Getting To Far Away Istanbul: Transport And Sofia

I leave Srebrenica after four days, feeling recovered and up for a very new country. Once more I enjoy the bus ride along the Drina, through the sunflower, corn and melon fields, and across the Sava in Belgrade. When I buy the ticket for the night train to Sofia I am delighted to find the charming old man at the counter for international tickets to be fluent in both English and German (sounding very Austrian - I later hear he speaks French, too!). He also reassures me about security issues: 'This train is about as safe as a night train from, say, Berlin to Munich. Maybe a bit less.' I spend some hours at the internet café, get some food for the rest of the day and the next morning and return to the station well in time. The train is already there so I get in and find my compartment where I'm soon joined by a young German couple and a Scottish pharmacist. This by chance grouping turns out to work really well, we continue to Istanbul together and meet there several times, too. 

While the beds are nice enough, border control before five in the morning prevents us from feeling really awake when we reach Sofia at eight. On the sober and empty platform of Sofia's otherwise gigantic socialist main station a smoking guy in worn-out flip-flops tries to persuade us to directly book a bus ticket to Istanbul with his company. Not too keen on this marketing strategy we try to ignore him for a while, but maybe this is the way it works here, the price turns out to be reasonable and we can leave our luggage at the station. So we set off to find the starting point of the free walking tour, one of my travel buddies heard about. We walk down the main street with a quite impressive mix of architecture. When we finally reach the Palace of Justice, we still have time till the start of the tour, so we have breakfast, sharing our bread with a Gypsy lady.  

The tour takes about two hours and the guide, a law student is really good. It is a suitable way to learn some basic facts and see the key sights in a city where you spend only a minimum amount of time. It gives me the feeling of actually having been in Bulgaria. We get an idea both of the old history and the socialist time and of the issues of modern Bulgaria. Walking through many green parks in combination with eating a lot of really good ice cream (fig! plum!) I even manage to stay more or less awake.

Start of the tour at the Palace of Justice. Note one of the ubiquitous lions - this one however proves the sculptor's lack of biological knowledge...

A capital in layers: Very old small church, Stalin era style government building (which used to be crowned by a huge red star)

Quite impressive lady - there was a Lenin statue at this place till 1990

Last functioning mosque in the city - built of brick! - in the background on the left a synagogue

The church bell of the church of the Holy Spirit 

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

After the tour we sit in one of the parks for a while and then walk around for quite a long time until we find a café where we just sit for most of the day, have a drink and watch the rain come and go. Finally we get up to buy some food, walk back to the bus station and take about an hour to rearrange our backpack households, sitting between the tiny bungalows holding bus company offices. At 8 we get on the Turkish bus. It's packed and unfortunately some of the elderly passengers are quite noisy, listening to music from earphones not on their ears or snoring. We cross the border two hours after midnight, this time we need to get off the bus and even put our luggage through the x-ray. We are not all that awake when we reach the absolutely gigantic Istanbul central bus station. Luckily there is a really nice waiting area where some people just continue snoring, we have some breakfast and watch the dawn growing lighter until we catch the shuttle downtown.

First morning in Istanbul, International bus station

More Paths Walked Till The End - If Only Caspar David Friedrich Had Known!

After the having spent an afternoon at the springs I want to find out where some other roads and paths out of the city lead. First I walk straight South. This is where I find the small Catholic chapel opposite the path leading to the town walls open this time. I pay it a short visit and try to figure out (not really successfully) the Serbian explanations about the stones in its yard. Then I just walk on, past short front gardens overflowing with pink and lilac flowers, it's getting hotter after a quite chilly morning, there aren't many people in the street that eventually starts to twist and turn, looking different after every corner. I walk past a small hotel, some guests waiting for their lunch at its restaurant, and some construction workers renewing part of the asphalt under some apple trees. Then buildings get scarce as I approach the edge of the town. There is a weather station and a sharp twist of the road leading out of the town there is a big dog living under an abandoned trailer with her puppies. I leave the main road as it doesn't look too approapriate for walking from here on and find myself in a quite idyllic sandy street with big houses generously placed between green hills, some of the gardens are entered by means of small bridges. A dog starts to bark fiercely, I'm glad to see he is on a chain. The street gradually turns into a forest path with a steep hill covered in shrubs rising to the side opposite of the houses. Sunlight and heat linger on the dried grass, it smells of warm needle trees. I see an old woman with a colorful headscarf and a kind wrinkly face. She leads her goat to grase on the steep hill, smokes and smiles. And looks at me curiously. There are probably not all that many tourists right here and I look very touristy I guess. I am happy to find my Serbian sufficient by now to have a small chat with her, tell her I am from Germany, not the Netherlands and thank her for her compliments. She asks me if I am married, as I tell her I am not she wishes me luck to find a husband and have a child. In Germany I might have felt offended by someone just taking it as a given that everyone wishes to have a family, but here I take it as a genuine good wish that puts a smile on my  face, even more so as I understood it in a language I didn't actually ever learn.

When I ask Miloš if it is possible to get close to the old city walls I realize that I actually stopped half way to the top last time because it was getting dark and I thought the road was leading somewhere else. So I go back there and continue up the side of the valley, dark green all around, some bushes heavy with big black elderberries, occasional apple trees on the up hill side of the road, quite some apples fallen on the road. The valley is filled with the sound of the Guber, invisible beneath all the trees and bushes and I catch a glimpse on the construction site of the new spa building. After a while I find another set of houses, I am not out of town here. They are surrounded by huge gardens and situated between two hills, one crowned by the old walls, the other holding a Muslim graveyard, white stones gleaming in the sun. There is a big steel cross on the edge of the wall and I sit next to it for a long while enjoying the view and the wind and the blazing sun. A good place for writing and feeling free. After a while the sky gets more overcast and I hear a rumbling sound in the distance. This is not the place to be in a thunderstorm so I hurry down and reach the hostel already drenched by the heavy four o'clock rain.

 



 

 

 

As quickly as it came the rain is over again and before darkness falls I hurry off again to visit the other Peak, the one with the graveyard. The quickly changing evening light and the damp air after the heavy rain make me take a lot of pictures - and some views of multiple layers of mountains and clouds actually remind me a lot of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings, especially when there are gravestones in the Picture, too! If you don't know this German painter who was actually born in the town where I study take a look here. Maybe he wouldn't have limited his trips to Germany, Danmark and Czechia if he had known about this place...

 





At The Springs

After Benedek got on the bus to Belgrade I once more walk up to the springs, this time I want to see where the path actually leads. It's getting warmer than expected, making altitude with every step I take. Some cars pass me by, obviously there is something worth going to. Indeed, not far from where I stopped the ascend last week, there is the more or less abandoned constuction site for the new spa hotel, the signs still advertiseing the project and the date of completion: December 30th 2011. In front of the fence there are outlets of two springs, the Veliko Guber (Big Guber) and Očna voda (eye water).

Two families are collecting water, the boys also climb further up the mountain to have a look over the fence. One of the women tells me something about the water, but retreats when she realizes I don't understand. They then discuss among themselves, I understand something about English and in the next moment a boy of about 14 approaches me in polite and good English. He is surpriesd that someone from Germany comes here travelling to such a remote place. They are Bosnians from Tuzla who came to visit the memorial in Potočari and get healing water. He is glad to learn that people in Germany know about the genocide of Srebrenica. Unfortunately he is not optimistic about the future of the different ethnic groups of Bosnia living together peacefully. He also translates for his father who is aveteran of the Bosnian army. When they ask what I do and hear that I will be a psychiatrist the reaction is the usual half bitter, half joking grin, 'oh no, you're reading our minds! But yes, we all need a psychiatrist in Bosnia...' The boy knows the English term post-traumatic stress disorder and the father knows what it feels like: 'You know, your emotions die inside of you, from getting used to seeing people being killed. From killing people yourself.' I feel quite honored to be trusted in this way outside of a professional setting.

