Peace Signs in Sarajevo
After the War, the Capital Rises From the Ruins

By Alex Crevar
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, March 26, 2006

As darkness fell and a celebratory throng of Bosnians sandwiched in on me from every direction, I had a delightful realization: This was not the Sarajevo I'd known when I'd lived here seven years earlier.

In the Sarajevo of the late 1990s, the effects of war -- the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 to '95, and the ravaging effect it had on its victims -- were still highly visible. But on this summer night, as the masses swarmed toward a stage recently assembled for an outdoor concert featuring a folksy balladeer named Dorde Balasevic (imagine a Slavic Bob Dylan), they were giddy. It was not the giddiness of little girls and daisy fields (no matter how happy, Balkan people are typically an emotionally charged clan), but there was gaiety in the air -- as if the survivors of a great storm were finally all together . . . and dry.

After a few minutes of crowd surfing, I climbed to a better vantage point above the town that was recently honored as the 2006 European Region of the Year by the Council of Europe, the continent's oldest political organization. On a grassy hill next to Sarajevo's Alifakovac graveyard -- an Ottoman-era Muslim necropolis reserved for foreigners buried in the Bosnian capital -- I sat near an ancient cobbled walk, looking down on the city center and drinking a can of locally brewed beer. A plump moon waxed through willowy branches and across obelisk-shaped Muslim headstones, many of them topped with stone turbans and inscribed in Arabic.

Below, on a bridge connecting the town's Turkish quarter, Bascarsija, to the concert stage on the opposite side of the Miljacka River, people were still arriving. They sat on a waist-high stone wall that frames the river and bisects the town. They encased the restaurant patio of left-bank favorite Inat Kuca, a three-story stucco with handsome wooden trim and decorated with intricately patterned wool rugs. They crammed around the National Library, which is still eerily beautiful despite being riddled with bomb scars and being boarded up since the siege that lasted more than three years and took more than 10,000 Bosnian lives. And they lined the streets, cradled in the foothills of the Dinaric Alps, and sang along with songs that reminded them of hope during the war that ended in 1995 and gained them their independence from Yugoslavia, where Bosnia-Herzegovina was once one of six member republics.

Even to the casual observer, the scene was surreal at best. For many, Sarajevo is synonymous with a suffering that seemed impossible in today's Europe. During the Balkan war, religion and nationality spiraled into a genocidal rampage resulting in neighbor-vs.-neighbor fighting and Nazi-like massacres. Still, as Balasevic led his fans into another melody, it was easy to forget about all of that. It was much better to enjoy the sight of Bosnians hooking arms and enjoying life.

The word most often heard from visitors about Sarajevo is "hospitable." After the concert, I walked the city streets, chatting with shop owners selling copper coffee sets and wooden crafts in Old Town, which Ottoman Turks founded in the 15th century. I wondered how a population so recently torn apart by hate could be so warm and inviting. Everywhere I stopped, I was beseeched to stay and share strong Bosnian (Turkish) coffee or something stronger. Who was I to refuse?

Region of the Year

The town that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics and where the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 precipitated World War I is again under foreign attack. This time, though, the invaders are tourists, and they are coming not merely as thrill seekers in a plundered land. They've come to delight in the cultural riches here. According to Sarajevo's tourism office, the number of visitors was up 40 percent in 2004 alone. By any standard, that statistic marks the turning of a corner for a place once known for bloodshed.

"I felt that the atmosphere in Sarajevo was filled with positivity and warmth," said Hollie Stephen, a recent visitor from the United Kingdom. "The streets at night are filled with people promenading, and the sundown call to prayer from the mosques adds an extra buzz to the soul of the city. . . . It's bustling with life, and you come away feeling like you've been included by the people of Sarajevo."

This is exactly the kind of attitude that Sarajevo's 2006 European Region of the Year recognition hopes to perpetuate. The Council of Europe's goals for the award are "to increase knowledge and recognition of European regional affairs, to make new contributions to regional construction and European integration and, finally, to project the regions designated as European Region of the Year onto the European and international scene, in all their aspects, such as the social, cultural, economic and tourism aspects." Last year's recipients were Ukraine's Kiev and Italy's Piedmont.

From the perspective of tourism, Sarajevo (population 400,000) already seems well on the way to selling itself to visitors hungry for novel destinations in the so-called New Europe.

"Part of the healing process [for Sarajevo] is people coming back as guests and not aid workers," says Tim Clancy. A Bosnian resident since 1992, the U.S.-born Clancy is the author of the book "A Guided Journey Through Sarajevo and the Surrounding Areas" and co-founder of the environmentally focused Green Visions, which leads ecotourism adventures around the country. Clancy says that Sarajevo -- host of such events as the Film Festival in August, the Jazzfest in November and Sarajevo Winter in February and March -- is becoming more popular all the time. "People are coming back for many reasons: curiosity -- to see what it's like 10 years after the war -- and because Sarajevo is still exotic . . . a taste of moderate Islam in Europe."

The next day, just as the rain clouds began to separate and the sun started to burn off a dramatic mist hanging above Stari Grad (Old Town), my tour guide, Amela Muhic , stopped abruptly and said, "This is the exact spot where East meets West." Standing under the stone clock tower, which helps remind Muslims of prayer times -- along with chanting that reverberates through town five times a day -- I looked up and around at the architecture: a hybrid of pastel secessionist townhouses with ornate facades of floral molding, and Oriental domes and minarets woven together with the occasional scars of a mortar explosion along a pedestrian promenade.

"Yes," I said absent-mindedly, still looking up. "No," she said, "here." I looked down at the spot where she was pointing with the toe of one of her sparkly slippers. "This exact spot, where the smooth stone sidewalk meets the cobblestones . . . this is where the Austro-Hungarian Empire meets the Ottoman Empire."

I looked east, down the cobblestone walkway that is the foundation of Bascarsija, highlighted at one end by the Gazi Husrev Begova Mosque and at the other by the main public fountain in Sebilj Square (colloquially called Pigeon Square). Between the two is a fusion of aromatic sweets shops, spice stores, cafes selling scented tobacco in hookahs, side streets loaded with meticulously crafted wares (almost anything made from metal, leather, wood or textiles, as well as famous Bosnian carpets), and blocks of hole-in-the-wall restaurants serving the local favorite, cevapi -- lamb sausages served with onions and pita.

To the west, I followed the smooth stones and clean Austrian lines of Ferhadija Street, which extends from the edge of Bascarsija to the eternal flame commemorating World War II. It supports a more upscale set of boutiques, coffee houses and bistros, with tables full of Bosnians spilling jovially into the street. There were also plenty of chic, young, strutting Sarajevans. "That is the catwalk," Muhic said pointing down Ferhadija. "Girls walk up and down to be seen in the latest styles. But they stop when they get to the cobblestones. Have you ever tried to look graceful while walking in high heels down a cobblestone street?"

Beyond just a place to people-watch, though, this multi-empire avenue is the spine of the city center's fish-bone layout, with galleries and museums such as the Old Serbian Orthodox Museum, the Jewish Museum and the National Gallery, featuring featuring pieces by Bosnian and Yugoslavian artists as well as contemporary Bosnian works. But maybe most important, according to my guide, the area is the source of seemingly endless open-mindedness. Renowned in centuries past for its liberal attitude toward people of all religions, Sarajevo has been called the European Jerusalem because Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews all have centers of worship within walking distance of one another. "In an area of just a few hundred square meters, you have all four of the world's biggest religions," Muhic said, and then she paused for a long moment. "And still today, in spite of everything, there's so much tolerance. It is impossible to forget, but you have to go on."

Later I stopped in at Cevabdzinica Hodzic, a classic Old Town cevapi joint in sight of Pigeon Square. Hodzic is the best of both worlds. It's efficiently refined the art of serving the mouthwatering grilled sausages and raw onions that permeate the air throughout Bascarsija. And it's the kind of place where you feel instantly that you've entered a locals' hangout. As I sat and mulled over my day in Sarajevo, I munched on cevapi and pita while sitting next to businessmen in dark, Italian-cut suits stopping by for a quick bite and earphone-clad teenagers text-messaging from their mobile phones.Then I headed due south across the river to Sarajevska Pivara (Sarajevo Brewery), a recently renovated beer hall that boasts some of the region's best brews, and enjoyed a tamno pivo (dark beer).

Pieces of War

There was a crisp autumnal breeze in the air when I boarded a city tour bus the next morning. If my outing with Muhic had been a micro exploration, this one, with panoramic vistas of Sarajevo, promised to be macro -- with one big exception: the Tunnel Museum.

As our bus rumbled toward what had been the war's front line -- the site of Sarajevo's former Olympic Village -- we learned that nearly every structural memory of the '84 Games had been destroyed and that the Olympic stadium now serves as a mass graveyard. The closer we rolled, the more agitated our guide, Sunni Lagum, seemed to get. "The former Olympic towns gave us money to help rebuild after the war," Lagum said and flashed a sardonic smile. "But when we made a bid for the 2010 Games, they didn't want to give it to us."

The bus stopped near the entrance of the Tunnel Museum, and we marched down a dirt road to a family's house that had served as the only gateway to the world outside the city for Bosnians during most of the war. The house was still bullet-pocked. Inside, we watched a film that explained that the tunnel -- which burrowed from the house, under Sarajevo's airport, and to safe ground on the other side -- took four months and four days to dig, using picks and shovels. Dank and dripping, it was about 2,500 feet long, 15 feet below ground and five feet high. We walked single file through the 75 feet of the tunnel that remained.

On the other end, I blinked in the sunlight and tried to imagine myself as one of the 4,000 people who had passed through daily -- often loaded with 100 pounds of food on their backs to feed their families for weeks and months at a time, or behind a caravan of carts full of humanitarian aid or ammunition. I was told that about 2 million trips had been made through the passage without a casualty.

As we left the museum, I looked back at the simple metal hatch that provided access to the tunnel and realized that between 1993 and 1995, this was the door to the imprisoned city. When that door was closed, it meant 300,000 people were shut off from the world. A supreme price had been paid for the fun I was having in Sarajevo.

Back in the city center, as dusk fell, I made my way to Jez, a restaurant and club, for a meal of local trout in garlic sauce. Afterward, I headed around the corner to the City Pub, where hipster expats and Bosnians were sauntering in. The evening was just beginning to pop. But before I went into the bar, I paid a visit to Alan Salihagic, the owner of Bascarsija Pansion in the heart of the Turkish quarter's shops and restaurants. Salihagic is never at a loss for things to say about his hometown -- either its past or its blossoming future.

"Sarajevo is returning," Salihagic said between greeting his guests. "We are getting back what people tried to take away. And even after all of this, I've never met people as welcoming as Bosnians. Their attitude is that we were together and we will be together again. We have been part of many empires and now we have freedom . . . and, I hope, peace."

Alex Crevar, a freelance journalist who covers the Balkans, lives in Sarajevo. He will be online to discuss this story Monday at 2 p.m. during the Travel section's chat.