A Long, Hard Day

Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016--Belgrade to Sarajevo

Wes got up at 4:45, and I got up with him, since I couldn't go back to sleep.  He left at 5:20 to catch his bus to the airport.  I remained at the apartment showering, shaving, packing, and cleaning the place up some. 

The mini-van picked me up at 7:00.  I was the first passenger.  Then we wandered all over the city picking up others.  At one place, the people weren't ready, and he just left without them, called his office, and got the location for another address for riders.  It was 9:00 before we ever started leaving Belgrade!

Although Belgrade and Sarajevo are only a bit further apart than Corpus Christi and San Antonio, we didn't arrive at my location until 15:00--8 hours after I was picked up and 6 hours after we finally left town.  I was so tired of traveling.

The trip was made worse by the fact that Bosnia does not have an expressway coming from Belgrade to here.  It is a two-lane road through mountains almost all the way.  There are never any climbing lanes or passing lanes.  Instead, cars just creep behind overly-loaded, double-wagon trucks, behind farmers on tractors, etc.  And twice, there were road construction crews stopping us as they repaired the highway. 

All that said, the country is beautiful with its green and sometimes rocky mountains and its narrow valleys.  And Sarajevo is nice, too.  Both the land and the city are so different from where I have been so far on this trip.

It is an area where East meets West literally in terms of religion.  As soon as we crossed the border, I noticed that towns started having mosques and churches.  Eventually, some towns had only a mosque.  But in most of Bosnia, there are both churches and mosques.  Tonight, as I walked through the center of Sarajevo with church bells ringing and the imam's calling Muslims to prayers at the same time so that they seemed to be competing with each other.

It's amazing that anything is happening here involving both Christians and Muslims.  They had a major war here in the 1990s that was based on religious intolerance.   Sarajevo is another city with many buildings having bullet holes showing today.  Yet Christians and Muslims are mingling everywhere today without any evident problems.  As I walked down the main pedestrian shopping street this afternoon and into the Old Town which was the main shopping area when the Ottoman's occupied the city and still has that eastern look and feel although everyone goes there, I saw women in skimpy clothing side-by-side with women in full, head-to-toe black burkas.

My apartment here, Simple and smart, is nice.  However, it's on the 5th floor of a building with no elevator, so I will be getting my exercise while here!  It's right downtown with a nice view toward the mountains.

I am tired from getting up early and traveling so long.  (That ride was as long as a trans-continental air flight!).  I am going to bed early in order to be fresh tomorrow.