Belgrade > Sabac, Serbia > Zvornik, Bosnia-Hercegovina > Srebrenica (85, 83, 54 km)

[Originally posted Sept 8, 2014]

I’m sitting on the cement steps of the Hostel Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in the Republic of Srpska.  The last three days have been fascinating - for many reasons.  I guess I will try and lay it all out chronologically (but interspersed with a short history lesson at the end).

The morning routine, packing up the bike.

We left Belgrade optimistic that our departure would be a little smoother than our arrival.  And it was.  We headed towards the only bike route in town (which conveniently runs southwest along the Sava river - the direction we needed to go).  I suppose the only interesting thing we passed en route was the bombed out NATO building that stands precariously on a street corner, bricks and cement still in rubble as if the bombing were yesterday, with only a couple of wooden boards over the sidewalk to prevent accidental injury.  It was quite the scene.

The bike path was a mix of two very opposite worlds - it seemed to be the only place where people could get out and exercise (and we passed many cyclists, runners and even later came upon a lake where many rowers and kayakers were out) but it also exposed us to the Sava River.  The river was a good reminder to me of why it is important to recycle. 

The Sava River, Belgrade, a bit dirty.

Plastic bottles from many years had collected on the banks of the river, along with abandoned boats and homes that was the best dose of poverty we have seen thus far.  As the cycle path ended and intersected the road we would take that day a cyclist quickly passed us and, thinking nothing of it, we jumped on the road behind him and started our journey towards Sabac.  At the next intersection, however, that cyclist was stopped on the side of the road.  He motioned for us to stop, and we did.

Milos was a 26 year old Serbian who currently lives in Belgrade but grew up in a small town 130 km to the southwest, where he was riding that day.  We talked and talked and talked (which was possible cause he spoke great English).  He was curious about everything, gave us a little schpeel on Herbalife (which he worked for), passed us a couple energy/candy bars and requested to be Katy’s Facebook friend before he took off down the road ahead of us.  But, about 8km down the road he was again stopped.  This time he demanded a photo with us because “my friends will never believe me when I tell them I met you.”  A very nice guy all around.

Miloš, Katy's first Serbian FB friend.

The following day we left our Hostel StanNaDan (“apartment for a day” in Serbo-Croatian) and rode through the rest of Serbija and into Bosnia and Hercegovina (which makes this country #12).  The border crossing was pretty casual, except Katy told me to take a picture of the “Welcome to Bosnia-Hercegovina” sign, which was promptly followed by security guards waving their hands and while making large X’s with their hands also acting out taking a picture.  I guess that’s a no-no.

Lunch, another common site and part of the daily routine. Bread, sardines, cheese, water, chocolate.

We were only 4 km down the road when we passed two (both about 50 years old) cyclists, again we thought nothing of it.  Until 3 minutes later we heard a strange bell noise behind us and it was those same cyclists.  They pulled up alongside us and said “timeout, timeout!”  We stopped and despite realizing that they spoke Serbo-Croatian, German and Albanian and that we spoke English, French and Spanish we were requested to ride to the nearby cafe where we sit and have a cup of coffee together.  Of course, we said.  We headed off towards the cafe wondering how exactly we would have a conversation despite our significant language barrier.  As I sipped my Schweppes Bitter Lemon, Katy had her Coca-Cola and our two Serbian friends enjoyed their espressos, a rather interesting game of charades occurred where we tried to act out very simple things like (do you have children, are their lots of cyclists in Bosnia, are the roads to Sarajevo flat or steep etc.)  The only significant progress occurred when we showed them a map (Google Maps on the iPhone) of the United States and zoomed in to where Utah was, which was quickly followed with ahhh, Salt Lake City, Utah Jazz, Karl Malone, John Stockton.  I was rather amazed at the intense curiosity and generosity of two 50 year old men on their regular Sunday afternoon bike ride.  Of particular interest, one of them introduced themselves as Dragon, which I thought was strange and as we looked at his National Identity Card (which he was carrying in order to cross the Bosnia-Serbia border on his ride) I looked at his card to see if his name really was Dragon.  But, again I was stuck as his name was written in the Cyrillic Alphabet instead of our Latin one.

Dragon, Katy's 2nd Serbian FB friend.

Bosnia. I love this picture - stray dog, a bit of garbage, mosque with minaret.

That night we approached the small town of Zvornik and the accompanying village of Divic to find the hostel/room that we had previously booked.  The address on Google Maps didn’t show up and the map on booking.com just had a vague dot aways away from a road in the village of Divic.  We rolled into the middle of town and it was obvious that we were the new guys on the block.  The kids pointed and laughed, we were getting deer in the headlights stares from right and left.  (It felt a lot like some of my first days in May Pen, Jamaica - except it was not accompanied with the yelling of “Whitie, Whitie” which I became so used to in Jam-Rock).  Katy asked a number of people for directions (complete with language barrier problems) and then ever borrowed a phone to try calling (no answer) while I rode around town (there were only 5 streets in this town) looking for Hostel Soja.  No dice.  Until somehow it was decided that we would follow a kid on a bike up the steep hill out of town and then down the highway a kilometer or so to Ristorant Soja.  And magic, the room was beneath the restaurant.  Katy was bit frustrated at the huge errors in this situation (the Google Maps address not working, the location showing up wrong on booking.com etc.) but I just kind of sat back and laughed and remembered the years I spent wandering around in the bush of Jamaica trying to find people - no addresses, no nothing.  Just strange directions like - you know a woman named, madgie, where you go up that road, and then you go so, and then there’s a mango tree, and then you go so and then there’s a little turn and you go so, and that’s my house.

Drina River, border of Serbia and Bosnia (also a little instagram editing).

Bosnia is beautiful.

Lots of rain lately.

Shifting gears a little.  As I mentioned previously I am in Srebrenica, Bosnia.  You may have heard of this little town, but maybe not.  So, without being a teacher or a history buff, I’m going to give the short version why everyone should know about Srebrenica.  (Given that I’m not a history buff this may have some huge oversimplifications and glaring errors, for which I apologize).  From 1992-1995 Bosnia-Hercegovina (which I will just call Bosnia) was in a civil war.  They had just declared themselves as an independent state, leaving the former Yugoslavia, and this created a number of problems.  At the time Bosnia consisted of two major groups - the Bosniaks (who were muslims who lived in Bosnia) and Serbs (which is an ethnic group that lived throughout the Balkans - Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro - who are primarily Serbian orthodox).  The Bosniaks made up the majority of Bosnia, the President of Bosnia was a Bosniak and they desired independence (Slovenia and Croatia had also declared independence within the last couple years - Slovenia was allowed to leave rather peacefully while Croatia had a war with Yugoslavia/Serbia).  The Serbs on the other hand did not want independence, they wanted to remain in Yugoslavia (by this time Yugoslavia pretty much meant Serbia - where the majority of Serbs of in the Balkans lived).  And so a civil war commenced, Serbs fighting to stay part of Serbia and Bosniaks fighting for independence.  During this struggle Srebrenica (which is a rather small mountain village in eastern Bosnia) became a place of refuge for Bosniaks in the area who had been forced from their homes.  Eventually the entire area became surrounded by Serb forces, blocking off any sort of humanitarian aid from reaching Srebrenica for a year or more.  Living conditions were what you would imagine - extreme poverty, thousands homeless, unable to go anywhere because of the fear of being killed.  Eventually the UN declared the area a “safe area” where Bosniak civilians could stay away from the threat of war.  But, on July 11th 1995 Serb forces moved into the village, separated men ages 16-60 from their families and massacred 8,327 Bosniaks - burying them in mass graves.  It was the worst massacre in European history since WWII.

Srebrenica Memorial - in the UN building where women and children fled during the massacre.

Srebrenica Memorial, names of those lost.

Srebrenica Memorial.

Srebrenica.

Today Katy and I stopped at the Srebrenica Memorial where the names of all 8,327 men are written.  It was rather sobering.  I thought to myself, what was I doing when I was 11 years old?  As I took a photo of the names etched in stone, a man came up to me, and very respectfully motioned for me to follow him.  We stopped at the letter M (all the names were arranged alphabetically) and in broken English the man said, 3 brothers.  He pointed at their three names.  Then he just shook his head, pointed at his skin, pointed at my skin, shook his head again.  It’s hard to think about the things others have experienced in their life.  It’s hard to understand how they continue to live in the same neighborhood where all of this happened.  After reflecting for a moment Katy said, it must have been really hard for Heavenly Father to give his children agency.

Across the street is the UN Dutch HQ (which is a topic I haven’t fully understood yet.  Supposedly they were present at the time of the massacre and were in charge of keeping the peace, although that didn’t happen).  Anyways, inside the old warehouse sized building is a Srebrenica Memorial.  The events of the time are laid out and then at the end there is a section of the lives of those that were lost.  They told stories about 2 dozen or so of those who were killed, how many children they had, what their occupation was and then on display was an item that was found in one of the many mass graves of the area that helped in identifying those who had died.  There were cigarette lighters and boxes, wedding rings, bracelets, a Koran.

A prayer was inscribed at the memorial, it read: