I hadn't considered visiting these countries of recent wars earlier, and wasn't sure if they had been Communist or not. But the wars were twenty years ago. I was very nervous in the dark strange city of Sarajevo until my next host, Oliver, appeared with his 'limo', an old car powered by liquefied natural gas. We stopped in an underground supermarket, then drove up the mountain overlooking the city. He built the large house himself - it's not quite finished - and in season it is a youth hostel. Two loving cats, Sylvester and Dodi, made a fuss over me but hate each other. One black and white puppy, Ursula, is allowed inside. The place looks like the abode of a Hollywood star with large picture windows, no interior walls on the first floor, a wood burning stove, a pave stone floor with gravel between the rocks. He said Angelina and Brad had visited. Anything is possible!
Oli has a bar in town, one of the first since the war to reopen, and a meeting place for former enemies to relax and forget about it. He is his own boss and decided not to open up the evenings I was there, except one afternoon when friends were shooting a film. He would never see it; all that interests him is science fiction. Like Londoners during the blitz of WWII, he said the best parties were during the war. They didn't have enough to eat but a little booze had a big effect.
Armed with a map, I explored the old town, found a small museum in a former market, and met Oli for a meal in his old neighborhood. Archduke Ferdinand was assasinated near the stone bridge when his driver took a wrong turn. Tensions were such the First World War would probably have occurred without this event.
Oli advised me to visit the newest museum, of Srebenica, which he helped found. The town is infamous for the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population. There are hundreds of photographs of the male victims, and hours of computer files re-creating day by day that terrible month's events. The United Nations forces underestimated the ferocity of the Serbs and failed to protect the people. There were also lengthy taped interviews with survivors, and over two days I managed to watch four of them, mostly women, recounting the horrors, the loss of their families and the terrible privations. They were reduced to using road salt to flavor the little food they had. Humanitarian aid was woeful; plenty of pots and pans and damn little food.
The view from Oli's house of Sarajevo at dusk, covered with snow, lights tinkling, is a living Christmas card. I wondered why I rushed from capital to capital on this trip, ignoring the countryside.
I had finished the wonderful British diaries of adolescent Adrian Mole and saw what Oli's guests had left behind. There was an early version of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" called "John Thomas and Lady Jane", slang for sex organs. But I'm not sure the last chapters were there so I just bought a copy of LCL here in Sofia. Oli gave me pomegranates for my trip to Skopje, and a big bag of Serbian Yugoslavian and Cuban coins. But I was only briefly in Serbia, changed buses in Kosova (Euros) and then it was Macedonia-FYROM
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