Random Thought: 14

So,

Upon leaving Mostar, I was travelling with 3 newfound friends; two girls from Denmark, named Kristina and Emilie, and then another girl from Australia, named Genevieve. Kristina and Emilie were on my (extremely hot) bus to Mostar, and they needed a hostel, so I showed them to mine. Genevieve was my roommate at said hostel. We all went to dinner together and had a great time (and I was introduced to this AWESOME Balkan sauce that goes on everything that’s orange and kind of tastes like olives and jalapenos), so we decided to sight-see some more the next day. We did so, and the day after that we traveled onto Sarajevo together.

The Danes are more of go-with-the-flow type travellers, so they didn’t have a hostel booked in Sarajevo either. We booked a place together for 3 dorm bed. Genevieve already had one booked, so upon arrival in the capital, we went our separate ways and decided to meet up again in the morning to sight-see. So the next morning we meet at this place called Pigeon Square. Interesting name, you might say. It literally was the home of hundreds of pigeons…and one even took a shit on Genevieve’s shoulder. But for some reason we always returned to meet there.

This particular morning, Genevieve had brought some friends. She had met Virginie, a French girl from her hostel, and this Turkish guy named Mohammad who was half Muslim and half Christian and “believed in everything.” Whatever, the more the merrier. Anyway, we all decide the first place we should go is the Tunnel museum. The tunnel museum is this museum located on the remnants of the tunnel that was built during the siege of Sarajevo to get access to the outside. People brought in water and food and stuff through it, and naturally it was on the outskirts of town. In all the travel books, it’s listed as a must-see. So we’re like, all right let’s do it!

According to the books, you have to take the tram for 30 minutes out to the farthest edge of actual Sarajevo, then get on bus 68A, which takes you to this suburb, and from the suburb, you walk to the museum. All right. This already sounds fucking ridiculous. Where do we get off the bus in this suburb? Where in the suburb is the museum? Are we walking within the suburb or outside the suburb? Why are there at least 68 bus routes? None of these questions have answers.

So we start to tram it up, and things are going well. We get to this huge bus depot at the end of the line, and it’s like sweet, where’s bus 68A? We look and look and look and wait and wait, and even though busses 27, 32, 8, and other non-numerical busses came by, there was no 68A. So Mohammad just takes charge. He’s like, ‘I go find out. It ok. I speak with man, I come back tell you, we go. It ok!’ Virginie follows him. Once they leave, Genevieve informs us that he’s actually a NATO serviceman, on leave, and he wasn’t at their hostel. So I’m like ‘So how does Virginie know him?’ and she replies ‘I don’t really know, I kept asking and couldn’t get it out of her…apparently she was walking around and just had a drink with him…I was like ‘ok no one does that but fine.’’ So they’ve been gone awhile and Genevieve goes to a nearby café, and finds out that bus 68A doesn’t exist anymore and we just have to wait for a bus with the name of the suburb on it. 10 minutes later the Turkish guy comes back and informs of the same information. By now, it was clear that he was an army guy, because he was all about taking charge and leading us around. It was like ‘We go over there, sit, wait for new bus. It fine, I speak with man.”
So the bus finally comes, but then it just sits there for 15 minutes before it opens its doors. We all eventually get on and there are actually quite a few other tourists on board, so we’re thinking, great, we’re on the right track. Since none of us know when to get off, we decide to just follow the crowd. By the time we get to the end of the line, it’s obvious that all the other tourists had the same plan. In fact, when we get up, we see about 7 other tourists also get up five seconds after us. So it’s like, ok fuck.

We hop off the bus, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. We just start walking and at this point I’m just cracking up. I mean, this is like the funniest shit ever, we are just walking around the Bosnian countryside (this is hardly a suburb) with no clue as to where to go. Luckily we saw a sign or something, I don’t remember, but we end up at the tunnel.
Aside from the pictures and autographs of Richard Gere and Orlando Bloom, it was very moving. The tunnel itself is only 1 meter wide and like 1.6 meters tall. So, you couldn’t walk through it without hunching over (which we were able to do) and we watched this video that someone had compiled about the war, seeing actual buildings that we recognized amid the bombing. All in all, the whole visit to the tunnel and museum (aka 2-roomed building with artifacts) took about 30-45 minutes. Compared to the 2 hours it took just to get there.

Then we realize that we literally have no idea how to get back. First of all, somewhere along the line someone had pointed out that it was Sunday. And it’s in the middle of Ramadan…so things are just in slow motion all over the city. We also realize that it had taken so long for a bus to come before that we had no idea when the next would come all the way out here. So we ask this guy at the tunnel what the easiest way back is.

Me: Hi, what’s the best way back to Sarajevo?
Grumpy Guy: Well how’d you get here?
Me: We took the bus.
Grumpy Guy: Then take the bus.

