A City East and West

There's a line down the middle of Sarajevo, but it's not one you'd expect.  On one side is the Morića Han, a perfect example of the east.  There's something both soothing and sharp about carpet sellers, with their bright eyes in the semi darkness and their still faces.  One feels one shouldn't trust them, with their treasures from Persia and Afghanistan stacked in neat piles.  Still, it's impossible not to be drawn in; they're merchants in intrigue more than yarn.  The Morića Han is full of these people, the smell of old wool and dusty light.  An inn and trading station for centuries, the Han's ancient back rooms still have some imprint of the caravans and the old empire.
Sarajevo was once the second most important Ottoman city, a huge metropolis and site of the largest Islamic library in the world.  On this side of town, legends of the Orient still swirl in the alleys.

On the other side of town, in the yellow hued "Markale," vendors display hanging garlands of sausages and white cheese under fluorescent light.  The pink fleshiness of the marketgoers and mongers, the height of the windows, the meaty offerings, the airy environs - this could be a hall in Salzburg, it feels and looks so Western.  This is the other bank of Sarajevo's current, where the aesthetic of a different empire washed up and stuck.

Sarajevo is a city with one personality and two faces.  Taking an evening stroll with the locals on Ferhadija street is an exercise in patience.  The walking is slow, we often got caught in the snarl of children, high heels, amorous couples.  Moving slowly west, the buildings begin in the classic Ottoman style, with looming mosques, low caravanseries and markets built in grey brick and red tile.  Then, without warning, the landscape shifts to central europe, with pastel walls and secessionist-white moldings.  There is literally a line in the street where the buildings change. Standing there, one can look east into the Ottoman past and the 1600's, then turn and face the west, Austro-Hungary and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In the outskirts, there are shrapnel holes and Tito's buildings, the concrete immensity of the TV station and the sprawl of the olympic village. But Sarajevo condenses and intensifies as it closes in on itself, until the narrow lanes and coffee shops press up against one another in a traffic jam of tables and young people.  It's particularly hectic in the Ottoman side of the old town.  We've spent hours wandering ćevapi scented courtyards and hookah-smokey passages.  It's the kind of city where one glimpses things in dark doorways.  Outside our hotel, this tight cluster of tables hums with conversation and laughter until the small hours of the morning - there are three different establishments, but they are packed in so closely that it's impossible to tell where one place's tables begin and the others end.

The western half has its share of atmospheric cafes and bars, with a different kind of nostalgia and a more local clientele.  At Zlatna Ribica (Goldfish Bar), old televisions flicker black and white and stylish young people drink rakija at brass tables.  It's a spectacle, a re-imagination of Lautrec's Paris by way of Leningrad.  After an hour or so of drinks, the waiter said he didn't have change for us - he told us to take our money and come back later to pay.
There's a big architectural difference, but the two sides of Old Sarajevo still feel like the same city.  It's a fairly homogenous capital, and almost everyone, everywhere, is Muslim and Bosniak.  The culture doesn't change from place to place, only the sense of history.

The Austro-Hungarian part of town is laid out in cleaner lines and wider avenues.  Not long after the Habsburgs acquired the city in the 1870's, a large fire destroyed much of the existing city.  Austrian engineers and city planners took it as an opportunity to begin afresh and experiment.  Trolley cars were installed in 1885 as a test before they were brought to Vienna, and architects were given space to work in the new Secessionist movement style.

There are many cities where east comes up against west. It's a common travel trope, used to give some feeling to places in the middle.  In Sarajevo, the physical division is clearer than other places, even if the culture is more nuanced - it's said that people from Asia feel that Sarajevo is very western, people from Europe feel that it's Oriental.  Looking up, minarets jostle against steeples.  Sarajevo's young people have embraced a low-key version of Islam - headscarves are a fashion statement more than a religious one, the prevailing climate is a mix of liquor, cigarettes and the call to prayer.  The cosmopolitanism in the street is of the violin case and bookishness variety.

The so called "Latin" bridge transcends all of Sarajevo's periods. It's now the most touristed landmark in the city, more for what it represents to the world than to the city. Built in wood under the early emperors and later shored up with stone, the little, three-arched walkway is now backed by a line of colorful, Austrian-style townhouses.  Of course, the bridge is famous for a different reason - this is the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, helping to bring about the first world war.  It's a funny place to be so weighted with history.  The water underneath is barely a trickle, the span isn't long.  On the shadier side, a booth serves coffee and soft drinks to visitors.  A young American man asked us about the lemonade one morning.  He was fresh off the bus and seemed excited, we were at the end of our stay and feeling complacent.  As he sat down and looked at the city, we thought about what he was going to make of Sarajevo - how surprising it would be, how adventurous.

