HOW TO GET THERE
One day, a few friends and I all woke up a little bit too hung-over and decided that we needed a departure: a European experience that wasn’t pre-packaged, glossed-over, mass marketed, and a whole lot of gluttonous fun. Now, we all know the countries of Europe, like, well, everywhere else, have a pretty violent and bloody history. But sometimes, whilst prancing along the Riviera or the Danube, it is easy to forget all this—but hey, who wants to think about that sad stuff anyway? Well for some reason that day, we did. We thought it Bosnia-Herzegovina would make for the perfect humbling experience. We had no idea how right we really were. Our travel (and by “our” I mean myself and three friends) to Bosnia began with the most romantic of ideas: an Eastern European road trip. The mere grouping of these four words conjures tantalizing images of rolling hills, sleepy off-the-radar villages, and magnificent castles of yore. In Prague, we were just 750 kilometers away from Sarajevo. Translation: 466 miles of sticking our hands—or who knew, maybe even our feet!—out the car windows as the breathtaking country cruised on by and the wind tickled our hair. We were overcome with anticipation. That is, of course, until the manager of the Czech car rental shoved our limbs back in the fantasy car, rolled up those windows and threw our dream in reverse. “Gypsies,” he said. “Landmines. Danger.” Now, when traveling it is important to always—and I mean ALWAYS—consult more than one person on any matter in question. So we tried another place: more talk of “gypsies.” More mention of those “landmines” and that “danger.” More chuckles and under-their-breath questions akin to “why on earth would you ever want to go there?” The bad news, well, it just continued. It seems the airlines shared the car renters’ sentiment. Even the guidebooks didn’t think we should go. In a book where each European country gets, on average, 25-plus pages, Bosnia-Herzegovina gets 3—and most of that is taken up by the big warning from the US government urging travelers not to go there unless they absolutely have to. Wasn’t the war over? Our trip finally became possible at the train station. Still, we had to ask more than one person—each telling us “no, we don’t go there”—before one incredibly helpful young ticketing agent picked up a map and gave us a plan to action. The very next day four of us left Prague. In total it would take well over 22 hours of different trains rides and a mad dash across a city just to get there—and not all of us would make it. It’s not easy to go where no one else wants to go.

PASSPORT CONTROL
Even though it was October, the frantic sprint across Budapest had us all looking like that sweaty overdressed fat man at the beach in July. We arrived at the train depot on one end of the Hungarian metropolis and had just minutes to make it across to the depot all the way at the other end in order to catch the train to Sarajevo. We jumped on subways, hopped trolleys, and ran down boulevards, getting there just in time with not a minute to spare and desperately in need of a shower. The train was a seemingly endless procession of shiny new coaches—save the two out-of-place rusted boxcars that looked as if they had been around since before this carriage went horseless. The train was as nice inside as it was out—air-conditioned and spacious—with reclining seats, no less! We found an empty grouping of four such seats and, with a happy sigh of relief, sat our weary selves down. Partway into the ride through the breathtaking countryside of Bohemia, a conductor came to check our tickets. Unexpectedly, he sneered and motioned for us to rise. We obliged and were then escorted through one air-conditioned and spacious car after another until we reached those old misplaced boxcars we had spied before boarding. The conductor pointed to the tattered and stained non-reclining benches that populated the boxcar and told us to sit. We asked for an explanation, but suddenly his English wasn’t so good and he didn’t understand us. He did, however, make it very clear that this was where we were supposed to be. The heat was on full-blast and the climate control was broken. Defeated, we sat down and unstuck some of the windows so we could breathe. Hours passed. Night fell and so did we—curled up on the smelly benches asleep. We were woken by the loud knocking of the most intimidating man I have ever seen. Tall and ferocious with eyes that spoke of nothing except an intrinsic desire to make your life inconvenient. His uniform looked as if it was purchased at the Third Reich’s going out of business sale, and the fact that the lettering on the uniform’s patches was in rigid Cyrillic made him all the more menacing. The gun slung across his waist didn’t help to soften his image either. He demanded our passports, snatched them from our hands, and all but goose-stepped off. Now, usually when you cross a border the border patrol comes by, asks for your passports, and then stamps them in front of you before handing them back. This guy had just helped himself to our most important documents and disappeared. We waited. Worried. Waited. Finally the terror returned. He handed our passports back and then, without warning, grabbed one of our friends and took him off the train. We sat in silent disbelief. The train’s locomotive fired up—our friend had not returned and the train was about to leave! Without thinking we dashed out the train. A swarm of machine gun toting soldiers pounced upon us, demanding we get back onboard. We begged to see our friend. They callously informed us that our friend—who was not a US citizen—was not allowed in their country. He was going to be deported. They would hold him there until a train headed in the opposite direction came by to pick him up. They barked at us to get back on the train and motioned toward their weapons. We about-faced to head back to our train but stopped cold. All that was left of the once grand procession of over twenty coaches were those two rusted boxcars, now attached to an equally rusted engine adorned in more of that oh-so-intimidating Cyrillic. The soldiers snarled and we got back on the train without protest. Almost at once, the whistle blew and we were on our way. It felt as if we were onboard a ghost train. All that was left was us. We plunged into the dark of Bosnia.


GETTING SETTLED
Stepping off the train at the Sarajevo depot is a lot like setting foot down in the kind of disaster stricken land you see on the news, overflowing with red crosses bringing help and hope to all the suffering. Except here there are no charitable aids or news cameras, they left a long time ago when the novelty wore off. The suffering seems to have stayed. We made our way through the barren train station, where I set off in search of a bathroom. What I found can only be described as a room containing a series of contiguous holes drilled in the floor. Next to each hole was a bottle of murky water. A weary old man squatted over one of the holes relieving himself. There is no such thing as privacy in this restroom: no doors, no curtains. I decided I’d rather my bladder explode than pee in a hole next to a man taking a shit. Besides, the build up of matter around the rims of the small holes laid testament to the difficulty of making the intended target and claimed responsibility for the unbearable odor. It smelt so foul I doubt I would have stayed long enough to pee even if I was alone. Back in the main hall, my friend, holding a “local” nudie magazine full of pictures of recognizable American girls flanked by fallacious captions indicating they hailed from Bosnia-Herzegovina, had just discovered that Bosnia did not have it’s own modeling industry. I informed him it didn’t have much of a plumbing industry either. With no money and no ATM, well, anywhere nearby, we resorted to the only option we had—shameless begging. We approached a taxi driver outside the station, and with our best begging faces on, began the usually difficult trick of convincing a cab driver to drive you to an ATM location on your word that you will pay him—and not flee—when you get there. We had barely finished explaining our situation when the cab driver, most likely concerned about all the other cab drivers who were slowly closely in on us three Americans—the only three Americans who got off the train in their city (and I had a hunch there weren’t many more coming) ushered us into his jalopy. The driver would rather risk us skipping out on paying him than have us become business for another poor cab driver. After a long ride through a sad but beautiful city, our cab driver dropped us off at his friend’s house. Since there aren’t really any hostels in Sarajevo (and the place isn’t exactly brimming with Hiltons either) the cab driver’s friend offered to host us in his spare room. The friend said “hello” in his best English and then disappeared, but not before becoming the third person (the cab driver and the travel book preceding) to warn us to stay off the grass (see they kinda, sorta haven’t really found all the landmines left over from the war, though they do have an accidental method to discovering the contraptions—but more on that later). This whole “keep to the pavement” / landmine thing may seem like a pretty good reason NOT to go to Bosnia, and, logically speaking, you’re probably right, but this here is a whole different kind of tourism—this is war tourism. Forget the museum, the macabre is Bosnia’s bestseller and boy have they got it all: landmines, mass graves (where everybody in the lot was killed in the same month), bullet riddled buildings, and mountains of rubble. But they also have some of the nicest and most hospitable residents, the best food I’ve ever eaten in Europe (and I’ve eaten A LOT), and a zest for life that would give an overly zealous Catholic missionary a run for his money. Oh yeah, they also have the spot where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated—but it’s nothing more than an inconspicuous street corner devoid of any signifying marker (we had to cross reference the internet, books, and locals just to find it). Sarajevo is also the only country in Europe where you can rip off your fake Canadian flag patch and stick on the patch of that American country you actually are a citizen of. The Bosnians love Americans. They are still incredibly appreciative of our help during the war, and you can now reap the benefits of that foreign policy by getting discounted pizza, free drinks, and personal taxicab tours of the city. We devoured our American pride pizza and beer, and then went out in search of someone who would be kind enough to give us a tour of the city. All this destruction needed an explanation.

