Sarajevo trip | Yesterday the end of the world and the storm is coming

Traveling in Sarajevo is undoubtedly a pleasant experience for people like me who are obsessed with the temperament of the old times. This city is composed of several old times superimposed on each other, from the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Poland. black.

Therefore, Chinese travelers who come here are very diverse. Some history buffs undoubtedly enjoy it very much. Domestic senior groups will also regard this place as an important part of their nostalgic trip to Yugoslavia. The movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo" makes their trip like a pilgrimage. , and the most attractive thing to Chinese students in Europe is probably the price here.​

However, the most emotional experience I had during my trip to Sarajevo was something I didn’t fully realize until I went to Belgrade later.

Belgrade had 273 mosques during the Ottoman Empire, but now only one remains, and there are only a few halal restaurants. My Kazakh friend and I checked the map for a long time. Unexpectedly, in this city that had been violently de-Turkified, we finally chose a Turkish restaurant for lunch.

In Belgrade, Turkey turned out to be my taste motherland, and Sarajevo, which still retains a strong Ottoman flavor today, is the end of the world I am familiar with.

The flight I took from Almaty to Sarajevo had to stop in Istanbul for 7 hours. This gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the historical connection. I have always been afraid of sweets and ate several pieces of baklava in the terminal. . The history of Sarajevo begins in Istanbul. I passed by a place called Galata in Istanbul before. The famous local football club is Galatasaray. Saray means palace, and Sarajevo was called Galata during the Ottoman Empire. For saraybosna (Bosnian Palace).

It was evening when we landed at Sarajevo Airport. Sarajevo is a long and narrow city built along a river in a valley. It spans the entire city from the airport to the old town. As the bus passes by, the city streetscape also undergoes historical changes. , from modern architecture to the architecture of the socialist era to the architecture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the end point is the old city established during the Ottoman Empire, which is also the beginning of the founding of Sarajevo.

The hotel I booked is right in the alley of the old town. I only need to walk a few steps to feel the strong Turkish temperament. There is a wooden fountain built in Ottoman style in 1753 on Pigeon Square at the entrance of the block. I am in Sarajevo My first impression is that everything is high-end. This is a civilized model city established by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans during its expedition to Europe.

During the previous stop in Almaty, I felt hot even wearing my shirt, but when I arrived in Sarajevo, it actually snowed, allowing me to see a richer urban landscape in the shortest time. The local God was kind to me. Everyone else around me was wearing winter clothes or even down jackets, but I only had a single coat and a shirt underneath, and I didn’t find the cold unbearable, which made me feel a lot more confident about my physique.

It was already dark after I settled down in the hotel, and I went out to prepare for dinner. Suddenly I heard the sound of a cannon, which was a signal to break the fast. It coincided with Ramadan, and firing cannons to break the fast was a tradition left by the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire took control of Bosnia around 1450. In 1461, the first governor Isa Beg Isakovic built some buildings here, including the city's first mosque, the King's Mosque, and the market. , public baths, hotels, etc., including a castle, which also bears the name of Saray Posna. However, the original King's Mosque was destroyed by an earthquake half a century after it was built. It was rebuilt in 1565, and the "king" was changed from Muhammad II to Suleiman I.

There is a restaurant diagonally opposite the King's Mosque. It is a very interesting building. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled Sarajevo, they wanted to build a city hall in the old town. There was a house on this land. The owner refused to move, so the officials threatened Finally, he moved the house across the river and rebuilt it piece by piece, naming it the House of Resentment.

Walking around the old town, Sarajevo is just like Istanbul. The streets are full of dessert shops, which are so sweet that I can’t eat them at all, and they also add sugar to my tea. I'm curious, people here eat a lot of sweets and still look so good-looking. Do they not need to control sugar at all? Is sugar control a false concept or a genetic problem of East Asians?

There are many tourists with Middle Eastern looks in the old town. For Middle Easterners, this place is very European, but the lifestyle and food are very familiar. There are also many youth study tour groups from European countries. I asked a young man if it is their spring break now, right? For Europeans, it is closer and cheaper than Istanbul, and the history is very rich and complex. It is a good study destination.

Although the first governor laid the foundation for Sarajevo, it was the second governor Gözhusre Beg who really played a huge role in the construction of the city. The most famous mosque in the old town bears his name. Named after him, he donated a large number of public buildings during his reign, making Sarajevo a prosperous and fully functional city, especially a huge market, academies, libraries, hospitals and mosques. The old town of Sarajevo is called Baščaršija, which is the main market, which shows the commercial prosperity of the city. During the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, Sarajevo was the largest and most important city in the Balkans.

After dinner, I came to the Göz Hussere Beg Mosque. If you have watched "Walter Defends Sarajevo", you will have a deep memory of this mosque. The courtyard of the mosque is where the clockmaker died in the movie. In the courtyard You can see the iconic clock tower in the movie. This clock tower was originally built during the period of Gezi Hussere Berg and rebuilt after the invasion of Prince Eugen in 1762.

What’s special about this clock is that 12 o’clock points to the astronomical sunset time to guide Muslims’ prayers. Therefore, this clock requires professionals to constantly adjust it to fit the height of the sun. In 1875, the clock was replaced with a clockwork system manufactured by Gillett & Johnston in England, giving it its current clock face.

The Gezi Khusere Beg Mosque is also the first mosque in the world to be powered by electricity. There is a mausoleum in the courtyard where the remains of Gezi Khusere Beg are buried.

I found an interesting phenomenon in the mosque. Although the mosque is accessible indoors, many people pray on the platform outside the mosque. Such outdoor worship spaces are rare in cold areas. I am curious why these people pray outside. , obviously the room was not crowded.

I said hello to an uncle and wanted to ask for more information. It turned out that the uncle was very talkative. He talked about the history of the mosque and the clock tower. He told me that the equipment used in the clock tower was earlier than the British Big Ben. He also talked about the movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo". Movie, he had seen many Chinese tourists come to the mosque to take pictures because of the movie, but until the end I didn’t ask the question why they prayed outdoors.

Compared with Turkey, people here are obviously more aloof and have a sense of propriety when interacting with strangers. I used to often meet people who took the initiative to strike up conversations with me in Istanbul. Most of them were just idle gossip, and there were also bartenders, liars, and pimps. But I didn’t meet any of them in Sarajevo. The locals rarely took the initiative to talk to me. They talked to each other. The chats between people are also a bit shy and not loud, unlike the overly enthusiastic people in the Middle East.

Although this city is very much like Istanbul, when it comes to food, only desserts and coffee are the same as Istanbul. Every time I eat, I miss my last stop, Kazakhstan.

The local specialty food is called ćevapi. It was introduced to the Balkans from Turkey in the 16th century. It is a spiral pastry pie with fillings. The fillings can be beef, cheese, chicken or vegan. It can be regarded as a high-quality and inexpensive civilian food. . Another specialty food, Börek, is scones with meat sausages. The price depends on the amount of meat sausages added, usually 5 or 10. Frankly speaking, it is not delicious, a bit dry and very salty. It is the same as what I ate in Turkey. The BBQ that arrived was completely incomparable.

I also tasted two other foods in another more upscale restaurant, both of which were specialties left over from the Ottoman Empire. One dish is called sarma, which is beef filling wrapped with grape leaves. Bosnian barbecue is usually very salty, but this dish is very light and has a herbal flavor, and the soup is great. The other dish is called klepe, which is a particularly small beef ravioli. Place inside sour cream.

To my taste, Bosnian food is not delicious, the meat is not rich, and many restaurants do not provide hot tea. Sure enough, in my food map, the middle part of the Eurasian continent is the best, and the farther you go towards both sides, the better. Each one is unpalatable. To the east, it's just using poor ingredients and playing tricks on it, while to the west, it's just making good stuff. Moreover, since the Bosnian Mark is pegged to the euro, as the euro rises, local prices are not cheap compared to those in China, which makes my trip unhappy.

