The Balkans. As the name, of Turkish derivation, suggests, the Land of Mountains. Land of borders: crossroads between the east and the west, tangle of languages, currencies and religions. Land of poverty, criminality and underdevelopment, in the common imagery. Sad, wounded by wars and fierce histories, but at the same time gypsy, foolishly free and happy. Snubbed and unknown. Yet still Europe, seriously just behind the corner from us.
We leave in August for our IperBalkanTour. It’s the three of us, driving an used Suzuki Swift: I, Enrico called "Enne" and Francesco called "Vacca". We included in our journey-plan a thousand different things and 4000 kilometers of road to drive, despite having little more than ten days of time. Our journey plan is written on a cardboard we are carrying with us all the time: it’s a coloured line, which is going to be filled with the names of the cities and of the people we are going to cross; in fairness, part of the road trip is pre-determined by the hostel and Airbnb accomodations we have booked a few days earlier and little bit randomly.
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| Graffiti of Sarajevo, our objective for the first part of the trip |
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| Enne, I and Vacca |
The first stage is Slovenia, the Italian-Austrian canton which is part of the balcan peninsula even though it’s so different from the rest of it: alpine, clean, tidy. Actually I only see it from the car window, passing by, since I reach my two travel mates directly in Croatia, thus missing out on the staying in Ljubljana, and the deviation across the Slovenian mountains, looking for a "famous" partisan hospital (hidden among the wood and the rocks to stay unnoticed from the German air rides during World War II).
We meet up next to the ferry for Cres, an island in the north of Croatia, then we make the tickets and get on board with our cars. We are joined by Elena, Chiara and Alek, who wisely decided to start their croatian holiday together with three experienced men as we certainly are. The ride lasts around 30 minutes, less the time it takes us to reach the remote house we have reserved. As we get there, euphoria takes the lead! The house, despite the bad premises, is really cozy and definitely suits us.
We go straight for a bath into the sea, resisting the cold water and the spikes of the rocks under our feet (things you immediately notice after ten days of seaside on the Salento coast). Nonetheless, putting our heads down the water and swimming with our eyes open, the scenery is marvellous: the blue of the seabed is blinding, while the feeling of cold water on the skin, both invigorating and purifying, is undescribable. In the evening, a violent storm rages outside our little house. So we take shelter inside, playing Machiavelli and eating a lot of food: it feels like being in an alpine-hut, more than in a Croatian summer house.
We go straight for a bath into the sea, resisting the cold water and the spikes of the rocks under our feet (things you immediately notice after ten days of seaside on the Salento coast). Nonetheless, putting our heads down the water and swimming with our eyes open, the scenery is marvellous: the blue of the seabed is blinding, while the feeling of cold water on the skin, both invigorating and purifying, is undescribable. In the evening, a violent storm rages outside our little house. So we take shelter inside, playing Machiavelli and eating a lot of food: it feels like being in an alpine-hut, more than in a Croatian summer house.
As we wake up in the morning we see that the dark clouds, and bolts, are gone; only a very enjoyable Croatian wind is left to live up the day. We move by car until we reach Lubenice, a tiny village perched on a cliff overlooking the sea. In little more than 45 minutes we see everything and decide to take a break from the violent gusts of wind by going inside the Sheep Breeding Museum, the only museum in town. We are welcomed by a nice slim lady, who invites us to start the visit. Old photos and small paragraphs in English introduce us to the secular art of sheep breeding. As it happens almost everywhere nowadays, even in Cres the pastures and the shepards are on the verge of disappearing, and alongside them the traditions based on the results of that activity. It particularly catches our interest a homemade video showing an old chubby woman dealing with homemade tools in order to create the typical shape of sheep cheese of Cres (cheese which, to our bitter disappointment, we don’t get the chance to taste). Straight after the visit we head towards the sea.
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| Lubenice (pictures: croaziainfo.it) |
A path, partly well paved, partly very rocky, crosses the woods and descends down the cliff. It takes us one full hour to cover it all and reach the beach. When we get there, we realize it was worth it: the beach, covered in pebbles, is there almost exclusively for us, and the sea is even better than the previous day. On one side of the beach there are vertical rocks, from where you can dive and go explore the sea with a mask, and, literally between the end of the wood and the sea, there is an old fisherman’s house with coloured shutters. To our great surprise, a couple of tourists gets in the house, after trafficking a bit with the keys, and leaves their rucksacks there. Apparently, Airbnb has arrived that far, one hour by foot from the nearest settlement, a village with no market place in an island in Croatia…(and yet, when we notice two kayaks emerging from the basement and a grill with a table in the garden we can only feel pure envy!).
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| Lubenice's surroundings, Cres (Croatia) |
The following morning, sadly, we have to split. We are heading towards Bosnia, while the girls will remain in Croatia. Being ridiculously lucky as we will be for the whole journey, we are among the last few cars which are embarked on the ferry to the isle next to Cres (Krk). At first sight, the island is less bare than Cres and Pag, and is connected to the mainland by a bridge. Which requires a toll, but only in the way in, meaning we can cross it for free. Back on continental Croatia, we start our southward descent.
