Day Fourteen - Jun 11, 2017

Sarajevo, Bosnia

High Point: Walking to the White Fortress in the evening

Low Point: Not a one

Miles By Foot: 8

Today's Antiquities: Good lord, that would be hard to nail down

Today's Weather: 74°, a few clouds, a pleasant breeze

Tonight's Lodging: Lejla's ridiculous Sarajevo flat

Touristic Events: The 15th century Bascarsijka Market, The Latin Bridge, Pijaca Markale, the Yellow Bastion, the White Fortress

Travel Tip: Visit Sarajevo

Daily Didactic

A beautiful day in Sarajevo. We got up and headed out early for us and checked off a bunch of tourist to-dos in the first 20 minutes of our walk. This culminated in an event Brian has taught children about, the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, a case study in the precarious nature of nationalism and alliances. The assassination was the first event in what became World War I, with an 18 year old killing and Austrio-Hungarian nobleman. For some reason seeing the spot (the Latin Bridge) where it happened seems pretty crazy. June 28th, 1914, on this seemingly normal corner, in front of this window, from the end of that bridge. 4 years later there were 38 million casualties. Crazy. The other thing about Sarajevo that is nuts is (as a result of the Siege of Sarajevo during the 'Homeland War' in the 1990s) that there are still bullet holes and mortar blasts in buildings everywhere. The city is full of cemeteries and memorials of dead 20 year olds from that war. Plaques and monuments to massacres are commonplace, on schools, in parks, and in the market where we got our produce. Speaking of which, from the Latin Bridge we hit the Pijaca Markale (Fruit Market) and got some fresh produce. In the evening we headed out for a neighborhood walk that turned into a neighborhood climb. We initially started for the Yellow Bastion, part of old armaments built in the early 1700's. Turns out it is also a hopping place where local muslims gather in wait of sunset during Ramadan. At sunset they fire off a firework canon that announces the breaking of fasting for the day. We are not much on hopping places and kept heading east from the Yellow Bastion toward a building we had seen lit up the night before. We totally missed that and ended up at the White Fortress, high above the neighborhood, which had a smaller group of sunset revelers and a great view of Sarajevo and the valley beyond it. After sunset and a really big day we made our way home. We really like Sarajevo.