18-Dec-2023
We've had really good weather in Sarajevo. Often cold (starting off in temps of minus 4 has not been unusual). But mostly dry. Often misty (aka smoggy...) But not instantly scouring your throat in the way that our Southeast Asian burning-derived air pollution does.
The result has been that we've been out and about a lot. Two sections follow. The first focuses on the amazing food we've had while we've been here. The second just rounds up some of the miscellany of sights that we've taken in on our walks.
1.
This is the indoor market:
And this is some of the produce from the cheese stall we patronized:
The lady who worked this stall is a natural-born salesperson. Basically, she just kept feeding us samples of stuff, and let the obvious quality of her wares speak for themselves. We'd gone in to buy the sheep-milk version of the famous Travnik cheese (on the left in the picture above). We came out with a big chunk of that, plus another big chunk of smoked cheese, a pack of kaymak (which we knew from Turkiye, and suspect we might have met previously in Mongolia), and a pack of plum conserve (we think):
Fruit conserve and kaymak. Unbelievably delicious
Really yummy smoked cheese. Looks like a bread roll from the outside
But Sarajevo has lots more food stories:
Another impressive market
So i Cokolada. We liked this place for many reasons: The coffee is good; the cakes are excellent; and it's non-smoking...
The best carrot cake I've had for a really long time
Caffe O'Clock also has a non-smoking area
On our last full day, we had breakfast at Zmaj, another cevabdzinica, or purveyor of Bosnian kebabs:
Great-quality food always makes you want to come back to a city...
2.
Stecchi (the singular is stecak) are pre-Ottoman tombstones, found throughout Bosnia-Herzogovina. They began appearing in the mid-12th century, reached a zenith in the 14th and 15th centuries, and stopped being used when the Ottomans arrived in the 16th century. They were erected by all the different Christian churches present in the locality (Bosnian, Catholic, and Orthodox). There's quite a collection in front of the museum:
We saw more tombstones when we walked up the hill today to Alifakovac Cemetery:
Good views of the White Fortress en route
The burial area is very poignant. You can't help but notice in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with only the most cursory of glances, how many people died in those early years of the 1990s... It is estimated that more than 100,000 people were killed during the Bosnian War, and at least 70 percent of those deaths were Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)
While there are undeniably memories of sadness, there are plenty of quirky things in Sarajevo too...
For example, the yellow cat:
Or the penny-farthing-rider braving the Miljacka:
Not far from where we're staying is the Ciglane area, with its funicular:
Atlantes en route
All up, Sarajevo has offered a fabulous walking experience. There is literally nowhere in this city without its points of interest, and crisscrossing certain areas on successive days has only underlined that no city is ever the same twice.
It's definitely one to return to.
Tomorrow, however, we head for Mostar.