A baker's opera

It's part Romeo and Juliet and part Tosca but supposedly the story, or some version of it, is true.

Safikada, a Muslim girl of Banja Luka fell in love with a Christian boy, supposedly a soldier stationed at the fortress by the river. Her father blew his stack over that and forbid a union and so, faced with life without her true love, she did the only thing she could think of to do and that was to walk in front of a canon just as it was being fired to mark the end of the Ramadan month of fasting and the call to feast. She did not survive, her boyfriend did not rescue her at the last minute, her father did not have to suffer grandchildren raised outside the mosque.

Her grave has turned into a shrine for the broken-hearted in the city; their  burning candles have left a crust of melted wax on the stone sarcophagus.

OK, true she didn't leap of the fortress like Tosca and her Romeo never did reciprocate with a loving suicide, and I can't figure out how come the guys setting of the canon didn't see her or stop her... but this does have melodramatic, operatic possibility.

And that is what a Banja Luka baker thought. The owner of Arion Bakery actually is a musician who has continued the  family business he inherited. And he's written Safikada, the opera. I would like to hear it because he certainly makes a mean spicy ham sandwich.

While I'm doing architecture criticism, here are some structures worth criticizing

WHAT were they thinking. Banja Luka has plenty of graceful mansions and an imposing fortress, great natural beauty and wonderful churches and public buildings so what happened here? To the left is the hideously expensive new Republika Srpska government building. It's just an ugly square box plunked down in an otherwise pretty section (see the structure at its base.) Next door - you can see the corner of it -- is the equally gross telecom building. Below is the definitely not awe-inspiring spire of a determinedly modern Catholic church.

more war memorials around Bosnia

Sarajevo recently dedicated a monument in Kosovo Park in the center of the city to the thousands of children killed during the war. The base of the monument is filled with hundreds of footprints from the siblings of those dead children.

Below is a monument in Jajce, a hotly contested locale in central Bosnia. It declares, in that illogical way of monuments,  that an honorable death lives on forever.

Monuments to war and loss

Across Banja Luka -- no it's true of Bosnia at large -- new monuments and memorials to the war are appearing. I realize how many I seem to have taken pictures of and there is probably a story to be done about what exactly they represent.

The one on the left here is a monument to 12 babies who died in a Banja Luka maternity ward because  there was no way to get oxygen they needed delivered. The Security Council in 1993 had a ban on flights over BiH. Wording on a plague near the monument refers to the deaths as a "crime" and blames "world powers that be" for it. The dead 12, it says, stand for all the kids lost in the ugly battling.

To the right: this sculpture is new and stands for lives ripped out of the fabric of the community. The chip-like monument to the left is in the front yard of a computer factory and strikes the same theme of lives separated from the whole.

Can you really fix something like this?

The 16th century Ferhadija mosque was the most prominent of 16 mosques destroyed in 1993 at the beginning of the Balkan war. The explosions that brought down the building and the complex around it in the center of the city shook structures and broke glass for miles around. The landmark was turned into a parking lot. Bosnian Serb and Banja Luka officials colluded in the horrible vandalism by most accounts and  the war crimes Tribunal in The Hague has sentenced a man to 30-some years in prison for destruction of Muslim property that went along with murder and ethnic cleansing. 

Mosques again stand throughout the city, though the number of Muslims is much reduced. My friend's aunt --who emigrated to Norway in the 1990s rather than watch neighbors killed or harassed -- said the area where she lives used to be 90 percent Muslim. Now it is about 10 percent at most. Rebuilding the Ferhadija Mosque, however, has been more troublesome than the lesser houses of worship. This was a UNESCO-protected structure when it was blown up so the restoration must be perfect and there are areas of contention. And a ceremony to mark the start of reconstruction in 2001 was marred by ethnic protesting and violence.  

The troubled symbol is, as you can see, however, being resurrected.

Scenes of weekend Bana Luka

Summer cleaning on the patio and browsing for books at the downtown stalls.  Below an old cemetery along the river and the reconstructed Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity in the center of the city. It was destroyed during WW II by Croat fascists and painstaking restored after the Balkans war as part of a resurgence in Serb pride. The most famous building in the city is probably the medieval fortress on the river, which could also use some restoration

Night and Day in Banja Luka

Summer light in Bosnia is spectacular from the morning wake up that comes about 5:15 a.m. to the full moons that come out in a still-blue sky at nearly 9 p.m.

I had coffee and cereal then pulled on a backpack and walked 15 minutes to the railway station and bought a ticket for about $20 for a five-hour trip.  I love trains, the motion, the noise, the whistles, the people you meet, the feeling of Independence to just be going someplace. Everything.

 There are exactly three coaches in the train from Sarajevo to Banja Luka, one for each of the authorities (ethnicities) along the route from Sarajevo to Zagreb (Croatian, Bosnian Serb and Bosniak-Croatian). I'm told that during the holidays when more people travel rail things get complicated because officials have trouble figuring out the math. Doubling to six cars, two for each group is not economical -- but you can't add something for one and not the other.

 The number of cars has nothing to do with where you sit. That also applies to smokers. They can sit in the smoking cars and light up anywhere or they can sit in the non-smoking cars and stand by windows in the hallways alongside compartments and light up.

My compartment had no smokers and no Bosnians. It was filled with an Australian couple on holiday from the international school in Beijing and touring Europe and an Italian gentleman who got off in Doboj to bring back a loaf of bread and cheese he didn't share... and this young Hungarian guy who had the most elaborate tattoos on his calves. One was a colored abstract like a Braque painting and the other a black and white port-side scene. I kept ogling him. The Australians kept talking about Banja Luka pronouncing it like banjo.

   The train came in exactly on time and Boki met me so we could go directly to Kod Muje where we sat in the garden and ate cevapi and Nektar pivo. Banja Luka has the best cevapi in the country, really. They use a different mixture of meat.  The garden was filled with bold little wrens who flew onto the table and took pieces of bread right out of my hands.

 Eating cevapi was on the list of things I had to do in Banja Luka, where I have not visited in about four years. We also had a beer at the kastel on the Vrbas River that night and vanilla ice cream with sumski voce (forest fruits) sauce for breakfast the next day.

 And yes, I am aware all my goals involve eating!

    

A different kind of medical system

One of our editors has been having troubling heart palpitations. A local doctor he trusts had him wear a monitor for a few days and the results did not calm his worries. She suggested that a visit to a cardiologist might be a good idea.

Let me take care of it, his landlord told him upon hearing of his problem. He said he was friendly with the best cardiologist in Sarajevo, and she had recently taken care of his own father's heart ailments. Leave it to me, he said.

The next morning the landlord called our editor and said meet me outside at 10; you got an appointment. And indeed the cardiologist saw him, did an EKG, delivered the diagnosis (good news, nothing but stress and age, relax) and collected her fee (100 km or about $80. In cash) all in about two hours.

Back in the states he'd still be calling around for a doctor who accepted his insurance and was also taking new patients. So you gotta admire the efficiency.

Or do you? This is a system where connections and cash get you what you need. That's handy. Unless you don't have the connections or cash. Then what?

Why do you like it THERE so much there?

That is the usual reaction I get at home from geography-challenged countrymen who do not understand my attraction to Bosnia.  I don't articulated the feeling well, in truth, and usually end up confounding my questioners even more talking about how alive it makes me feel to deal with smart, mean, assertive, vocal people with a history that is tragic, untamed, self-induced and beneath all the war and domination by other nations a preview of all the world. Plus there is the coffee and the daily show on the Ferhadija. See what I mean? What sense can you make out of that?

But recently the UK's Guardian printed former High Commissioner Paddy Ashdown's response to that question, which he apparently gets a lot of too. Ashdown is the most famous of the European overloads  with king-like powers appointed to watch over Bosnia's recovery from the 1990s war. Here's what he said about the place that captivated him too:

Bosnia is probably the last place in pasteurised Europe where you can live a genuine adventure. Danger is very present there. Sarajevo is one of the most beautiful cities in the world - a garden city sitting in a bowl of mountains. Then there is the tremendous romance of the east and west coming together. I loved my time there. I loved the people. They're a bunch of bloody rogues but I'm used to that from Ireland.