CRF: Hungary

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're home for a visit. (Back in Europe August 20th).

Kalocsa is a small town with a lot going for it. Its claims to fame are varied and fascinating. It is the "paprika capital of Hungary," was the Holy See for one of the country's four archbishops and is the birthplace of some of the most celebrated and iconic Hungarian folk art. So, in one short day trip, we visited a museum dedicated to the national spice, saw the skeleton of Saint Pious all dressed up with no where to go and marveled at the colorful Kalocsa floral patterns at the Károly Viski Museum.

The Hungarian Great Plain or "Puszta" is the land of the cowboy. We went to see the csikósok at work (and play) in a fantastically entertaining and slightly bizarre horse show in Bugac. Here, a donkey sits in the stable mentally preparing for his part in the show alongside the majestic horses. Needless to say, he was the butt of a few jokes.

Just a simple lunch at a simple roadside eatery. Eggs, potato, sausage. Of course, there was paprika involved.

Hungary is a land-locked country with plenty of water. Aside from lakes like Balaton and Baja, there are over one thousand thermal springs that feed into baths and spas, indoor and out. Above, a woman relaxes on flotation noodles in the indoor section of the bath at Lake Hévíz. People had traveled from all over Europe to soak in the curative waters of Hévíz for hours. The pungent smell of sulfur and bobbing swimming capped heads made us think of hard boiling eggs. The regular bathers were no doubt more accustomed to the smell.

Eger was a really lovely city in which we camped for days.  It was our first stop in Hungary and, our first real days of summer in 2011.  We couldn't wait to see everything come to life once again after our long, cold, Slavic winter.  Sure, spring is great, but nothing quite beats green grass, flash showers, children trading backpacks for ice cream cones, overflowing market stands.  Watermelon. 

A cemetery in Eger. Last names first and plenty of flowers.

We can't remember exactly where we took this picture, but it was most likely in Eger - either from the top of the northernmost Turkish minaret in the world or up in Eger Castle. 

About 20 kilometers south of Kalocsa, we turned off at Hajós. The village has the largest concentration of wine cellars in Europe, around 1300 in just a blip of a town. Out of season (we were there in late June) the pincék were all shuttered. Only the faint smell of fermented grape hinted at the bustle of activity that would once again begin in a few months.

A summer concert in Eger's park draws an excited but demure crowd.

Just a small town corner store we past on our way to the horse show in Bugac. It was a sleepy town in that familiar way, somewhere between one long stretch of flat road and another.

CRF: Budapest

"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." Below are some of our favorite pics that never made the blog. We figured we'd reminisce a little while we're home for a visit. (Back in Europe August 20th).

Budapest beguiled us in a way that left us a little speechless.  Or post-less.  Aside from the subterranean maze below Buda Castle, we didn't feature much of the unique,  charismastic city.  We were too caught up enjoying it.  Testament to the fun we had, our other Budapest-specific post was about garden bars. So, here's a look at all the things we couldn't quite wrap up in a neat bow.   Some of our favorite shots from the city that didn't make the original cut.

Construction being done on the Applied Arts Museum- a building that screams 'applied arts.'

Budapest's Great Market Hall is really impressive.  Outside, its roof is covered in green and yellow tiles with purple flecks.  The inside is just as vibrant.  There are three floors.  The top is tourist-ceentric, with handicrafts and food stalls serving up real deal local cuisine. The ground floor is a heaven of fruits, vegetables, spices, baked goods, dairy products, etc.  The basement is where they keep all the nitty gritty market fare i.e. the butchers and fish mongers.  Budapest is an excellent city to dine in.  So, the fact that we cooked in twice (making Hungarian cherry soup , fish paprikas and mákos metélt) shows how inspirational this market was.

The view from an apartment in the 5th district - a great neighborhood.  If you look closely, you can see the pull down shutters outside every window. That's something we noticed throughout Budapest.

The steep, winding Sikló walkway leads up away from the Danube to Buda Castle. Some tourists stop to rest en route to picture perfect Castle Hill. These two lovebird locals used the benches for other things.

We stayed in a rental apartment in the 8th district, a neighborhood that went from artist colony to prostitution den to the recipient of (what some call) the biggest urban renewal project in Central Europe. It has a big mall, cinema, kindergartens, but also hole-in-the-wall food joints and small businesses. It's cleaned up but not too cleaned up, you know? At night it buzzed with fluorescence and laughter.

The Great Synagogue in Budapest is the second largest synagogue in the world, fitting 3,000 people. It was built in the middle of the 19th century at a time when Jews were banned from the city proper. You can actually see a bit of the old Pest city walls right across the street. The synagogue is bright and beautiful inside. The chandeliers were particularly eye-catching.

A staircase in one of the many old, abandoned buildings that have been turned into a kurt. Many of them were palatial and people were tucked into every corner of every room, lining hallways and - of course - outside under the stars.  Kurt means garden after all.

Orange cable cars whiz across the Liberty Bridge.

River cruises moved down the green Danube and grand bridges stretched over it.  This building stood unused in its blue coat of paint with its round maritime windows.

When we're asked about our some of our favorite cities, Budapest comes to mind.  It's always difficult to explain why.  A city is often broken down into categories - sights, dining, nightlife.  Some cities excel in all three fields but never really stand out as more than a collection of great elements.  There's no connective energy, no character.  Budapest felt kinetic and edgy, but also comfortable and welcoming.  Heck, we couldn't put it into words while we were there and we can't now.  It's just someplace special.

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.