Another interesting observation is that a large proportion of the tourists I saw on the streets of Sarajevo were traveling with children. They were often traveling as a couple, with the husband carrying one child on his back and the wife pushing another in a stroller. But this combination Basically, they have European or Middle Eastern faces. I haven’t seen any East Asian-looking tourists with children. My friends say that this is because most East Asians don’t enjoy traveling with children. Especially when traveling abroad, they either don’t have children or leave their children behind. Let the elderly take care of them at home, unless the children are older and may learn a lot from them.

Walking west from the old city, you will see a dividing line on the road. The east of this line represents the east during the Ottoman Empire, and the west is the west during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The corresponding historical stages have also advanced to 19 late century.

There are clear differences in the architectural styles of these two blocks. In the block to the west, there are many more fashionable cafes, bars and restaurants, as well as many fashionable clothing brand stores. Walking to the far west is a large high-end shopping mall. Super, prices in this neighborhood are also cheaper than in the Ottoman Old Town where tourists gather.

After the Ottoman Empire suffered a disastrous defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1878, Russia began to lead the re-division of the Balkans. The Treaty of Berlin allowed Romania, Serbia and Montenegro to become independent countries, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to station troops in Bosnia. Although Bosnia remained de jure part of the Ottoman Empire, it was actually controlled and administered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Austro-Hungarian Empire began to carry out a series of social and administrative reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and did a lot of work in codifying laws, introducing new political practices, and comprehensively promoting modernization.

The Austro-Hungarian government hoped to integrate the residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a separate Bosnian nation. It tried to isolate Bosnia and Herzegovina from the surrounding Serbia, Croatia and Ottoman, exclude the nationalist influence of Serbia and Croatia, and eliminate the possibility of the Ottomans regaining their lost lands.

The rulers of Sarajevo invested a lot of effort in building the city, trying to establish a model new territory loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. To this end, Austro-Hungarian officials actively promoted the new dynastic era in Bosnia and Herzegovina and planned many events about Bosnia's history. , folklore and archaeological exhibitions, a large number of new schools, theaters, and libraries were established, and the development of Bosnian culture and art has entered a prosperous stage.

In order to restrict the Orthodox Serbs, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Holy See discussed the issue of rebuilding the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Sacred Heart Cathedral in Sarajevo was completed in 1889 and became the center of this new neighborhood.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire actively promoted industrialization in Sarajevo and used the city as a testing area for new inventions such as trams. Sarajevo built the earliest tram in Europe in 1885, earlier than the capital Vienna, but the original tram was made of Horse-drawn, in 1895 Sarajevo built a distribution station to supply power to trams and street lights. This also made Sarajevo one of the first cities in the world to provide a public power system. Later, the first batch of real trams produced by Siemens also Delivered to Sarajevo.

Instigated by the Habsburgs, some European idealists hoped to make Sarajevo a new cultural and artistic center in modern Europe. A large number of architects and engineers came to the city, allowing Sarajevo to incorporate a variety of architectural styles.

By the river in the old town, there is the Sarajevo City Hall during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The style is an eclectic mix. This building was used as the National Library for a long time. On August 25, 1992, the siege of Sarajevo caused the library to be destroyed. The bombing was severely damaged, and 2 million ancient books were damaged or lost. It was only renovated in 2014.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire invested a lot of effort in the construction of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Sarajevo, the forced obliteration of ethnic differences to create a unified nation-state itself had a fierce collision with the nationalist ideological trend in the 19th century, especially the suppression by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The main target of nationalism was the Serbs, so the Serbs were extremely dissatisfied with the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Taking advantage of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire completely annexed Bosnia. At this time, Russia, as the backing of Serbia, was trapped in the Russo-Japanese War and was unable to fight hard. On the one hand, Serbia was very angry but had no choice. On the other hand, Serbia turned south in the hope of gaining access to the sea from Albania, so it united with Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro to form the Balkan Alliance to attack the Ottoman Empire. This was the first Balkan War.

