BBC: Belgrade-Sarajevo railway reopens after 17 years - A rail link has re-opened between the capitals of Serbia and Bosnia, almost 17 years after it was cut during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The line between Belgrade and Sarajevo was damaged in the fighting between Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. The journey time is now two hours longer than it was before the war, as the track is in such poor condition…read whole article here

Times Online: Belgrade to Sarajevo express resumes service after 18 years - Eighteen years after its disruption by the ethnic fighting that ripped federal Yugoslavia apart, a symbolic link between the lost country’s two main cities was quietly revived yesterday. In its heyday the Belgrade to Sarajevo express was the gleaming pride of Josip Tito’s patchwork socialist republic. The two-carriage train that slipped out of Platform 3 at dawn yesterday … read the whole article here

Euronews: Rail link reunites Serbia and Bosnia – Nearly 18 years after war stopped it in its tracks, the train service between Belgrade and Sarajevo has resumed. It was one of the victims of the wars that erupted as Yugoslavia fell apart. The authorities concede the railway line has been re-established for political rather than for commercial reasons, to try to restore ties between Serbia and Bosnia… read the whole article here

SETimes: Direct Belgrade-Sarajevo rail link restored - The direct railway line linking Belgrade and Sarajevo began operating Sunday (December 13th), nearly 18 years after it ended, as the former Yugoslavia was plunged into wars in the early 1990s that eventually led to its disintegration. The train between the Serbian and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) capitals will run once daily, for 31 euros round-trip. The journey in one direction, which lasted about six hours in the past, takes more than eight today, due to the new borders along the 500km rail route via Croatia and the poor condition of the track… read the whole article here

Reuters video “Historic train rides again” @ Youtube is here

In last edition of Guardian Travel, in collection of articles and notes titled “50 ultimate travel experiences” where various travel writers and tour operators remember their favourite travel moments, Sarajevo was chosen by Benji Lanyado, travel writer for the Guardian, as his favorite travel experience. This is an excerpt:

City tour, Sarajevo, Bosnia : A few years ago, while travelling through the Balkans, I met a man called Muammar, a punk rocker with hair down to his waist, in a bar in Sarajevo. We got chatting about his name (he was named after colonel Gadafy) and very drunk on rakia, and he promised to show me around the city the next day. He turned out to be the best guide I have ever had…

Read the whole article here

Located in Visegrad, Eastern Bosnia, stretching over Drina River, this 11 arches bridge considered a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture,  was  built in 16th century and was a subject of Ivo Andric’s Nobel Prize-winning book The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini Cuprija) , which described the building of the bridge and life in Bosnia in times of Ottoman Empire.

The UNESCO’s World Heritage List includes 851 sites that are conisdered worth preserving for their cultural or natural value. Another UNESCO’s site in Bosnia and Herzegovina  is Mostar’s Old Bridge (Mostarski Stari Most)

Cheap flights to Sarajevo from Stockholm  are to start on 21st of June 2008 .

The current timetable is displaying the Wednesdays and Saturdays flights, departing from Stockholm at 16.35, arriving at Sarajevo Airport at 19.25.

Flights from Sarajevo to Stockholm are departing also on Wednesdays and Saturdays with timming: Sarajevo departure at 19:55, arrival in Stockholm at 22.45.

New Sarajevo flights, which will begin in June 2008, are available to book now at www.flynordic.com

In article, titled ‘ Landscape After Battle’ Joshua Hammer, writes about his travels to Bosnia:

The Sunday brunch is a well-practiced ritual these days in the Old Town of Sarajevo. On a dazzling morning, my friend Senad Slatina is escorting me to his favorite weekend restaurant through a throng of pedestrians on the main promenade. Australian backpackers, Gypsy beggars, Islamic women swathed in head scarves, uniformed European Union troops, and young, well-dressed, secular Bosnian Muslims wander past turreted and domed European edifices from the nineteenth century. Beyond the cluster of ice-cream shops known as Sweet Corner, the street narrows to a cobblestoned passageway barely twelve feet wide. Abruptly we pass from a slice of Hapsburg Vienna into the Ottoman Empire: teetering, red-tile-roofed houses; brassware makers; Turkish coffee stalls; stone minarets and mosques. Slatina leads the way to the Asdz bakery, a hole-in-the-wall. Minutes later, the specialty arrives on our outdoor table: two cottage cheese–stuffed pastries called sirnica, each as wide as a small pizza, baked underneath a charcoal-topped lid and served piping hot…

Read the whole article

The article, titled ‘That’s Sarajevo – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Europe’ introduced readers to writer’s first ever arrival to Sarajevo and her impressions about the city and Bosnia & Herzegovina - Here is an excerpt from the article:

Welcome to Sarajevo, was the predictable announcement from the smiley British Airways flight attendant. His fixed grin was genuine and also genuinely understandable, this being the very first direct flight of British Airways’ new service — London Gatwick to Sarajevo in just three and a half hours — and he being of Bosnian decent, proudly conducted his bilingual announcements in Bosnian and English.

As the plane descended into a dramatic valley amongst the rugged Dinaric Alps, a new excitement replaced the usual blasé. It was already obvious to me that this wouldn’t, at least not yet, be a Milan, Barcelona or Prague, where Terravision coaches or their equivalent local transport affiliate wait for the cheaper-than-a-train-ticket flights to land. This was my first time in Bosnia-Herzegovina…

Read the rest of the article here

Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday in Sarajevo held a special meeting after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) threatened to erase the Old Bridge in Mostar from its world heritage list.

More than six months ago UNESCO warned Bosnia’s authorities they should stop building of the Ruza (Rose) Hotel near the UNESCO’s flagged bridge and the old centre of the southern Bosnia- Herzegovina’s city of Mostar.

The hotel near the bridge in the eastern side of the city was destroyed during the country’s 1992-1995 war.

The reconstruction of the hotel was not a problem for UNESCO, but concern was over the decision of the city’s authorities to build additional floors that would visually damage the image of the Old Bridge…

Read the whole article here

The article begins with paragraph ‘If you plan to stay at home all summer, you don’t need to read this. But if you think some sort of holiday might be an idea, you do. Because laid out below are 100 of the best trips that 2008 has to offer’

Under the ‘Walking and riding’ section, at the 90th place, Bosnia is featured for ‘one of Europe’s finest high country’:

‘In all the coverage of the Balkan conflict, the reporters forgot to tell us how beautiful Bosnia is. Understandable, perhaps, but after 12 years of peace, we’re only just discovering some of Europe’s finest high country. Enter Walks Worldwide (01524 242000, www.walksworldwide.com), which is stepping out through the primeval forest and traditional mountain villages, up the 7,828ft peak of Maglic, then down past ancient mosques and churches to the cities of Mostar and Sarajevo. The 10-day hikes, departing on June 15 and September 14, cost £1,095, including most meals. ‘

Following recent The Independent’s article which listed Bosnia among the best of 2008 emerging European destinations , this is another good news about travelling to Bosnia.

Read the whole article

If you are going to fly to or from Sarajevo in period from 7th January to 30th April 2008, and if you buy your ticket before end of February, Croatia Airlines is currently offering special prices.

Passengers travelling to Sarajevo from international destinations (served by Croatia Airlines) are offered the special price of 139 EUR for return flight.

The prices include the airport taxes.

Check Croatia Airlines site.

Here is an extract from the article:

Emerging European destinations: Serbia and Bosnia are making rapid strides in attracting tourists. For the first time, some of their traditional winter resorts are being featured as summer destinations for walkers, mountaineers and cyclists. Holiday Options (0844 477 0452; www.holidayoptions.co.uk) is now offering Kapaonik in Serbia, and Jahorina and Bjelasnica in Bosnia all year round, with itineraries that can be tailor-made to include excursions or longer stays in the two capitals, Belgrade and Sarajevo.

Read the whole article

The tale traces the history of one coveted tome, a Jewish prayer book traditionally used during the Passover seder, through time as it travels through war-torn Europe of many eras and influences the lives of the people who create or encounter it.

In April 1996, rare-book conservator Hanna Heath flies into Sarajevo to inspect and repair the Sarajevo Haggadah, which has just turned up after being lost during the war. ”The Sarajevo Haggadah, created in medieval Spain,” Brooks writes, “was a famous rarity, a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind.”

The author notes that the novel is based on the true story of this Haggadah, though she has fictionalized her account, imagining the book’s history.

More info on the book at author’s home page

An interesting article about Backpacking through Bosnia is recently written by Scott in his Travel Blog.

Scott visited Sarajevo and Bosnia and has some useful tips to say  – Here is an excerpt from the article:

So what is the first thing you think about when you hear of Bosnia? When I told my friends that I was planning a trip to Bosnia, they thought I was crazy. Unfortunately, when people think of Bosnia they still think of horrible images that they may of seen from the war that happened years ago. The truth is far from this stereotypical image that many people seem to have. I am convinced that Bosnia is one of the most beautiful places in Europe. It is also much safer than many people tend to think. Unlike many other parts of western Europe that people generally don’t associate with crime (like Paris), I never felt unsafe when I was there (for more information about crimes in Europe you can read my article about personal safety in Europe or my article about common scams). If I would have listened to my friends, I would have probably missed what turned out to be one of my favorite places in Europe to travel…

Thanks Scott for nice introduction to Bosnia and Sarajevo!

Read the whole article : Backpacking and traveling through Sarajevo Bosnia – Is Bosnia safe

“All over the country, mosques and minarets have been demolished, including some of the finest examples of 16th-century Ottoman architecture in the western Balkans. These buildings were not caught in the cross-fire of military engagements—in towns such as Bijeljina and Banja Luka, the demolitions had nothing to do with fighting at all—but were blown up with explosives in the night, and bulldozed the following day. The people who planned and ordered these actions like to say that history is on their side. What they show by their deeds is that they are waging a war against the history of their country.”1 Thus wrote a British historian in 1994. When one year later the war against Bosnia ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), the country could survey its losses: over 250,000 dead, more than two million refugees, tens of thousands of raped women and girls, and over 3,000 architectural monuments destroyed or damaged.2

Mightier than the sword: scholars prepare the ground

It is an indisputable fact that Bosnia’s cultural heritage was destroyed in a systematic and methodical fashion: religious monuments, libraries and other landmarks identified with various communities. The destruction of Bosnian Muslim heritage in particular was not a by-product of the war, but a deliberate policy that went hand in hand with an attempt to exterminate them. It does not come as a surprise then that the largest destruction occurred in areas outside military activity.3

Historical precedence for dynamiting mosques and razing Muslim graveyards in the Balkans may be traced back to the 19th century when the nascent Balkan states went about obliterating their Muslim communities and their cultural heritage, as expressed in one of the most highly regarded pieces of Serbian poetry:

‘And all their houses we did see ablaze;

Of all their mosques both great and small

We left but one accursed heap

For passing folk to cast their glance of scorn.’4

More recently those who launched the genocidal assault on Bosnia drew inspiration from Serbian intellectuals including Serbian orientalists whose contribution to portraying Muslims and their heritage as alien, inferior, and threatening can only be described as significant. In their articles and books in the 1980s, they deliberately distorted Islam, dehumanized and delegitimized Muslims as a community, providing “scholarly” justification and intellectual respectability to ethnic cleansing.5 This term refers to the removal of an undesirable population; it generally went hand in hand with destroying physical traces of that population’s presence. Thus a leading “expert” on Islam wrote that “trying to conquer the world … they use their birth-rate, the construction of mosques and pressure against non-Muslims.”6

Croat nationalists were not far behind. As a Croat militiaman explained: “It is not enough to cleanse Mostar of the Muslims; their relics must also be destroyed.”7

Examples are many, but let us confine ourselves to some of the more prominent cases of destruction.

Atik Mosque, Bijeljina

Built between 1520 and 1566 during the Ottoman reign of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, the Atik Mosque in the northeastern town of Bijeljina was utterly destroyed along with the nearby turbe on 13 March 1993. In the course of its re-building, remains of a previous structure were found. Amid claims that these belonged to a church, the work halted before an independent commission published a report disproving the claim. It was fully restored and opened on 3 August 2002.

Aladza Mosque, Foca

Aladza was built in classical Ottoman style in 1550/51 by a close aid to the celebrated Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. Remarkable for its harmonious proportions and preserved internal decoration, Aladza was one of the most beautiful mosques in the Balkans and an important symbol of overall Bosnian Muslim heritage. Its reconstruction is yet to begin.

Ferhadija Mosque, Banja Luka

If Srebrenica was a crime that became a horrific symbol of an attempt at the physical destruction of Bosnian Muslims, the destruction of Ferhadija in 1993 has come to symbolize the destruction of their material heritage, particularly their mosques. In fact, the day of its destruction, 7 May, has entered the calendar of the Islamic Community of Bosnia- Herzegovina as the Day of Mosques in remembrance of over 1,100 Bosnian mosques destroyed in the war of 1992-1995.

Within two months of its destruction the remaining 15 mosques in Banja Luka were blown up too. If anyone needed proof that the Bosnian Serbian nationalist authorities were behind the crime, it came a few months later in the form of an exhibition of photographs about the history of Banja Luka: it had not a single photograph of the city’s mosques. 8 Their destruction was not just aimed at destroying Bosnian Muslim architecture, but also at changing the city’s identity, which—in the eyes of many of its citizens regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation—these mosques, and especially Ferhadija, were very much a part of. Perhaps due to the powerful symbolism of Ferhadija, the international community has taken strong interest in its rebuilding.9

After years of foot-dragging and numerous delays, the Bosnian Serb authorities finally agreed to allow the laying of the foundation stone on 7 May 2001. As Muslim visitors and representatives of political and diplomatic life in Bosnia were arriving at the site of the destroyed mosque, a huge and menacing mob gathered around chanting nationalist songs and insults and throwing stones, sparing not even foreign dignitaries. An elderly Muslim man was injured and later died in a hospital. The rioters managed to burn coaches in which the visitors had arrived.10

It took another four years before reconstruction could finally begin on 4 October 2005. The first stage involves recovering the mosque remains from the city’s waste dumps. Around 1,000 remains of Ferhadija and other Banja Luka mosques have been uncovered so far and they will be used for the purposes of their restoration. Each fragment is washed and marked in order to be used for rebuilding the mosque exactly to its original layout.11

Muslim heritage of Stolac

One of the most poignant cases of war-time destruction and post-war recovery is to be found in the town of Stolac. It is a place with the longest urban settlement in Bosnia, spanning over 3,000 years. In spring 1993 Muslim men were rounded up and sent into camps, while women and children were expelled. Again the ensuing looting and destruction was carried out systematically and at a time when there was no fighting. As a result all four mosques in Stolac and another seven in the surrounding villages were blown up including one of the oldest Bosnian mosques that lay at the heart of town, the Carsija Mosque from 1519.

