Eastern Europe retroblog: Brčko, part 2

(Brčko, part 1.)


Saturday 23 June 2007
Had a wonderful tour of not one but two mosques, both of which are new buildings. The original ones were destroyed in the war; a sheikh, a very nice man, showed us around, with Mujke [MOY-kuh] translating. I enjoy hearing the call to prayer, and not just because it sounds exotic. It’s also simply a beautiful sound—even if it is often a recording. Counterpart to church bells, almost.


Coffee with Briony and Mujke afterwards, and then we finally got around to visiting the outdoor fruit and veggie market (also with B.) So glad we made it—dinner is going to be yummy tonight. Can’t remember ever seeing such fresh and robust heads of garlic.

Briony is from England, and was conducting part of her doctoral research in Brcko in the summer of '07. I was hoping to see her while I was in London, but unfortunately our schedules weren't going to jive. Next time!

16 June 2007
Our apartment here has a very lived-in feel, down to the eyeglasses and balled-up socks on the curio shelves, the rotten apple on the kitchen windowsill (Kate threw it out the window and busted out laughing—there’s a wild apple tree in the courtyard outside, she wouldn’t have gotten away with it otherwise. You can hear the occasional thump as an apple falls to the pavement), the cobwebs dangling from the eaves on the balcony (no view, but we hung up our laundry out there, and some coal-black cobwebs clung to our skivvies. Yuck), cologne bottles and half a dozen toothbrushes in the bathroom.

The owner later paid us an unexpected visit at 6:30 in the morning, for no apparent reason.

Kate in the courtyard.

Next and final post: back to Budapest!

Eastern Europe retroblog: Brčko, part 1

Toward the end of our Eastern European adventure Kate and I arranged to volunteer at a children's summer camp in a Bosnian town called Brčko (pronounced 'Birch-ko'— and if it's not then we were saying it wrong the whole time). There would be children of all religions and ethnicities here, and the idea is to foster friendship and cooperation between them. It was a very positive experience overall—thanks to our lovely volunteer coordinators Dina and Sanjin, other new friends Briony and Mujke, and a bunch of really sweet kids—but as with every other volunteer experience I've had, there were definitely aspects I found ineffective or at least inefficient.

Monday, 18th June 2007
Thoroughly frustrated…yesterday we passed three boys rooting through the dumpsters at the far end of our block, and of course one of them approached us and asked for money. THOSE are the kids who need help, but as Dina pointed out, the Roma don’t want or think they need any help. They don’t want a better life for their families, and that is totally incomprehensible to me.

We were there less than two weeks, but we quickly settled into a routine of workshops and coffee afterwards at Dina and Sanjin's favorite cafe, Jazzwa.

Wednesday, 20 June 2007
The workshop this morning was quieter but still a success—we did the ‘pass it on’ story exercise and illustrated a few of the stories afterwards, and of course most of the kids got plenty of laughs when they were read out. We started with 'Once upon a time a brother and sister left home with their pet goat in search of adventure,' and though the goat dropped out of pretty much all the stories (never featured in Dina’s quick translations, anyway), there were still a few gems. ‘The boy squeezed the bird and mayonnaise came out’; ‘they ate five kilograms of chocolate and had diarrhea.’ Lots of farting too, naturally. Our favorite illustration was a marsupial dragon—a ‘dragaroo.’

At three we were treated to a tour of the town library, which is housed in a crumbling but wonderful imperialist Hungarian building dating to 1892.

Two views of the library:


There's so much to say about Brčko that I should split it into two posts. Next time: fresh (and not so fresh) produce, other people's toothbrushes, and an unexpected early-morning visitor.

Eastern Europe retroblog: Mostar & Sarajevo

An Islamic graveyard in Mostar. Spooktastic.

We arrived in Mostar pretty late—it's a pleasant town best known for its historic bridge (which crazy locals occasionally like to jump off of), but we were pretty much only there to break the journey to Sarajevo. We chose a restaurant in the old town where the waiter spoke Italian, and I managed to communicate that Kate and I wanted only vegetables on our plates.

The next day we took the train to Sarajevo. Way too many pigeons, strong Turkish coffee for breakfast and delicious spiral-shaped spinach pastries and juniper juice for dinner, shops full of beautiful shawls and metalwork.

(Below: the main drag of the old town, the Baščaršija, which dates to the 16th century; a fountain in the courtyard of a mosque.)



I don't know what this building is—or used to be—but it's a real shame to let such an amazing piece of architecture fall into disuse and disrepair.

Three goofballs at the Sarajevo Brewery. Elliot sampled the local dark lager, Kate got baklava and I had a campari and orange. This was before I became a (very occasional) beer drinker. I think this was Elliot's last night—he took a train back to Budapest to go home, and Kate and I went on to the volunteering part of the trip.

Inside the Orthodox Cathedral.

Next: Brčko, Bosnia, where Kate and I volunteered at a children's summer camp.