I Royally Suck at Updating
So the next two days in Sarajevo were busy and mind numbing. We heard so much on the Bosnian governments, what trouble it is in, if it is doing anything correctly or is just 100% screwed, what the international community is doing (incredibly little), what a real 'dark sense of humor' means, and some marketing/economics. Maybe I should have requested ECON credit for this course instead of the HIST credit that I am getting… That way I can finally say I have taken an economics class because the segment on the stock market we did at the end of AP Euro in high school definitely did not count. I played games and snoozed while Danny and Mark did all the work. We only won the stock game because Danny's relative (aunt? grandma? I have no idea) is good at the stock market if such thing is possible and called that we should invest in gold. I've learned a lot about much more than history thankfully.
Our lectures for the next days were as follows:
Day1-
A member of Parliament
The Second in Command at the Office of the High Representative (OHR)
A legal advisor in the courts of BiH
Why foreign investment is so hard from a George Mason Ph.D. candidate
Day2-
The Tunnel of Hope (not a lecture)
The US Embassy
Advisor to the Bosniak President
International Commission of Missing Persons
Through all of these lectures, it is really impressive that I only snoozed for one of them which should have been one of the more interesting ones. The courts of BiH should have snapped my attention away but I was sitting in the back in a warm room, listening to a quiet lady. Not exactly the greatest way to keep someone awake. Maybe too much time was spent at the bars during the night and not enough time sleeping, but even so, I regret nothing. These days were held several first experiences for me and probably most other people on the trip. One of the things that is always joked about is the reputation of Americans abroad and a generally less than favorable viewpoint but this was as far from the truth as possible. This combined with the inner workings of Bosnia and Herzegovina baffle me. Outside of the OHR, there was a group of Bosniak men who built tents and were camping out for three months trying to get the High Representative, who happens to be an American, to finally get the ball rolling so the people can get some benefit. Despite this, the international community has taken steps back during the past decade trying to get the country to stand up on its own without face planting before it takes its first step. Clearly this agenda is working pretty well for Europe as a whole. One of the things that confused me the most though was their reasons for being angry. The Bosniak men cited that their kids were learning Serbian instead of Bosnian in the schools, which angered them because Serbian is not their language despite the two being remarkable similar save some grammar differences from what we were told. Don't quote me on this because thats just what I think I remember being told. But to solve this problem, instead of letting their kids go to school and then teaching them Bosnian when they get home, they just pulled them right out of school. In what world does this action make any sense, especially if you have any desire for your child to fend for themselves. Maybe this is just my biased opinion as someone who has grown up in the United States but this stance makes little sense to me.
One of the other interesting experiences came at the Tunnel of Hope, which may have been on one of the most depressing days I have ever seen. The smog made it seem like we were in the movie 'The Mist' and were all waiting for tentacles to come and rip us from the bus and drag us to the abyss. We got a brief history of the tunnel and the war from a man who we were pretty sure was Muslim based on his point of view that 'no one objects when you go to war against Muslims.' Unfortunately for something that had such a strong impact on the recent history of Sarajevo, this was pretty much all we heard about the war other than the massacre at Srebrenica, which we visited the next day. We did not get too much personal information from the speaker so I have no idea if he lived through the siege or is just knowledgeable about it. Either way, he put things into perspective that you do not think about or realize that happened especially during my lifetime. One of the things he said that had the largest impact for me was that one pack of cigarettes was worth a pig or goat and the Mona Lisa was only worth the amount of heat you could get out of burning it. Every resource was used towards survival and extra objects that did not help with this were practically useless. Pretty much everything in our homes would be worthless in this situation except for the food, blankets and things that could burn. All of these had to be smuggled through an 800m long tunnel that was 1m wide by 1.6m tall. In a horrible sense, the cause for this tunnel is almost worth a chuckle because the reason the tunnel was needed was to run under the UN airport that was controlled by the French. If the Bosnians tried running across the airstrip, they risked being shot at by both the Chetniks and the UN Forces so their only solution was to go under the airstrip. They kept a 25m section of the tunnel preserved so people can walk through it and see what the people had to go through in order to survive. With the smog lying low over the city, you could not see the hills or across the airstrip where the other end of the tunnel was, making the experience much more ominous.
