Sarajevo

Bosnia day 5. or something

Left the national park and headed for Sarajevo - but even on today's 'day off' we had to climb hills, there was a steep one from the centre up to our hotel.
The group did a city tour, we'd done that last year so we got ourselves on a tour to the tunnel.
During the war the only way in and out of the besieged city was through a tunnel that was dug from the edge of the city - so you had to run the gauntlet of sniper alley just to get to it - under the UN-controlled airport and out to 'free Bosnia'. The tunnel was 800m long, just 1.6m high and 1m wide. Anybody who wanted to get out had to get permission and use the tunnel; the other way, it was the only source of supplies to the city, apart from UN 'humanitarian aid' which was pretty useless.
The trip takes you to one end of the tunnel (hidden in an ordinary house) and you get to go in a little bit of it and see some displays; just as interesting was what the guide told us as we travelled out and back and she pointed out the tower blocks used by the snipers, talked about the targeting of maternity hospital, old people's homes, funerals, and just how useless the UN really were. And about the future for the country - paralysed by political deadlock.
To me, if there's hope for this wonderful country it's in people like that young guide who just wants the best for her country, and people like Green Visions who ran the holiday - working together for Bosnia, not for Bosnian Muslims, Serbs or Croats.

After the tunnel, we had a walk round the city. There are plenty of blipportunities in Sarajevo but I decided to blip the same view down the same alley as last February. Compare and contrast!
You can also see here how vulnerable the city was to shelling from the hills.

Then we all went to the brewery which has a good restaurant and is one of the few places where you can get the wonderful Sarajevo dark beer.