Memories of Sarajevo
Sarajevo (Сарајево): My meandering journeys through Bosnia-Herzegovina’s storied capital
This summer, I spent 31 days volunteering with the College of William and Mary’s American-Bosnian Collaboration Project in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Project, the oldest international service trip at the College, began in 1998 when a visiting Bosnian scholar visited campus to teach a course about Yugoslavia’s political disintegration. In Williamsburg, he saw American students’ deep interest in teaching and learning in post-war Bosnia, which sparked interest in organizing a cross-cultural service project sponsored by university students in both countries. Since the initial exchange of American and Bosnian students 21 years ago, five students from the College have traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina every summer. Each June and July, five Americans teach alongside Bosnian co-teachers from the University of Sarajevo at a fully subsidized summer camp for young Sarajevans. Every year, the camp strives to bring Bosnians of different religious, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds together in an effort to improve intercultural communication, foster strong non-violent communication and conflict resolution habits, and provide meaningful opportunities for fun and personal growth.
This year, I was truly fortunate to be selected as one of the American co-teachers. I traveled to Sarajevo June 20 to teach English, ecological sustainability and cultural diversity using creative literature to an incredibly gifted group of 25 Bosnian children. Alongside my Bosnian co-teacher (and now my close friend) Alema Halilovic, I had the opportunity to explore Bosnia-Herzegovina’s vibrant, stunning and complex capital city for four weeks. This photo journal recounts the happy accidents I had the fortune to see in Sarajevo: these are some of the things that I didn’t plan on seeing, but that ended up becoming the memorable snapshots of my month in Eastern Europe.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
One day after work, Alema and I meandered out of the city centre towards Sarajevo’s older Austrian neighborhoods, a relic of Bosnia’s occupation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This building was especially impressive, with ornate decorative windows and elaborate stenciling along its structural foundations. We never did find out what was housed inside the building -- we were hurriedly venturing to our 2 p.m. reservation at Franz & Sophie, a tucked-away tea shop just a few blocks away, so we didn’t take a moment to check inside.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
When the Bosnian War died down in the late 1990s, Sarajevo immediately became home to several new construction projects, presumably to show the world that Bosnia-Herzegovina was on the mend. Among these is the Avaz Twist Tower -- the tallest skyscraper in the former Yugoslavia -- which is named for Dnevni avaz, a prominent Bosnian newspaper company. ‘AVAZ’ is emblazoned in red on the building’s top floor, as if the tower wasn’t recognizable enough without its company logo. Avaz stood a few kilometers from where I lived, and every morning it pierced through the foggy sunrise blanketing Sarajevo below, always looking a bit too tall, and slightly too imposing, for the humble neighborhoods surrounding it.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
Sarajevo’s Old Town, Baščaršija, is a captivating labyrinth of side streets, small mosques and meat pie joints. Before Bosnia became an Austro-Hungarian domain in 1878, it was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the city’s Turkish influences can be clearly seen in its architecture and cultural identity. Ottoman structures dot Sarajevo’s mountainous landscape, especially in the eastern parts of the city; the building pictured peripherally here at the end of the alleyway is Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, which was built in the 16th century and is one of Sarajevo’s most notable tourist destinations.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
During the Bosnian War, Sarajevo suffered the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare as it was bombarded and surrounded by Bosnian Serb separatist fighters from April 1992 to February 1996. While the city’s inhabitants dealt with miserable conditions for almost four years, the international community attempted to alleviate their suffering by airlifting in food and supplies. Unfortunately, much to Sarajevans’ chagrin, the food they received was largely pork-based. For a city primarily comprised of Muslims, pork was not an acceptable food source; but to make matters worse, much of the food was expired, and potentially harmful to consume. To thank the United States and its Western European allies for ‘helping’ during the conflict, Sarajevo erected this commemorative statue, which sits adjacent to a popular bar near the U.S. Embassy. It satirically reads: “Spomenik Meðunarodnoj Zajednici”, or “Monument to the International Community.”
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
I arrived in Sarajevo on a rainy Thursday morning on the daily flight from Belgrade, Serbia. My lovely project manager picked me up at the airport and drove me to where I stayed for the month, and we had my first Bosnian breakfast over orange juice, Turkish coffee and cigarettes. After a nap I strolled around the city and came across an abandoned amusement park in the middle of downtown, or at least I thought it was abandoned -- a few weeks after this photograph was taken, the square suddenly buzzed to life, with newly functional amusement rides and an astonishingly good beer garden. However, it was a jarring introduction to Bosnia, for my jetlagged self to see these creepily idle rides sit and rust amidst the drizzle.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
In addition to teaching, I also volunteered at an English language-learning preschool where I worked with a darling group of six-year-olds. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, we got together to sing English lullabies, draw elaborate, fantastical unicorn sketches and play with their treasured collection of plastic dinosaurs. One visit, I helped repaint their outdoor playground, which they used for playing hopscotch, hide-and-seek and ‘wizards, giants and elves,’ which is a Bosnian adaptation of ‘rock-paper-scissors.’ Admittedly, I wasn’t the best painter, as seen with the backwards ‘4’ in the picture’s lower left. But I certainly tried my hardest!
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
One evening I found myself in the bathroom of Goldfish, an antique bar located steps away from Sarajevo’s Eternal Flame Against Fascism, a monument commemorating Sarajevo’s occupation by several authoritarian regimes throughout its history. The bathroom was delightfully odd; it was located behind the bar itself, so I had to get a key from the main bartender in order to gain access. A handful of strange trinkets and tchotchkes were strewn effortlessly next to the sink and toilet, but my favorite item was an incredibly small vintage television held perilously in place by a few rolls of toilet paper. When I walked in, the television was inexplicably playing Korean newsreel footage of President Donald Trump. It was almost as if I’d never left the U.S.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
I went for a jog around the city centre most evenings and snapped this photograph of Sarajevo’s Sacred Heart Cathedral at dusk. Bosnia-Herzegovina’s religious diversity is visible with just a kilometer-long stroll around downtown; it’s not uncommon to see a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church and a Muslim mosque all on the same block. During the Siege of Sarajevo, Sacred Heart was bombarded by Bosnian Serb separatists, most of whom were Orthodox. Immediately outside the cathedral’s entrance lies a crimson ‘Sarajevo Rose,’ which marks where one of the mortar shells exploded during the war. The explosion spots have since been filled in with red concrete and are splattered around the city, a haunting reminder of the violence less than three decades prior.
ETHAN BROWN // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
Baščaršija is home to many small, family-run copper shops. I stumbled upon this one by accident after school and fell in love. The shopkeeper was exceptionally friendly and chatted me up while he clattered away making the bracelets, and I eventually found one small copper piece that I’ve worn almost every day since leaving Sarajevo. On the middle shelf are some beautiful homemade džezvas, which are the pots used to make traditional stovetop Bosnian coffee.
Leaving Sarajevo was emotional. The memories I created and the friendships I forged in Bosnia-Herzegovina made me feel confident in wanting to work in Eastern Europe post-graduation. This experience reinforced my love for working with children and validated my passion for global development (and I even discovered an undeniable love for strong Balkan coffee!) I wish to visit Bosnia again soon so I can be reunited with the places and people that make Sarajevo so remarkably special.