We drive through a good chunk of the coast, and make a deviation towards the inland only to stop at Plitvice Lakes. The price of the entry ticket, almost 20 euros for students, and the absurd amount of people we find as a welcome spoil the natural show which lays in front of us. With the long face, sensing to have been ripped off, we proceed towards the wooden walkways, and don’t miss the chance to use shuttles and ferrys which are at disposal of the visitors. The park is really vast and definitely well maintained. The plays of water and the colours of the trees may be worth the price of the entry ticket (wait, what am I saying? Natural parks should be for free, what the f…). However we could have expected such an amount of people, being a Sunday of the summer holiday. While head ing back to the car, I promise myself to get back there on a winter day and not inform the guards of my presence next time.
We drive through a good chunk of the coast, and make a deviation towards the inland only to stop at Plitvice Lakes. The price of the entry ticket, almost 20 euros for students, and the absurd amount of people we find as a welcome spoil the natural show which lays in front of us. With the long face, sensing to have been ripped off, we proceed towards the wooden walkways, and don’t miss the chance to use shuttles and ferrys which are at disposal of the visitors. The park is really vast and definitely well maintained. The plays of water and the colours of the trees may be worth the price of the entry ticket (wait, what am I saying? Natural parks should be for free, what the f…). However we could have expected such an amount of people, being a Sunday of the summer holiday. While head ing back to the car, I promise myself to get back there on a winter day and not inform the guards of my presence next time.
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| National Park of Plitvice Lakes (pictures: unconventional tour.net) |
After some driving, the night falls and it seems like we will never make it to our hostel room in Jayce, one of the first towns in Bosnia over the border. We drive past mountain areas and valleys. One, in particular, where we foolishly wanted to find a place to eat, really resembles the American flatlands you see in western movies, where the buffalos live and the Indian tribes ride their horses. In the first village we cross after 30 or 40 kilometers in the darkness, we eat the first cevapi of our lives. Up to the border to Romania, we will be haunted by the cevapi signs, but we won’t have the guts to stop by one anymore. To be honest, cevapi is quite tasty… Yet the sense of fullness and greasiness it conveys in us will be stronger than that. As a matter of fact, since that moment cevapi undoubtedly becomes for us the standard economic value: it can be very useful as a measure if you're not so at ease with Bosnian marks and Serbian dinars.
At midnight we finally arrive in Jayce and settle in the hostel. After enjoying some well-deserved wifi for a bit, we are all sound asleep. However, I wake up quite early and take a chance to see the town. The streets are still desert, and I easily reach the old town, waiting for me in its decay and medioeval fascination it still evokes. In the highest point is located the castle, which is closed due to maintenance works, even though I can’t see any from the outside. All around it the historical city centre unfolds, as a cone. I’m impressed mostly by a Christian church, whose plant and tower bell are the only parts left nowadays. There is no roof anymore, neither doors nor windows, grass and moss are now growing where once there was the floor.
Around the castle hill other hills can be seen, just like it will be in Sarajevo, where lots of white houses with red roofs and pointed minarets stand out. On the way back to the hostel, along the river, I notice that that at last the city is awakening. On a few kiosks of souvenirs some products are displayed, cars start to fill up the streets and a few elders are sitting at a bar. My mates wake up as well, so we pack everything and go downstairs to eat our breakfast. Breakfast so to speak, since, while we painstakingly swallow the biscuits and fruit we have left, a bunch of guys is cooking their meal: standing around a stove, they are waiting noticeably hungry for a sort of meat broth to be ready.
Around the castle hill other hills can be seen, just like it will be in Sarajevo, where lots of white houses with red roofs and pointed minarets stand out. On the way back to the hostel, along the river, I notice that that at last the city is awakening. On a few kiosks of souvenirs some products are displayed, cars start to fill up the streets and a few elders are sitting at a bar. My mates wake up as well, so we pack everything and go downstairs to eat our breakfast. Breakfast so to speak, since, while we painstakingly swallow the biscuits and fruit we have left, a bunch of guys is cooking their meal: standing around a stove, they are waiting noticeably hungry for a sort of meat broth to be ready.
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| Jaice's roofless church |
Cooking tunafish pasta without any oil or pan, we really identify with the trash character Bello Figo, thinking we should be in the video instead of him. We settle pretty well with the style of the city: trashy, a bit dirty, old yet modern, intellectual, crazy and sad, but interesting in each of its corners. It’s different from any other city I’ve seen so far. There is a reason why Sarajevo is called the "European Jerusalem" or the "Door to the east": here the west frantically lives together with the bazaars, the mosquees and everything else the Turkish dominance left behind. Every side street sparkles with life and hits you with a whirlpool of weird noises and big cars riding fast a few inches from the sidewalks, really narrow and bumpy. It makes a strange effect, Sarajevo, with the decaying and coloured houses in the city centre and the funny look of its inhabitants. I’m instantly conquered by it.
