As I stretched from my nap and looked out the bus window, I could have sworn that I was in a different country, Neverland perhaps? I had managed to drift off to sleep for a few hours of the six-hour bus ride from Sarajevo to Banja Luka, the capitol of Republica Srpska, one of the two entities of BiH. The bus was hugged on either side by rich green foliage with intermittent tunnels and exposed rock. A couple hundred feet below us (in a huge white charter bus) was a beautiful turquoise river. The view was one of the most majestic that I have ever had the pleasure of seeing, the gorge that the bus wove through was covered in mist from the rainy day and it actually illuminated the countryside. It was almost impossible to imagine that war had devastated these areas less than twenty years ago.
And at the same time, every turn offered a new view of a burned or bombed out building that had not been repaired. In some places the buildings stood alone as remnants of the entire community that was ethnically cleansed, a prevalent action in the northern part of the state. In other areas the bombed houses were a functioning part of a larger settlement, either as an inadequate form of housing, a storage facility, or an empty shell of someone’s former life. The same applied to religious structures – we passed more than one burnt out Orthodox Church or Mosque. While refugees and displaced persons, an estimated 2 million from the war, are entitled to the right of return and property in Annex 7 of the Dayton Accord, in many respects property was returned to individuals, but they did not return to their own lives. The results are what we saw from the bus window, the exoskeleton of the former lives of two million individuals (most of whom have not physically returned to their former lives) in the middle of breathtaking countryside. (Side note, for those with access to Facebook, my attempts at capturing the view will be up shortly.)
Each house we passed had its own garden, and some areas boasted small farms, complete with livestock. Not much, in fact, was different from Appalachia or areas of Western Virginia, such as the landscape surrounding the New River. With a thirty-minute stop, to divide up the trip, at a small restaurant reminiscent of a ski-lodge (with good food at an excellent price), the six-hour trip was not long. Banja Luka approached quickly between reading for pleasure (Three Cups of Tea), for class (about Montenegro and Kosovo), car games (Geography) and sleeping. So far Banja Luka seems like a wonderful town. There is, however, gorgeous architecture, especially in the Orthodox Church. There is also a bell tower that announces the time, reminiscent of Carolina and the Sound of Music, not surprisingly. We left the hotel soon after arriving in order to explore some of the city, which was unfortunately pretty much asleep at nine pm on a rainy Monday night. Banja Luka is, however, the capitol of the RS and a college town, so Tuesday and Tuesday night should provide a better understanding of the real life of the city.
Over the next two days we will have a variety of meetings with different field offices of the major organizations with which we met in Sarajevo including the OSCE and the EU Police Mission. I am really looking forward to hearing another opinion of all that we have learned about.
With Love,
Lauren
all caught up!
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