Bosnablog

Heading north-east from the old town and into the hills, I quickly entered a warren of winding residential streets, rising and dipping with the contours of the hillside—just as I had on the south side of the river the day before. The streets were narrow and mostly cobbled, the houses all unique. Some had an unfinished look that seemed paradoxically permanent: wiring poked out of concrete walls clearly decades old; patio furniture sat, well-used, on half-built terraces barely more than cemented breeze-blocks—perhaps to be finished in less lean economic times. It lent a delightfully idiosyncratic air to the place, infinitely preferable to some uniform row of Georgian townhouses or a prefab, new-build suburb. There is barely a straight line to be found here—even the ones that are meant to be.

My target today was the eastern boundary of the city proper, just above Vratnik. Up in the hills there were the old Austro-Hungarian barracks and the Bijela Tabija, a ruined medieval fort; my real aim, though, was a view of the eastern extent of the Miljacka. East of the city, the river cuts a deep gorge in the mountains as it flows down from Pale; by the time it reaches the city, the valley has flattened and widened considerably as the river tumbles and slows to meet the Bosna—conditions more suited to city-building, of course, but less conducive to stunning scenery.

I had taken a rather indirect route, half-deliberately, but I had come to rue this decision by the time I was a little over half way up the hill; not only was it a longer distance, but the narrow and twisting streets reduced orienting myself to a simple “up good, down bad” decision that left me with little idea of where I really was or whether I was heading in the right direction, a process not helped by Sarajevo’s wholly inconsistent—and often absent—street signs. Occasionally, through a gap in the houses, I could glimpse the Bijela Tabija; it appeared to be getting slowly larger, which was, I supposed, a good sign.

Eventually, I rounded the final hairpin and emerged onto a narrow ridge, at the end of which was the Bijela Tabija that had been my landmark during the walk uphill. I walked over to the eastern side, to get a glimpse of the view I had climbed all this way for, and was floored: it was more incredible than I could even have imagined. The whole scene was awash with rich, green forest; only the occasional limestone scarp, jutting out from the mountainside too steeply to support trees, penetrated the thick blanket of trees. The Miljacka appeared as a narrow stream, far below, and its meandering path traced a deep gorge through the mountains; the slopes intersected in turn, as the river twisted alternately left then right from its eastern source and into the city behind me. The motorway to Pale sliced through the lower reaches of the gorge, crossing the river on high-stilted bridges and boring through the mountainside with tunnel after tunnel.

It was a breathtaking sight; I sat there for hours, captivated. Lunchtime passed me by, and it was four o’clock before I realised; I headed back to the start of the ridge, where there was a restaurant with outdoor seating. Heading upwards, I found a seat with the same breathtaking view as I had had on the end of the ridge; what better place to eat than this could there possibly be in the world? I ordered some sudžukice and cevapčići,1 demolished them in what seemed like seconds, and returned to the view. It really was beautiful.

Before heading back downhill, I ventured out to the Bijela Tabija. A squat structure of thick, white stone, it was built in the sixteenth century, and forms a rough square at the end of the ridge. Embrasures dotted the internally buttressed wall on the eastern side, and a tower jutted out from the southeastern corner; if the city’s natural defences weren’t enough, then this fortress was surely unassailable. Unfortunately, in more recent times it has been far from impregnable, and lies now in a sad state of disrepair. In the central courtyard, smashed stone lies asunder, and all of the external walls are covered in a mindless, spray-painted scrawl. It was an anticlimactic experience; the fortress is visible from much of the city, and I had envisioned a proud bastion, standing tall for half a millennium—not a graffitied ruin.

Having climbed higher and higher with each day I’ve been in Sarajevo, I still feel the urge to go further, to finally summit the valley that shields me from the rest of Bosnia and look out as it extends beneath me, vast and limitless; the qualities that make Sarajevo’s location so strategic and defensible also shelter it from the country outside, the country I itch to explore. Not just yet, though: my work at BIRN starts on Monday, so I am confined to Sarajevo for five days at least. Not that you’ll find me complaining—there are far less beautiful places to be confined than this!