Although the war ended with the Ottoman Empire retreating, Austria-Hungary joined the peace conference to prevent Serbia from acquiring Albania and allowing Albania to become an independent country. As a result, the hatred between Serbia and Austria-Hungary deepened, eventually triggering World War I.

I walked to the Latin Bridge. This ordinary bridge was the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. The First World War broke out, the 20th century really began, and our world entered a crazy and crazy world. Cruel times.

There is no need to describe the process of Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of the Archduke and his wife. It is worth mentioning that in his court confession, he did not emphasize Serbian nationalism, but claimed to fight for Yugoslavia. The members of his assassination team were also from There were many ethnic groups, but both Austria-Hungary and Serbia emphasized Princip's Serbian national identity for their own purposes. Because Princip was only 19 years old at the time of the assassination, he was not executed and died of tuberculosis in prison in April 1918. His grave is on the territory of Republika Srpska near Sarajevo Airport.

During the Yugoslav era, the Latin Bridge, the site of the assassination, was renamed Princip Bridge in commemoration. In 1992, the name Latin Bridge was restored. Six monuments to Princip were once erected here, but they were demolished each time with the change of power. A pillar was erected in the corner of the assassination site in 1917 but was destroyed the following year. A plaque commemorating Princip was removed during the German invasion in 1941. During the Bosnian War, the embossed footprints marking the spot where Princip shot were removed. .

The sign one sees now was erected as the centenary of the assassination approached, with an apolitical plaque in the corner where the assassination took place that read "June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip Here the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were assassinated."

I continued walking west along the river and came to another bridge. A very famous and tragic incident once happened on this bridge. During the siege of Sarajevo in 1993, a couple tried to leave Sarajevo across this bridge. The husband was Serbian and the wife was Muslim. As a result, they were killed by snipers on the mountain. The bodies were left on the bridge for several days before being lifted. Go, a reporter recorded this incident. Sammi Cheng's song "Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo" tells this story.

The reasons and background for the outbreak of the Bosnian War are complex, and this complexity is also concentrated in Sarajevo. From the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then to Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina has always hoped to downplay ethnic differences and turn it into a region loyal to the country. Whether these policies are tough or soft, they suppress and hide ethnic conflicts.

During the Ottoman Empire, a large number of local residents converted to Islam and formed a Muslim community. During the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they tried their best to create a unified concept of Bosniaks and suppress Serbian nationalism. During World War II, Bosnia was ruled by the fascist regime of the Independent State of Croatia, which persecuted the Serbs. After that, Yugoslavia entered the socialist era and recognized Bosnian Muslims as an independent nation, turning the five ethnic groups in Yugoslavia into six. The ethnic issue became more complicated. At the same time, it still suppressed Serbian nationalism.

After Tito's death, the ethnic problems in Yugoslavia that had been covered up for a long time became more serious. By the 1990s, ethnic conflicts completely broke out with the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in 1992. However, the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not agree to secede from Yugoslavia. They established the pro-Belgrade Republika Srpska regime, and the Bosnian Civil War began.

At the beginning of the war, the Serbs had a great advantage, because most of the members of the Serb armed organizations came from the former Yugoslav People's Army, had a large number of heavy weapons and received assistance from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. By the end of 1993, the Serb armed organizations had controlled 70% of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. . However, in the spring of 1994, an artillery shell focused on a market in Sarajevo, killing 67 civilians. Although the armies of the three ethnic groups did not admit that they were responsible, NATO and the United Nations pointed the finger at the Serb armed forces and intervened militarily out of humanitarianism. , carried out air strikes against Serbian armed organizations. The war lasted until the two sides began peace talks in September 1995 and ceased fire in October.

