| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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A 'national restaurant' is one serving
traditional food, not one owned by the government, though the term
'national restaurant' is ambiguous these days--does it mean Yugoslav
or just Serb? At this restaurant they met us with bread and salt
and a tray of aperitifs (slivovis). Later I saw them pouring the
untouched glasses back into the bottle. Waste not, want not!
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Off to Sarajevo! Yugoslavia has better roads
than its neighbors, but they're toll roads. And the toll is twice
as high for foreign vehicles as for Yugoslav vehicles--145 dinars
(US$7) versus 70 dinars (US$3) for the stretch we drove. This
probably rules out Romanian and Bulgarian tourists from using these
roads, though I suppose if they can afford private cars they can
afford the toll.
We finally saw our first elephant in Yugoslavia. No, I'm not
totally confused--we passed a circus caravan. Mark had been
complaining that he had been in Austria four days and didn't see a
single kangaroo, so he'll have to be satisfied with this.
We drove through more 'wildly beautiful scenery' (as the
brochure says) into Bosnia-Hercegovina. There were very few towns
or even villages in this area, so we had brought picnic lunches,
which we ate by the side of the road on one of the mountains.
Bosnia-Hercegovina is one republic made up of two provinces:
Bosnia in the north and Hercegovina in the south. Located between
Catholic Croatia and Orthodox Serbia, it is predominantly Muslim.
How did this come about? Well, before the Turkish occupation, the
Bosnians (and presumably the Hercegovians as well) were Bogomils.
This was a Christian sect that believed in Manichaeism: that the
world was created not by God but by the devil and that man must
overcome this. This spread from Persia as far as France, where it
was known as the Albigensian heresy. In Bosnia it was the
predominant sect, but was rejected by both the Catholic and the
Orthodox Churches. As a result, when the Turks arrived the Bosnians
had no strong central church to look to, and converted fairly
quickly to Islam. So even now there are more mosques than churches,
and we saw many older people wearing either scarves (for women) or
skullcaps (for men). The younger generation seems to be abandoning
this style of dress somewhat, but not entirely.
We arrived in Sarajevo about 3 PM. Our city tour was at 5 PM,
so Mark and I hopped on the tram (without tickets!) to go see the
Sephardic synagogue and Jewish Museum. We had planned to buy
tickets on the tram, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that.
In terms of Jewish interest, Sarajevo is best known for the
Sarajevo Haggadah, written in the 14th Century in Spain, and brought
to Sarajevo when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. The
Germans tried to seize it during World War II, but it was smuggled
out of Sarajevo and hidden in a cave. A copy is exhibited in the
Jewish Museum. The original is in the National Museum, right across
from our hotel, but is exhibited only occasionally. Given our
string of luck, I wasn't going to gamble our only free time on an
iffy proposition, plus some people claimed the original was at the
Jewish Museum anyway. We even checked the information desk at the
hotel and verified that the Jewish Museum was open.
When we arrived, it was closed.
Well, sort of. The gate leading into the courtyard was open,
but the building itself was locked. We walked around the courtyard,
trying various doors and looking for someone. No luck. We circled
the outside, hoping for a clue. Nothing. We tried the inside door
one more time and were ready to give up when the attendant showed
up. Business must have been slow (I suspect we were his only
customers that day), so he had apparently gone for a coffee break
and came back when someone told him they saw a couple of people
trying to get in.
The museum, housed in a 16th Century Sephardic synagogue, told
the history of the Bosnian Jewish community from its beginnings as
refugees from Spain after the expulsion of all Jews (and Muslims)
from there in 1492, to its almost total destruction by the Nazis
during World War II. The most intriguing reference is to some
miracle that saved the Jews from destruction by Turkish invaders on
the 4 Marheshvan 5580 (12 October 1820). I'll have to look up and
see if I can find any mention of anything in our history books for
that date. There was also a book with a list of all the Bosnian
Jews killed by the Nazis (it was labeled 'Dvanaest Hiljada
Nastradalih' or '12,000 [something],' referring to the number
killed). As I said to Mark, it's not a very big museum, but I think
it's important that we visit so that people realize that some people
care about Jewish history in the area.
We returned to the hotel on the tram, this time buying tickets.
I *think* the tickets would have been good for multiple rides,
working like strippenkaarts in the Netherlands but, as usual, no one
else seemed to have tickets or at least they weren't validating them
in the (possibly broken) machine on the tram.