Perhaps the most frustrating event we had was the meeting with the advisor to the Bosniak president. This guy was a politician through and through. He was a great speaker and you could tell that he used to be a lobbyist before getting into politics by the way that he talked. By the time we got to him, many of us were tired and did not have the attention span to listen to him dance around the questions, which is exactly what he did. Without directly answered any of the questions that were asked of him, he talked for an average of 20 minutes after each one and danced his way around giving us the answers we were looking for. This is what I mean when I say that he was a politician if I have ever seen one. There is a reason this guy has been the advisor to two different presidents, each with opposing views and yet he still managed to survive the political office. The thing that aggravated us the most was his constant referral to the Dayton Accords as 'the Dayton Constitution.' Maybe it was because we had previously come from the US Embassy so our biases were a little stronger, but we were all convinced that the Dayton Accords were in no way meant to serve as a long standing Constitution as it is currently doing. The other thing that surprised all of us was when he told us that he believes Republika Srpska should not exist because it was founded on war crimes during the war. By allowing RP to continue to exist, it is sending a message to criminals saying they can create their own 'entity' through illegal means and heinous crimes. For something that was such a strong opinion, it came as a surprise that this was so bluntly stated in the middle of his rhetoric that was leaving many of us confused.
As with every night, we continued to hit up the bars because it was a lot more fun than sitting in the hotel room, no offense to that. Pat took a bunch of us to see Bilbo's which ended up being a big disappointment, but hey, I got a picture of it so I guess it is worth it. The big drink in Eastern Europe that we found ended up being rakia (no idea how it is spelled but that is how it is pronounced) and it is brandy. It entirely depended on the flavors because in Hungary, the raspberry was gross but the plum was pretty good. In Sarajevo, we ended up doing a shot of cherry instead of jaeger because we may as well have expanded our horizons. I don't normally like cherries but this stuff was fantastic. For being so strong, it went down like sweet wine and I have no idea how. Unfortunately, I do not remember the names of the bars but the second one we went to was very punkish. They had a brick wall with the writing from The Wall album by Pink Floyd written on it along with signatures and quotes. This should give you a pretty good idea of the music that they played there. It was all classic and 90's rock music. Maybe in the 6 months I've been 21 I haven't explored enough but I need to find bars in the states that are good to hang out at and play this type of music.
To end the final night in Sarajevo, all the Bosnian students reserved part of a pub for us, and there ended up being 19 of us that went. 19 out of 26 ain't bad. It was a lot of fun and a great night, the only problem was that there were almost 30 of us when including the Bosnian students in a space that was meant for probably half that many people. The group of us from the previous night all decided to do another shot of rakia and this stuff was even more delicious than the stuff the previous night, assuming you like sweet. I'm talking juice sweet which worked wonders because the main objective of the night was to get drunk and have fun. So the night was a complete success. One of the biggest advantages of doing this in Europe is that buying drinks at a bar was still more expensive than doing it on your own, it was maybe a third of the price of bars in the states and that may still be overestimating it. It turned out to be a good night of just drinking and hanging out talking and relaxing. It was pretty close to our hotel so we knew how to get back and people came and went from our group as they pleased, which made the whole night so much easier.
