around the Balkans

I was able to slip in a quick trip to the Balkans before our Amsterdam conference - just a few days each in Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, but that was enough to get a flavour of the culture and an introduction to the complicated history, too complicated to understand properly in such a short time.  I suppose a summary would be that the region lies on a kind of crossroads between Asia and Europe and so was invaded and occupied over and over again through the centuries by Celts, Romans, Slavs, Hapsburgs, Byzantines, Ottomans ... and parts were also bombed by the Nazis and most recently by NATO.


As a group we were most interested in the recent history - the break-up of Yugoslavia and what followed - but, maybe not surprisingly, our Serbian guide avoided the subject and focused instead on the fourteenth century under Stefan Dušan before the Battle of Kosovo where the Turks defeated Serbia, beginning 500 years of Islamic rule.  The resentment against the Turks is still part of the politics for some, shown by the fairly recent persecution of Kosovan Albanians and of Bosnian Muslims by the Serbs.

We arrived at Srebrenica the day before the annual commemoration of the massacre.  In addition to the thousands of existing graves there were around seventy newly dug graves awaiting the burial of remains of victims identified during the past year.  It was very moving as families surrounded these empty graves, some in tears - the genocide was only 22 years ago so the memories are still fresh and raw.  & there is still work ongoing to find further remains and carry out the DNA testing required to identify them.  A difficult task, as the re-burial of many victims, in an attempt to hide the evidence of the massacre, was crudely done such that many partly decomposed bodies were broken up in the process.  I heard of one victim whose remains have been found at five different sites.  A later visit to the Srebrenica Gallery and the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo provided more information - including gruesome photos and videos.  Hard to believe that this happened in Europe, in my lifetime.

Maybe in part because of the history, I found myself a bit ambivalent about Serbia, but totally smitten by Bosnia & Herzegovina.  It's easy to focus on this recent history as the evidence is all around, from the museums and memorials, the tunnel in Sarajevo (used to get people in and out during the four-year siege by Bosnian Serbs), the mortar holes in buildings, and even a monument erected in the Republika Srpska (one of the three constituent parts of Bosnia & Herzegovina) to the war criminal Ratko Mladič - the underlying tensions between the different ethnic groups did not go away just because a peace accord was signed.  However there is also beautiful countryside, great architecture (including several UNESCO World Heritage sites) and a great ambience in Sarajevo and, although very touristy, in Mostar.

Really oddly, I cannot post my best photo of this famous bridge in Mostar, as every time I try to upload it I get the message "Upload failed: server rejected" (has blogspot been hacked??) but this is a different view of it, taken from the top of the minaret of the Koskin-Mehmed Pasha's mosque.  One of the only places in the world where the minaret of an active mosque is open to the public.

Another stunning place was the village of Počitelj with its ruined fortifications:

An enjoyable half day was spent travelling up a terrible track to the village of Lukomir, the highest settlement in Bosnia & Herzegovina (at 1,500m), a place that is only occupied for half the year because of the deep snow that cuts if off over the winter.  The houses are built of stone and sit next to the stunning Rakitinica canyon.  The picture shows one of the old buildings (they seem to function as houses and barns at the same time) with the edge of the canyon behind.

Just one more picture from Bosnia & Herzegovina, forgive me, the Kravica Falls:

I shouldn't ignore the other two countries, however. Even Serbia had some reasonable Roman ruins and the beautiful winding Uvac Canyon with its nesting Griffon vultures and 6km long Usac cave full of stalactites and stalagmites.  Kosovo is low key, but very nice, the most impressive parts for me being the old painted monasteries.  No photos were allowed inside Gračanica monastery, but in Visoki Dečani we were allowed to take non-flash photos of the amazing frescoes.  It's impossible to capture the impact in a photo of all those amazing paintings surrounding you, (you really do go "wow!" when you enter!), but here is one pic looking up at part of the ceiling.  The frescoes date back to the 14th century, and the monastery is protected by KFOR (a NATO international peacekeeping force), since as recently as 2007 it was attached by Kosovan Albanian insurgents - as noted above, ethnic tensions have not gone away even though there is currently peace.