Things Bosnian People Like

Cooking things Ispod Sača.  "Ispod Sača" means 'under the sač' and is often translated to 'in a Dutch oven.'   But that's really simplifying matters far too much.  While the sač is a round, cast iron dish with a lid, you don't normally cover the tops of dutch ovens with hot coals or ash, making them so heavy that some sort of stick or chain pulley system is needed in order to check on your food.  Cooking ispod sača is unique to the Balkans - we first heard about it in Serbia and first saw it with our own eyes in the mountains of Kosovo.  But here, the sač is not a relic rolled out on special occasions.   Cooking ispod sača is not just something you have to go up into the mountains or to a rural household to see it.   It's not just part of the kitsch at a national restaurant. It is a way of cooking recognized to be the best.  So, it continues to happen in homes, on roadsides, at restaurants, from towns to cities to villages.   Anything cooked ispod sača is ten times better than its oven-cooked version. 

Re-appropriating Luxury Brand Names.   There was a tailor named Prada and Benneton Second Hand Shop.  In the cases of Ferrari Cafe, Rio Mare Motel and Malibu Caffe, the actual logo artwork was used for the signage.   The Marriet and Big Hiltin hotels played it a little safer with spelling changes.   Definitely something they like.

Firewood.  After the watermills and tobacco fields, one of the first things we noticed in abundance when first crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina was the firewood.   In the Krajina, people like to stack in these large circular stacks.  They were stuffed under porches, piled in laws, cut for hours with a chainsaw in the parking lot of our pension in Travnik.  The obvious reasons are necessity and availability.   Poverty and woodstoves often go hand in hand, both because of the price of electricity or gas and because many homes don't have modern ovens or furnaces.   As for availability, half of Bosnia and Herzegovina is forested.  But there are also a large number of people who just choose to heat and cook with wood.  For some people, it's for security - a different sort of 'fire insurance' than we have at home.  Russia is Bosnia's main gas source and just yesterday there was talk of a cut-off because some bill didn't get paid.  A wonderful byproduct of this love of wood-firing is the general excellence of pizza across the country.  Burn, baby, burn.

Water fountains.  Well, with all the water, why not?   The water fountains are used more often for a quick cooling head splash than a water bottle fill up, but that's just because drinking on the go just isn't how they do things in Bosnia and Herzegovina.   That is, of course, because they really like...

Cafe Culture.   I read that during the Siege of Sarajevo, when so many people stayed in cellars to survive ammunition showers and shelling, others walked right out their front door and joined their friends at a cafe.   Even the fact that any stayed open shows the dedication to cafe culture people of Bosnia and Herzegovina have.   The cafe can differ in style, but you know there will be leisurely conversations, groups expanding and contracting as people join their friends for a few minutes. The receipt is always set down with the delivery of the order, but sits there and sits there amongst the slow-burning cigarette and espresso cup, the sundae bowl and glass bottle Bitter Lemon, the potato chip and burek crumbs from someone who brought their own snack.   The point is to linger, converse and 'cafe.'

Striped Buildings.   The brightest, boldest striped building was definitely the Gymnasium in Mostar, above, built in 1902.   I can't find anything about the style online, if stripes were something big in Austro-Hungarian architecture.  That still wouldn't explain it anyway, because around Bosnia and Herzegovina, you see new and old buildings painted this way.  Sometimes, it's a subtle ivory on white, sometimes it's two shades of green or purple.   I really like them.  And so, apparently, do Bosnian people.

Honorable Mention

Walking Slowly.  Similar in principal to cafe-ing is taking a 'Sarajevo stroll.'   Someone told us that's what walking slowly is called here, but we can attest to the fact that it is not just a capital phenomenon.  You know how babies look all funny when their body is trying to move forward faster than their feet know how to?  That's me in Bosnia and Herzegovina.   I have managed not to clip the back of anyone's heels, but have found that the only way I can possibly move this slowly without coming to a complete stand still is by maintaining a strange, wide stepped waddle. Locals are much better at it.  These strolls are designed for conversation, not transit.  Which is probably why once a Bosnian gets in a car, they drive very fast. 

