A long day in the saddle today. At about 9:00am our bus headed out of Belgrade bound for Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the south-west. The road was flat and straight for the morning with the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina looming larger and larger as the bus drove onward. Shortly after a refreshment break at a service station, where we were joined by a busload of secondary school students, we reached the Serbia/Bosnia and Herzegovina border control. With a couple of big buses and many private cars in front of us in the queue a brief discussion between our driver and Ivana ensued. A quick decision was made that we would head for another crossing further along the Drina river, which marks the border between the two countries. Thirty minutes later we arrived at the border control first in the queue! Great call!
Over
the border the winding, mountainous road began almost immediately.
Little
farms and villages gave way to heavily forested, green hillsides.
Creeks,
rivers and lakes bound to hold trout passed us by with Dennis (a
fellow trout fisherman from northern Michigan) and me unable to do
anything about it. The sky was blue and the sun was shining making
the wonderful scenery that continued to unfold before our eyes even
more spectacular.
By mid-afternoon we had arrived at the Hotel Sahat in the heart of the old town, right by the Miljacka river and the Latin Bridge. At 5:00pm our guide, Amed, met us at the hotel for a two hour tour of the town. The first port of call was no more than 50m from the hotel. It was here on 28th June 1914 on Obala Kulina bana where a nineteen year old Bosnian Serb student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie. Princip and five other students were co-opted by the Serbian terrorist group Black Hand to achieve their objective of disrupting the rule of the Austro-Hungarian empire in an effort to form a south Slavic nation which would eventually come into existence and be known as Yugoslavia. In response to the assassination of the heir to the throne the Empire declared war on Serbia and WWI ensued. It’s a very interesting story.
From
here we toured all the important old town places, including the Town
Hall from where Franz Ferdinand commenced his fatal journey that day.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a mostly Muslim country with about 65% of
the population following the faith. The majority of the other beliefs
are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Judaism. Sarajevo
and Bosnia and Herzegovina people are very proud of their religious
and cultural tolerance. Indeed, it’s much more than just tolerance
with the people actively working hand-in-hand with anyone and
everyone to achieve peace and harmony in the land. Amed described
numerous occasions when Muslims and Jews or Jews, Catholics and
Muslims worked together to achieve an outcome that was good for the
nation. Although firmly in the minority, the citizen of Sarajevo have
elected a Mayor who is Jewish and female! Muslims and Jews worked
togetehr to ensure that an important and rare Jewish manuscript did
not fall into the hands of the enemy forces during the Siege of
Sarajevo. The
Muslims of the nation live the Islam faith in a very different way to
other Islamic nations. To use Amed’s words, “we’re very chilled
about how believers practice the faith”. Unlike the stricter
interpretation of the rules some other nations enforce, if a woman
wants to wear a Hijab
then
that’s OK. If she does not then that’s OK too. Women are not
precluded from perusing anything they wish to in their lives. Many
nations could take a good, long, hard look at how the people of
Bosnia and Herzegovina live in harmony with others in a
mixed
religious, ethnic and cultural setting
and learn a valuable lesson or two.
Our tour finished at the Roman Catholic cathedral where a photo with Amed was taken and we headed off to a restaurant in the Muslim quarter of town for dinner. There we sat on low stools around a low table out on the street and thoroughly enjoyed Bosnian stews, soups, dumplings and breads before returning to the hotel and bed after a long day, but not before a load of hand-washing was done.
What a shame you couldn’t pull over and do a spot of trout fishing. That would have been a highlight for you.
ReplyDeleteMy interest in all things WW1, as you know, is well “documented” within our family, but I have to admit, while I knew they were not in Austria at the time, I didn’t realise that Ferdinand and Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo. You learn something every day!