Banja Luka - Sarajevo

We said goodbye to our Banja Luka friends this morning and made our way to Sarajevo for a quick 2 night pitstop on our way through to Mostar.

Vrbas river alongside road.

Absolutely stunning countryside on our drive down to our first stop at a town called Jajce. 

Castle in background.

Banja Luka was relatively unaffected by the Bosnian conflict but as we drove further South and closer to Sarajevo we saw more and more evidence of the war that wracked the region from 1992-1995.  

Abandoned houses with roofs missing, bullet scarred walls and the occasional wall with a massive hole through it.  

There was a lot of new work going on to the houses but those (presumably) without the money or because they were forced out were still showing signs of the conflict.

Fort at Jajce.

We stopped at Jajce (in Bosnia Herzegovina, no longer the Republic of Srpska) which has a huge 14th Century fort perched on a hilltop in the middle of town and right next to the hill is a waterfall which is the confluence of the Vrbas and the Pliva.  One of the few cities in the world to have a waterfall smack in the middle of town.  

We walked around the old town and grabbed some lunch right next to a 1992-1995 war memorial for Croatians with names of many 20-something men engraved on the side.  (I don't know either.  Serbs in Bosnia, Croatians in Bosnia, Bosnians in Croatia, Serbs in Croatia.  You'd need the wisdom of Solomon, a massive bottle of Rakija and about 1000 years to sort this place out.)

View at top of fort - Jajce.

We left Jajce for Sarajevo with 3 hours up our sleeve (for a 2 hour drive) to get to tonight's soccer match in Sarajevo.  Initially when we looked it up on the web we thought that might be a bit of fun seeing Banja Luka play Sarajevo in Sarajevo as we'd just stayed in Banja Luka.  

That is until we realised that Banja Luka, the capital of the Srpska Rebublic and a region full of Serbs, were playing Sarajevo, a city full of Bosnians and the very people they were at war with some 18 years earlier.

Scenery of the way - brillant.

I tried to reassure the kids that we'd be right but as we drove along and closer to Sarajevo we saw some police and then some more police and then a whole bunch of police in riot gear with a coach load of young blokes parked by the side of the road while the bus was being searched.

I leant over to Nicki and said I think they're the Banja Luka supporters.  (They were.)  After passing that I told the kids that maybe we wouldn't be going to the soccer tonight because I wasn't a 100% that we'd be able to get tickets, didn't know where the stadium was etc etc. (And I didn't want to get stabbed and set on fire.)

Chocka block stadium - great fun though.

Anyway we found our accommodation with about 15 minutes to spare after a detour due to roadworks, a traffic jam due to the match and asked our host if it was possible to go the soccer and how far away the stadium was.   He seemed amazed that we wanted to go at all but assured us that we'd be safe and even gave us a lift to the stadium which saved us a 2km walk.

Bought our tickets from the worlds dingiest ticket box and went through the gate only to be met by about 4 security officers who frisked all of us including Ryan.  

After the free grope on the unmentionables, I felt like I should have brought flowers or something, we were in.

Luckily this time the Sarajevo team read the script and scored 2 and left the Banja Lukans with a big fat donut.  Lucky for us because we got to go home in one piece.

Had to laugh at some of the chanting and abuse of the Sarajevans as I know a little bit of the lingo swearing wise and lets put it this way if you took out the big 2 and references to opposition's mothers they weren't saying a hell of a lot.

Stray observations:  Football matches between former wartime enemies aren't the most jovial of affairs.