Sarajevo

Finally I'll post a few pictures from my trip. This week in Sarajevo I've been doing a little sightseeing / research, with a bit of a focus on sites that somehow I've never managed to visit in all these years of coming here.

I took a "Times of Misfortune" tour the other day as "research" for a project I'm contemplated that compares popular and tourist-focused histories of Sarajevo with academic histories with "what really happened." As part of that tour I finally visited the Tunnel that was used during the siege to sneak food and weapons into the city. Its been open for tourists for about ten years, and Miran and I tried only once to go, but it was closed.  It was kind of kitchy, but interesting. I didn't manage to take a picture while actually going through the 60 feet of tunnel they have reopened, but here is the outside of the building and one of the exhibits inside the museum part (showing how goods were transported through after a track was built).

Today was lovely, in the 50s and sunny and I spent most of the day touring cemeteries. It sound morbib, but there were a couple that are interesting that I've meant to visit.

First I went to the Jewish cemetery, which claims to be the second largest in Europe (after Prague). I don't know if thats true, but it was definitely huge. It has a fancy gate and chapel that have recently been restored.

The oldest graves are from the 17th century when it opened.

There was a little holocaust memorial as well as memorials for World War I and the ashkenazi. I'm not sure, but I think it is unusual for sefardi and ashkenazi to share a cemetery. Here are two shots of the Holocaust memorial.

Then I went all the way across town to visit Bare Cemetery, which was built in the 1960s and is still the main active cemetery in the city. It was cut off from the city during the war, so is a very normal cemetery, not a war one. What is interesting about it is that at the time it was built, at the height of socialist "brotherhood and unity" it had a central complex with 5 chapels - for Orthodox, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Atheists. And within the graveyard there are sections set aside for each of those "faiths" as well as for Evangalists. So a nice example of multiculturalism. Plus the architecture is interesting.

In this shot you can see the tall skinny, white Muslim nisani gravestones in the background, and orthodox graves in the foreground.

And I ended the day by actually going into St. Mark's Cemetery, which I've passed a hundred times to take a picture of the chapel built in 1939 and dedicated to Gavirlo Princip and friends who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There graves are also there, but I'm not sure if they are in the chapel or somewhere nearby, I couldn't tell.

I also checked up the other day on the Austro-Hungarian Town Hall, which was being used as the National and University Library at the time of the war and which was so notoriously burnt. Its been being restored the past few years and it seems they still aren't done but the exterior looks really nicely done. Very colorful in any case. Someone very patient must have painted it!