelled, if you would like to see more photos, check our my Flickr photoset: here

Going anywhere on your own can be a scary experience, and going to a city not many people would dream of going to, was a little nerve-wracking at best. I had some fantastic times while I was out there, and I would definitely recommend going somewhere alone to anywhere – not just Sarajevo. You meet loads of new people, you learn about other cultures and you learn a lot about yourself. Plus, you get away from the world of work – and that’s always a welcome relief, no?

I would love to visit Sarajevo again I am going to visit Sarajevo again, there’s so much more the city has to offer. Next time, though, it would be nice to go with someone I know – even though meeting lots of new people was fun, it did get a little lonely at times! Other travellers who stayed at the hostel have recommended lots of other places in Eastern/Southern Europe, so I’d definitely like to see about going to lots of places in one big adventure at some stage in the future. I’ve tried persuading my friend Joe, but I’m not sure he’d actually come… Are you interested in going travelling for a month or two? It would be awesome.

If you have any questions about my time in Sarajevo, or would like to know about anything, please please please write me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

I am going with work to Bordeaux tomorrow for two weeks, but I will try and update a few blog posts while I am away to keep you all informed.

Much love,

Graham x

As I said in my previous post, I did make a trip to Sarajevo last month. I went for 10 days and learnt a lot about the war, the country, its history and values. I learnt that Sarajevo is a sort of futuristic country where all the different cultures come together and just get on with life. Of course there are tensions associated with the war and between the Bosnians and Serbians, but that is understandable; after all only 15 years ago they were either side of no mans land shooting at each other.

So, what did I actually get up to? Let’s have a few photos, I think.

Day 0: Leaving Gloucester.

I left Gloucester to get to my hotel near Gatwick on the Sunday afternoon on a train.

After changing at Reading (which ended up being a struggle as nobody seemed to understand where and when the rail replacement buses would be leaving from) I did eventually head towards Gatwick. However, this was not to last and the track was broken so we all had to get off and continue our journey using some magical form of transport that First Great Western didn’t seem able to organise.

Lucky for us, the driver of the train which had to stop decided he would organise a coach to pick us up and take us straight to Gatwick. This one:

The coach journey was memorable. I saw a van with a trailer. Now, this was no ordinary trailer. It was a trailer with temporary traffic lights on. And they had been left switched on! So when it overtook us you could watch the lighes changing from green, to amber and then red. And red and amber, then green and back to amber then red, etc. You get the point, I feel. So next, I ended up getting a taxi to the hotel. This was a hotel with a view.

More specifically, this view.

The view from the window was just another side of the building, and a moss-covered roof. It had rubbish food, a poor bar, and the service was the worst I’ve ever experienced. It was like Fawlty Towers. Please, if you can, avoid the Gatwick White House Hotel. It may be cheap, but it’s not good value as it feels like you’ve rolled into some flea-infested student bedsit, not a hotel which has AA stars. Nasty.

Okay, rant over. What’s next? Let’s go to the plane.

Day 1: Travelling to Sarajevo

So I had loads of leg room on this plane, which was most welcome. I like legroom. I flew with Malev, an airline I’d never heard of, and I was most pleased with their service and everything. This was also the first time I had a glass of wine when they brought round the drinks trolley. Yummy. The food component of the flight was a salami sandwich in an Italian flatbread. Which was equally scrumptious.

Then, when I got to Budapest, I ran through the transfers where some Hungarian woman took my IRN-BRU as I wasn’t allowed to take it on to the plane. Thing is, I just came off a plane with 500-odd people on, with this drink, and I was about to go onto a plane which holds about 20 people. If I was a bad person, surely I would have made my move earlier? Angry Graham. Do you know how hard it is to find Irn Bru in Bosnia? I do. Which is why I wanted to take some with me. That really really got to me. A point I think you’re starting to understand. Let’s move on.

Tiny little plane this time.

After landing in Sarajevo, with no phone battery (played too much Angry Birds), I did feel a little bit lost. There I was, a British person looking suspiciously like a tourist, camera around neck with a massive suitcase and a coat in 37 degree heat, completely lost in a country 1200 miles from home. So what did I do? I went outside to sum up my options. I could see people coming and going in their typical airport manner, taxis looking for fares, mothers waiting for their children to come back and men and women waiting for their partners to get back from their business trips. Stuff like that, really. Anyway, there was a woman walking up to everyone asking the same question and I started worrying she would come up to me next. And she did. But the words she said are probably the most welcoming thing I’ve ever heard. “Hello, are you Graham? I’m here to take you to the hostel.” Epic win. Then two true-blooded Aussie lads with thick accents – who wouldn’t look out of place on a Foster’s advert, or a Aussie footy promo video – jumped up and were all asking about Hostel SA, where I was staying. Turns out, it’s quite a popular place. So we all bundled into this shiny German car and headed through the city to our new temporary home.

Obviously, travelling was a little tiring and the heat was pretty stifling, but I decided to go for a walk as soon as we got to the hostel. It was nice to stretch my legs. I saw this man taking photos of the birds:

After that I went for a bite to eat at the local favourite – a place called Zeljo. This is what they eat there:

Nom nom nom. That stuff was delicious – proper, fresh cooked pita bread filled with 10 lamb and beef sausages, served with kajmak – almost like clotted cream cheese (delicious) and freshly chopped onions. This cost 7 konvertibilna marka, which equates to 3.5EUR or just under £3. And it was huge!

In the evening, I tried to take apicture of the scenery at night, but I have done this better elsewhere. Here’s the view from my room.

I will cover more days as and when I have time. Thanks.

Until later…

Graham x