Mosques, madrasas and public conveniences

Saturday 19^th May.

Today we had to fit in all Sarajevo’s history and a wedding in Windsor. Off we went to the front of the cathedral to meet Ennis who was our guide for the fr walking tour of the city. First fact was while indeed it was a free tour he would be expecting tips from us and suggested €5 minimum as he said this wasn’t even a beer where we hailed from Sweden, France, and Canada as well as us plus 1 other from the UK. He then launched into a brief history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The locals call it the Jerusalem of Europe as it has Jews, Muslims and Christians all happily co-habiting the city since the middle ages with the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain during the inquisition. Islam arrived with the Ottomans and of course it was the meeting point in Europe with the influence of the Orthodox from Greece and the Catholics from Rome. We were able to see a synagogue, the R.C. cathedral, Orthodox Churches and Mosques all within a few hundred metres of each other. While the Yugoslav war of the nineties was described as ethnic differences the combatants were in fact all of Slavic origin and the division was in Religion, although it was largely a tick box exercise possibly similar to Northern Ireland. A simplified view was Serbs = Orthodox, Croats = Catholic and Bosnians = Muslim but then they all stuck together in the siege of Sarajevo. Back to the walking tour we visited the old synagogue which now houses a museum and an ancient book, a 13^th century Haggadah which was saved by a Muslim man when the city was invaded by the Nazi’s in WWII. The main Mosque was built by the 2^nd Ottoman governor of Bosnia completed in the 16^th century. Before the Mosque was built a public ablutions and toilets were constructed, the first in Europe to quote Ennis Islam promotes good personal hygiene and the workers would need somewhere to piss. The Mosque has a clock tower with a lunar clock where 12 o’clock equals sunset. Gazi-Husrevbey the benefactor also built a library, hamam and a madrassa. The next stop on our tour was the site of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia by a 20 year old Croat, this completed our journey from the end point (Ypres) to the beginning of WWI. Around the city we also saw “blood spots” representing the site of deaths during the siege with the names of those who died at that place inscribed on a plaque nearby. Ennis filled us in with as much detail as possible in 2 hours possibly a slight bias here and there but surprisingly he was a big fan of Marshall Tito and considers the current government corrupt and idiots.

Our next task was to find a café with good enough band width for Liz to watch the Royal Wedding. Coffee bars are everywhere again but bars selling alcohol are scarce on the ground. We have found throughout the south east Balkans that smoking is still very much the norm and especially in Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia the waiter will bring an ash tray before the menu and taking your order. Apart from smoking and coffee the other apparent “vice” is ice cream and Liz is pleased with herself that she manged to forgo this to a large extent and avoid ending up as Michelin Woman. I missed my beer but such abstinence does not see to have had much effect on my waist line. After the Royal Wedding we went to visit some of the museums and site that we had been shown that morning but unfortunately by that time many had closed. We had especially wanted to visit the tunnel which had been constructed during the 1990’s siege to allow supplies to reach the city centre. Again, we had left it to late and instead visited the Neo Moorish pile that is the city hall where we had 25 minutes to look at the exhibition of modern Bosnian History before it closed. We had hoped to see the flash and hear the cannon fire that signals sun down during Ramadan fired from the yellow fort on the hill but I missed it and Liz saw a very brief flash.

We stayed in a different bed and breakfast hotel in a very small bed but less then 200 yards from the old city next to the city hall.

Sunday 21^st May.

It was Zagreb or bust today. There was less dramatic scenery on this leg of our journey and a fair amount of motorway. At the border between Bosnia and Croatia it was much more protracted as we were entering the EU and queuing took over an hour. We made Zagreb by early evening. Our Camper Stop book found us a large car park just off the city centre but on arrival there we found a travelling fun fair installed and while there was room to park u p I didn’t think it would lead to a peaceful night or security of the camper if we left it to go into the city. So we moved onto a proper camp site by the Lake Jezro just outside Zagreb and the citizens summer recreation ground. We parked on the shores of the lake next to the restaurant and bar which sold alcohol.