Walk with me to work this morning

Mornings in my current borrowed home begin with a paw in the face. I have had insomnia for years, but I am sleeping hours of uninterrupted, non-medicated sleep in this place. It's not the bed, which is fine though nothing extraordinary. It could be the company. I have Henry, my cat, plus the cat and dog that live here all getting along so well we crowd each other in the bed. They all fight to be closest to me or on me, which is nice. But it's probably the light, or lack of it, that puts me into a nightly coma. You could develop pictures in this bedroom which is outfitted with black-out blinks and a metal door. It's like crawling into a cave.

Anyway, I get up with the animals demanding to be fed and after dressing and coffee I go into the garden with scissors. The grape arbor is laden with fruit, but the little green clusters won't be ready to pick for a month. Instead I harvest roses. They are amazing bushes full of blooms of velvety red, yellow with a blush and white. I am keeping the office alive with roses these days.

It's a 20-minute walk to work, all downhill. Because of the Bosnian diet and because soon it will be snowy and icy and I won't be able to I force myself to walk up and back to the house rather than rely on taxis. Even in the rain, even late at night, even coming home when it's a 35-minute walk straight up hills and stairs.

The house is atop the city and the view leaving is panoramic. The cats and dog come out the doggy door and leap around me as I set the alarm and go out the locked gate. All they need is champagne and it would be an official morning send-off.

I go down the alley which is lined with trees heavy these days with apples and pears and cross the street near the garbage bins. The bins in Sarajevo are recycling center, SPCA and Good Will wrapped together. Around every bin in the city you'll find people -- usually Roma pulling wagons -- shopping for treasure. Most people carefully put electronic equipment or clothing in bags separate from garbage and kitty litter to accommodate. Birds flutter and strut around most of the bins too. People leave out their stale bread from the rest of their trash for them.

At the traffic light I go left again down a sloping street that leads to a cobble-stoned path with a green iron railing that I usually cling to. The other day I slipped on the sloping street before I got to the rail. Landing on your ass on the sidewalk is just a fact of life here. Especially when it rains the cobble stones are like ice cubes and they are unfriendly to sandals or heels.

City workers occasionally come up the path with a wheelbarrow and pluck out all the weeds that poke out from the stones.

In the middle of this winding path workmen have been busy for days at a pile of sand and a cement mixer. They are building or repairing a patio for one of the houses set into the hill through which the path runs. I find it amazing they can keep their footing on the steep incline much less heft around weelbarrows of cement. The other day a dump truck had manuvered up that little path to drop off more sand -- and was backing down and out again. I actually stopped to watch this masterful piece of driving skill. That truck just looked enormous on the crowded country path.

The bottom of the cobblestone path is not the bottom of the hill, however. There is this drop from the path to the street below. It's the kind of drop that makes you walk on your heels and kills your calf muscles. Instead I usually use the stone stairs one of the residents built alongside the road -- 26 stairs down.

Then I wind around a city street, past a car dealership and the Bulgarian embassy and a little corner store with neat stacks of fruit and vegetables of all different colors, out front. A few years ago some Bosnian officials tried outlawing this outside display of vegetables, but it didn't work. People didn't seem worried about dirty food.

Next I go past the Sarajevo Vatrogasci -- The fire station -- where muscular young men are always hanging out smoking in their dark-blue firemen t-shirts. The street here is always wet because they are forever washing the gleaming red fire trucks parked half in and out of the big bay doors. I turn to the right and go past Meeting Point cafe which at night is always packed out to the street with young people and noisy with music and gossip. In the mornings, it's deserted except for guys sweeping and I can still almost smell from my side of the street the stale beer and cigarettes.

I turn left at the movie theater and art stores into a little alley that runs past the Gong Cafe. Cafes here have the weirdest names -- The Bill Gates Cafe, the Hemingway Cafe. The guy who runs the Gong is a dwarf and I am only bringing this up to make one point -- he's as tall as I am. He really makes me feel short.

The alley dead ends at the Miljacka River so I turn right and walk on the raised walkway along the shore. This is my favorite part of the walk. I love the flower-hedged cafes here, a favorite spot to go Saturday morning with a book for cappaucino. The sidewalk is broken and ragged. This place is full of life. People walk their dogs, people-watch from cafes over their newspapers or, like me, rush to work.

Lately, and I hate this, they've put up this series of ugly steel-pipe scaffolds right in the middle of the river on which are plastered posters for the annual Sarajevo Film Festival. I'm glad the festival is getting publicity, but I am afraid they'll leave up these ugly billboards for beer and tobacco ads afterward. The Miljacka isn't exactly a beautiful waterway, but I love the sound of it as it runs over a series of man-made cascades. In each of the little drops you'll see dozens of balls and plastic bottles endlessly tumbling. I've got this theory that Greenpeace ought to stop their little pirating charades in the name of marine mammals that just piss off people and instead come to Bosnia and organize a national river-clean up and litter pick up campaign.

Next I cross over one of the bridges over the Miljacka into the center city. On the other side, you have to wait for the trams and traffic to go by and the light to turn green to cross the main street. The sidewalks here are narrow and it's crowded with pedestrians. When we are all carrying umbrellas on rainy days it's like an obstacle course.

From the main road along the river I go straight down a bustling side street past the Hotel Bosna. This is where you usually find the thin, dark young man who sits leaning against a building with a cardboard sign asking for "mala pomoc za zivot" -- a little help with life. Sometime he begs at the main post office, but this is where I usually see him. I've decided I must give him a whopping 5 KM (3$) donation the next time I walk by him just because I can understand his plea (and I'm not just talking about translation.)

The sidestreet runs finally into big Marsala Tito Boulevard. Right across the street is the CIN office. I just have to wait again for trams to go by. I have had nightmares about slipping under the wheels of these huge heavy buses. Anyway I cross the street, fight with the balky lock on our building and face those 78 marble stairs up to the CIN office.