Sarajevo is tragic. I’ve visited battlefields before, like Gettysburg or Omaha Beach. But those were in the countryside, and besides, all happened before I was born. The urban battlefields I recall in the United States are mostly quaint and historic, where local guides will happily point out musketfire on the town hall or the cannon captured from a British man-of-war by the docks.

In Sarajevo, the war was recent, and bloody, and the reminders are everywhere. The apartment next to mine bears the unmistakable signs of mortar fire. There are still Sarajevo Roses everywhere — the places where the starburst patterns of explosives in the streets have been patched with red resin. And just this year the government announced a new initiative to make Sarajevo mine-free by 2020. It’s not, yet.

I’m really the wrong person to be writing about about it — my experience in and around the Balkans is limited and my grasp of the history is shaky — but I’m comparing what I’ve seen of similar cities¹ and imagining what Sarajevo would have looked like without the war. It’s not like there’s not new construction or welcoming parks or refurbished buildings. But they’re cheek-by-jowl with apartments scarred with the aftermath of shelling, or across the river from blown-out brick warehouses with the roof collapsed and floors missing.

The city feels to me like it’s still caught in that history, that for every investment in the future there’s a part that’s still caught in the early ’90s. Restaurants still have smoking sections.² All the showcase buildings, not counting corporate skyscrapers,³ are these Brutalist hulks (many constructed for the 1984 Olympics).⁴ It feels like time has been moving in slow motion; that the war chased away the investment you’d have normally expected. Which I suspect is exactly the case.

After the emotional rollercoaster of the weeks leading up to this trip I needed to relax for a while, so I wasn’t looking to do much. And Sarajevo’s a good place for that. It’s not especially touristy⁵ but still has an old town and scenic views and historic bridges. I had initially intended to spend the month just traveling through the area, but I ended up signing up for a convention this weekend back in the Netherlands and I signed up for a larp after the time I’ve scheduled in Croatia, so my excitement at seeing new countries has once again run aground on my excitement at doing new things.

But it’s been nice to not have much to do this week, at least. I’ve been wandering semi-aimlessly through the evenings, or spending time sitting outside in cafés. I’m working on some personal projects that have had me busy. Staying in one place for a week feels like luxury. It’s largely a way for me to cosplay being a resident. I start to discover small places I’d otherwise miss.⁶ I buy groceries. I pass long afternoons, not wandering, not thinking, just sitting.

Maybe what I need is to find a place to settle for a month. But the places I can stay that don’t run into visa restrictions are far away from the people I like to spend time with. So on I go.

The last day I spent in Sarajevo I did some tourist things. First, I visited the Latin Bridge. The bridge is famously the spot where Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. The assassin was a Serb nationalist demanding an independent Serbian nation-state — this may be a recurring theme — and accidentally kicked off World War I.

For a long time there was a “monument” in the form of golden footprints on the spot where the assassin stood and fired. It was finally torn out by citizens of the city shortly after the Bosnian War broke out, when anti-Serb sentiment was running particularly high.⁷ It seems to have stuck; at the present day there’s a small plaque mentioning the assassination, and honoring the victims, but nothing for the assassin. I count this as progress.

The other site I visited was the Sarajevo Tunnel, aka the Tunel Spasa, aka the Tunnel of Hope. And that was deeply affecting. If you’re not up on the history⁸ the short version is that when Bosnia and Herzegovina held a referendum on separating from Yugoslavia (which passed) ethnic Serbs within Bosnia (who had boycotted the referendum) responded by militarizing as the Republika Srpska and seizing control of large areas of the country. Ethnic Croats and Bosniaks militarized in response, and in short order Sarajevo was surrounded by Serb forces and under siege.⁹

What followed was the longest siege in modern warfare, a year longer than the Siege of Leningrad and three times the length of the Battle of Stalingrad. The Serb forces controlled all access in and out of the city, and were reasonably well supplied by Serbia. They were significantly outnumbered by the Bosnian forces, but the near impossibility of resupplying the forces within the city made it something of a stalemate.

At the start of the siege, the best way to get things in and out¹⁰ was to cross at the airport; although it was under the control of Serb forces, it represented the thinnest part of their lines and their control over the area wasn’t as total as elsewhere. As the war dragged on the Serb forces turned over control of the airport to UN forces, with the proviso that it be locked down. After this point it became nearly impossible to cross. You might be able to sneak across during the day, where the biggest risk was the UN forces, who would catch you and drop you off at your starting point. But at night the Serb forces were prone to hose down the area with automatic fire whenever the motion alarms went off.

That’s where the tunnel came in. Over the course of four months, locals dug out trenches and then a tunnel under the airport, connecting Bosnian-held territory on one side with Bosnian-held territory on the other. From mid-1993 until the end of the war in late 1995 it allowed 3,000–4,000 people to pass through every day, along with food, and gas, and medicine, and arms, and cigarettes (which were effectively used as currency for bartering).

It prevented the military collapse of the Bosnian forces, the capture of the city, the (likely) slaughter of the residents, and possibly the fall of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serb forces. The city held out for four years, until international pressure forced both sides to negotiate a peace. It’s a painful peace; Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina agreed to split the country into separate administrative regions, managed autonomously. But it’s held.

Reading over what happened, the war crimes and atrocities on all sides, the way that kind of life eats into the soul of a city, the souls of everyone living there, it’s heartbreaking. I’m not a hard-core pacifist; sometimes you have no choice but to fight back. But that’s a tragedy. It’s the last option. Anyone who valorizes war? They’re an accomplice.

It’s given me new insight into Northern Ireland, about the ongoing fear that even after all this time, sectarian violence could consume the country, like it once did. Peace is a fragile thing. It can shatter unexpectedly at any time. Hang onto it. Nurture it. Pray it holds. And if it breaks, despite everything? Just be prepared to dig a tunnel.

Next: Düsseldorf to Venlo
Prev: Budapest (BUD) to Sarajevo (SJJ)

Footnotes

¹ Zagreb, mostly

² I cannot remember the last country I was in that had smoking sections in restaurants. Here, the ones that don’t seem to be because every table already has an ashtray on it.

³ Berlin-sized skyscrapers, not New York City-sized skyscrapers.

⁴ To be fair, the Skenderija Complex was built twenty years before the Olympics, and it’s the most obvious of these. But I’ll never understand the love of buildings like that by city planners and government officials. I’ve seen dozens of buildings like that, and I think I can count the number of them I’ve liked on one hand.

⁵ More aftereffects from the war

⁶ I only just found a tiny but great French bakery not a 5 minute walk from where I’m staying. Alas, finding that a day before I leave, rather than the day after I arrive, means I’ve only gotten to enjoy a single apple tart.

⁷ Probably because of the heavy mortar fire targeting the city and reports of war crimes by Republika Srpska forces, which tends to make residents a bit tetchy.

⁸ I totally wasn’t

⁹ I’m being a little loose to try and keep this summary streamlined. If this seems all incredibly confusing, trust me, it’s really about a hundred times more complicated.

¹⁰ I mean, besides being allied with the Serbs — one of the horrifying details about the war is that snipers within the city would set up positions in neighborhoods and pick off anyone wandering by.