Bosnian Food

Every night during Ramadan, a single firework is fired above Bosnian towns.  If you haven't installed yourself at a restaurant table yet, you may be out of luck - the bang is a signal that it's time to eat.  Crowds of Muslim Bosniaks suddenly emerge and pack the eateries, famished after a day of fasting.  What do they order?  Brains or trout, liver or steak, maybe a shopska salad or a plate of spinach and eggs… but probably, predictably, they will sit down to plates of ćevapi.
Ćevapi is a Yugoslavian dish, served from Belgrade to Split, but we've never seen it in such heavy quantities as we have here.  In Travnik, a crowded alley of tables and sweating waiters is hung thick with smoke and the smell of charring meat.  Ćevapi is like a skinless sausage, grilled and served in thick loaves of bouncy bread.  It's mildly spicy, heavy with fat, a perfect combination of salt and heat.  We were told repeatedly, by people in other towns, to go to Hari, a Travnik institution.  The tables were full, the meat was good, the plates were garnished only with a pile of chopped onion.  This is, in practice, the national dish.

Not everything in Bosnia is made of brawn and sinew - before this post devolves into a list of organs and cuts, I should point out that there's also cheese, in terrific variety.  Sheep's milk is the preferred foundation, and the process is usually quick and light-handed. While there are some firmer, more aged types - the old, yellow livanjski sir comes to mind - their most distinctly Bosnian cheeses are soft, newer and cloud-white.  Travnik in particular is famed for its shepherd's travnički, which has a sharp and creamy taste that is great both by itself and as an addition to other dishes.
At this cheese shop in Travnik, the smell of milk was overpowering. The white-coated proprietor gravely sliced and spooned and carved us tastes from his various wheels and tubs.

At its romantic core, Bosnia is a land of woodcutters and mountain streams, of smoky fires and hidden glens.  It's also a land of shepherds, and the dish we found ourselves identifying with Bosnian roadsides is a kind of amalgamation of woodland and herd.  Everywhere on our travels - especially in the more Bosniak regions of the country - we came across spit-roasting restaurants, where lambs turned whole over hot coals.  The hearths ranged from solid brick to bare dirt.  The animals were stretched into gruesome lines; legs extended behind, skull pierced by metal, ribs tied shut around the pole.  Beside water or in thick forest, with picnic tables or ironed linen, these jagnjetina restaurants all had something of the ancient about them, a primal treatment of meat.
This is how it arrives on the table at Vrelo Restoran, near Vlašic.  The meat is saltier closer to the outside and untouched by seasoning or technique further in.  It's a perfect way to cook lamb.  The meat stays richly juicy and chewy.  This isn't braised, fall apart, mushy meat that has been tamed in a pot - it requires a little tearing, a willingness to confront the beast itself.

It's the way that Bosnian cuisine is, once you veer away from the ćevapi and french fries.  This is brave food, and it's rewarding not only for its taste but for the adventure of the thing.  When I ordered mozak, an enthusiastic waiter turned cautious.  "Do you know?" she asked, gravely.  Yes, I assured her, pointing at my head.
Mozak, or fried veal brain, is one of the most common dishes on Bosnian menus.  At Srebrna Školjka, a restaurant above the meat and cheese market in Sarajevo, I figured the brains would be the freshest.  They arrived in two fatty lobes, lightly battered and piping hot.  The mayonnaise was superfluous, as the tenor of the dish is already soft and oily.  It needed only a squeeze of lemon and a firm commitment - after a few bites, my trepidation was gone.

A similar dish in some ways, though more familiar to me, is brizle, or sweetbreads.  At Papilon restaurant, in Cazin, the delicate little glands were served as simply as can be, treated as casually as anything meaty; scored, fried and accompanied by french fries and kajmak.  It was one of the best meals of Bosnia, and one of the tastiest sweetbread dishes I've ever had (and I love sweetbreads).

Oh, this culinary journey already seems too full of offal, too carnivorous, too greasy and charred.  But, alas, that's what Bosnian people eat, it's what they like.  For them, red meat is food, everything else is just decoration.  When Rebecca told a woman in Mostar that she didn't eat meat, the reply was "but you're already thin, you don't need to be vegetarian!"  I could go on to talk about sudžuk, japrak, mučkalica and pljeskavica, meaty dishes all, but there's no real need.
There was no real need, but at Titanic restaurant I ate thick slices of veal liver beside the Lašva river. The portly waiter approved heartily, the meal was weighty and I left feeling that I'd had enough liver for a few months.  I'll leave Bosnia feeling the same about meat in general, but that's fine.

A glimmer of scales can seem like salvation amid all the meat.  Thankfully, Bosnia is full of water and the streams and rivers are full of pastrmka.  Near the Pliva lakes, as the sun set and people strolled by the water, we ate these fine trout with cooked chard.  The fish had been dressed up a little more than is typical, with a sprinkling of paprika and a fine layer of garlic and herbs inside the rib cage.  The local fish - as Rebecca has already written - are delicious, and (along with the plentiful wild mushrooms) have been a lifesaver for her in such seas of beef and lamb.

Of all Bosnian foods, the most Bosnian, is probably their version of pita.  Pita, meaning pie, is another pan-balkan staple, but this national preparation is different.  Thin tubes of bread-like pastry are filled with stuffing and baked in a swirl - it's a more labor intensive, unique process than in other places, and it is the default fast food on the streets of Sarajevo or Mostar.  There are four main types: burek (stuffed with meat), zeljanica (filled with spinach), krompiruša (with potatoes) and sirnica (with cheese).
At Buregdžinica Sač, in Sarajevo's old town, the pita is cooked under a sač, a kind of coal-covered, iron cover.  We ate a special type called tikvenica, filled with creamy pumpkin and cheese.  The women there, standing in the sweltering heat near the ovens, cut big slices which they weighed on an old scale before wrapping in paper.  It's greasy, it's filling, it's too hot to eat for several minutes, and it tastes like nothing else.  

Sarajevo Under Siege, Survival Underground

Near the Sarajevo Airport, in the suburb of Butmir, is a house that used to belong to the Kolar family.  Its exterior is pockmarked in that now familiar Bosnian way, the markings of bullets, shrapnel, war.  It looks like any house in a quiet spot outside the bustle of the city, but is actually one of the most important sites in Sarajevo.  Two tour buses pulled in while we were there, one carried a group of Chinese daytrippers, the other had arrived all the way from Turkey. Backpackers set down their loads at the entrance, most likely visiting before or after a flight.  Our own journey there was courtesy of a taxi driver named Rasim.  Each of us were there to see something undeniably important.  In the family's backyard, in the side of a grassy mound, is the southern entrance of the Sarajevo Tunnel, the secret weapon with which the people of Sarajevo managed to survive during the longest siege of any capital city in modern history.  One thousand days.  "Without the tunnel, everybody dies," said Rasim.

The roughly 3,000 ft long tunnel was devised by the Bosnian army and dug by volunteers over the first seven months of 1993.  The men worked in four hours shifts around the clock to secretly connect blockaded Sarajevo with the "free" or "neutral" area near the airport, which was Bosnian held and UN controlled.  On July 30th, two excavators working from opposite sides of the tunnel had finally dug far enough to meet each other.  They shook hands in the middle and hundreds of thousands of lives were given hope.  With the tunnel complete, international humanitarian aid that arrived by plane could be transported into the completely cut-off population inside the city.    Around 20 million tons of food entered the city this way, single-handedly keeping its inhabitants alive for 3 and a half years.  

"I went through the tunnel twice," Rasim recounted casually.  Once, was to pick up a package sent from his cousin.  The other was to shop for food in the Bosnian-held territory on the other side. "It was much cheaper," he said, "inside the city, food was ten times the price!"  He said this like a neighbor telling you about their money-saving drive to Costco as opposed to a man who lived in a blockaded city in which any food that remained or was smuggled in was sold for high prices by war profiteers.  It never ceases to amaze me how these stories are told to us with such ease.   How the definition of 'normal' can be so drastically distorted.

"Perhaps for people who experienced very terrible things, it would be harder to come back to Sarajevo," but not for her, Mia reasoned to us over dinner.   Just before meeting her, we were told by a mutual friend that she had escaped through the tunnel in 1995 - at nineteen years old and at the edge of starvation.   She and her husband were handed plane tickets to Burlington, Vermont on the other side and were whisked off to the Zagreb airport before even being given a meal.   "She only remembers putting her foot in the water," we were told on our walk to meet Mia.   The tunnel had a constant pool of water at its bottom.  Sometimes, it reached knee-height.   Imagine sloshing through the meter wide space with a live, mega watt electric cable running alongside your hunched head. In the dark.   It would be scary if the word "scary," just like her use of "terrible," hadn't been so intensely redefined.

Mia and her husband were more an exception than the rule.  Most of the million or so people who made the trip through the Sarajevo Tunnel were bringing supplies in or helping the sick, wounded or very important out.  Government documents were required to enter the tunnel from either side and one way trips out were almost exclusively allotted to children, the elderly, the dying and the dead.   And VIPS, of course, like Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who was pushed through the tunnel on an armchair rigged up to a trolley by the Kolar family's then-18 year old son, Edis.  A gripping, mostly wordless documentary shown inside the Tunnel Museum had footage of some of these journeys.  As people emerged in the Kolar backyard, the wrinkled matriarch would hand them a cup of water. 

