Sarajevo

Shut up, you’re in Dubrovnik. I don’t hear you.

The beautiful Olympic stadium became a cemetery after they burned the Rings...

I don't know but the ruins of the abandoned Winter Olympics venues are morbidly interesting.

Beautiful land, inhabited by horrible people.

Full of "ethnic cleansing" bigots who slaughtered their fellow countrymen.

Steer clear of that place.

That ethnic cleansing war claimed the lives of 140,000 people.

Why would anyone ever want to go there?

I had a lousy time there. Wish I'd stayed away.

Yes, an interesting city because of the abundance of tragic history. Everyone is friendly. I would also suggest the city of Mostar with it's iconic bridge.

Mostar is more Muslim, so the dynamic mix of religion and people is fascinating in a good way.

Nothing good has ever come out of the Balkan Peninsula.

They started World War I, and they have always had a bloody history.

Most of ethnic cleansing and sieging in Sarajevo was done by the Serbs and they all left the city after the war and moved to a newly established one nearby, called "East Sarajevo" (which lies in the other autonomous entity of Bosnia, Republika Srpska). Of course Bosnians and Croatians also did plenty of shitty things during the war there (it was Croats who destroyed that famous bridge in Mostar).

[quote] Nothing good has ever come out of the Balkan Peninsula.

Nikola Tesla disagrees.

R5, maybe because the people of Sarajevo were the victims and not the perpetrators?

I had Serbo Croation relatives (via my grandmother) and I can tell you that they are crazy! They’ve since passed away. They can be fierce and combative; most of my relatives were. They’re hot tempered and they cling to negativity.

My grandmother often said “you cannot keep Serb down.” She said they’ve been fighting so long, over the centuries, with various people, that they even forgot what the fighting was all about. They turn holding a grudge into an art form. It’s in the DNA, my own included. I see these traits in myself and I try to temper them. I lose it when I see and hear Donald Trump.

It's a beautiful but scarred city.

The Balkans area is crazy but the ethnic tensions there still seem mild if you compare them to the one in the Caucasus region.

And you'd be surprised how well most Serbs and Bosniaks get along today...Well, at least until they start discussing the political issues.

[italic] The Cellist of Sarajevo [/italic] is a rather gripping novel about the city while it was under siege. Sad but beautifully written.

I remember watching a gay movie called Go West about a Bosnian and a Serb couple during the war.

Are Balkanites as crazy as they are on the internet?

R17, yes, they are.

R17, I don't know if I've ever noticed them being particularly crazy on the internet. I do think it was a terrible idea to lump all of these various ethnicities together -- with all of their grievances and simmering tensions against one another -- into a pan-Slavic republic.

It looks pretty.

The food looks very meat-heavy.

[quote] The food looks very meat-heavy.

Perfect for savages.

If you can you must visit a live performance of their "sevdah" music. It's often nicknamed "Fado of the Balkans".

Mostar's bridge is a weird low-rent tourist trap and the surrounding country is very poor -- masses of people are trying to emigrate. Angry references to the war creep into what start as innocuous conversations. Not a happy region.

It seems they have an abundance of cafes serving this style of coffee.

The Mostar bridge is amazing if you have a view as the sunsets. There is a nearby club with a line of attractive men outside. But, we did not take a chance and join the line. Too bad

Sarajevo is an absolutely fantastic city. There are some wonderful museums popping up; the Tunnel Museum and a trip out to the bobsled track are absolute musts. Checking out the graffiti while walking down the tracking was one of my favorite things in the Balkans.

The people are very friendly and there’s a great vegetarian restaurant there- the first in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The city is in sections- the old town or Muslim section, the Austro-Hungarian section is next, followed by the Yugoslav/Tito section and finally the modern financial district. You can walk down the main drag by the river and watch the architecture change through the time periods.

Great stuff.

I'd skip it in favor of Dubrovnik. You'll be safer.

i was in Mostar, which is beautiful. I regret not going on to Sarajevo.

Sarajevo was a unique mix of Croatian, Serbian, Muslim and Jewish cultures. The Civil War destroyed all of it. Now it's just another decaying Muslim town.

Prettier than Belgrade?

Serbs caused much of the disaster that shook Europe in WWI.

There was a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century, no need to go into details, but the Russians were really worried that the Austria-Hungary would intervene to fuck Russia's shit up. The Russians got the Austrians to agree that they would not get involved in the war if the Russians gave the Austrians Bosnia-Herzigovina once they had conquered it from the Ottomans. The Austrians agreed.

This infuriated the Serbs. They had established their own independence from the Ottomans at the end of that very same war, but had been planning for independence well before that, and they had big plans to incorporate Bosnia into their new country. So they immediately turned their sights on Bosnia-Herzigovina, which as you'll remember was given to Austria-Hungary. Bosnia must not be in the power of the Austrians!!! Bosnia must be Serb! That sort of shit. They encouraged and funded Bosnian Serb movements to fight Austrian rule.

It was a Serb nationalist in Bosnia who murdered the Archduke Ferdinand in July of 1914, which pushed the first domino that ultimately ended with WWI, which killed something like 18 million people, destroyed the old order, gave us world war II in its wake, which was vastly worse that WWI, and then, the deeply fucked up world we live in today.

So if you go to Sarajevo, find a Serb and kick him. The world will thank you for it.

R32 has a highly blinkered view of Balkan history. You might as well state that if it wasn't for 800 years of Muslim invasion, conquest, and occupation, WWI & II would never have happened.

r33 sees the whole world through his poisonous, bigoted islamophobia, and if anyone doesn't hate people for their religion the same way r33 does, that person must be "blinkered."

WWI would happen sooner or later even without the Sarajevo assasination. Europe was reaching a boiling point and the countries were just looking for an excuse to attack each other over the colonies.

It's a soulful little city, with good restuarants, bars, cafes etc and, as others have said, a fascinating mix of architecture, history, cultures etc. Yes, like much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans it has it's 'issues', but the people are friendly and for what is now a largely Muslim city it is very secular- bars abound. I recall sitting in a park and from one direction came the call to prayer and from the other the music emanating from a jazz club. And don't let anyone tell you it's unsafe these days - it's not. Well worth a visit.

Bosnia and Albania are by far the most liberal muslim countries in the world (Albania even more so, since most Albanian muslims aren't even circumcised). But you can still see women wearing headscarves in Sarajevo these days - people who visited the city during the Yugoslav era say there wasn't a single headscarf in sight.

Serbia looks beautiful and I find the men attractive. Unfortunately, I have a Serbian-American friend (born in Serbia and gay) who tells me not to go there. That's a shame, but as he's somebody whose opinion I trust, I'll take his word for it.

R38 They're currently commemorating the 20th anniversary of 1999 NATO bombings in Serbia so now's probably not the right time for an American to go there anyway.

Everybody smokes there.

Ratchet AF.