Aufiderzein, Good Night

My last day in Vienna was a massive success. After meetings at the OSCE in the morning I spent the afternoon with some friends to the Schonberg palace a little bit outside of the city. It was so pretty to walk through the palace grounds with all of the leaves changing colors. Behind the palace are just these huge manicured, rolling hills with little fall-covered side paths splitting off along the way. At the top of the biggest hill is a fountain and a beautiful little cafe with big windows on all sides so you can sit inside and get a view of the grounds from all angles. We snacked on some apple struessel and kaffe Mozart (mocha espresso with chocolate liquor - highly recommend it).

After relaxing we hiked back down the hill to the labyrinth! The palace has its own intricate maze that we wandered through for a bit. I can't imagine that people actually lived in this house and whenever they got bored, you know when something cruddy was on tv, they could just go in the backyard and chill in their personal labyrinth.

One of the coolest things for sure was this crazy playground right next to the labyrinth that has an old school mirror maze with different carnival mirrors, and a bunch of climbing equipment that definitely made me miss rock climbing!

After our little foray back into childhood at the playground my friend and I found a market a little off of the beaten path not far from downtown Vienna. Everywhere we went in the market we were greeted immediately in German and people seemed a little surprised when we looked super confused and asked if they spoke English. It was so nice to get off of the main streets and into the non-tourist site, Viennese Vienna.

If I ever live in Vienna I will come back to this market every day. They had rows and rows of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of the mostly delicious freshly dried fruits I've ever had, cheese stalls with more types of cheese that I knew existed, and one of my favorites - a vinegar and oil stand with vinegars and oils made from all types of fruits and vegetables. We just walked around to every stall spending our spare Euros on taste tests of everything that looked particularly delicious. It was the perfect way to end the afternoon.

After the market we had a big group dinner. It is so strange to think that this time tomorrow we will be back in D.C.! At dinner I had my very first Austrian schnitzel and we all toasted to each other, our professor, and especially to Viego and Azra who have been like our surrogate parents for the past few weeks.

After dinner I went to the opera and it was incredible. Just being able to see inside of an opera house anywhere is always beautiful and fun, but being inside of an opera house in Vienna was doubly amazing, and then having the opportunity to see an actual opera (especially one that I have studied in class) in an opera house in Vienna absolutely topped the charts in my music nerd brain. I saw Il Barbiere de Seville by Rossini and I'm pretty sure I sat there with a big goofy grin on my face the whole time since I was so excited!

I still can't believe that this trip is actually coming to a close. It has been a wonderful and unique opportunity to get to know a culture, a people, and a specific time in history that most people do not have the chance to do. I wish I could tell you that after studying and researching in both D.C. and in the field that I would at least have a first step to solving the issues in the Balkans, but I must say that after all this I am more confused than ever. The more I learn the less I seem to know for sure. But I can't stop learning, traveling, exploring, questioning, and adventuring.

Goodbye and thanks for reading! I can't wait to see you all in person and share the rest of my photos and stories.

Until my next adventure...

Wilkommen to Wien

Woke up this morning...in Vienna! So excited.

I spent most of the day at meetings in the UN, kind of felt like being back in DC. The UN complex here was designed in the 70s and was supposed to be super hip. All of the buildings are grey and then accented with bright orange. Even the inside of the elevators was bright orange walls and orange light bulbs. If Austin Powers were to try and solve the world's problems he would do so from the Vienna UN headquarters for sure.

After the meetings I wandered around Vienna with some friends, played a little frisbee with my frisbee team buddies in a park about a block from one of the prettiest cathedrals, ate some delicious gelato, and stumbled upon monuments to some of my favorite composers (Mozart, Strauss, Mahler, Haydn, and oh my gosh so many more!!).

Not much else to note except that I cannot believe that tomorrow is my last day here, then hopping a plan early Wednesday morning and back to the DC grind...have to make tomorrow count!

the cathedral near where we played frisbee

Haydn and me
Strauss' star

Travels were going way too smoothly...

...I have never traveled internationally with such a big group. Combine 20 college kids, a giant language barrier, and a space cadet professor and I was sure that the logistics of the trip would be a giant recipe for disaster. Things have been running pretty smoothly until today.

We woke up early because we had to drive from Zagreb, up the coast of Croatia, through Slovenia, to Austria, and finally in Vienna. We made it to the Austrian border fine, but the bus had to go through the weigh station and inspections. Turns out the EU is kind of a stickler for functioning machinery and after about 30 minutes of inspecting our janky transportation they deemed the bus' brakes unfit for driving on EU soil. No one was quite so concerned when we were driving the falling apart bus through mountains and four different countries for the past two and a half weeks, but we're down to the final three hours of driving in the bus ever and the brakes are down for the count.

Austrian border patrol was pretty pissed but finally succumbed to giving our illegal bus a police escort back into Slovenia to the nearest train station so we could hop the next train to Vienna. Conveniently enough the next train left in about 10 minutes so we booked it through border patrol no man's land, stopped the bus and ran with all of our luggage to the train platform. My professor and our translator went in first to purchase tickets and immediately came back out with fallen faces. Apparently there was only a ticket machine, not a desk attendant, and the machine only took Euro. We all currently have four types of currency in our wallets and I could see Eleftherios inside rifling through his wallet only to find Bosnian marks, Serbian dinars, Croatian kunas, and American dollars.

Eventually he was able to negotiate something with our police escorts and purchase 23 train tickets on the fly with only moments to spare on the platform.

Finally, after a few extra hours of travel time, and a little ounce of adventure I am in my hotel in Vienna!! Meetings all day at the UN tomorrow and then soaking up the aura of Mozart's favorite city to compose in - so excited!

Dubrovnik!

I feel like I say this for every city, but Dubrovnik is actually my new favorite. It is so beautiful. We finally had a full day with no class, speakers, or meetings and it was wonderful.

I spent the whole day in the old city of Dubrovnik. There was a fortress built surrounding the whole city to block off the access point to Vienna and it is one of the only fortress walls in Europe that remains complete. We spent about two hours walking along the fortress walls, trying to take in the incredible view from every possible angle. I have never seen water so purely blue contrasted with bright white rocks, green green grass, and the orange rooftops of the buildings. Then when you turn away from the water the city is surrounded by mountains. The pictures below definitely do not do the view justice.

We took our time mosey-ing along the walls and stopped about halfway for fresh squeezed juice and a 360 degree outlook. I can't even describe how great it was. It is so funny that everyday that my schedule is bleak and depressing it rains or is very grey and cloudy, but in Dubrovnik, soaking up the view and enjoying life, the weather was sunny and it seemed like everything about the city sparkled.

After the walk around the fortress walls we grabbed some lunch, wandered through the farmers market, and then went for a swim in the Adriatic Sea! The water was the absolute perfect temperature. A few friends and I went swimming in this little alcove where we found an open beach and after we had been swimming around for a while we looked up and realized that part of the fortress wall was looking over the alcove and a handful of tourists were videotaping our swimming excursion. I can't wait to be on a Japanese family's vacation video!

The water was amazing though and such the perfect end for a relaxing day. Cross the Adriatic off of the list of bodies of water left in the world to swim in.

part of the fortress wall

Dubrovnik!

walking out into the Adriatic [awesome photo credit to Markie]

Bridges, bridges, bridges

I spent all of yesterday in Mostar, Bosnia and it was beautiful. Mostar is making headway but it used to be one of the most divided cities in the country. Even the university in town sat on an ethnic border with separate classes for students of different ethno-religious identities. One of the most recognizable monuments of Mostar today is The Bridge. The bridge is at the center of the old city, in the middle of the Turkish quarter, and in 1992 it was bombed by Croats and destroyed. The bombing separated the people of Mostar by their political views and also physically and visually since it further cut off communications across town. In 2004 the bridge was finally rebuilt not just for engineering's sake and convenience, but as a symbol of the end of the war and the progression of Mostar into integration and acceptance.

The day in Mostar was one of the first sunny days I've had since coming to the region and walking through the old town with the bright turquoise water sparkling along the side was incredible. Then we spent the afternoon with the Nansen Dialogue Centre which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year when Obama won it. There are a ton of NGOs in the region, many whom I've met with in the past few weeks, who focus on cross-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation, but NDC is definitely one of the strongest, and an inspiring organization to meet with on such a great day!

Mostar is so beautiful!

a poster promoting the rebuilding of the bridge
The Bridge!

Continued...

Some photos from yesterday's post:

The outside of the memorial in Kozarec

inside of the memorial and the flowers we brought

When we were driving to Mostar yesterday we went up through the mountains and saw snow! I only have a few pictures before I had to keep my camera in my pocket to protect it from our snowball fight!

Kozarec, Banja Luka, on to Mostar

I haven't posted in a while, internet continues to be kinda shady. But it has been a rough few days.

Two days ago we went to a DNA identification center in Sanski Most, the biggest center in the region for exhuming mass graves, reconstructing skeletons, and matching the found bodies with a DNA database of families searching for loved ones. There were about 10 newly pieced together skeletons lying on the floor of the warehouse of bodies when we walked in and a family was coming to visit the center, to see the newly exhumed people for the first time.

Talking to the manager of the DNA project was scientific, we talked about budgets, the pioneering technology that allows for DNA matching, and it all seemed fairly logical, a scientific lecture. But then the family agreed to speak with us and this man, who has been living in Austria since the war, walked up and down the line of bodies pointing out his little brother, his cousin, his neighbors. One of the DNA workers came over to show the bullet hole in the skull of his eight-year old neighbor.

Most of the meetings that we attend paint a bleak picture of the future of Bosnia, they talk about the economic decline, the 43% unemployment, the still segregated schools 15 years after the end of the war, but those situations have a little bit of hope. That's why we study this country, to figure out how to rise above the hardship and to make the seemingly inevitably bleak future, not quite so tragic, but the DNA center was a whole other animal. The DNA center for me was a warehouse full of hopelessness. These people put in a huge amount of man hours, money, and energy to identify each body, but they can never bring that person back. Some families may get an ounce of closure, but then there are the racks and racks of skeletons in the store room who can't be identified because families refuse to donate blood samples for matching. They want to hold on to the believe, still almost two decades later, that their loved one somehow escaped, somehow avoided these horrors and will show up again, one day, alive.

After stopping at the DNA center we had lunch at an NGO in Kozarec who brought us into town to show us the memorial at the town's center that she helped to construct. It was so incredible, definitely the memorial full of the most hope of any we have seen so far. The women talked about how much pain came from the war and from the cleansing, so when we remember these people, she said, when we honor their lives, we must do so with light and with hope.

I'm running out of time, leaving for Mostar in about 15 minutes, so I will continue and post photos later.

Oops forgot some...

Photos from today:

Vucovar, it is amazing in all of these cities the refusal to refurbish bombed buildings, and it is not like a section of each city that is hurting but on each block there is a damaged, uninhabited building sandwiched between beautiful, up-kept ones

the church in the middle of the square in Osijek, also this is my favorite color for the sky to be ever

Photo catch up

Croatia's internet is flying! I left Belgrade this afternoon and drove into Croatia to have lunch with an NGO in Vucovar that works with women victims of trafficking, domestic violence, and rape. After my experiences with similar organizations in the States, it was really interesting to hear about their different approach because of the surrounding political and cultural climate, that I'm sure you can imagine is very different in the U.S. and in Croatia. Then we hoped back on the bus and just got to Osijek, Croatia a few hours ago. It is a super tiny city that is just a little pit stop. We leave first thing in the morning again to cross another border into Banja Luka.

To make up for the photo uploading I couldn't do from Belgrade:

the fortress walls of Belgrade old city at night
Terrible Towel in Serbia!!!
fortress wall during the day overlooking the Danube

eating a giant watermelon, yay public art

tombstones at Srebrenica
Srebrenica memorial: "8372...and still counting"

Beograd is my new favorite

Today was amazing. We had a full day of meetings and it was really interesting to finally hear the Serb perspective on the wars. It is incredible to me the importance of victimization in the Balkans. Each culture, no matter where the conversation starts, will be quick to point out why they are discriminated against, how they have been victimized for the past 500 years, and immediately list the aggressive acts of the other countries in the region. Sarajevo's scar was the siege, and in Belgrade they celebrate the victimization of the NATO bombings. The defense department building was bombed here and half of it is still in shambles and the offices haven't moved, they just use the half of the building that is still intact for their offices and leave the other half in a disintegrating mess. Each country wants to prove how much they were attacked which is a shocking change from U.S. rhetoric which does the complete opposite of victimizing our country.

After a full day of meetings we all rushed out of the conference room to go to a pub down the street and watch the soccer match between the two teams of Belgrade. We asked to get to go to the game and our contact here in Belgrade said that it would be way to dangerous, especially because we are American (apparently in a State Department survey Serbia is tied with Pakistan for the lowest opinion of the U.S.). We were able to find a bar near the hotel to get some local beers and snacks and watch the game far away from the police officers lining the streets and the political hooligans at the game. And yes the Serbs refer to them as hooligans (which in my head is like the Fonz from Happy Days). But what is so dangerous about the soccer matches here, and sporting events in general is that they quickly become politically charged. At this match last year and French teen was beaten to death outside of the stadium.

After the soccer game I was able to go back to the fortress and see it in the daylight. Last night when we kind of pointed into the distance and assumed the Danube was there I tried to picture in my head what the view would be like and in reality it is so much prettier. We sat on the fortress walls overlooking the grounds and the rivers. It was rainy and grey the whole time we were in Sarajevo and it has been sunny and beautiful in Belgrade!

[oof, photos are still not uploading but get ready for a monster upload when internet improves]

Welcome to Belgrade!

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I got even busy-er and then internet got a little shady so I'll try to update on everything from the past few days.

On Thursday morning we left Bosnia to drive 9 hours to Belgrade, Serbia. On the way we stopped in Srebrenica, the site of the worst atrocity on European soil since the Holocaust. In a giant nutshell, Srebrenica was a UN safe zone during the war and was filled with Bosnian Muslim refugees and supposedly protected by the UN. But in July 1995 the safe zone was overtaken by Bosnian Serbs, and all of the men of Srebrenica (who the Serbs were scared would be the ones to fight back) were rounded up and tortured and murdered. Over 8,000 men died in a span of just a few days and the city is still struggling to rebuild.

We went to the Srebrenica memorial and spoke with two women from the Mothers of Srebrenica organization. Hearing their stories was absolutely incredible. One of the women told me that every morning she thanks god that only two of her sons were killed. I can't even imagine every day being overwhelmingly thankful that only two of your children were murdered. The other women looked out over the class and smiled and wished us the bright future that was robbed from her son. There are women here who lost 20 or 30 or 40 members of their family in 72 hours. This pain is even further compounded by the delays in identifying remains in mass graves all over the country. New remains are ID'ed each year and so some of these incredible women are waiting for 10 or 15 years with no closure, no grave site to visit in mourning.

It was interesting too, to drive straight from there to Serbia, where people still deny that the genocide occurred at all.

Belgrade is beautiful though! Tonight we walked up to the old city where there is a fortress that was originally built to protect Belgrade from the Ottoman Turks and later during WWI because Belgrade and control of the Danube was a strategic gain on the way to Vienna. We walked along the old walls of the fortress, looking out over the intersection of the Danube and Sava rivers that surround the city.

[The internet is super slow and won't let me upload photos but I promise to load more soon!]

A few notes of hope

Tonight was definitely one of the best experiences I have had in Sarajevo. I sat in on the rehearsal of a choir group called Pontanima, which loosely translates to "bridge of souls." Pontanima is an interfaith choir that was started in 1996, while the war was still going on, as an attempt to "sing louder than the bombs." During the war, Pontanima was a safe place for people of all ethno-religious affiliations to come together as one, to sing out as one voice, to show that a united Bosnia was possible, and that hate was not the answer.

My new friend Amy who introduced me to the choir spoke with me about the power of singing your enemy's songs. She says that when the group tours the country some people are still not quite sure what to do with it. They are shocked to see nuns in habits, muslims in hijabs, singing Ave Maria, Jewish prayers, and Islamic melodies. But Amy, who has been with the choir for a decade and considers them her family, sees this as proof that a united Bosnia, with a united voice, is a legitimate future for the country.

"Pontanima sings a symphony of religions that does not exist in the world in which Pontanima lives. That symphony is the hope, vision, foresight and longing of humanity that the strongest spiritual energies of humankind not be used up in quarrels and conflicts, but turned towards shared goals...In the highest achievements of creativity, differences fade away, enmity finds reconciliation, and space for enculturation is created - space in which we experience as our own everything that is good and beautiful."

-- Ivo Markovic

part of Pontanima warming up
my classmates and me with Amy who sings in the choir

Salsa, orphans, and a night at the theatre

Bosnia has not stopped surprising me. Last night we found a club with Monday night salsa so of course we had to go (my Colombian friends were so excited)! As a person who has traveled extensively and self-defined her major as "Cross Cultural Communication" you would think that I would be expecting these kind of cultural implants by now, but nope I'm still pleasantly surprised.

Salsa night was pretty hopping. I was just trying to remember all of the steps that I learned in Peru and in Val's living room! It was kind of a double edged sword though, nice to unwind, drink, and dance after a not so uplifting day but my salsa moves were served up with a twinge of guilt, the realization that I can escape to this club, that in three weeks I will escape back to America and all of these people will be left to untangle this war-torn mess.

Today we had another full day. After meeting with the PR rep from a Bosnian political party in the morning we drove out to Zenica to visit an NGO that works primarily with women and children affected by the war. The offices are located in their safe house and we were welcomed by the warmest, sweetest women I have met in Bosnia so far. They cooked us all a big lunch and talked to us about their programs. When the organization started in 1993 they dealt primarily with the direct effects of war - women who were raped as a tool of war, or abused or abandoned by their husbands who were fighting. But as the years went on, and until today, while the rape victims may be less in number it is so discouraging to see the rising statistics of domestic violence. The war may be over but it seems the trauma will last forever.

After learning from the women at the NGO we went down the road to volunteer at an orphanage. What shocks me about the orphanages here in Bosnia is that many of the children have families that they know and see fairly often but they have been abandoned because their parents are suffering from too strong PTSD to care for them, or the loss of a parent increases the financial burden of the child, or the child has special needs.

Needless to say, the kids were incredible. We played with them all afternoon, never being able to forget that they are probably stronger people than I will ever be. One of the kids had a photo album of his family that he showed us and you could see the disintegration of his family life as you flipped from page to page. First a standard happy family, him as a baby, and as you turn through you get to a picture where his father has lost his legs, later in the book his mom disappears, she died of causes he could not explain, and his older brother, old enough to care for the boy on his own but perhaps too busy with taking care of their father, or too scared to accept the responsibility of his younger brother is no longer around.

After an afternoon of singing songs, playing animal charades, and trying to fill the orphanage with silliness and sunshine, this boys story, told emphatically with photos, finger pointing, and loose translations, brought the whole experience back down to earth.

This week there is a big theater festival in Sarajevo. A theater right down the street from my hotel is hosting a bunch of the productions so tonight I went to see one...didn't have a name on any of the tickets and there weren't any programs. A loose, shall we say avant-garde, interpretation of Strauss' opera "Salome." Definitely interesting to see a different rendition, especially one in Bosnian, with the same general storyline but with Modern music full of dissonances, 7ths, and 13ths that might have made Strauss turn in his grave. Just another level of borrowing, evolving, and translating between cultures. Also kind of reminded me of whatever that saying is that there are really only 3 or 4 stories in the world and we have just been recycling them for centuries with slightly different elements.

drinking from the Sarajevo Fountain in the Turkish Quarter...apparently this means that one day I will return to Sarajevo in good health
waiting at the theater for the show to start (I'm pretty sure Pablo and Camillo in the background make this photo a success)

Problems in the Balkans are complicated...darn

After getting the chance to do mostly touristy stuff yesterday today my prof through us right back into the mix with 4 meetings and an hour or so of class discussion to remember why we're actually here. Research? Oh yea.