People and food were far from the only transports through the Sarajevo Tunnel.  An arms embargo meant that any weapons or ammunition needed to be smuggled in this way.  Germany provided cables to bring in a little electricity and a few telephone lines.   Oil was piped in, military and medical equipment, everything.   The design of the tunnel was tweaked and updated throughout its three year usage.   Points were widened to allow people to pass each other if coming from opposite directions, a rail line similar to that in mine shafts was added.  When the Serbian forces figured out where the Sarajevo-side entry was a new, stronger entrance was constructed.  Any attempt to collapse the tunnel with bombs was futile, as the it had been ingeniously dug in a wide L shape.  So, even with knowledge of both entry points, the Serbs couldn't pinpoint the underground trail between them.

The original entrance on the Sarajevo side was in the basement of one of these houses.  Nothing is known of who owned it, Rasim wasn't even sure which one it was.  Most likely, the family had abandoned the house in some way before it was chosen as the entryway.  From inside Sarajevo, you see bucolic hillsides all around you.  A natural ring around the city, the forested slopes remind you of mountain air, cold springs and leafy shade while pounding the pavement.  At the very top, after the orange roofs of the hillside villages peter out, the green changes from sweet pea to deep emerald.  The trees get denser and pointier.  This was the Serbian front line.  You can instantly see how easy it was to surround and cut off the city.  While the Serbs held the city from above, showering it with ammunition, blockading it from all the resources one needs to survive, Sarajevans found salvation down below, in the basement of one suburban house and the backyard of another.  Through the Sarajevo Tunnel. The Tunnel Museum is well worth a trip outside the city center. 

A Land Of Water and Wheels

The first amazing thing I saw in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a waterwheel.  We were crossing an arid valley in the south, with rocky slopes all around and a harsh, mediterranean sun beating down on the road.  From inside the bus windows it seemed impossible that there could be any crops there - but the valley bottom was covered with corn and tobacco plants.
Hydropower is an amazing thing.  Any machine, essentially, can be powered by running water - and often in a much simpler way than one would imagine.  As the bus descended into the seam of the valley, where a clear river flowed in the dust, we began passing irrigation channels and pipes. Makeshift, rough things - PVC and rusted metal - they were being supplied with water from waterwheels turning creakily in the riverbed.  No pumps, no gurgle of hoses, just old wheels lifting water up and letting gravity do the rest.  It was so beautifully, elegantly simple.  I almost asked the bus driver to stop so that I could take a picture.
In another corner of the country, we visited these much older - and just as intriguing - watermills.

Though there are plenty of hydropower plants in Bosnia, most of the waterwheels one is likely to see are of the schlocky variety.  Spinning purposelessly beside restaurants or tourist centers, the wheels seem curious at first, but they're the continuation of a long tradition.  Rivers and streams are an integral part of Bosnia - the name is actually derived from the ancient word bosana, which means water.  This is a third world country and one of the poorest in Europe, but the tap water in every faucet is not only drinkable - it's delicious and stony cold.  It comes from Bosnia's greatest resource, a collection of pristine aquifers that haven't yet been tapped for mass irrigation or drained and dirtied by urbanization.  There are springs and crystalline rivers everywhere, their flows almost impervious to drought. It's no surprise that there's also a long history of using all that water to spin wheels, grind grain, pound wool and saw wood - for hundreds of years, mills have been a part of the Bosnian landscape.

The Pliva river springs from the ground whole at Pljeva, where three underground flows bubble to the surface and run together.  The water - even at midsummer - is so cool that the forest near the source has a mountain feeling, as though an alpine breeze had somehow been trapped in the trees there.  It's a magnificent, almost magical sight; the water emerges from mossy rock so abruptly that it seems like an illusion.
Nearby, old mills stand wheel-less, with water spilling unchecked through wooden flumes.  There were more picnickers and hikers around than millers when we passed through, and a few cows grazing in unfenced meadows.  Some old stone wheels lying in the weeds were the best evidence of the town's past.

In Bosanska Krupa, a connected trio of mills juts out into the clear water of the Una river.  Now more of a tourist attraction, the waterwheels here are brightly painted and rarely used.  Nicknamed "Aleja Vodenica"("Mill Alley") the wooden vestiges have become a symbol; the platforms and pilings connect town and river, anchoring history and nature together.  If nothing else, they're pretty.