When they filled all their water bottles, rinsed their eyes with eye water and get back into the cars - not without offering me a ride and leaving me a pack of juice - we are happy to have had this conversation.

I stay at the springs writing down all the unfinished blog posts in a school notebook I just got from the supermarket, drinking water and now also juice, only occasionally disturbed by a giant hornet.
After a while a British car with three young men parks in front of the fence, they ask me, first in Bosnian, if there is any way to get closer to the springs, I don't think so. Two of them don't speak English, but the third one lives in England, so we chat a little, he is happy to hear I am in med school, he works at a hospital himself. When I answer the obligatory question about my future specialization there is that crooked grin again: 'Oh well, this region's gonna need a hell o' a lotta that!' Well, what can I say... Actually I am quite surprised in a positive way that it is not a taboo to talk about psychiatric assistance.

Taking A Break: Srebrenica II

I didn't think I'd be back that soon, but after having figured out how to get from Belgrade to Istanbul, shaky health and the feeling of having had enough to process for a while make me see I am not yet ready for such a huge city in such a new country, nor for two nights on transportation. So, after having spent literally hours on finding out how to get back to Srebrenica I return to the spectacular road along the Drina and the less than spectacular little border crossing (no one even touches my ID this time). 

There is one other guest at the hostel, Benedek from Hungary, he has been here before, too. And he is a semi-professional photographer, I highly recommend his page on fb, you can find a lot of pictures there both of places I visited, too, and many others, architecture, geometrical forms, colors and the people surrounded by these (Explanations are mainly in Hungarian, but I think you don't necessarily need explanations). We walk across town for an evening drink and to take some pictures afterwards. With the East, the West and art (geometrical photography and Caspar David Friedrich - who was born in my university town where some of his much depicted buildings still exist) there is a lot to talk about.

Street art at the sportsground

New mosque

Orthodox church

 

 Chapel reminding of the Franciscans' monastery

 Old gravestone with traditional ornaments behind the chapel

After Benedek leaves for Belgrade on the next day I spent a lot of time just sitting somewhere, preferrably not in the sun, reading and writing and taking long walks. This calm and friendly place without any obtrusive distraction is just perfect for taking a break. And taking pictures seems to be contagious, unfortuanately there is something behind my lens, I post some pictures anyway.

 Rain, finally

 

Morning mists

Instead of two I stay for four days in order to fully recover and witness the change of seasons, water restrictions are lifted as thunderstorms with heavy rains start to occur every afternoon around four. It even gets chilly at night which doesn't keep Miloš and me, later joined by the new girl from Italy, from chatting asway for hours on end on Sunday night with the cats' rank issues as a show on the side. It is actually hard to leave, but I also started to look forward to going to Istanbul, so I go. And I know I will be back.

Shining Novi Sad

I didn't know anything about Novi Sad except for that it exists, and in day trip distance from Belgrade at that, and some friends told me it was worth seeing. Nela and Goran confirm this and tell me about the Danube beach park which (funny for Germans as Strand is the German word for beach) is called Shtrand. So I buy some sweet Serbian rolls with poppy seed filling and after 90 more minutes on transportation I reach Novi Sad central station, situated at the end of a huge and long boulevard that leads right down to the river and the beach.

The sky is a bit overcast and it is not as warm as in the previous days, so I take just a short dip in the river. It's a working day and it's "cold", so there are only few people, some families speaking both German and Serbian, four French girls, some older couples. The surface of the sand is damp, probably they got at least some rain, too, last night.

After just sitting and musing for an hour or so I follow my thumb rule of if possible not to take the same road back and find a neatly designed sporting path leading along the river with seperate lanes for runners (with rubber covering), pedestrians and cyclists. Eventually I do return to the boulevard for a short time - and on the other side of it, so not the same way, it really is an enormously wide boulevard until I turn right to reach the old town.

When I do it's like a light being switched on. These streets, too, are relatively wide considering the two storey houses along them and the houses are all painted in light yellow, pink and cream and seem to emit light, shining on the flowers in big pots along the roads, the café tables and the people walking in the car free street. (I am not quite able, however, to capture this light on photo...) At the main square I see the first of many especially beautifully ornated churches. I criss-cross through the old town finding more shining houses, some with even more shinig gold, blue and red icon mosaics on the walls and more beautiful churches.