Thanks. So we start walking back to the bus, and halfway there, we see another bus stop. There are some other tourists waiting there, so we’re like ‘all right, let’s go sit by them.” They inform us that they had been waiting 30 minutes already, and had been dropped off there earlier. We take a closer look at the sign indicating it was a bus stop, and though it looks like a Bus 31 is coming….it also looks like it may have been crossed out.

Great. So we’re like ‘well, we’re all here, and it’s only like 2 PM, so let’s just chill here for awhile. If it doesn’t come, we’ll find the other bus stop again.” So after like 10 more minutes of being super cute and sharing all the food and gum in our packs and stuff, I start talking with the Turkish guy. Apparently, he lives right down the street from us in these NATO army barracks. Like, I can see it from where we’re sitting. So it’s like

J: So do you know this area pretty well then?
TG: Yes! I live down street, in Army barracks, I talk with people, I know all this, very well.
J: Do you know if a bus is coming?
TG: No.

Eventually, he figures out that if anyone should do something about this, it should be him. Like, come on, please use your overbearing attitude and leadership abilities now that it’s actually useful! So he walks the half a block to his barracks find out when the bus comes. Apparently it comes every hour and fifteen minutes. That essentially means nothing to us. Then we get into this big discussion about whether or not to call a cab.
After like 5 minutes of this and 2 minutes of the Turkish guy claiming that he can totally talk with the cab to get us a good fare and make sure it’s safe and get us on our way and we’ll be just fine, a cab just comes right along. We’re like I don’t even care if it’s a Nazi, let’s get in. The turkish guy takes it upon himself to talk the shit out of the driver and get us a fair of 20 marks…he seems pretty proud of himself, but 20 marks is pretty much exactly what I’d expect to pay for someone to drive me into and across a city of 700,000 people. The Turkish really wants to make sure this is ok with us, and at this point, we’d be willing to pay 50 euros to get back to town so we barely even say ‘yeah it’s fine’ before hopping in.

I feel bad leaving Virginie though, because she’s slightly awkward and is now stuck with this guy that she doesn’t even remember meeting…so I ask them both if they want to meet us at Pigeon Square for lunch. Like, they could just hop on the next cab, and we’ll be waiting. Viriginie gives me a grateful smile and it’s all nice.

So as soon as we get in the cab and it takes off, we see the bus come. Yeah. It’s really no biggie to us by now, b/c we didn’t feel like sitting on public transit for an hour in the heat and 20 marks is literally 10 bucks, divided by 4 people. But we soon realize that we’re gonna have to wait for Virginie and the Turkish guy FOREVER if they take that bus. Hell, we didn’t even know what bus it was. For all we know, it’s a fucking long distance bus picking people up to go to Kosovo! And though the Turkish guy was really proud of his linguistic abilities, something told me he didn’t really have as strong of a hold on Bosnian as he professed. He didn’t even know if the fucking bus comes to his house!

So we’re back at Pigeon Square and we face this dilemma. It’s like, ok they’re both kind of weird, but we can’t just blow them off. And honestly, I’ve been Virginie so many fucking times. Like, she just wants to meet some people to hang out with and she’s kind of shy and on top of that, she’s in a foreign country alone and nervous and everything. On the other hand, we are all so starving, we can’t just not eat, knowing that we may very well never see them again. So, we decide to just eat in a café in Pigeon Square and keep an eye out for them.

Luckily, this works out and like an hour later they show up. We, of course, are done eating. And all any of us want to do is just get out of the heat and go sleep, so after 10 minutes of silence it’s like ‘so…..you guys want to meet again like at 7 and get some supper?’ The Turkish Guy’s attention is elsewhere and Virginie seems happy just to be invited, so it’s like sweet. We all head back to our hostels to sleep.

At 7:00, the lady Danes and I find ourselves at Pigeon Square, and see Genevieve right away, alone. We ask ‘so where’s the Turkish guy?’ and without missing a beat she replies ‘I dunno, he’s kind of weird.’ Apparently he just walked off and she wasn’t sure if he understood that we were all meeting again. We ask about Virginie, and apparently she had been asleep for about 3 hours back at the hostel and there was no waking her.
Ugh. Virginie! I mean, I know you’re probably tired but if you want to make friends, you’ve gotta get with it! You can’t just sleep all day with no alarm clock. I wanted to include her but she had to meet me halfway. Right on the borderline is where I’m gonna stay. I never saw Virginie again, but the four of us had a great time in Sarajevo. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to Genevieve last night as we went our separate ways, and we exchanged big hugs all around…but now I’m on the way to Banja Luka, capital of the Serbian Republic with Kristina and Emilie, and I’m pretty damn excited. Next up: Slovenia!