From April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996, Serb forces of the Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo. The Serb army was stationed in the mountains around Sarajevo and attacked the city from high altitudes with artillery, tanks, heavy machine guns, and multiple rocket launchers. There were also snipers shooting civilians from the mountains. However, the Bosnian Defense Forces were poorly equipped and unable to break out of the siege. During this period, 11,541 people died, including more than 1,500 children.

To this day, Sarajevo is divided into two parts, one belonging to the Muslim-Croat Federation and the other to the Republika Srpska, two political entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as an internationally regulated Brkoč District. Although as a foreign tourist, you will not have a clear sense of this distinction, there are still boundaries for locals. There are two long-distance bus stations in Sarajevo, one is next to the train station in the Federation of Muk, and the other is in the Republika Srpska near the airport. The buses from Sarajevo to and from Banja Luka, the capital of the Republika Srpska, will only stop in Sarajevo. Long-distance bus station in the Republic of China.

In Sarajevo, the ticket prices for Bosnia-Herzegovina war-themed museums are very high. If I were in another country, I might have ridiculed and left and told everyone not to come. But for Bosnia and Herzegovina, I really don’t want to say that such a thing is so close that I have endured it since I was born. Countries with too many injuries are selling their scars to foreigners for money.

I don’t know if the alienation I feel in this city is related to the legacy of the war. The generation who were born and grew up during the Bosnia-Herzegovina War are now in their 30s and 40s. They have lived amidst ethnic strife and estrangement since childhood. Amid the brutality of the war, I had little impression of the previously unified Yugoslavia.

In fact, based on my experience traveling in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, I did not feel that the locals missed Yugoslavia as some Chinese tourists said, and therefore had a good impression of China. Serbia is actively joining the EU. Bosnia and Herzegovina relies on European tourists on the one hand, and gets help from Turkey on the other. They are all yearning for Europe. Maybe some people truly miss the loose freedom they gained as a non-aligned country between the US and Soviet camps during the Yugoslav era, but this is obviously different from the nostalgia that some Chinese tourists expect.

Moreover, even during the socialist period, the relationship between Yugoslavia and China was actually very poor. The two parties had been attacking each other. The establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries was mediated by the Soviet Union. It was not until the death of Mao Zedong that Tito visited China for the first time. Relations really began to improve after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. During the Kosovo War, China refused to recognize the independence of Kosovo out of concerns about its own separatist forces and sided with Yugoslavia. This gave rise to the illusion that China and Serbia have friendly relations today.

To put it more deeply, some Chinese people’s favorable impression of Serbia, including Russia, does not come from left-wing ideological trends, but rather from the right-wing. Both Russia and Serbia have strong national chauvinist tendencies, and are very conservative on some social issues due to the influence of the Orthodox Church. This is partially consistent with the nationalist conservative forces in China today. Some Chinese see them as antagonism to North America and Western Europe. Provide signs of an alternative route to social development.

One of the Bosnian war-themed museums I visited had an exhibition hall where the walls were filled with messages written on post-it notes by tourists. I noticed that many of the Chinese messages were related to Chinese politics. What surprises me is not this. In my previous travels abroad, I have also seen Chinese people of different political leanings arguing in various forms. What surprises me is that the discussion here is directed towards Hong Kong, rather than what I thought was easier. Another place where the connection arises may be that it is easier for people in Hong Kong to travel abroad, while it is less easy for people in another place to get out.

After the siege of Sarajevo, the scars caused by shell explosions were preserved and filled with red resin, which resembled a floral pattern on the ground and became known as the Sarajevo Rose.

The Bosnian War was not the final state of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In the second year after the war ended, the Albanians in the Kosovo region in southern Serbia established the Kosovo Liberation Army. This was also an ethnic division issue left over from the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At that time, the only remaining members of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were Serbia and Montenegro.

In 1999, NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia led to the outbreak of the Kosovo War. In 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed Serbia and Montenegro, stipulating that any party had the right to withdraw from the federation after three years. Montenegro became independent in 2006, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008, although China and Russia were included. Some countries do not recognize it, but if the Sanjak region, which currently has weak independence tendencies, is not included, then Yugoslavia will have completely disintegrated.