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| Our hostel in Sarajevo |
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| Muslim cemetery in Sarajevo |
We decide to spend the afternoon in the historical centre. We move on foot, passing by the main landmarks (some of them really touristic). One of the most interesting to me is the Muslim cemetery, made of thin pale white gravestones, on which the names of the Arab people who died are embossed. From up there, there is a really nice view on the city suburbs. We are struck by Svrzo's House, the old house from an upper class Ottoman family, which is now a museum. We cross the bazaar and eat our bellies out in sweets, and have some hot drinks too, for the price of about 2 euros overall.
After that, we enjoy a really nice yet "smoky" night at Kino Bosnia, a vintage pub made out of a dismissed yet conserved cinema, where once a week groups of sevdah players perform. Sevdah is a traditional romantic music from Bosnia, really melancholic. To be fair, we are not in the mood for Sevdah that night, so we take advantage from meeting other young travellers and from the reasonable price of beers to get a little tipsy. The way back to the hostel is a tiny odyssey which will be one for the books: a communal pee down from a bridge, followed by an hallucinated discussion over the willow trees and a historical disquisition sparked by the place where Franz Ferdinand was shot, only to reach desperation when we find out our bancomats don't seem to work anymore and that the last uphill actually lasts forever.
Parallel to Sniper Alley, Visnovo Boulevard has always carried a very different connotation. With its lime trees and the romantic atmosphere along the river, it was the meeting point for lovers and families who just wanted to have a stroll. For many years it represented a place of tranquility and everyday life, but then -for five long years- it had not been accessible anymore. We got to know all this partly from a very special guide ("Scoprire i Balcani. Storie, luoghi e itinerari dell'Europa di mezzo" - CIERRE Edizioni), and partly from the peculiar historical museum of Sarajevo.
After that, we enjoy a really nice yet "smoky" night at Kino Bosnia, a vintage pub made out of a dismissed yet conserved cinema, where once a week groups of sevdah players perform. Sevdah is a traditional romantic music from Bosnia, really melancholic. To be fair, we are not in the mood for Sevdah that night, so we take advantage from meeting other young travellers and from the reasonable price of beers to get a little tipsy. The way back to the hostel is a tiny odyssey which will be one for the books: a communal pee down from a bridge, followed by an hallucinated discussion over the willow trees and a historical disquisition sparked by the place where Franz Ferdinand was shot, only to reach desperation when we find out our bancomats don't seem to work anymore and that the last uphill actually lasts forever.
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| The courtyard of a mosque in Sarajevo |
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| Shop of a metal/copper artisan |
By the following morning, we sober up enough to understand that we are in Sarajevo and we cannot afford to sleep over and miss to pay a visit to all the war related places. We pick up the car from the garage and go back to the sniper boulevard, Ulica Zmaja in Bosnian. Slowly, palace after palace, the boulevard gets repaired and goes back to normality. In the 90s though this was a clou spot, or at least a symbol of the Serbian siege, since especially in the area between the national museum and the Holiday hotel many civilians lost their lives, hit by the snipers stationed on the roofs. Those who find death couldn’t avoid moving to get some food or just as a refusal of that prisony.
Parallel to Sniper Alley, Visnovo Boulevard has always carried a very different connotation. With its lime trees and the romantic atmosphere along the river, it was the meeting point for lovers and families who just wanted to have a stroll. For many years it represented a place of tranquility and everyday life, but then -for five long years- it had not been accessible anymore. We got to know all this partly from a very special guide ("Scoprire i Balcani. Storie, luoghi e itinerari dell'Europa di mezzo" - CIERRE Edizioni), and partly from the peculiar historical museum of Sarajevo.
The museum, already from its disorganization and tha palace inside which is located, is the essence of the past century in Bosnia and in Sarajevo, evoked particularly through photos and objects. From there we head to the Tunnel Museum, located outside Sarajevo and used to connect the airport, where the humanitarian aids arrived, to the city centre. Thanks to a reconstruction of a trait of the original tunnel and other pieces of evidence from those years, we have a first-hand experience of how living in Sarajevo should have been like during the conflict.
Back in the car, we talk about the events that led to the war and how the conflict unfolded, but the more we discuss, the more we are confused about the issues from those years. And yet we leave Sarajevo behind us. We would be very tempted to stay, but we have decided to reach Belgrad within the same day. So, once again, we set up Enne’s old navigation system (which not only has to be restarted every time the engine of the car has been off, but apparently it has never been updated) and we let ourselves be carried away by the roaring of the Suzuki. A long road is still in front of us and the adventure has barely started!
Back in the car, we talk about the events that led to the war and how the conflict unfolded, but the more we discuss, the more we are confused about the issues from those years. And yet we leave Sarajevo behind us. We would be very tempted to stay, but we have decided to reach Belgrad within the same day. So, once again, we set up Enne’s old navigation system (which not only has to be restarted every time the engine of the car has been off, but apparently it has never been updated) and we let ourselves be carried away by the roaring of the Suzuki. A long road is still in front of us and the adventure has barely started!
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| In the Tunnel Museum of Sarajevo |
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| Reconstruction of the city |
English translation by: Giovanni De Maria (Zio Dema)
Italian version of the article 
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