None of them are operational, but the famous cluster of mills near Jajce is still one of the most interesting and unique sites in Bosnia.  A line of cabin-like buildings in the spillway between two lakes, the mills have been maintained (if not used) since Ottoman times - some estimate that they date to the 16th century.

These small structures were an important part of the medieval Bosnian economy - Ottoman farmers brought their grain to places like this for grinding, leaving ten percent as payment. Centralized mills were common in some places, but at Jajce the small, steady rivulets were perfect for individual families to construct their own.  Even today there are close to a dozen, none larger than a shack, kept up as a cultural tribute to the past.  In truth, the Jajce watermills were used as recently as the twentieth century, and there are still people in the city that remember grinding their flour there.

It's a beautiful spot, especially on a weekend evening, when Bosnian families canoe on the lakes and barbecue in the parkland around.

The most ingenious and interesting use of hydropower we've come across in Bosnia and Herzegovina was this lamb-roasting spit at Vozač restaurant, in the Vrbas River valley.  A bored waiter let us into the roasting cabin, which was - needless to say - quite hot.  The home-made wheel was fed by a hose running from the nearby spring; a clever gear mechanism kept the meat's rotation slow and methodical.

We would have stayed for lunch, but it appeared that the creature was a few hours away from being done.  Driving away, we realized that it was the first working watermill that we'd seen since the irrigation wheels in Herzegovina - and it wasn't even connected to a river.  How wonderful, that a place would cobble something together like this, even with electricity at the ready and a local crowd that didn't care how the spit was turned.  

The Most Bosnian Town

If one place could claim to really encapsulate this country's identity, spirit and history, it's Jajce.  And to most people, Jajce is this view.  Looking at it reminded me a little of tourist t-shirts that show an artistic rendering of all the key sites in a country.  A composite that could place the Empire State Building side by side with the Statue of Liberty, whose making eyes at the guys of Mount Rushmore from behind the Golden Gate Bridge.  It's like a celebratory diorama.  Bosnia and Herzegovina = water! forests! castles! Medieval churches! Ottoman mosques! the prettiest hillside houses you've ever seen! They're all right there, piled above the town's very own set of waterfalls.  It would be almost twee if it weren't Bosnia.

As a taxi driver told us on our third day in the country, "We have a war every fifty years.  It's tradition!" While that's not precisely true, it's pretty close and Jajce has characteristically played a significant part in each.  Piled up behind and cascading down around the beloved waterfalls that have witnessed it all are reminders of all different chapters.  The 13th century fortress crowns the town, apropos of its status as capital and royal residence of the Bosnian kingdom beginning in the 1420s.  St. Luke's Tower, illuminated on the left side of the skyline, harkens back to this time.  It's the only in tact Medieval Tower on the Balkan Peninsula and was the location of the coronation of the last Bosnian king.  It has been idiosyncratically attached to the side of a mosque since the 1520s, when Ottomans destroyed the church but knew that the historic tower was worth saving.

Across from St. Luke's sits the entrance to the royal catacombs.  It's an underground church, complete with nave, altar and the now-emptied tombs of noblemen, built in the 15th century in just about the final years of the Bosnian kingdom.  The Ottoman Empire was swooping in and the Austro-Hungarian Empire grabbed a hold of Jajce and successfully protected it for around 60 years.  Then, in 1527, Jajce was the very last town in all of Bosnia to fall to the Ottomans.  Like everywhere else, this rule lasted about five centuries - at the end of which, Jajce became Austro-Hungarian once more. Unlike many other places, though, both sides cherished this town.  It never fell into neglect, was not ignored or forgotten.  It retained some of its former-capital luster and in the years before World War I it was treated to an  updated road system and modern infrastructure in the surrounding region. 

The next chapter of Bosnia and Herzegovina's life came, of course, with another war.  It was the big war - and the big turning point.  And, of course, Jajce was right there at the center of it.  In 1943, during World War II, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) met and drew up the documents that would outline the new state of Yugoslavia.  Tito's Yugoslavia.   A museum has been created where this took place, but we found out about it after closing hours.  Instead, we visited the small, but bright Ethnographic Museum.  A television set up amongst costumes and ancient pottery showed a video about wedding rituals.  Three vignettes played on loop, about Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox rituals, respectively.