An interesting thing happened when I was walking on the streets of Sarajevo at night. There was a middle-aged Chinese man, who must be a travel vlogger. When I went out in the morning, I saw him live broadcasting on the street with his mobile phone. When I arrived in Sarajevo at 9:30 in the evening, At 3:30 a.m. Beijing time, he was still live broadcasting on the street. We passed by each other. He probably thought I looked Chinese, so he nodded to me, and then continued to thank his brother for the gift on his mobile phone.

On the last day in Sarajevo, I took the cable car to the mountains in the south. I had "Waida" in my mind, and I knew where there were ruins. I really found the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics on this mountain. The race track ruins.

It happened to be snowing on this day, and there was not a single tourist on the mountain. This was the most wonderful moment of my trip to Sarajevo, walking down the mountain on the track, which is a bobsleigh and sled track built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, the Bosnian War. This track was used by the Serb army as an artillery position, but most of it is intact. Now the track is covered with graffiti. The Bosnian government once planned to repair the track and reuse it for competitions, but there has been no progress so far. .

On the track, there was a man more than 100 meters in front of me. He also saw me, but neither of us had any intention of chatting with each other. There were only two of us in the entire forest, and we were just 100 meters apart. Each walked on the snow-covered track.

The 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics was a very special Olympics. This was the first Winter Olympics held in a socialist country. The next one will be the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Prior to this, the 1980 Moscow Olympics were boycotted by 64 countries including the United States, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were boycotted by 17 countries including the Soviet Union, and the Sarajevo Winter Olympics were held in Yugoslavia, a non-aligned country between the US and Soviet camps. , and also hope that the sports meeting can get rid of political barriers.

Perhaps this is why Yugoslavia did not place the Olympic Games in other single-ethnic areas, but in Sarajevo, where multi-ethnic coexistences occur. The Yugoslav government selected six candidate mascot shapes among the people, and finally selected a small boy named Vučko. 40 years later, the streets of Sarajevo are still full of graffiti and wall paintings of this mascot.

In this Winter Olympics, East Germany ranked first with 24 medals and 9 gold medals, and the host Yugoslavia ranked 14th. This was the first time that Yugoslavia won a medal at the Winter Olympics. This Winter Olympics was also the first time that the Republic of China participated in the name of Chinese Taipei, and the two delegations from both sides of the Taiwan Strait have since participated in the Olympic Games together.

In Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", he sadly recalled Vienna from the end of the 19th century to 1939. In Zweig's youth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated after the First World War, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia After the establishment of the Soviet Union, Vienna and Sarajevo were divided into two countries. "Yesterday's World" was over, and the subsequent World War II was just a continuation of the First World War. In Sarajevo, from the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Socialist Yugoslavia, to today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, several "yesterday worlds" are superimposed.

It was still snowing on the first day when I arrived in Sarajevo. In the blink of an eye, the 20-day trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina-Serbia has passed. The last day in Sarajevo was sunny and bright, and I will return to Kazakhstan tomorrow. Before I was about to leave, I came to the place where the assassin who started World War I stood. Frankly speaking, this trip gave me a strange sense of alienation. I would rather believe that my mentality has become boring than think about it. Is the world really changing?

During my trip to Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, I saw wars, sieges, ethnic hatred, famine, labor camps, and forced migration in history. These are the epitome of the cruel human experience in the 20th century. Sarajevo is the epitome of them all. starting point. During the week in this city, the surrounding air seemed to have been giving me a vague revelation, and I was resisting this revelation. I didn't want to see clearly what it was going to tell me, although I had vaguely guessed the answer.

Sarajevo started the crazy 20th century. Maybe we are still at the end of the 20th century, and the crazier 21st century has not yet arrived.

The air trembled, as if the sky were on fire and a storm was coming.