Sarajevo – Our First Night

Us at the Latin Bridge Our First Evening

We arrived in Sarajevo around 5:00 in the evening.  Our first experience with a Bosnian was immediately positive.  We got off the bus and, as usual, booked it straight to the nearest map of the city to figure out where we were and how to get to the tram, which would take us to our hostel.  In Sarajevo, the bus station is about 3 km away from the center of town, so the tram was a necessity.  As we were looking at the map, a tall, lanky guy with shaggy, shoulder-length hair said, in perfect English, “Can I help you get somewhere?”  We told him that we wanted to get to the nearest stop for Tram #1 and he pointed us in to a nearby stop.  After thanking him, he strode away and we started trudging along with our packs.  By the time we made it to the large street crossing, I realized that the guy who had helped us was waiting for at the cross.  He asked us again where we were going, and said he thought he mixed up the tram stations, so I showed him where we were going and our step-by-step directions.  He proceeded to walk us to a different tram station, make sure that the tram was the one we wanted, and showed us where to get tickets.  His kindness set the mood for the duration of our trip in Sarajevo.

We made it to our hostel, which was perfectly located in the middle of the old town.  There were only two minor problems: (1) it was on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and (2) it had no air conditioning.  Other than that, it was great and the staff was incredibly helpful.  Kati and I got a recommendation for a local food place that serves what seems to be the “rice” of the Bosnian diet: cevapi.  Cevapi is essentially pita bread stuffed with “meat fingers” (sausages) made of veal and pork along with a kind of creamed cheese and onions.  Sans the onions (and with the cheese), they’re delicious, but they don’t warrant the kind of obsession that the Bosnians have for them. 

After dinner we headed out for a drink.  We had a recommendation for this small little wine bar in town.  It looked like a place out of the streets of New Orleans.  It had crazy artsy posters and old-school pictures all over the wall.  The wine was served in whatever glasses and mini-pitchers they had available.  The absolute bohemian-eclecticism of the place was really cool.  They even had a goldfish in a strangely-shaped bowl attached to an air-pump so the fish was continuously being blown around.  We finished our night with a walk past the Latin Bridge, the infamous location where Archbishop Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, starting World War I.