Stolac is unique among Bosnian towns in that much of its pre-war Muslim population has returned against the violent opposition from local Croat nationalists. In order to intimidate the returnees, the nationalists erected crosses on the hills surrounding the city, a policy replicated in other towns with strong Ottoman heritage such as Mostar and Pocitelj. The senior local clergy, including a bishop, tried to prevent the rebuilding of the Carsija Mosque, by claiming that it had stood on the remains of a destroyed church. This prompted a U.S. scholar to write an open letter to Pope John Paul II asking for his help in restraining the nationalist clergy.12

On 22 August 2003—on the 10th anniversary of its destruction— Carsija Mosque was fully restored to its previous design, using original building materials and building in the fragments of the destroyed original. On 22 August 2005 the second or Uzinovicka Mosque was restored and re-opened as well. The third or Podgradska Mosque is currently undergoing restoration, while work on the fourth one, Cuprijska Mosque, remarkable for being one of the only two double- story mosques in Bosnia—is expected to commence in summer 2006.

New mosques

If Stolac represents a hope of how to go about rebuilding Muslim heritage, there are also examples of mosque-building or rebuilding without regard for traditional Bosnian architecture. Between the end of the war in November 1995 and September 2004, a total of 565 new mosques were built; 265 of them replaced mosques destroyed in the war. The funding for these mosques often comes from Middle Eastern humanitarian organizations. Not surprisingly they reflect the prevalent architectural styles of the donors’ countries. Often huge in size, their monumental proportions only serve to underline their foreignness. Sometimes these new mosques are built in locations which were never used in traditional mosque buildings such as hill tops, making them domineering rather than inviting. Some of them have more than one minaret serving no function or symbolism. Usually their internal decoration is non-existent, the glaring clinical whiteness leaving the visitor cold. Their message is one of confusion, disorientation, and a misplaced pride.

What is particularly worrying is that in some cases this kind of architecture has received backing by the very people who ought to be protecting it. In the case of one such official, his ideas for mosque design are described to involve “knockoffs of Saudi-modern shopping malls architecture with odd touches inspired by the décor of the Love Boat, including portholes!”13

New mosques cannot be seen as contributing to the healing of the traumatized Bosnian Muslim community or to the rebuilding of their identity. Agnes Heller wrote: “Whenever cultural memory is lost, a group of people disappears.”14

According to Bosnian architect Amra Hadzimuhamedovic, these new mosques contribute to the loss of cultural memory. They change the cultural landscape and create the sense of disconnectedness with the place. Perhaps most importantly, new mosques lack the symbolism and beauty of traditional architectural forms and ultimately fail to invoke a sense of the sacred.15 Potentially they even undermine Bosnian Muslim identity by de-Bosnianizing the sense of belonging to the country and its past reflected in the traditional architecture.

The traditional mosque architecture in Bosnia speaks to a Bosnian with the reassuring familiarity of more than five centuries of enriching Islamic influence in the culture of its people—and not only its Muslims. Traditional Bosnian mosque architecture is far from being monotone: from the large domed mosques exuding majesty and quiet confidence of the Ottoman era to some of the eastern Herzegovinian mosques remarkable for their stone roof-tiles and quadrangle minarets, so in tune with the rugged, rocky geography of the region. Particularly picturesque are small mosques graced with wooden minarets and found in villages and some towns. In their simplicity they radiate the warmth and tranquility of the lush Bosnian landscape.

The work of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments

It is not possible to speak of the reconstruction of Bosnia’s cultural heritage without mentioning the Commission to Preserve National Monuments. The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), which ended the war against Bosnia, envisaged a very weak central government. Many viewed this as a fig leaf for the de facto division of the country, giving the nationalist forces more or less what they wanted. In the absence of strong institutions of central government, the DPA’s Annex 8 must have been viewed as a joke: it envisaged establishing a Commission to Preserve National Monuments in Bosnia. Its mandate is defined as receiving and deciding petitions for designating properties with cultural, historical, religious, or ethnic importance as national monuments. The Commission’s decisions are deemed final and enforceable in accordance with domestic law. Thus the local authorities are bound by its decisions, even though the Commission itself lacks power to enforce such decisions. Nonetheless it has still been able to perform a remarkable service in enabling the restoration and preservation of Bosnian cultural heritage. In the end, the Annex 8 has proven to be—apart from the Annex 7 that guarantees the right of refugees to return to their prewar homes—a most significant provision of the DPA.16

References

1 Noel Malcolm. Bosnia: a Short History (London: Macmillan, 1994) p. xxiv.

2 Hadzimuhamedovic, Amra. Transnational Meaning of the Bosnia-Herzegovinian Architectural Heritage and Its Post-War Reconstruction. Online. University of Trieste. Internet. 29 October 2005.

3 Michael Sells. The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1996) p. xiv.

4 Petar P. Njegos. Gorski Vijenac (A mountain wreath), (Belgrade,1884), p.122, quoted in Rusmir Mahmutcahajic. Bosnia the Good: Tolerance and Tradition (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), p.183.

5 Norman Cigar. Uloga srpskih orijentalista u opravdanju genocida nad muslimanima Balkana (The role of Serbian orientalists in justification of genocide against the Muslims of the Balkans) (Institute for the Research Against Humanity and International Law and Bosnian Cultural Centre: Sarajevo, 2000).

6 Miroljub Jevtic. Savremeni dzihad kao rat (Contemporary jihad as war), (Belgrade, 1989), pp.316-317, quoted in Mahmutcahajic, p.183.

7 Sells, ibid., p.93. For the destruction of Bosnian cities see Mehmed Bublin. Gradovi Bosne i Hercegovine: milenijum razvoja i godine urbicida (The cities of Bosnia-Herzegovina: a millennium of development and the years of urbicide) (Sarajevo Publishing: Sarajevo, 1999).

8 Zeljko Cvijanovic, “Srbi i Ferhadija: evolucija koje nije bilo,” BH Dani. 11 May 2001:205. Online. BH Dani archive. Internet. 1 November 2005.

9 A major contribution toward reconstructing the Ferhadija has been made by a UK-based organization, Soul of Europe, a unique Christian-Muslim collaboration project that has campaigned and raised funds for the mosque. See the Soul of Europe website www.soulofeurope.org

10 The current Serbian president Vojislav Kostunica, during whose rule the EU agreed to initiate the Stabilization and Association Agreement, recently went on record as saying that some “churches and mosques should not be rebuilt, since that could provoke incidents.” For images of the events visit www. ferhadija. com/bL07052001.php

11 For the history of the Ferhadija and its destruction, see Aleksandar Ravlic. Banjalucka Ferhadija: ljepotica koju su ubili (AARis: Rijeka, 1996).

12 The Careva Mosque also housed many manuscripts in Arabic and other languages. For the letter to the Pope see Amra Hadzimuhamedovic, ed., Ljudska prava i razaranje kulturnog pamcenja: slucaj Stoca (Human rights and destruction of cultural memory: the Stolac case). (Sarajevo, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2005), pp.228-33

13 Schwartz, Stephen. “Islamic Fundamentalism in the Balkans,” Partisan Review. 2000: vol.lxii, 3. Online. 27 October 2005.

14 Agnes Heller. “Tentative answer to the question: has civil society cultural memory?”, Social Research, Winter, 2001. Quoted in Human Rights and Destruction of Cultural Memory, p. 210.

15 Amer Obradovic, interview with Amra Hadzimuhamedovic, BH Dani, 4 February 2005: 399.

16 For the Commission’s work visit its website on www.aneks8komisija.com.ba.

Author: Asim Zubcevic. Asim Zubcevic is a scholar based at the Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Sarajevo. This article appeared in Islamica Magazine No.15, Winter 2005/6

British Airways is starting with new flight route to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina from London Gatwick from March 2007.

There will be three flights each week to Sarajevo, both of which will be operated by Boeing 737s.

British Airways decided to introduce this new route because “Sarajevo is undergoing economic redevelopment and is the gateway to tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

Return fares for the new London to Sarajevo starts at  £179 including taxes.

Places are already available with British Airways online booking – for reservations and flights booking visit following link :

Book flight to Sarajevo + Read about Flying to Bosnia and Herzegvina

The Sarajevo Haggadah should be ready just before Passover, Bosnian Jewish leader Jakob Finci told JTA. “We are printing a limited edition of just 613 copies — the number of the mitzvot.”

The Sarajevo Haggadah has long been a symbol of Jewish presence — and survival — in the Balkans. Handwritten and illuminated in 14th-century Spain, the lavishly illustrated 109-page manuscript was brought to Sarajevo after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and remained intact through years of conflict and upheaval.

It served countless family seders over the centuries, and wine stains mar some of the pages. Owned by the Bosnian National Museum since 1894, it escaped the Holocaust, hidden away in a remote mountain village. It also survived the brutal Bosnian War of the 1990s, either locked in a bank vault or stashed away in private custody.

In December 2002, the book went on display at the museum.

A full-scale copy of the Haggadah was published in the early 1980s, but it was printed on paper. The new edition is printed, like the original, on parchment, and bound with leather covers. Each copy is meant to be, as much as possible, a replica of the Haggadah itself.

“It will look exactly like the original,” Finci said. “The copies that were published in the past were just copies.”

The idea — and seed money — for the project came from James Wolfensohn, the past president of the World Bank.

“When he saw the Haggadah during a visit to Sarajevo, he asked why we didn’t try to produce a better facsimile,” Finci said. “When I answered that it would be too expensive, he said that he would be ready to provide money for it, which we could repay him after publication.”

Wolfensohn personally donated $150,000 for the project. The edition’s publisher, RABIC of Sarajevo, provided further funding, and the project was also helped with a bank loan.

Finci said that potential buyers have already expressed interest, particularly after the Associated Press ran a story about the project last summer.

“We have several dozen inquiries and requests from all over the world,” he said, from individuals and institutions.

After reimbursing Wolfensohn and repaying the bank loan, the proceeds will be divided between the publisher and La Benevolencija, the Bosnian Jewish cultural, educational and humanitarian society.

The creation of this edition represents another step in the Sarajevo adah’s extraordinary history.

“The Hebrew word ‘Haggadah’ means ‘telling’ or ‘story,’” Finci writes in an introduction to the edition. “In front of you is a remarkable story, not only because of the beauty of the illuminations, but also because of the strange history of this rare book.”

The Sarajevo Haggadah was created in about 1350, probably as a wedding gift, but it changed hands — and countries — a number of times over the centuries. The full details about how and when it arrived in Sarajevo are not known. It was sold to the Bosnian museum in 1894 by Joseph Kohen.

Legends formed about where and how it managed to survive.

During World War II, just before the Germans entered the city in 1941, the director of the museum smuggled it to a Muslim professor who hid it in a mountain village, some say under the floor of a mosque.

Its whereabouts during the 1992-95 Bosnian War are a matter of rumor. The museum was bombarded and badly damaged, but the Haggadah survived unscathed, hidden for most of the time in a vault of the National Bank.

Bosnia’s then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, displayed it briefly at a community seder in 1995, partly to dispel speculation that the government might have sold it to purchase weapons.

Edward Serotta, director of the Vienna-based Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, produced a documentary on the Haggadah for “ABC’s Nightline” in 1996.

“The facsimile of the Sarajevo Haggadah is certainly an achievement,” he told JTA. “But I look forward now to a real, critical analysis of the book and its history.”

source: http://www.jta.org/

About the Author: http://geocities.com/karmelakis/karmela.html

With over 50 years of experience in kitchens across Croatia and Bosnia, author Karmela Kis now owns an organic farm in Istria where she grows her own ingredients and is actively involved in the Europe’s Permaculture movement. With a degree in Language and Literature from Zagreb University, her recipes have traveled around Europe and have now been arranged for North American readers.

For more information, please contact Karmela at e-mail protected from spam bots, or visit her web site at http://geocities.com/karmelakis/karmela.html. Cooking in Croatia and Bosnia is available to order online at BookSurge.com, Amazon.com, Borders.com, and through additional wholesale and retail channels worldwide.

About BookSurge: http://www.booksurge.com

BookSurge, an Amazon.com company, is a global leader in self-publishing and print-on-demand. Offering unique publishing opportunities and access for authors, BookSurge boasts an unprecedented number of authors who have been picked up by traditional publishers and successful authorpreneurs who enhance or build a business from their valuable expertise.

A library or an art gallery is a cache of cultural memory – evidence of the reality of that community’s history that extends and legitimizes it in the present. Even office buildings may acquire powerful symbolic value: this was brought home with singular force by the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York.

In The Destruction of Memory, Robert Bevan examines both the effects of conflict on architecture over the last century and also examples throughout history: from the conflict between Islam and Hinduism in India and the razing of Aztec cities by Cortez to the Holocaust and the Chinese destruction of Tibetan Lhasa.

A notable example from more recent times is the terrorist activities in the former Yugoslavia. Incidents discussed include the bombing of Dubrovnik; the destruction of the iconic bridge at Mostar; and the blackened leaves of priceless books floating down over Sarajevo after the National Library was shelled.

Robert Bevan argues that these were not ‘collateral damage’, as some might claim: they were deliberate acts of destruction, an attack not only on the architecture, but also the cultural memory of a nation.

Robert Bevan is former editor of Building Design and writes regularly on architectural, design and housing issues for national newspapers. He lives in Australia. Buy his book The Destruction of Memory at http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

The restoration of infrastructure, the modernization of large hotels and the opening of many smaller hotels and pensions means that Bosnia is ready to receive larger numbers of tourists.

Eastern Europe specialists Regent Holidays led the way in 2005, introducing Sarajevo as a city-break destination. This year the company is running two more holidays to Bosnia: a long week-end in Sarajevo and Mostar and a seven day tour visiting in addition such places as Travnik, Kraljevska Sutjeska, Blagaj and Pocitelj.

Adventure travel operator Exodus is introducing a walking holiday through Sutjeska National Park, trekking through the Durmitor Mountains, with visits to Sarajevo, Bjelasnica, Mostar and Dubrovnik, while Bosnia is included in the Balkans Adventure tour offered by train holiday specialists Festtravel.

Eastern Trekker operate a Bosnian Trek aimed at independent travellers. Even massmarket operator Cosmos Tourama is including Bosnia in a three-country tour of the region along with Slovenia and Croatia. For those looking for self-catering accommodation, both Croatian Villas and Owners Direct are featuring holiday homes in Herzegovina on their web sites.

Bosnia is keen to develop its winter sports profile and the Olympic ski resorts at Bjelasnica, Jahorina and Igman have seen a substantial increase in visitors from countries across the region over the past season, helped by record snowfalls in March and increased marketing. World-class alpine trails combined with reasonable costs have attracted skiers from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro.

The resorts are helped by their proximity to the cafes and cultural attractions of Sarajevo with its fascinating East-West ambiance, mixing Turkish bazaars and Austro-Hungarian grandeur, and just 30 minutes’ drive from the ski slopes.

At a conference for the travel industry held in late March at the Bosnian Embassy in London, Bosnian government ministers, speaking alongside representatives from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and foreign investors, encouraged investment in tourism and tourist infrastructure.

They emphasized that perceptions of Bosnia-Herzegovina needed to change: the country is a safe destination for visitors with a stable currency, beautiful untouched landscapes and a unique culture.

source: Bosnian Institute

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SmarterTravel’s report, “Ten Under-priced and On-the-rise European Cities” consists of cities the site has designated as a “must-visit,” including:

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Source: www.SmarterTravel.com

Borovac said that this recognition also gives us the commitment to further improve the image of the City.

“Internationally Sarajevo is known for three events: the Sarajevo assassination which was one of the causes of the I World War, the 84 Olympics and the longest siege of a capital. However, we in Sarajevo need to turn towards the future and our natural potentials, especially the Olympic mountains, tourism”, Borovac said.

In its latest edition of the Cities Book, Lonely Planet authors gave Paris the number one spot, New York is second, Sydney third, Barcelona fourth and London fifth.

With its 43 spot Sarajevo has come ahead of Dubrovnik, which is at 59, Ljubljana at 84, Bled at 90, Zagreb at 125 and Belgrade at 143.

source: http://www.fena.ba/

The taxi stops at the sign for the de-mining project. Thirteen centimetres of fresh snow obscure the ground. Fikret, my Bosnian guide, leads me past blown-out houses, trenches in the woods, splintered bunkers, a Habsburg-built tower from the 19th century reduced to a ruin by war.

Then we are on the promontory looking over barbed wire down upon the city. Fikret points out the Kosevo Stadium, now nearly surrounded by cemeteries. Over there is Trebevic, he says. Once it was the site of the bobsled races. Now the mountain is divided between Bosnia and the Serb Republic, salted with mines, the run chipped with holes where the snipers once squinted over their rifles. Only from the hills does one grasp how pretty this city is, and how nakedly exposed it was.

It’s easy to see, too, where the battle lines were set during the Serbs’ 1400-day chokehold on Sarajevo during the 1992-1995 war that convulsed the country.

Fikret Kahrovic was in the militia defending the city, but he does not offer much about the war in a way that makes me think he could say plenty. He used to be angry all the time, he says, but not any more. “It was,” he says, “like a very old and very bad movie that you watched once upon a time.” His voice seems flat, affectless.

Then, as we stand looking over the city, Fikret says this: “One day it was 1992, August. I come to my home, was so tired, I laid on my sofa near my balcony and five or six kids played table tennis on the street below. They were making so much noise – I was almost crazy! And soon there was an explosion. I ran to the balcony. They were all dead. I saw a child’s brain on the asphalt. How do you make sense of that?” Then, as casually as if we had been discussing our lunch plans, Fikret stands me beside a war monument for a photograph.

In the picture I am squinting, confused, sharing the frame with the gilt names of the dead, unsure where to put my hands. It is my first full day in Sarajevo, in this country where history is never buried and where moving on is a very complicated affair.

Two decades ago the Winter Olympics were held here in Sarajevo. Those 13 days in 1984 were grand. Sports Illustrated called the games “the sweetest Winter Olympics of them all”.

Just eight years later, the country lay in shards. For Serb nationalists trying to carve an ethnically pure country out of the former Yugoslavia, multi-ethnic Sarajevo was an obstacle. In 1992 the powerful former Yugoslav army, headed mostly by Serbs, encircled Sarajevo with heavy weapons, inaugurating a siege that was longer even than the torture of Stalingrad. Fighting and shelling killed about 11,000 people in the city, including more than 1500 children, before NATO air strikes finally ended the horror.

Ten years after the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 ended the war, this famously picturesque city of 388,000 people, now the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has slowly begun to lure tourists again. In 2004 Paddy Ashdown, a former British MP and the country’s then-top civilian peace administrator, even toured Europe touting Bosnia-Herzegovina as the continent’s last great undiscovered tourism destination.

“Sarajevo and Bosnia are definitely not the Sarajevo and Bosnia that people think of,” Nick Hawton, a Sarajevo-based Balkans correspondent for the BBC, told me when I was there early in January. “It’s not the place of terror and vengeance and blood and war that it was several years ago. It’s come a long way, a very long way. Three and a half years ago most buildings had some kind of war damage. Now there are new buildings, new banks, trendy new clothes and shoe shops, a new tram line has been laid, new footpaths.”

Bosnia’s street crime rate is comparable to that of Lausanne, Switzerland. “Here,” said Edis Kolar, proprietor of the Tunnel Museum, the terminus of the 800-metre tunnel dug by hand under the airport during the siege to transport supplies and soldiers, “our country is full of war criminals, but you can feel safe.”

All of this is true and all of this makes the city a fascinating destination – exotic, safe, shockingly inexpensive by European standards, stuffed with history. And yet, even to see the place is to know it is hardly the whole story of Sarajevo today. As Hawton cautioned me: “There’s a lot of pain just under the surface – a lot of pain.”

The Ottoman Empire founded the city in the 1440s and Sarajevo can rightly be said to begin at pigeon-cluttered Sebilj Square in Bascarsija, the Turkish quarter. One morning I began a day-long walk from there, fuelled with a bag of 30-cent pastries. Bascarsija is a bazaar of wooden shops along pink-stone medieval alleys that feel plucked whole from old Istanbul, with names that reflect the trades that once defined them: bookbinders, coppersmiths, silk tailors.

A window showed Prada handbags and Chloe clutches of sketchy provenance. But I followed the tink, tink sound of small hammers onto Ulica Kazandziluk, an alley of one-room shops displaying traditional Bosnian coffee sets and the tall water jugs that are Sarajevo’s symbol. And ordnance. From the countless shells that had rained on Sarajevo, the craftsman had stamped flower vases. Bullets had become ballpoint pens that read “Bosnia”. In a few shops men still hunched on stools over virgin copper platters, slowly adorning them in ways little changed from when the pasha had governed here.

It was late morning. Smoke rose from Bascarsija’s ubiquitous cepavi joints. Soon people would begin to crowd in and, for about $3, fill up on loamy, slightly charred pitas stuffed with small grilled sausages that are this city’s favourite fast food, and wash them down with glasses of cool yoghurt. Among the war’s many small cruelties was how it forced residents to loathe their beloved hills; the snipers watched from those hills. Now the city has its views back.

I often heard Sarajevo’s residents say their city was more a village than a city – though they corrected themselves to say that it socialises with the stamina of a city. On a few evenings my guide to the night life was a habitue of the scene named Nerma Jelacic. Nerma is a hard-eyed, chain-smoking 28-year-old journalist whose family was chased out of their home town during the war. Today, Nerma writes about war criminals and mass graves and the importance of not forgetting. By night she keeps tabs on the city’s watering holes.

Understanding turbofolk music is essential to understanding Sarajevo and its night life, Nerma pronounces, firing up the first of many cigarettes. Turbofolk is the catchy pop music, songs of requited lust, mostly, sung by towering, silicone-ised Amazons from Serbia or Croatia with bleached hair. “When you are out drinking, the music always ends up turbofolk,” she explains. “Even the sophisticated people listen to it.”

After midnight Galeria Ko is thick with smoke and ox-browed men in black T-shirts and gold chains. Music soon explodes over the speakers. The singalong begins. A woman with a machine tan and a T-shirt hiked past her stomach grinds with another in high boots and a peacock chemise. Nerma is apologetic. “Usually the girls are more skimpily dressed.”

Nerma has told me that one of the most popular turbofolk singers is the widow of Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, who was accused of murdering thousands of Muslims during the war. (He was shot in 2000.) Another song comes on, and Nerma says of the singer: “She’s a Bosnian Muslim who became a Serbian nationalist. She used to sing songs to Serb soldiers and she was wearing a Serbian army uniform.”

Sarajevo’s population today is, by some accounts, at least 80 per cent people of Muslim background, known as Bosniak – many of whom were forced from their home towns in what was called ethnic cleansing. That means that these young people, now arm in arm, embracing each other, embracing this music, dance to a singer who once urged on to victory the very tormentors of their families, the tormentors of Sarajevo. And the singer herself is Bosniak. The scene becomes Beckettian.

The longer I stay in Sarajevo, seeing the daily resilience of the people and the hungry scenes like Galeria Ko, the more I think of the phrase “Sarajevo spirit”. I hear it several times, usually from people who have lived here much of their lives. “I don’t know exactly what it is,” Senka Kurtovic offers one day over coffee, “but maybe it started during the war, that we had a party almost every night.” Senka is now the chief editor of Oslobodjenje, the city newspaper made famous for publishing nonstop throughout the siege. Asked for an example of Sarajevo spirit, Senka recalls living in a front-line neighbourhood during the siege.

“I had to walk one hour to work,” she says, but “every morning I have to do my make-up. It was very important to me and my friends. You never know where you spend your night – maybe you get back to your house, or the hospital, or the graveyard. So you better look nice.”

I begin to think that the Sarajevo spirit is in demand nearly as much today as a decade ago. For war still shades everything – and not just the buildings scarred by machinegun fire or the half-finished repairs on others that can make it seem sometimes that the predominant colour of Sarajevo is plaster filler. The damage lingers in unexpected places, as in the people on New Year’s Eve who say they cringe at the bottle rockets that crack over the Ferhadija district.

I ask Senka if the war is still very much with her and she answers with a story about a conference she recently attended in Germany. A film was shown about the Srebrenica massacre to the north-east; more than 7000 men and boys were slaughtered there. During the film her nose began to bleed uncontrollably and she began to cry. Recounting this in the cafe she chews her lip, the tears close again. Her fingers worry a sugar packet, rolling it, unrolling it.

“After 3½ years you could not be the same person,” Senka says of the siege, “but I think I am a better person.”

She could be Sarajevo speaking – this worldly, wounded woman, wanting to be hopeful.

TRIP NOTES

Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a mountainous country in the central Balkans surrounded by Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro.

Getting there:

• Austrian Airlines flies to Sarajevo via Kuala Lumpur and Vienna for $2049 plus taxes. Phone Flight Centre, 131 600.
• Buses go to Sarajevo from Dubrovnik in Croatia as well as from Munich, Amsterdam and Brussels.
• Trains operate daily between the Croatian cities of Zagreb and Ploce via Sarajevo and Mostar. Trains also operate daily from Budapest, Hungary.

Warning: Unexploded mines are a danger in parts of the countryside, suburbs and war-damaged buildings.

Source: The Sun-Herald The New York Times