Sarajevo

Where to even start?!!!

I have been in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina for the past five weeks volunteering at a hostel and it has been such a fun, interesting, fulfilling, wonderful experience.

Since traveling I have become a lot more aware of the tourism industry and got the idea that running a hostel might be something I would really enjoy and succeed at. I searched for Workaway listings from hostels needing volunteers to see and ended up at Hostel Kucha (Kucha means “home”) in Sarajevo. My main task was cleaning — making beds, cleaning bathrooms and the kitchen, vacuuming, mopping, doing laundry, etc. I also did some reception tasks and spent a lot of time talking with guests. My goal in volunteering was to get some hands-on experience and see if hostel work is as fun as I thought it was. I feel really successful, happy, and excited while doing hostel work (at least at this hostel), so my current goal is to travel around while volunteering at hostels once I graduate next year.

I love introducing myself to new guests and making them feel comfortable and welcomed. I love when I offer them a glass of water and they say yes. I love when guests are having such a great time that they extend their stay. I love when people ask me for advice on where to go in Sarajevo and I get to tell them about my favorite restaurant, Avlija.

The day I discovered Avlija, I went there for both lunch and dinner. From the street, the restaurant is entirely hidden except for a small window that provides a glimpse of something magical. I have gone to Avlija eight times during my five weeks in Sarajevo, and taken many different groups of people from the hostel there. Recently I have been trying to eat more vegan, but before I began taking this goal more seriously I particularly enjoyed Avlija’s bread bowl with meatballs in the most indescribable, delicious cream sauce. Since trying to make vegan choices, I order their blended vegetable soup and colorful seasonal salad…and sometimes this one red wine from Montenegro.

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One of the most exciting cultural exchanges I experienced was when three men from Oman stayed at the hostel. They were ages 25, 36 and 40, and the older two had never been out of Oman before. It was particularly cool to realize that I understood quite a few of the Arabic words they were speaking due to the similarities between Arabic and Hebrew.

They shared their coffee with me, and explained that, in Oman, they eat dates with their coffee. They were so excited when I showed them the dates I had bought from the shop next door, although apparently my dates were “not very good” compared to the ones they grow at home. The 40-year-old didn’t speak very much English, but he asked if I was traveling alone. When I said yes, he widened his eyes and enthusiastically flexed his bicep while saying something in Arabic. “He said you’re a strong woman,” the 25-year-old translated.

Bosnia, like the rest of the Balkans, has a complex and traumatic history that we are somehow not taught in schools. I honestly knew nothing about the Bosnian war before coming here, but quickly became fascinated by how recent and devastating this war was, and how omnipresent its collective emotional and physical consequences are. Cemeteries are scattered throughout the city, and it chills you to see how the vast majority of gravestones mark the year of death as sometime between 1992 and 1996.

It was a new and extremely impactful experience for me to visit a museum where I learned about the horrific atrocities done to Bosniacs (the Muslim ethnic group in Bosnia), and then to leave the museum and that pretty much everyone around me (over the age of 26 or so) has lived through the unimaginable genocide I just saw graphic images, photographs, and stories of. Everyone around me who is younger than 26ish undoubtedly feels the effects of intergenerational trauma. It stood out to me how desperate and dedicated survivors of the war are to find and properly bury the remains of their missing family members. When I stand on the street, I wonder how many people around me have had to identify their beloveds by a shirt or a pair of shoes…or are still waiting to find their missing loved ones.

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On Trebević mountain, there is an abandoned bobsled track from when Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984.

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I went with these three German guys, and I thought it was funny (and impressive) how thoroughly they were applying their sunscreen.

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I always loved walking by this music school and hearing students practicing their instruments:

Speaking of beautiful noises, you can hear all of the Imams (Muslim prayer leaders) chanting from their Minarets (Mosque towers) for prayer five times a day. I love when you can hear different ones from all over the city, like in this video:

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Kino (meaning cinema) Bosna is a bar that used to be a cinema. Every Monday night they have live Bosnian music. The woman next to me in the photo (I think she might be the owner) gave us all a bunch of homeade rakija (Balkan fruit spirit).

She showed me a picture from her phone of how she makes it!!!

In the Hostel

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Sarajevo Pride

I feel SO lucky that I was able to attend Sarajevo’s third annual pride parade. Considering that the only other pride festival I’ve been to is the one in San Francisco, I was really curious to see what pride is like in a place like Bosnia. Semina (my coworker) said that after she posted a picture of the pride march, five people unfollowed her on Instagram, which is less than she expected.