Sarajevo renoted

After a month in the states, Sarajevo looks like a new city. It's probably just the sun shining. The fog has lifted, the ice melted, the sleet stopped. Flowers are out, trees are budding, girls in miniskirts are back strolling the Ferhadija with ice cream cones.

I spent the weekend walking through town and then cleaning the apartment, scouring, washing, opening all the windows and throwing blankets and rugs out on the balcony to air.

City workers are doing some spring cleaning of their own. All through the city there are giant pads of stiff paper fluttering about at the base of street lamps. They are old posters. For months one advertising poster after another is stuck up on the lamppole signs -- until it gets so unyielding workers pull 'em off to start fresh.

And garbage men were out cleaning up the narrow street around the corner where the entire contents of a dumpster had been poured out on the sidewalk and paving. Roma go through the containers looking for clothes and other items. Maybe they got carried around or a car might have slammed into the container. I don't know, but it was a mess and the men were shoveling, sweeping and scooping up crap as fast as they could. But still their big truck blocked the passage and a line of cars behind itgrew longer as I walked. Of course, drivers were honking away, men yelling and gesticulating out car windows, public temper tantrums being tolerated here as a matter of course.

I went to bed on stiff clean white sheets and drifted off. I was awakened by a blast of cold wind from the window. Spring here is not the same as Florida. The apartment was freezing and there I was at 3:30 trying to get windows in the place to shut. They are heavy wood-framed contraptions that open both on the top and the side and in my chilled and drowsy state I couldn't manage them. I finally pulled on sweats and block the bedroom window shut with a pair of boots.