The trip keeps flying by and I’ve gotten behind on my blogging once again so welcome to another edition of bus blogging. I’m writing on our drive from Sarajevo to Mostar. I’m sad to be leaving Sarajevo already – I definitely would’ve liked to spend more than five days here. I suppose I should start about two days ago, July 25th. Bright and early we piled onto the bus yet again but this time for a much shorter ride. Less than a half an hour later (much different than most of our bus rides!) we found ourselves at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a chilly and drizzly day so we hustled inside and through security. There we had our first of what would be several interesting talks over the next couple days. We spoke with a court official who gave us a great introduction to the work of the court and how it fits in to the broader narrative of the region. This court deals primarily with War and Organized Crimes and is one of the few that continues to use international judges. Their work is largely an extension of the work done by the ITCY – which is part of the reason international judges have been mandated. Later, we also got to speak with two of the international judges, both Americans with NU ties, Judge Weiner and Judge Whalen. I really liked hearing their viewpoints and found the presentations more free flowing than some we’d heard. I’m not sure if this is because they were not politicians or representing a specific ethnicity or cause – they don’t really have a horse in this race one could say, or if it was the simple fact that they were native English speakers and Americans (Judge Weiner even had a Boston accent which reminded me and a couple others strongly of home). The judges helped us grasp some of the intricacies of Bosnia’s hybrid justice system. In Bosnia, in this particular court since Bosnia has 4 criminal codes, there is a combination of the common law/adversarial system and the civil or inquisitor system that most of Europe uses. Bosnia has not always had a common law type system and this in itself is presenting several challenges. In addition to general opposition from some in the legal system to the change, no one knows how to work in this system yet. Even the basic things we take for granted in the US, like knowing rules of evidence, or writing out an opinion explaining why a ruling was made a certain way and what the findings were, were unheard of in the old system. Unfortunately we ran out of time to talk to the judges but with a promise to pick up the conversation later, over dinner we headed back out into what had become a very pleasant day and back to towards the hotel for our next meeting. First though, some of us stopped back at a donor kebab place we’d found a few days before. Later in the afternoon, we spoke to a Bosniak who shared his story of fighting in the siege for Sarajevo. It was interesting to hear how the Bosnian army slowly came together after starting out as mostly small groups that were largely disorganized. After the talk we took advantage of the fact that it was not raining and headed out into old town, which is just a quick walk down a steep cobblestone hill. There we spent the next couple hours wandering the area and picking up some souvenirs. Generally the area we were in had a highly visible and large Turkish influence. It was the first such area I’d been in and I’ve definitely found myself liking it. During our wanderings a few of us had a great conversation with a man who ran one of the little stalls. (Old town is full of little stalls and shops; emphasis on the little, usually only 3 people can crowd in at a time) We’d asked him about the prevalence of Arabic spoken in Sarajevo which led to one of the most interesting conversations of the week, if not the trip. The man went on to explain that it is spoken but isn’t entirely prevalent. He had actually gotten into a heated discussion the other day with another local over this. He greets people at his stall with a friendly Hello. However, the other offended that he did not use the traditional Muslim greeting & response. Our shopkeeper is a Muslim, but was quick to explain that he was not super religious and that religious/ethnic identities had been heightened by the war. The shopkeeper explained that even though he is a Muslim, he recognizes that not everyone is. He sees no need to greet everyone with a religiously based greeting. Instead, he prefers hello, something distinctly Bosnian. A few hours later we were off to dinner. Judge Weiner showed us a great old brewery that still works as a brewery and restaurant today. During the war it was heavily bombed because water supplies were kept underneath it. That night however, it was just a source of excellent food and good conversation. Everyone’s gotten much better at ordering here, reading the menus in both Serbian and English, and generally knowing what good. Personally I’m a fan of the парадајз салата, tomato salad which here is slices or wedges of tomato with some onions, arranged on a plate, and shopska which is tomatoes, cucumbers with local cheese. The foods’ definitely grown on me. Regardless, after dinner, the Judge took ous on a little walk through Sarajevo, showing us the Latin bridge and we stood on the corner where Franz Ferdinand was shot (yes I minorly geeked out). We wound our way through the pedestrian area and it was great to get a personal tour from someone who lives in the city. As it started to rain, we wound our way back to the hotel – all together a successful day.
Before I talk about yesterday I just want to pause for a second. I’m looking out the window while I type because it’ll keep me from possibly getting carsick but more importantly because it’s beautiful out. Sarajevo is especially so. The city is nestled between several mountains. These mountains today provide a beautiful landscape but not so long ago, the city was shelled from positions in those hills. We’re outside the city now but the huge mountains covered in uninterrupted green continue to impress me. The city itself was beautiful. SA reasonably large amount of the old architecture had survived so the influences of the Austrian Hungarian architecture can be seen. There are beautiful mosques all over the place and the air is dotted with the call to prayer several times a day. It’s beautiful in an old way that I haven’t seen much of here. It’s odd to think that at this point the trip is nearly over and that soon, I won’t see places like this every day and I’ll be left with my memories and pictures that don’t nearly begin to capture the beauty here. I’m not sure how I’ll describe it to people back home but I’ll miss it for sure.
Alright, back to the schedule. Yesterday we visited Parliament!!!! Some on the trip are less of a fan of these type of trips because we talk to politicians and politicians are somewhat similar in every country, including our own, in that they don’t really like to give straight answer to anything. That is so not the case for me and I loved this trip. Be started out with an intro into the institution. Going over the basics of what each house was (House of Representatives and House of the Peoples), how many members they had (42 &15), how they functioned, etc was helpful because it highlights some of the issues the government has and gives a better understating of how the country functions in general. An example of problems the government runs into can be seen with the Presidency of Each chamber and the House of the Peoples as a whole. There are constitutionally mandated quotas for representations amongst the ethnic groups, Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs, to theoretically force a more multiethnic government and society. However, mandating this in the constitution presents a problem. There is no provisions for ‘others’ which is a huge issue in my personal opinion. Therefore, in addition to dealing with the issue that most political parties are based along ethnic lines, you also have to deal with the issue that if one identifies as a Bosnian they cannot become president of either Chamber. This is a problem that is recognized by the Parliament but they have not yet been able to change the constitution to rectify it. To me, this a huge problem because I view the shaping of a Bosnian identity, rather than one base along ethnic lines, as a key part in Bsonia becoming a well functioning, multi-ethnic society and country. As part of our visit, we got to see each of the chambers used by Parliament. I’m not sure I can pick a best part of this (continued to geek out for most of the visit) but definitely up there was that we got to go into one of the chambers while it was IN USE! It wasn’t being used by the House of Representatives that it was intended for but instead by the ministry of justice for a meeting. Even though I couldn’t understand a word of what was said, it was still exciting to see how the government functioned. You can pick up a lot by just watching interactions of the people in the room. After a few minutes we went to the smaller room used by the House of Peoples. As it turns out this is where we would speak with several of the MPs. We actually sat in their sets for the talk. Unfortunately we’d left our bags with notebooks in another room prior to the tour and hadn’t had a chance to retrieve them prior to the talk. The MPs spoke about the need to change the constitution and for ethnic groups to work together. However they acknowledged that their optimistic view is not shared by all. There are some in the government who do not believe a united Bosnia can exist. I enjoy talking with politicians even though I know that not all of what they say is necessarily on the mark. I think that once you acknowledge that some to a lot of what they say will be political rhetoric and you’re going to have to read between the lines, there’s a lot being said. We had the afternoon off after paper writing after yet another kebab and trecking up the hill. That’s how the afternoon and early evening was spent, typing away with little but the click clack of keyboards disturbing the quiet. Oh wait, and the band practicing. We had a youth band staying out our hotel and they like to practice in the common areas at full volume. After a brief break to inhale some Indian delivery on our lovely balcony – apparel writing is tiring and at this point we go for whatever food is good, easy and reasonably cheap, local food isn’t a necessity every night – we went back to writing. Finally, we were done enough for the night and headed out into the cooling night to celebrate our last night in Sarajevo.
Today we had off and got to sleep in a bit. Checkout was at 10:30 and there was packing to be done but it was nice to have a lazy morning. With the rooms small size it seemed like our stuff was everywhere; even fully packed the room seemed crowded and full of stuff. Then, leaving the Hotel Hayat for the last time (despite is small size, lack of elevators, and funky design, Hotel Hayat had been good to us) we threw our stuff on the bus and headed off for one last Sarajevo wandering. After hitting up the museum where WW1 started and realizing it was really just one room on tangentially related things besides the gun it was back to old town. I spent the time wandering the pathways over and over in every which way; I kept going farther and father, getting myself half lost on purpose. This is my favorite way to get to know a city or any place at all, just wandering its streets and mixing with the people. After one last relaxing desert in a bakery, we piled back on the bus and here we are! I’m going to leave off for now and go back to strictly enjoying the scenery, I’ll post this with possibly some pictures when we get to Mostar for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment