Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

A little something for everyone

So I'm traveling the Balkans as I've done before, and I'm looking for the next country to visit. Turns out Bosnia's not only pretty cheap, but also... well, pretty pretty.

Apart from all the mandatory corn fields, three-legged dogs, and +80-year-old goat farmers, my biggest first impression of Bosnia was its surprisingly beautiful nature. Surprisingly, because...

Well, I mean, try walking down the street and ask the first 10 people what they know about Bosnia. Chances are, if anything, it's gonna be something about the war. Which, to be fair, is pretty much all I had to show for it in terms of pre-knowledge.

If you're traveling by bus, don't expect anything fancy. Especially not if it's a local one, but not a Flixbus, either. (I don't care what the website says: That was NOT a Flixbus that took me there from Zagreb.) It's a bumpy, twisty ride through all those mountains, but the scenery's nothing short of beautiful.

And the same thing goes for Sarajevo. The Bosnian capital is surrounded by mountains, and it stretches along the Miljacka river, making it by far the most oblong city I've ever visited AND the city with the nicest surroundings.

In fact, Sarajevo's more like a compound city. It's got the Communist part in the far left – big, squalid off-gray apartment buildings for hundreds and hundreds of people alongside big, squalid off-gray governmental buildings which, today, may or may not be used for actual governmental purposes.

In the middle of things, you got the Austro-Hungarian part, which looks like a relatively smaller, modern-day European city, like Hamburg or Malmö. Big shopping malls, cafés, parks, restaurants, fancy shops, fancy architecture... the works. Tall, square, and neatly kept.

And to the far east is the oldest, Osmannic part. In fact, there's a clear, dividing line between that and the Austro-Hungarian part, signaling the sudden cross-over between two completely different cultures.

The Osmannic part's got no buildings with more than two stories. Everything's sand-colored; it's got mosques, wooden fountains, greasy burek and shawarma joints, souvenir shops, bazaars, local, exotic food, hookah hangouts... yeah, the works.

It's like being in the Middle East. This is the part where I lived, and it's definitely the most exotic, and, in my humble opinion, by far the most interesting part of town – albeit by far also the smallest.

So that's Sarajevo in a nutshell. It'd take a long time to get from one end to another. Fortunately, though, the local tram lines are... pretty much shit. At least from what I heard. Either Google Maps seems to have given up on them in terms of showing any possible connections or schedules, or they're simply as good as useless.

But taxis are cheap. I mean, everything kinda is. This goes for the great local food as well: Apart from the aforementioned burek and shawarmas, Bosnia also does some excellent dolmas – not only with wine leaves, but onions as well, and not only stuffed with rice, but with spiced meat, and often served in a nicely herbed-up tomato sauce.

As for restaurants, Inat Kuća is a highly rustic place serving purely authentic local cuisine, and Cakum Pakum is a bit more modern and expensive, but with good food and a cool, old-school interior. Both are recommendable, as are others with names too weird to recall.

As for drinks, the only local beer I had that was worthy of mention was Sarajevsko. Apart from that, sadly, the most predominant ones were the acceptable Karlovačko and the less-than-acceptable Ožujsko, which are both from Croatia. Fortunately, though, they're big on rakia here, as in all their brethren Balkan nations.

I could only find one record store and one rock bar, but they were both worth a visit. On the lower floor of the Dom Mladih mall, you'll find Sarajevo Disk, which not only has a wide range of music, but an interesting and fairly cheap selection of metal CDs and LPs. The owner is that wonderfully arrogant elitist record store clerk stereotype who's just plain done with all that shitty music that's coming out these years, and who probably hasn't cracked a smile since he got that Facebook picture taken.

I did buy an album by local black metal band Krv, which is not an acronym, but an actual word that means "Blood". But you can go ahead and take a guess as to whether I've actually listened to the damn thing yet.

Bar-wise, it also seemed like there's pretty much just one place to get your rock on: Pro Rock Club Johnny. The zany name aside, the place is big, beers are cheap, and the night we were there was metal night. Meaning, in practice, that half of the songs played were Metallica songs. Which, as it turned out, was the DJ's comment on that whole dumb cancel culture debate that was going on around them at the time.

Apart from that, they mostly played thrash, but went on into more old-school territory like Maiden later on. Also, I met a bunch of pretty cool people, one of which happens to be a host on this pretty cool music channel.

Something you should check out when in Sarajevo is the remains of the tracks and fields from the 1984 Winter Olympics. It was getting dark when we got there, so I only managed to see the bobsled track before sunset, but the southern mountain side offers a stupendous view of the city around that time.

Also, you gotta go exploring the country itself. Funky Tours has this amazing 1-day trip around the southern parts which has both rustic villages, historic sights, and some of the most gorgeous nature I've ever seen.

And sure, the war did leave its marks on Sarajevo. You'll see buildings riddled with bullet holes, and sidewalks with indentations after grenades exploding. But the locals are owning it – even painting aforementioned grenade indentations red and calling them "roses". You'll always feel safe there.

So, is Sarajevo worth a visit? Hells yeah. It's definitely a unique city; it's beautiful; it's cheap, and it's nice and warm – especially during August. I was there for 12 days, but you could easily go exploring there for 2-3 weeks.