THE CITY TOUR
As a tourist, one of the most common—and generally most informative—ways to get acquainted with the city, country, hamlet, crater, whatever you happen to be visiting is to take a guided tour. Whether by foot, in an extraterrestrial looking amphibious vehicle, rickshaw, or big red double-decker bus, guided tours allow a simple, yet comprehensive introduction to the locale, even if it does mean you will be branded with the scarlet letter of “tourist.” Looking for a tour is not a task usually associated with traveler savvy. Stop in any hotel and see the concierge, ask at the tourist info center, look up numbers in that handy guidebook you brought along. But what do you do when there is no concierge, no info center, and the only numbers in your guidebook are emergency ones to help you get an airlift in case you discover one of those pesky landmines? You would probably have greater ease finding a tour in Iraq. Iraq is in vogue, Bosnia Herzegovina and the 250,000 people massacred there is just old hat. With a little bit of wandering and a whole lot of pedestrian questioning, we were able to find a little souvenir shop that also happens to run a makeshift tour operation. While the slow increase of tourism to the region in recent years had the owner telling us of great future expansion plans for her tour company, right now all she had to offer was a taxi she simply hailed off the street. Sarajevo has some noteworthy landmarks, ones you would certainly expect to see on any tour: the spot where Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, the Ivan Straus Holiday Inn, the National Museum, the Tsar’s Mosque. Yet none of these iconic landmarks were ever pointed out on our tour. In fact, we drove right past the Tsar’s Mosque without a mention. Our tour didn’t begin until we drove past the first noticeable war scar. The residents of Sarajevo know what sells, and it isn’t the offbeat architecture of the Holiday Inn. Instead of seeing the corner where Franz Ferdinand was shot, we saw the graveyard from where the first shot of the war was fired, killing a young girl. The only buildings we saw were ones that could barely stand and ones that had history relevant to our tour guide personally (as in, “my friends died there”). We walked through underground escape tunnels, saw a Bosnia rose (named for the flower like pattern grenade shrapnel makes upon impact), and learned about the demise of our tour guide’s loved ones. Our tour concluded with the answer to a question that had been on my mind since I arrived: the city of Sarajevo is full of stray puppies and kittens, yet I never once saw a dog or cat. It was as if the young animals had found the fountain of youth buried beneath the crumbling architecture of the city. Upon asking our guide, we learned that these puppies and kittens weren’t successful little Ponce de Leon’s, they were living metal detectors—animals that, once heavy enough, would set off any undiscovered landmines. A guided tour through Sarajevo is not an uplifting experience. It seems hard for the guides to extol the positive aspects of their beautiful city. Looking at the handful of new office buildings and the plethora of street vendors selling t-shirts emblazoned with logos from the 1984 Winter Olympics, one could surmise that Sarajevo is on the up and up, but the people there are not quite experiencing the same rise as the infrastructure. One thing has been on their minds for over 10 years and the deep scars it left can be seen everywhere: from the Bosnia roses to the crippled men, women, and children on the street to the numerous mass graves and all the way to the macabre tours they give. Bosnia is still bleeding.

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