We took a peek into the Museum of the Revolution on the way
back to the hotel. It was closed, of course, though our city guide
claimed it was still functioning, just that a lot of museums weren't
opening for all their hours this season. It's possible, I suppose,
since tourism is way off, and it's also possible the museum is a bit
of an embarrassment but they don't want to admit it.
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was scheduled to open the National
Museum on June 28, 1914, but he met with an accident on the way.
There was a plan by Bosnian freedom fighters ('Mlada Bosnia,' or
'Young Bosnia') to demonstrate against him, but word had leaked out
(or perhaps his car passed the demonstration in one direction and
officials didn't want it to pass it on the way back), so the route
was changed. Except no one told the driver of the car. So when the
driver made the turn around the corner at what is now Princip's
Bridge, Gavrilo Princip, one of the Young Bosnians, fired from less
than ten feet away, killing both the Archduke and the Archduke's
wife.
We were supposed to see the Mlada Bosnia Museum, but it closed
at 5PM, and since that was when our city tour had started, it was
closed. This is the scheduling problem I referred to earlier. By
having the city tours late in the afternoon, we started running into
places being closed. (There was also an Orthodox church we were
supposed to have seen, but it was closed as well. That's somewhat
unusual; churches are generally open all or most of the time.)
So next we went to the Emperor's Mosque. We had been scheduled
to go to the Husref Bey Mosque but it was--all together now--closed
for renovations. I can only conclude that people are trying to make
up for forty years of neglect of religious buildings by renovating
them all at once. (Sometimes we do hit it right. We went to Madrid
right *after* the Prado re-opened after being closed for two years
for renovations.)
Naturally we had to take off our shoes to go into the mosque,
but the guide was a bit surprised when I pulled out a head scarf to
cover my hair. I guess I'm used to Malaysia, where they're stricter
about this. Here they even allow photography inside the mosque.
This may be a government decision, though. It seems as if all the
churches and synagogues throughout Eastern Europe have signs saying
photography is prohibited, and then the guides (or even the door
keepers) say to go ahead. Maybe it's an attempt to keep the amount
of photography, especially flash photography, under control.
The qibla in the mosque faced southeast (toward Mecca)--I
checked with my compass. We usually talk about how Muslims face
east when they pray, but that's a very Western-Eurocentric
statement. Muslims in Bosnia pray three times a day, not five, at
least according to the guide. Off the courtyard was an old
cemetery. None of the markers had names or dates, only Quranic
verses. The size and decoration of each marker provided some measure
of the importance of the deceased, but that was all. Newer Muslim
cemeteries do have names and dates on the markers.
Speaking of cemeteries and grave markers, a couple more
comments come to mind. Sephardic grave markers have a very unusual
shape. From the front they are the usual rounded-top markers, but
they extend back about three feet with the top sloping down to the
ground. And in Yugoslavia all along the roads you see markers with
names, dates, and pictures. We think they are of traffic
fatalities--most seem to be at the worst parts of the roads.
Well, returning to the city tour: next was supposed to be the
church but it was closed. So we walked around the bazaar a while and
picked up some odds and ends (a Turkish coffee pourer and some folk
music cassettes). Then we went into an old inn for a rest and some
Turkish coffee. (This is the kind with the mud in the bottom.) The
bazaar area seemed touristy (or touristic, as Mojca would say) at
first, but many of the shops were clearly aimed at a local
clientele. And the coffee was only ten dinars (less than 50 cents);
I was expecting it to be at least twice that amount. On the way
back to the bus we bought a copy of the Sarajevo Haggadah for 385
dinars (about US$17.50) for a hardbound art reproduction of the 142
pages with an additional explanatory book. This is certainly less
than it would be in the United States, and for that matter less than
in Dubrovnik, where Mark later saw it for 700 dinars.
We spent some time before and at dinner talking to Sam and
Susan. They're on their honeymoon, which is nine months traveling
around the world. Susan says she's not sorry they're doing it all
at once because they get some rest between tours (they just had a
week in Istanbul), but it seems to us that they miss a lot of the
places they go to. I don't think Sam saw Prague at all; he rested
the day we had there. And I need time to let the places I've
visited sink in. Three weeks (or maybe four all in one or two
countries) is about my maximum at any one time. And they obviously
don't do the advance reading and research we do. I suspect it's
more a status thing with them.
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| I haven't mentioned hotels and passports. In
some countries, the hotels want your passports for some period of
time to register your location with the police. Usually it's only
for a few hours, but in Bulgaria they kept them for our entire stay.
This registration business happens in Western Europe as well, but to
Americans it's a very new idea. Another new idea is having to show
your passport to change money. |
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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