At ANVOJ, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed itself "neither Serbian nor Croatian nor Muslim, but rather Serbian Croatian and Muslim" and guaranteed brotherhood, freedom and equality for all three people.  In the next fifty years, Jajce's population reflected this sentiment, just as its steepled and minaretted skyline does.  Of course, the war challenged this very principle and Jajce was placed in its familiar wartime spotlight once more.   Jajce changed hands many times and was bombarded by every side.  The town's Serbian population fled, as did the Bosnian Muslims, neither group returned to the town in anything near their pre-war numbers. This young boy waved a Croatian flag as part of a long, honking wedding caravan.  Each vehicle has at least one flag bearer, some hung full sized versions over the back window.  This sort of nationalistic pride, which we've seen throughout the country (Banja Luka was covered in Serbian flags)  is worrisome to some in Jajce.  It's uncharacteristic of this town, a symptom of post-war divisions that aren't entirely mended yet.

"All war is stupid," that taxi driver had continued on.  "But ours was the stupidest."  The constant witness, Jajce's waterfalls, would undoubtedly agree.  At some point during the fighting, a hydroelectric power plant up the river was attacked, which caused some major flooding.  The falls were cut down by about a third of their size.  Once 30 meters tall, they are now around 21.  How sadly symbolic that the icon of this most Bosnian citizen, that had survived untouched through all that preceded, was truly hurt by the tragedy of its own people fighting each other.  Still, it gushes and it is beautiful.  It is visited by its fellow residents of Jajce every day.  The town has a unique energy to it.  After dark, the cafes overflow, though you won't necessarily hear bursts of laughter.  The constant rush of water in the background goes with it so well. Maybe that's chicken and egg, though.

Since the conflict, international organizations have been helping to fund the restoration and renovation of Jajce's historic monuments.  There are 24 protected national monuments in what's not a very large place.  Above, the Esma Sultana Mosque sits (newly) pretty.  This was once the most important mosque in the region but was destroyed - along with the town's Serbian Orthodox Church - during the war in the 90s.  It's exterior has been redone, but the inside is still a work in progress.  The first historic buildings to be worked on, of course, were those that make up that iconic waterfall panorama.  That view is an icon, the "Mostar's Old Bridge" of Northwest Bosnia.  To leave it in shambles would have felt too sad.

You don't get the sense that people see themselves as living in what could really become a museum town.  Excavations don't take place here, even though accidental findings date back to Aneolithic times.  The breakfast room of our hotel has a glass floor, beneath which are Roman ruins found during construction.  Luckily, they didn't just cement over them. But one gets the feeling someone else may have.  "The owner is Swiss," we were told by someone not associated with the hotel.  As if that explained the very logical, thoughtful decision to keep the findings exposed to the public. Even the Mithras Temple, the most ancient jewel in Jajce's sightseeing crown, was discovered by accident during construction.  It was found underground, hidden like all temples to this god are.

Now, it is in pieces, above ground, in a green tinted glass box by a condominium behind a Maxi supermarket.  It's obviously in the process of being fixed up, completely moved from its original home to help stop the effects of moisture damage.  A sign gives the estimated date of restoration completion as April of last year.  Like a lot of things, this is probably a combination of a lack of funds and interest.  Maybe Jajce just doesn't know what to do with their history anymore.  Looking back at all of their amazing town's past may feel impossible without also seeing the events that took place between then and now.  It is easier to look forward, to stroll by the waterfall and look out toward the future while the rest of us are taking little tours of their past.

The Frontier: Bosnian Krajina

We came up to the Krajina trying to get out into the wilderness, lured by stories of river rafting and ancient castles.  We found the edge of Bosnia, where the country long ago mixed and bled into the world outside.
A frontier is both one thing and another.  The very meaning of the word suggests two sides, where something comes up against the unknown, or the other.  The Bosanska Krajina - or "Bosnian Frontier" - is a place where war has always been close at hand, where the people are quiet and tough, where minarets rise beside cornfields and river trout jump at flies.  This is the most beautiful and wild corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina, pushed up into the sickle of Croatia and overflowing with rivers and pretty towns.

In Banja Luka, government buildings still fly the Serbian war flag. In the northern plains and forests, Muslim farmers and loggers make up the vast majority. In 1992, the Bosanska Krajina was swept over by fighting. A quick and ugly front sprang up between towns and ruined any chance for camaraderie in the future.  The combatants - Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks - have mostly withdrawn to their own corners, creating homogenous enclaves where once there were ethnic mixes. Wounds are licked.  Life goes on.
An old name for the Krajina was the "Ljuta Krajina," or the "angry frontier."  It's been at the heart of almost every conflict fought in this part of the world: the fault line between Roman Dalmatia and the invading slavs, the grating edge between Austro-Hungaria and the Ottomans, the headquarters of the Yugoslav partisans during WWII, the bloody site of Serb concentration camps during the conflict of the nineties. War is ingrained in the landscape.

