Seven years later
Having elected to visit Prague in the year when monstrous floods threatened its most treasured buildings, I was surprised at the level of everyday normality to be found in even the worst hit areas only a week or so after the waters had been at their height. Clear-up operation, yes; interruption of consumption of rightly famous beer, no. Preparation perhaps for my journey around the former Yugoslav countries of Croatia and Bosnia, even seven years after their crisis had ended? 'Normality' here is not quite the word, however. It was inevitably the contrasts that provided the clearest comparisons. The tourist-ridden buildings of Croatia, the bullet-ridden buildings of Bosnia. The magnificent walls of Dubrovnik, the crumbling walls of Mostar. Of course it was never as simple as this. Croatia had its fair share of dilapidated buildings that could not just have been the result of neglect, so illustrating again the speed with which the Czechs were able to recuperate compared to a former war-torn region. But Bosnia was where recent history was most sharply brought home.
The journey by bus from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo was perhaps the most spectacular and beautiful I've ever done. Forested mountains forming gorges plunging into blue-green rivers along which the road twisted... But in the same way is the 'front-line' of Mostar an unforgettable testament to the unchecked nationalistic manipulation of history. Still the dividing line between Muslims and Croats, blocks of flats immediately either side have been left un-repaired as if in memorial of continued ethnic tension, lack of money and bureaucratic wrangling the only other explanations so long after the armed conflict ended. Normality here is taking a bus through such surroundings. The suburbs of Sarajevo would again break the seven hour rural idyll with more shocking revelations. Communist blocks of flats with huge painted numbers misshapen by bullet and shell holes, sported freshly laundered clothes hanging out to dry, and on closer inspection, unemployed Bosnians peering out of the ruined apartments. Despite the ubiquitous 'EU Reconstruction Project' signs, seven years after the shells stopped falling and Bosnians again were able to walk along 'Snipers' Alley', people are still forced to live in the shot-up buildings at the bottom of the exposed valley within which Sarajevo cowered.
Although I was only able to stay here one night, it was leaving this once-beautiful, now fascinating, city that afforded an insight into how the country still operates. To get a bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade one has to travel to the Republika Srpska suburb, Lukavica, thence catch a different bus from the 'Serbian' bus station. Not a 'normal' occurrence by any stretch of the imagination, but paying partly in euros and partly in 'convertible marks' was only half of it. We then proceeded to retrace our steps back through the centre of Sarajevo taking the same route as I had just made by bus in order to head back eastwards, for Belgrade. I'd discovered a Bosnian normality. It took an American to point this out more explicitly on the next lengthy bus journey I had embarked on. Stopping for lunch on these buses was not a precise affair, particularly if you don't speak the language. So when the driver started to slowly move off before this tourist had boarded, so jumping onto the moving bus, the foreigner relieved his anger by shouting in English: "Are you stupid?" prompting the reply "Who stupid? You stupid."Indeed.
Protracted border controls into Yugoslavia caused me to hold the bus up by twenty minutes, despite my care to get an advance transit visa. The coolness extended to my co-NATO member (who'd by now alighted) was now transferred to me. Although I experienced no direct hostility in Belgrade, I was left in no doubt as to how the Serbs felt. The welcoming stealth bomber t-shirts that lamented the fact they'd neglected to tell us Yugoslavia was invisible, were hint enough. The inexorable consumption of Coke and MacDonald's remained unaffected, as did frequent use of English colloquially.
Maybe I was wrong to be surprised at the continued poor state of many of the war-stricken parts of the countries I visited, and Croatia, though least affected physically by the war (Slovenia aside), is now a very popular tourist destination with few vestiges of its recent violent past. My reaction should perhaps remind us that there is still much work to be done in this region, and it takes many years to mend only the visible damage, the rest so easily forgotten. Clearly a comparison with this year's unusual weather is a very artificial one.
17th Oct 2002