Think Sarajevo, think Winter Olympics (who can ever forget Torvill and Dean’s Bolero?), think assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and think Sniper Alley. Yes, Sarajevo has had all these, but it has so much more!
The city is surrounded by hills and mountains and the architecture tells the story of the city, and indeed, the country. The narrow market street of the old Ottoman town flow into the Austrian Hungarian wide boulevards, with a few communist tower blocks thrown in. Add to this the many homes clinging to the hillsides around the city centre and you have a really vibrant city centre.
Back in the ‘bad old days’ of communism, an employer would build or give you a house, rent free. After 20 years, it was yours to keep, sell or bequeath.
This garish block in town was built to show the world that communist buildings weren’t all made of drab breeze blocks. Rather ironically, it is now known locally as ‘the ugly building’.
This clock tower shows lunar time. The hands show 12 o’clock at the moment of sunset, the time of the Muslim Maghrib prayer.
Of course, this means some wee man needs to climb the tower every day to reset the time!
As the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it has suffered in recent history. This can clearly be seen even in the buildings of the main street where the heavy calibre bullet holes rival those of Dublin’s GPO, and then some.
We visited on the day of the anniversary of Srebrenica and the many times we passed the City Hall we heard read aloud the names of the 8,000 (yes, 8,000!) souls who perished that day back in 1995. A sobering thought, since we were busy celebrating our new baby daughter that summer.
Sarajevo is definitely a city worth visiting. Despite high but reducing unemployment, especially in the young, it has an exciting vibe and hopefully an exciting future.
Our journey there from Dubrovnik was spectacular! After an hour of the, by now expected stunning coastline, we headed inland to meet mountains with jagged peaks above rivers and lakes of the most vibrant blue or green (we’ve never been able to agree on the colour). On the journey back from Sarajevo to Split, Google decided to have a bit of a laugh and, instead of RATW we suddenly joined World’s Most Dangerous Roads! We survived though and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
It's a wanderful life, so it is 
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