I love traveling in former Yugoslavia. Many enjoy it for its Dalmatian Coast resorts, its seafood, or its great prices. For me, it’s like turning a history and politics text book inside out, shaking its contents all over the earth, and then playing in it.
While the region is still smarting from the bloody wars of the 1990s, things are changing fast. Much of the war damage scenes I saw two years ago in Mostar (Bosnia) and wrote into our script have been fixed up. Updating my script, I replaced the sad images (and words) with hopeful ones — men in hard hats on scaffolds rebuilding blackened shells of buildings.
Like the Habsburgs and Ottomans, Yugoslavia was the fault line of cultures between east and west. Bosnia was the same fault line within Yugoslavia, and the unfortunate city of Mostar was the fault line within Bosnia. It was an epicenter of ethnic tension. That’s why city parks (which were out of the line of sight of snipers) are now jammed with shiny marble tombstones, mostly dated 1993. Primarily Muslim graves, they have images of the person buried there…a reminder that while the Muslims here came to blows with Christians, they are European Muslims and don’t have the strict limits (regarding alcohol, modest dress, showing images in art, and so on) imposed on many Muslims farther east.
While each evening the tourists clamor to eat down by the river with delightful views of the city’s beloved, pointed, single-arch bridge, I took my business to the Boulevard — the former front line that only now is getting some tentative businesses opening up.
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As Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina rebuilds, this big new church comes with a minaret-shaped spire that seems designed to reach higher than the neighboring minarets.
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Enjoying a plate of stuffed peppers and a Sarajevsko beer — I thought of Sarajevo, considering the Bosnian capital in the news in 1914, 1993, and today. I talked with a young man who served me. He just opened his bar here on the Muslim side. Immediately across the street stands the new Catholic church, with a minaret-shaped spire that rockets up at least double the height of any minaret in town. (He and I compared stress-related cold sores…mine from finishing up three TV shows covering most of ex-Yugoslavia in 20 days…his from opening up a bar on the former front line.) He said that while bullets are no longer flying, he worries about vandalism from young, hate-filled men across the road. There’s understandably a lot of “Your father killed my father” and vice versa sentiment. He’s been open two months, and so far…no problem.
Eating my meal, I was surrounded by poignant sights and sounds. First a warbly call to prayer echoed across town. Then the church bells tolled determinedly across the street. It was like Turkey and Germany were taking turns knocking on my ears. All the while, a little boy with training wheels on his pint-sized bike pedaled vigorously around and around the newly laid sidewalk by a still-bomb-damaged line of buildings and grass too young to walk on. He went faster and faster with each circle.
The day before, we crossed from the Serbian part of Bosnia into the Croat and Muslim part, filming visual indicators showing that we were crossing a centuries-old cultural divide that was gerrymandered into a border in the 1990s to finagle a fragile peace. Flags flapped proudly from wires strung over the road. Old Serbian kings were stenciled onto abandoned buildings. Ruined castles guarded ghosts of centuries-old threats on strategic mountain passes. On road signs, Cyrillic letters gave way to Latin ones.
Stopping to film one sign at the cusp where cities were indicated in both scripts, Cameron (co-author of our guidebook on this region and a critical part of our filming effort for his passion, knowledge, and contacts here) and I were sitting like Clark Kent’s puppies in our van while big, strong Simon and Karel were out with their fancy camera and tripod, framing up the shot. Suddenly a beat-up truck screeched around the corner and skidded to a halt next to Simon and Karel, raising enough dust to obscure the camera.
An enraged man powered out, slammed his door, and screamed at my crew, thumping his chest so hard he almost got air. As he was threatening our friends, Cameron and I were traumatized, watching from the car. Simon and Karel talked calmly with him while taking the camera and tripod down, then walked back to the car — not knowing if the mad Serb would actually get physical. Thankfully it didn’t come to blows.
We learned afterward that the media has been angering Bosnia’s Serbian community lately with its 60-Minutes-type coverage of sensitive issues, and apparently this brute just had it out for anyone with a big camera.
While we’ve met generally gentle and thoughtful people in all communities here, I can also see the potential for more of the sectarian tumult that made the 1990s so horrific. There’s a certain strata of society here in each ethnic community, and when you see them, you just have to think “for war…just add bullets and agitate.”
I’ll see a café filled with skinhead bodybuilders who make me think brains and brawn are a zero-sum game. Some are built like big tubes, with muscles that seem to squeeze their heads really small. They live in poverty, amidst broken concrete and angry graffiti with little but unemployment in their futures.
And then, you get out of the backcountry, and the energy and focus are much different. On Montenegro’s coast, people are still talking about the recent concerts featuring Madonna and the Rolling Stones. Both visited Montenegro (with local government sponsorship to help put that homely little country of 700,000 on the map) and sold out (30,000 tickets at $50 each — lots of gross for a small, poor country).
The Stones learned native words, referring to the country by its local name (Crna Gora), wishing all a dober dan (good day), and so on. They thrilled the euphoric crowd with a robust encore set. Madonna, on the other hand, didn’t relate to anything local, never talked to the people, and ignored their pleas for an encore. Friends who went to the concert recalled that she was in her helicopter, lifting up over the stadium on her way out of the country three minutes after singing the last verse of her last song.