On the other hand, the area is also very peaceful, even bucolic.  Farmland abuts pine forests, there are countless woodland springs and the soft, low mountains have a sentimental resemblance to old-europe or New England.  If the people are reserved, they're also determined and hard working. Towns like Bihac, Jajce and Cazin fill up in the evening with men in from the fields and woods. Tan, broad shouldered youths drink beer in workboots and jeans, a scene that would be familiar in Oklahoma or the Hungarian Puszta.  Tractors rumble through the streets, lamb grills on roadside spits, the food is a hearty mix of grilled meats and potatoes - with some river fish mixed in.

In the dyer valleys between rivers, the land is more yellow hued and open.  To the north of Bosanki Petrovac, we drove through a long expanse of fields.  There were a few houses, but mostly they lay in ruins, shelled during the war.  Much of the land was fallow.  Shepherds huts and carts had replaced the old farms, perched high on the valleysides.  In the intense light of noon, they were like faraway glimpses of the past.  Flocks of sheep moved as one thing, spreading and contracting on the grass.  It was an empty place, where the driving was fast and straight and there were few other cars.

Several thousand Bosniaks were imprisoned, tortured and raped at the Serbian Omarska concentration camp, near the town of Prijedor.  One of the most publicized and awful outrages of the Bosnian war, Omarska was officially referred to as an "investigation center" by the Serbs who had taken control of the region - in truth, between four and five thousand people were shot, beaten or starved to death at the camp before it was shut down.  Mass graves have only partly been exhumed, the Mittal Steel company resumed operations at the town mine after the war and hasn't allowed much investigation.
Cazin, not far away from Omarska, up at the very point of the frontier, came to life in the evenings after the daily Ramazan fasting.  We ate dinner at Papillon restaurant, which served proudly national food.  A man popped in and out of the kitchen with plates and bags of cevapi. Only one other man ate in the restaurant, but there were plenty of other people waiting to bring food home.  We have stopped trying, in this land, to reconcile normalcy with horror.

This was once one of the most ethnically and religiously mixed regions of Yugoslavia, with Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks and Orthodox Serbs living together somewhat peaceably.  When this was the end-point of the Ottoman Empire, the government encouraged Muslim farmers and Bosniak families to move here and create a kind of buffer against the Hungarian and Austrian lands beyond.  Later, in the 18th century, Serb herders and mercenaries came to graze sheep and fight against the northern neighbors.  The boundary changed often, allegiances broke generally along religious lines, the Krajina's culture changed much less than its boundaries.
Joseph Broz Tito, the daring young Partisan leader (and later ruler of Yugoslavia) hid his base in a cave near Dvar, in the thick of the Krajina's mountains.  Thousands of German paratroopers failed to capture him there in the embarrassingly unsuccessful Operation Rösselsprung - his escape and the Yugoslav victory helped create a legend after Tito returned.

In truth, our experience in the frontier has had little to do with bloodshed.  We've traveled here like drivers across the American west, covering large distances and letting a larger ambience sink in.  Between busy towns, there are stretches of light and shadow as the trees and plains pass and the sun rises or sinks.  We've come by lakes near Jajce, followed river canyons around Bihac, climbed winding passes through the firs.  The towns, when they appear, are pass-throughs, with sunny-walls and self-contained cultures - a whirl of gossip, wedding halls, rusty trucks and the smell of meat.  Sometimes we stop, sometimes we don't.  In Bosanski Petrovac, we parked our car at the bus station - a place even more transient, where ancient-caravan buses creaked and puttered in from the lands around.  We ate lunch at "Florida Restaurant," where the sign was very faded but the trout was perfectly fresh and tender.

As we licked ice cream in the old castle of Bosanska Krupa, looking down on the Una river, we felt satisfied that we'd made it far enough.  We had a pleasant time doing it, too.  The Bosanska Krajina is a beautiful place to come to grips with history and culture.
For us, this is also the frontier of our journey - the last push into the hinterlands of the Balkans, of southern Europe, middle Europe, wherever it is that we are.  In a few days, we'll be ensconced in Sarajevo, then headed home, then on our last leg - Scandinavia, the British Isles, places that feel especially far removed from heat and confusion, tiny cultures, bombed buildings and Turkish coffee.  We'll leave behind a tangle of roads traveled and looped, borders crossed, towns with impossible names.  This is the last foray into this particular wilderness, and, standing in the breeze atop the castle, we began to sense the end.  Fitting, probably, that this historical middle ground felt like a perfect place to finish the chapter.