Spendthrift Shoestring

Sarajevo Gets More Cheap Flights

More ahead-of-the-curve activity from Germanwings. At the end of June, the German low-cost carrier announced that they'd start flying between Cologne/Bonn and Sarajevo in August. Flycheapo spent some time with the airline's 2008-2009 schedule and reports today that the airline will also be connecting Stuttgart and Sarajevo from late October on.

Sarajevo is an absolute star of a city. Its rich layers of culture and history and unique atmosphere make it an extraordinarily special place. When Marisa and I visited in May, I kept thinking about the relative dearth of tourists. Back in London, I blabbed to whoever would listen about the city and wondered out loud why Sarajevo hadn't made it onto a shortlist of weekend break destinations for Londoners. One British friend said, in his typically understated way: "It may have something to do with the fact that it was a war zone not long ago." But Bosnian War hostilities ended almost thirteen years ago.

Sarajevo is ripe for greater numbers of tourists. If another low-cost carrier or two were to jump on the Germanwings bandwagon, the city might begin to receive its tourism due.

Balkan Graffiti

Here are some images I meant to put up after returning from the Balkans last month. I'm particularly curious about the first one.

Belgrade.

Sarajevo.

Belgrade.

One Night in Sarajevo

At the moment, I'm waiting in the Zagreb airport for my delayed WizzAir flight back to London. I should be tired. Marisa and I took the overnight train from Sarajevo to Zagreb last night. But I'm not tired, not at all; this wakefulness may have something to do with my newly acquired kava sa slagom habit. Sarajevo was absolutely amazing. The last time I visited I was 12 and it was wintertime. I visited with my mom and it was incredibly cold. The entire city was so dramatically different from anything I'd ever experienced that it fully took me aback. This time, with a bit more cultural and historical perspective, I found myself again amazed by Sarajevo's layeredness.

We arrived on Monday by bus from Belgrade. (To see what I was up to in Belgrade, check out my New York Post posts. Scroll down a bit.) The bus whizzed through the old city, with its amazing range of buildings, its minarets, and its church towers, leaving the city behind entirely. Surprised, we were reassured by a fellow passenger that the bus station was in the new part of town. It suddenly became clear to both of us that our bus, a Serbian line, was headed to a Serbian part of Sarajevo, something confirmed for us later. We grabbed a taxi into the old city and found a room at Hotel Gaj, a very welcoming hotel across the Miljacka river from most of the city's sights.

The city is just so magnificent, varied, and gorgeous, and locals are strikingly friendly. Trying to find a particular restaurant, we asked a woman in her sixties how to find it. She promptly bundled us into a taxi and took us to an excellent hillside restaurant, where she sat and drank wine with us and then left us to our dinner, returning as we were tucking into dessert. She's lived in Trier for 40 years and is about to return to her second Heimat after a vacation in Bosnia. We shared a fun and relaxed Ausländer-to-Ausländer palaver.

Anyway, more later after I return to London. In the meantime, here are some images from Sarajevo.

Paint-lashed wall.

Remnants of a caffeine break at the fruit and vegetable market.

Bottle of local sparkling water.

Beautiful stone wall.