First thing this morning we met with a representative of the Muslim community in Sarajevo (Sparknotes history of Bosnia: war and ethnic cleansing in the 90s, atrocities committed by and against the three ethnic groups - Bosniaks [Muslims], Croats [Catholics], and Serbs [Orthodox] after the Dayton peace process the country remains ethnically divided). So meeting with religious leaders, since religion became a divisive tool in the conflict is imperative to the peace process. He emphasized the challenge of multi-leveled identities here in Bosnia your ethno-religious affiliation defines your history and your place in society. He said that the 20th century was the bloodiest of all of human history and to move forward we must learn how to live in harmony and tolerance or we will perish. There is no third alternative.

It is frustrating after meetings like this to know that intolerance and hatred is not coming from the religious community, after meetings like yesterday's with students and professors from Sarajevo to know that hatred is not coming from civilians, to meet with politicians and hear that intolerance does not stem from them and then to realize how stuck the society is, to see that ethnic divisions are written into the Bosnian constitution and no one seems to have the power combined with the political will to stop it.

Later when meeting with a representative from the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia we looked at the policy surrounding Bosnian license plates. Like in the U.S. where license plates are printed by state, Bosnian plates used to show the municipality of the owner. But after the ethnic cleansing of the 90s it is easy to look at a municipality and know a persons ethno-religious affiliation. This further institutionalized ethnic divisions, instigated violence, and hindered the freedom of movement of the people. It is crazy that such a silly thing as license plates that we do not think twice about in the states (aside from the DMV being annoying) played such a huge role in Bosnian society. To change the policy surrounding the license plates took years of political maneuvering.

We later met with the director of an NGO who's goal is to create "civic courage" and empower Bosnians to change their society for the better from within. Their slogan is "Imam petlju!" or "I have guts!" It was refreshing to finally talk to someone who, at the grassroots level, is promoting empowerment and positive change, but frustrating again to hear of the organizations limitations, the lack of response from the government, and the silent majority of society, and the lack of funds to do more widespread work.

I just got back from a meeting with a center that focuses on the identification of victims of the atrocities of war and information sharing with survivors about their own past. In schools each ethnic group is taught a different history with their people as the victims and never the aggressors. But the point here is to disseminate real, "fact-based truth." It was not until I came to Bosnia that I learned that some must distinguish between "truth" and "fact-based truth." The center has created one of the only databases of victims, sites of mass murders, graves, and destroyed buildings in the country. They teamed up with Google Earth (google is totally taking over the world) to impose the database on a map where you can see the GPS locations of all of the atrocities.

When we were being shown the database and the Google Earth tool the discussion seemed fairly technical until Viego (probably the cutest old man ever and our translator and guide for the trip) raised his hand and asked the presenter to type a name into the database, to search for the dead son of a friend of his. Immediately, the database came up with a result - a picture, a description of the shelling in a local Sarajevo market, and a tag on the Google map of where this kid died. Pinpointing locations on a map is one thing, but understanding the people and the tragedies behind it is shocking.

Walking down the streets of Sarajevo I have to keep reminding myself that the war I studied in D.C., the horrors that I hear about in meetings and discussions, they took place here, on these streets, to actual people.



A "Sarajevo rose" - when Sarajevo was under siege the city was being shelled by Serbs everyday and each time a shell left an indent on the sidewalk artists would follow when they could and fill the indents with red wax, to signify that someone died. It is an amazing public art project and also a little chilling to see when you're just walking down the street on your way to lunch.

Crawling through tunnels and climbing up mountains

Third or fourth day in Sarajevo and it seems like it has been weeks. We've been meeting with government officials and professors the last few days so today we finally got to ditch the business formal duds and explore even more of Sarajevo's culture and history.

First thing this morning we visited the tunnel that the Bosnian army and citizens used when Sarajevo was under siege for four years. There was a slight gap in the control of the Serbian army around the city at the Sarajevo International Airport where the UN peace keepers were in control so the Bosniaks built the tunnel right beneath the airport, knowing that the Serbs would not bomb the small UN-held area, and that they could cross the Bosnian free territory on the other side of Sarajevo city limits. The tunnel starts in the basement of a normal residential home. The Serbs had suspicions about the entrance to the tunnel and as we walked up to the house you could see the damage from the shelling on the streets and houses nearby.

A portion of the tunnel has been preserved and we were able to walk through it. Crouching down and unable to stand up straight for the four minute walk of the segment that remains I cannot imagine the thousands of people who stayed below for more than two hours, often in a foot or so of water, carrying one hundred or so pounds of supplies from free Bosnia back to their families in Sarajevo. No matter how many sites like this I visit all around the world, sites of triumph over tragedy in the most heartbreaking situations, I never cease to be astonished by the strength of the human spirit to power through.

After visiting the tunnel, we traveled by bus up the windy roads of Mt. Ingram to visit the Olympic site from the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in 1984. The drive was absolutely incredible. The leaves haven't started turning yet in DC so I haven't seen fall in about a year and all of these mountains and valleys are just exploding with the most vibrant fall colors. My camera in no way does them justice. It was incredible to leave the tunnel and drive up the mountains until we reached way up above the fog that lingers on Sarajevo's streets and into this sort of oasis of color, light, and happy memories of Sarajevo being at the center of the world's stage for reasons other than its violent war.

walking through the tunnel

some Bosnian coffee in a cafe in Sarajevo

at the top of Mt. Ingram

the mountains breaking through the fog
medal podium at the Olympic site

This one's for you Molly! Donner House in Bosnia...it may be a place to eat kebabs but I'm still feeling the Big Blue love <3

Welcome to Sarajevo!!

I can hardly believe that it is Saturday I am trying really hard to keep the days straight, figure out what time it is, and come to terms with the fact that I am actually in Bosnia right now!

After 12ish hours of traveling I arrived in Sarajevo yesterday afternoon, got a quick bus ride to our hotel, and then had a delicious buffet lunch of Bosnian specialties. Lots of meat pies and vegetable pies, sausage, and pickled vegetables.

After getting a moment to catch our breath my prof rushed us to our first meeting, with UNHCR (th UN High Commissioner for Refugees). At the UN office building I work at in DC, the UNHCR office is right down the hall so it was cool to be able to compare the work and philosophy of a more administrative-focused office in DC with this field office in Sarajevo.

The women we spoke with at UNHCR had an interesting dual perspective, working with the UN to handle refugees and internally displaced persons as well as having to survive the conflict in their home themselves. On of the UN workers, after painting a rather bleak picture of post-war society said, "I am surprised that anyone returned to Bosnia after the war...and I am from here."

After the meeting we walked around Sarajevo for a bit. It is so interesting to walk down the street and look at the architectural differences between the buildings. On a single block will be a beautiful, elaborate building from the Austrio-Hungary Empire, next too a dismal, unadorned building from Tito's communism, right next to a super modern western-European building with lots of glass walls and windows. Walking down each street is a different view into the past, a different chapter from Sarajevo's history all squished together on a single street.

We spent the evening in the old Turkish quarter, an all pedestrian area of the city with stone walkways and beautiful old buildings and shops.

you can see holes from shells on this building
a mosque in the turkish quarter
a park in the middle of the city
a street in Sarajevo looking out over the hills where snipers and militias were positioned during the decade long war

Map-Attack!

For a customized google map of my travels:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=100545885184352883376.0004907bae7faf6762938&ll=45.243953,18.676758&spn=8.090184,21.643066&z=6

Plans Part I

Hey there friends, family, and adventure lovers,

As you all know I will be crossing the pond to Eastern Europe in just four weeks! This morning in class my professor handed out our first tidbit of adventuring excellence - a calendar and map of which day we will be traveling to which city. We are hitting 10 different cities, in 4 different countries, in only 21 days! I can only imagine the adventures to come:

Oct 14: Fly Washington, DC - Munich - Sarajevo

Oct 15-19: Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Oct 20: bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade via Srebrenica

Oct 21-23: Belgrade, Serbia

Oct 24: bus from Belgrade to Novi Sad

Oct 25: travel through Osijek, Croatia and Banja Luka, Bosnia

Oct 26: Banja Luka, Bosnia

Oct 27: travel from Banja Luka to Mostar

Oct 28: travel from Mostar to Dubrovnik, Croatia

Oct 29: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Oct 30: travel from Dubrovnik to Zagreb via Split

Oct 31: travel from Zagred to Vienna via Slovenia

Nov 1-2: Vienna, Austria

Nov 3: Fly Vienna - Munich - DC

Nov 4 + : SLEEEEEEEP