The connecting street back to the boulevard is different yet again, wide, but with somewhat bigger buildings standing with some space around them and very green trees on both sides of the streets. I unfortunately have to pass by the synagogue as I want to catch the 6 o'clock train back to Belgrade. The boulevard is even longer than I thought it was so I get a little work out and after getting my ticket I make it to the right platform just in time to catch the short train, covered in grafitti, but clean on the inside and so I rumble home.
Or nearly so. It takes me almost as long to get to Nela's and Goran's home because of a tram line that was not working and a bus driver who doesn't know the names of his own stops. A boy of maybe 14 who speaks excellent English saves me in the end as he enables three helpful women to discuss my problem and lead me to the right stop.

White Capital: Belgrade

After only two days that feel both long and short as time spent with great people in a great place usually does I get on the eleven o'clock bus to Belgrade. After crossing the Bosnian-Serbian border here formed by the river Drina at a small check point that doesn't carry any border tension and changing the bus in Ljubovija I am in for truly amazing views of the river we follow in its valley, it's not easy though to take photos as the bus is shaking and trees constantly get into the picture. Then suddenly for the first time since I left Northern Germany the landscape turns flat. The Serbian highway takes me through many sunflower and some melon fields until we reach Belgrade, cross the Sava and finally stop at the big and busy central bus station. My couchsurfing hosts will return from their weekend out of town only in the late afternoon, so I take a first walk through the city center. Belgrade is light, bright (doing its name justice), feels considerably bigger to me than Sarajevo and looks quite impressive with its monumental churches and government buildings, but never the less it feels welcoming to me. Once more I am a good customer of the ice-cream sellers who sit beneath their sunshades virtually everywhere in the city. Later I meet my hosts Goran and Nela at the central station and they take me to their appartment in the outskirts of the city where the hills begin. We spend a relaxing evening with home grown salad and good conversations about language, soccer, music and history.

I spend the following days enjoying the lively atmosphere of Belgrade by just walking around, visiting the fortress of Kalemegdan where the Sava joins the Danube, the huge Orthodox churches of St. Sava and St. Mark and an exhibition on the last royal families of Serbia. Many other museums are unfortunately closed, because of renovations or for unknown reason as the Ivo Andrić museum. I mentioned him before and promised some more information, he is the 1961 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate and one of the most important Serbian writers. In his award winning novel "The Bridge on the Drina" he draws an epic picture of Ottoman Bosnian society and the undertaking of building a magnificent bridge, the  Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad. I find the book really capturing though cruel at times and it offers important background knowledge on this region. I buy an English translation in Belgrade - which adds to the weight of my backpack, but I don't want to wait until I return to Germany to read it. Later in the day I meet Nela and Goran and we always have lots to talk and joke about and as as Nela and I both are psychologists we also gain some insights on the structures of our subject in the other country. Apart from that she shows me the memorial for the national broadcasting employees that were killed by NATO bombs in 1999. The war is still present here, too.
It is still quite warm during the days, but the evenings are perfect for sitting outside, especially for having pizza on a swimming restaurant at sunset:

Although they have a lot of work I get to meet Predrag, the national director of YFU Serbia and his current German volunteer Sandra. YFU is the abbreviation of Youth For Understanding, the high school student exchange organisation I joined as a volunteer after spending my exchange year in Latvia. We find a café at the walls of the Kalemegdan and it's one of the times that make me realize ever so clearly why I am still active with YFU - and that I should see to contribute more again than I did since I started med school. For one thing, YFU Germany is huge, old, well-functioning, in a one-man-show (plus volunteers, of course) such as YFU Serbia the connection to the reasons why we do this is somehow easier to grasp. Actually the reason for YFU to come into existence more than 55 years ago was to introduce young Germans to a functioning democracy in order to enable them to help building one in their own country. And reflecting on a recent meeting in Norway and my experiences in Germany and Latvia, we come across quite some similarities between German and Serbian societies after their last war that Central European media usually leaves unmentioned. Both our countries are widely recognized as the bad guys, an attribute that eonly ever so slowly allows for some additional characteristics to be acknowledged besides the guilt. Both Serbia and Germany were faced with considerable numbers of refugees of their own nationality having to leave their homes in territories lost in the war and usually not welcomed by their neighbors in their new towns. In Predrag's words I clearly feel the hurt of being put into one corner, first bombed - with some "collateral damage" of children and other civilians killed by the NATO - and then isolated, the latter in some ways even more suffocating. Why did Germany participate in this, he asks me. I was only 14 back then, but I recall the extremely heated discussions about sending German armed forces abroad for the first time since WWII. And how we needed to be very certain that if we go abroad and bomb someone those have to be the bad guys, how the left wing government that decided to join had to overstretch many of its fundamental beliefs. How they then tried to believe that there is such a thing as a clean war, with surgically precise missiles. "Collateral damage" was elected the Unwort (something like "anti-word", bad public use of language) of the year 1999 in Germany.
Somehow, as my Serbian friend Ivana in Istanbul put it, every story in Bosnia or Serbia begins and ends with the war. I try not to stick too close to this, after all, there is much more to this region, just as there is more than Nazis to my country.

And after finishing my lemonade (fresh lemon juice squeezed into a glass of water, add sugar or honey to your own taste), my standard drink in the Balkans, and continuing the conversation with Predrag and Sandra on the way home I think that I'd really like to come here on exchange. And as I am too old for the YFU program I recommend it to everyone else: If you know some high school student interested in Southern European athmosphere and climate, Eastern European culture, rich history and great food, why not send them here?

Small Town, Silvertown: Srebrenica

My limited orientation in Sarajevo and some animosities between different parts of the city made getting to Srebrenica a bit difficult in the beginning. I am not sure in which direction from the final stop of my city bus the overland bus station Eastern Sarajevo is located and only with the help of some German speaking lady in the street I finally get the officer to reconsider his answer that there is no other bus station anywhere around: Ah, the Serbian bus stop...! Well, yeah, the Serbian one. I get on the small bus just in time and enjoy another ride with many great views up and down the mountains.

The first thing I hear when I get off the bus in Srebrenica is the muezzin's call. ın a town that had most of its Muslim male population murdered only 18 years ago this doesn't sound as normal to me as in all the other Muslim places I stayed at so far. Srebrenica, however, is not at all to be reduced to a crime scene. In fact, considering its size of 3000-5000 inhabitants I get to know it as a place not much different from many rural towns in the eastern part of Euıope. And more alive than many places I've come across in rural Germany. I had my directions on my inner map a bit mixed up, but I soon fınd the hostel right off the main street (Maršala Tita, of course) with a garden at the Guber, a stream now tiny after several weeks of drought, but still giving a cheerful and soothing background sound. Miloš, the owner, is still at work and his mother and I don't have a common language, so we mostly smile, drink coffee and play with the cats. When he returns we are instantly in a good conversation about things like traveling and this place, the mineral springs that form the Guber and made the town a spa resort after the big days of silver mining and manufacturing were over that first gave the place its name (srebra is the Serbian/Bosnian word for silver) and how the town has developed since. I don't feel as if I just arrived; this is a good place.

The other guests, four Dutch guys and a Frenchman return from theır rafting trip and we decide to have dinner in the most astonishing restaurant Bato. On the way there we see many children and young people play basketball on the concrete sports ground next to the maın street now the heat of the day is over. We sit on the terrace of the fancy restaurant and after the charming owner has handed us the menu a young man with a blond pony tail whom we just saw playing basketball on the pitch appears, he seems to have beamed himself up the road. Now he beams at us and explains his mother doesn't speak English, so he helps with the foreigners. His English is very good, he translates and explains the menu and creates a vegetarian dish on the spot as there is none on the menu. The evening passes in cheerful conversations with occasional visits by a crazy cat (he likes to lick people's arms...) and the young waiter disappearing and reappearing in incomprehensible speed helping his mother around the house. For the first time on this trip it actually gets a bit chilly. And after the nights spent in big and noisy cities I fall asleep at the rushing sound of the Guber this night.

On Saturday I visit the memorial in Potočari. I've seen many pictures of the lines of white marble gravestones extending up the hills, but being there is a different thing altogether. At the center there is a modern Islamic chapel without walls, an abstract fountain, a central memorial stone and, most impressive, a marble panorama listing the names and life dates of the 8373 victims of the genocide. There are quite some visitors, a school class or youth group, moşt of the girls veiled, some Central European visitors speaking French or Dutch to each other, and locals visiting graves of loved ones. It feels strange to know that on the one hand this is the memorial of the worst crime against humanity committed in Europe since WWII and one of the most shameful failures of the international community and thus a place of public interest, a place that must not be forgotten by anyone, but on the other hand it is the site of the last connection to their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers for many heavily traumatized survivors that needs to be protected and respected in its intimacy. Therefore I only take a few pictures. I feel like I need to take some, but at the same time it is weird...

On the other side of the road are the halls of the abandoned battery factory of Potočari where the Muslim boys and men were kept before they were taken away and killed. One of the halls holds a picture exhıbition describing the fall of Srebrenica and two half rooms with black walls added inside of it. One serves as a room for film presentations and as the school class arrives the documentary is started. Although I saw the same film only a few days before in Sarajevo I cry half of the time. I am not working here and thus not in a professional mode. Miloš had expressed his worries of me being some sort of shrink when I told hım I'm in med school, but even though I am half a shrink I am not here out of strictly professional interest (although it's hard to tell where that ends and begins) and so I can let things get to me.

I wander through the other halls, some still have some old equpment in them, one holds a big greeting to Comrade Tito,  reminding of still older days, and there are many graffiti by Dutch soldiers who were in charge of the base that was supposed to protect the Muslims of the area.
I return to the exhibition hall and read the short biographıes displayed in the other newly added room together with one photo of the killed boy or man and one item found with the remains of his body. Then I leave, after buying a pen at the tiny souvenir and flower shop.

I am quite emotionally exhausted when I get back. Miloš tells me where to find the mineral springs and the old town walls with nice views of the town and the valley. They are both at the other end of the main street so I get to walk through most of the town again, this time in daylight. Especially after the exhibition ın Sarajevo I had expected worse. Some houses still carry holes of gun fire, some windows of abandoned flats are still covered in UNHCR plastic. Other houses on the other hand are all prim and proper and the atmosphere is basically that of a friendly calm summer afternoon. A small Bosnian town. As everywhere in the country I see many little shops selling groceries and more or less everything, people sitting outside, children on bicycles, many taxis. And there is a church overlooking the town and several mosques. In spite of the changed composition of the population there was even a new mosque and Islamic cultural center opened only a few years ago. A way to say we are still here, although many Muslım families who lived in Srebrenica until 1995 are not anymore. In turn it became the new home to Serbs not welcome anymore in their hometowns in other parts of Bosnia. War doesn't leave much unchanged. 

The spa tourism infrastructure is largely abandoned, though there are attempts to rebuild it. After climbing the stairs to a former restaurant I am rewarded with a great view of both the town and what has probably changed least over the past decades: the very green and round, yet steep mountains around it. I have to take a lot of pictures before I climb down again and up another path to find the mineral springs. After passing the construction site of the lower new spa building I find the first ones, truly amazing! Every one has a different way of emerging from the stone and one of them even smells of iron, I take a sip of the water with strong metallic taste. Actually some of these spring waters should not be consumed without medical advice because of its high concentrations of metals. Darkness starts to fall and so I return without knowing if I saw all springs.

A long day ends with some hours of cheerful craziness in the garden including a hornet fight (or nearly so) and some escalations of weird Dutch, Serbian and maybe even German humor. Probably true, this town doesn't see so many mainstream guests...