I was staying with the Luftman-Kleinwaks family. Eric Luftman was friends with my dad in college and he and his wife Elise are both in the US foreign service, and they just started their 2 year post in Sarajevo a few months ago. They have two daughters Gavi (almost 13) and Sarit (just turned 8). They were a fantastic family to stay with and I was genuinely sad to leave them! I sort of felt like I could stay there forever and just become part of the family posted there. :) I bonded with the girls, even though they started out calling me Miss Tinkle and eventually shifted to Miss Shana when I told them they didn't need to address me so formally. I've never felt like such a grown-up! It was a bit trippy. Gavi made dinner for the 3 of us the first night and a half I was there, so I was shamed into cooking for them shortly thereafter. It pretty much never happens that I cook at all, let alone for other people, so that made me feel a bit like a grown up too, but in a good way. It was just spaghetti though. Any fool can cook spaghetti. :P Still, it's the first step.
They both reminded me a bit of myself, in different ways. Gavi and I have really similar taste in books. Her room was festooned with excellent fantasy novels with a few things like Freakonomics and Three Cups of Tea sprinkled in, lest we should forget how smart and knowledge-hungry and precocious she is (hard to do). Sarit, on the other hand, is a crazy little ball of energy, who will not be told what to do but is very good at turning the cannon the other way. Pretty hilarious.
As for the country, each day unleashed new surprises and joys. It was totally unlike anywhere else I've been, especially on this trip in Europe. There were mosques everywhere, for one thing, which I found really beautiful and awesome, especially since they're so foreign from my day to day experience. They were also mostly built in the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s to add to their aesthetic and historic value. One of my favorite moments was when I took an expansive walk into the hilly neighborhoods of Sarajevo on my fairly foggy second day, when suddenly the iman's call to prayer came wafting up to where I was from miles below. It was quite magical and surreal.
Sarajevo's old town is a joy. It feels like a very different world, sort of the way I imagine Turkey and Morocco and parts of the Middle East look and feel like. There were all these little bazaars and shops, and there were also all these metal-workers tinkering away at these beautiful crafts they make. And they drink this crazy kind of coffee out of these weird little containers- hard to explain, but it's really sludgy with grounds and bitter and they put lots of sugar cubes in it and serve it with Turkish delight. Needless to say, one cup had me pretty well wired.
Probably my favorite day in the area was the one when I took a walk to the Skakevac waterfall. The waterfall itself was pretty small and not THAT impressive, although it was lovely and interesting. The walk there wasn't fun so much as intense and strenuous. I felt like I was battling a deadly foe, intent on my doom. There must have been about 100 trees lying directly across the path I was trying to follow in the wet, muddy, slippery forest, and each time I came to one I needed to figure out a way over under through or around it. It was no easy task, and I learned that my new shoes, sturdy LL Bean walking shoes though they are, don't tread that well, especially on wet wood. I fell hard and often and I was wet, muddy and scratched up, and very tired and hungry and cold, by the time I finally emerged from the woods. I wasn't always sure I would, but I reigned victorious in the end. I should add also that I did not see another soul the whole 3 hours or so I was in the woods. I did meet a friendly Dutch couple on my way in, but they decided they weren't sturdy enough for it. A few minutes after they left, it began to hail. I pressed on.
When I finally came out of the woods, I met a fellow who was parking his car at his house near the start of the path. He said he had seen me on my way into the forest a few hours earlier. I remembered waving to a man in a car, and assented. He said, ¨Come in and have a drink.¨ I eagerly accepted.
Some of you might be thinking that it is unusual for strangers to invite other strangers into their homes in such a fashion, and that it is unwise to accept such offers when they are proferred. In this case, I had no such concerns. I had read in the LK's guidebook that this is part of the Bosnian culture- people are very friendly and hospital and often invite you into their homes and give you drinks and sometimes food. Having read this, I was really eager to experience it for myself. And indeed, I got my chance. The man (whose name was Dragon) brought me inside and I hung out with him and his German girlfriend Hannah for about an hour and a half. I drank two cups of typical Bosnian coffee and later a cup of tea. They also had me take off my wet socks and shoes and put on some of theirs and dry mine by the woodstove while I was there. It was totally awesome.
On the weekend, my last two days in the country, I went on some family adventures with the LK's. Saturday we went to the town of Mostar, where there is a famous old bridge (that was destroyed during the war, but later rebuilt, unlike much there which is still looking bad), another Old Town, (somewhat more touristy) and supposedly one of the newest UWCs, though I didn't spot it. Sunday I took my first ever horse and carriage ride in this pretty park near Sarajevo, and also tried roasted chestnuts. In those two days I also tried nearly all the traditional Bosnian cuisine. It's very meaty and fatty, and although I'm glad I tried it, I don't miss it too much. The same does not hold, however, for my hosts and the country itself. It was a really lovely week.
I was just eating with two Mostar UWC-ers =) <3
ReplyDeleteI love that coffee. I really miss it: it was everywhere in Palestine, too, and played the same role in gracious hospitality. I read a book called The Lemon Tree recently (a great book, maybe look into it if you get a chance) and, among other things, it follows a Palestinian family after they were expelled from al-Ramla in 1948 and had to live in a refugee camp. . . one of the darkest moments for the father of the family was when they became so impovrished that he was unable to offer his friends a cup of coffee. That says a lot about the importance of hospitality.
I also met a Bosnian artist once who did performance art, and one of her biggest projects was collecting enough coffee cups for everyone who had died in one of the massacres in 1994, donated by thousands of refugee families, and putting them all outside together as a memorial. Pretty cool.