The train ride from Mostar to Sarajevo is considered a highlight with beautiful scenery, the only downside being that it leaves at 6.45am. We arrived at the station at 6.15 surprised at how chilly it was, at 6.55 some type of announcement was made, not that we could understand it. Luckily there was another tourist who understood the local language and she explained to us that the train was delayed for about an hour. We all left the platform and went to the foyer area, we found a cafe and waited for an announcement. About an hour later we noticed that a lot of the people from the platform were standing out the front of the station facing the road looking like they were waiting for something. K tracked down the bilingual girl and asked her what was happening, she said the train wasn't coming as it had run over a person and they were arranging a bus for us, lucky we had noticed what was going on as we had been expecting an announcement. Not long after we followed others to a bus stop and an hour and a quarter after we were meant to have left we were on a bus to Sarajevo. We had been very close to being left behind, at least it wasn't as long as the 33 hours we waited for a delayed train in Africa.
The bus route followed the train line at some places so we still got to see the beautiful scenery. When we arrived in Sarajevo we had planned to take a taxi to our Airbnb, normally taxi drivers are hassling for your business but Sarajevo bus station must be one of the few bus stations in the world without taxis. Instead we hopped on a tram that stopped very close to where we were meant to be staying, the only problem was we couldn't find the apartment. After dragging our cases up and down the street while staring at the maps on our phones we gave up and went into a cafe for help. Not speaking Bosnian definitely made things tricky but the waiter and a customer managed to make a phone call for us and our host came and collected us. We weren't anywhere near the apartment, it was in the opposite direction!
To get to the old town from our apartment all we needed to do was walk across the bridge over the river, we wandered around for a couple of hours and then joined the afternoon walking tour. We had planned on joining the morning tour but missed it because of the train, the afternoon was based on the war and the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996.
Our guide was 7 when the siege started and 10 when it finished so her recollections as a child living through it were very interesting and her lack of hatred for the Serbians that bombed the city with shells and killed with sniper guns daily for three and a half years were insightful. She spoke about the appalling food that was supplied by the UN, tins of rotten spam type meat that were so putrid and full of worms they suspected they were left from WWII. They had worked out that there was rarely bombings in the mornings before 10am so the children would meet for school in an old pub from 7-9 and then be back in the basements of their homes by 10. Life had to continue and people still went to work even though there was no pay. She pointed out the footpaths we were walking on that were shell damaged that we hadn't even noticed along with the buildings. It was one of the better walking tours we have been on and for the rest of our time in Sarajevo we took more notice of the signs of war.
No comments:
Post a Comment