Our lectures for the next days were as follows:
Day1-
A member of Parliament
The Second in Command at the Office of the High Representative (OHR)
A legal advisor in the courts of BiH
Why foreign investment is so hard from a George Mason Ph.D. candidate
Day2-
The Tunnel of Hope (not a lecture)
The US Embassy
Advisor to the Bosniak President
International Commission of Missing Persons
Through all of these lectures, it is really impressive that I only snoozed for one of them which should have been one of the more interesting ones. The courts of BiH should have snapped my attention away but I was sitting in the back in a warm room, listening to a quiet lady. Not exactly the greatest way to keep someone awake. Maybe too much time was spent at the bars during the night and not enough time sleeping, but even so, I regret nothing. These days were held several first experiences for me and probably most other people on the trip. One of the things that is always joked about is the reputation of Americans abroad and a generally less than favorable viewpoint but this was as far from the truth as possible. This combined with the inner workings of Bosnia and Herzegovina baffle me. Outside of the OHR, there was a group of Bosniak men who built tents and were camping out for three months trying to get the High Representative, who happens to be an American, to finally get the ball rolling so the people can get some benefit. Despite this, the international community has taken steps back during the past decade trying to get the country to stand up on its own without face planting before it takes its first step. Clearly this agenda is working pretty well for Europe as a whole. One of the things that confused me the most though was their reasons for being angry. The Bosniak men cited that their kids were learning Serbian instead of Bosnian in the schools, which angered them because Serbian is not their language despite the two being remarkable similar save some grammar differences from what we were told. Don't quote me on this because thats just what I think I remember being told. But to solve this problem, instead of letting their kids go to school and then teaching them Bosnian when they get home, they just pulled them right out of school. In what world does this action make any sense, especially if you have any desire for your child to fend for themselves. Maybe this is just my biased opinion as someone who has grown up in the United States but this stance makes little sense to me.
One of the other interesting experiences came at the Tunnel of Hope, which may have been on one of the most depressing days I have ever seen. The smog made it seem like we were in the movie 'The Mist' and were all waiting for tentacles to come and rip us from the bus and drag us to the abyss. We got a brief history of the tunnel and the war from a man who we were pretty sure was Muslim based on his point of view that 'no one objects when you go to war against Muslims.' Unfortunately for something that had such a strong impact on the recent history of Sarajevo, this was pretty much all we heard about the war other than the massacre at Srebrenica, which we visited the next day. We did not get too much personal information from the speaker so I have no idea if he lived through the siege or is just knowledgeable about it. Either way, he put things into perspective that you do not think about or realize that happened especially during my lifetime. One of the things he said that had the largest impact for me was that one pack of cigarettes was worth a pig or goat and the Mona Lisa was only worth the amount of heat you could get out of burning it. Every resource was used towards survival and extra objects that did not help with this were practically useless. Pretty much everything in our homes would be worthless in this situation except for the food, blankets and things that could burn. All of these had to be smuggled through an 800m long tunnel that was 1m wide by 1.6m tall. In a horrible sense, the cause for this tunnel is almost worth a chuckle because the reason the tunnel was needed was to run under the UN airport that was controlled by the French. If the Bosnians tried running across the airstrip, they risked being shot at by both the Chetniks and the UN Forces so their only solution was to go under the airstrip. They kept a 25m section of the tunnel preserved so people can walk through it and see what the people had to go through in order to survive. With the smog lying low over the city, you could not see the hills or across the airstrip where the other end of the tunnel was, making the experience much more ominous.
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| Siege of Sarajevo and the location of the UN Airport/Tunnel of Hope |
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| Entrance to the Tunnel of Hope |
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| The Tunnel of Hope |
As with every night, we continued to hit up the bars because it was a lot more fun than sitting in the hotel room, no offense to that. Pat took a bunch of us to see Bilbo's which ended up being a big disappointment, but hey, I got a picture of it so I guess it is worth it. The big drink in Eastern Europe that we found ended up being rakia (no idea how it is spelled but that is how it is pronounced) and it is brandy. It entirely depended on the flavors because in Hungary, the raspberry was gross but the plum was pretty good. In Sarajevo, we ended up doing a shot of cherry instead of jaeger because we may as well have expanded our horizons. I don't normally like cherries but this stuff was fantastic. For being so strong, it went down like sweet wine and I have no idea how. Unfortunately, I do not remember the names of the bars but the second one we went to was very punkish. They had a brick wall with the writing from The Wall album by Pink Floyd written on it along with signatures and quotes. This should give you a pretty good idea of the music that they played there. It was all classic and 90's rock music. Maybe in the 6 months I've been 21 I haven't explored enough but I need to find bars in the states that are good to hang out at and play this type of music.
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| The disappointing Bilbo's |
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| One of the good Bosnian beers |
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| Church in the old city at night |
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