Well, this is my first real time with access to the internet since arriving in the Balkans on 26 May. I flew into the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia (pictured left) which borders Bosnia-Herzegovina and is located on the beautiful Adriatic Sea. My friend, Matthew Parish (a friend I met in DC, as many of you know), and I had a beautiful room atop a mountain overlooking the old town of Dubrovnik and the sea. Breathtaking view, to say the least. I have taken tons of photos but because I lost my camera usb cord and haven't replaced it yet, I cannot upload any here....anyhow, we spent most of our time walking around the walled city, swimming in the clear water, having some beer, and relaxing. We drove back to Bosnia on Sunday the 28th and, let me tell you, it was one hell of a scary drive along the small roads curving in and out of the mountains--not to mention, the road signs were few and far between and when they did appear, were in cyrillic. I knew this region was mountainous, but nothing like this! It was also strange to see all of the destruction from the shelling and fighting from the war, which is visble everywhere. Sarajevo has a really neat old town, which I live very near to. It's clearly a mixture of Eastern and Western worlds with churches, mosques, and synagogues all around. The setup of the market area is several hundreds of years old, not changing much since. The buildings in the city are generally drab and evidence of war is overwhelmingly present here. I found myself quite distracted by it when I first arrived trying to imagine what it must have been like to be here during that time...you can see the effects of the experience on the faces of the older people here and the younger people seem to be resilient even though they too were subject to the conflict--I am sure they are more hopeful for a stable political future, but they also don't hold onto the prejudices to the extent of those in the older generations. Some of the nationalist political parties encouraging prejudices and seperatism does not help either.
If you didn't know, the majority of the population here in Sarajevo is Muslim but having said that erase the stereotypes from your mind because that isn't the case here. Muslims, Christians, and the Orthodox people here in Sarajevo are generally not practicing. Only a small minority of the Muslim women wear head scarves and most everyone drinks alcohol, which if you were a strict practicing Muslim, would not do. Intermixing, at least here in the city, is quite normal. As in the rural parts of the U.S. where you tend to find many more of the hardcore religious people who do not have as much exposure, if any, to other cultures as you get in say NYC or DC, the same holds true for the rural people here--they are generally more close-minded and prejudiced. It is unfortunate, though, that these groups acted upon their prejudices more so here which led to the war (upon strong encouragement from people like Milosevic). Furthermore, without proper functioning institutions, one of the main things I am working on improving during my internship, corruption is very present. You do everything through family and friend connections because you will either have to wait forever to get anything done through official channels or have to pay some kind of bribe. The 'rule of law' is something which most of the internationals here are working on developing...
Well, that was just a blurb of what's been going on in general. Arno is visiting me in two weeks so I will get to spend some time with him in Dubrovnik, hopefully taking a boat to one of the many nearby islands, before returning together to Sarajevo. Looking forward to it!! Take care everyone.
For some more info and photos of Sarajevo check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo
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