Did a Tour of the War Zone on my Second Day......

.....but I started with a leisurely morning in the Old Town with a walk along the river and visits to a couple of tea houses.  The old main street is now a pedestrian mall but the cultural influences are very evident.  In fact, the sidewalk delineates the differences between Ottoman and Hapsburg.

If you turn one direction, it would be easy to imagine you're in Vienna:

Turn the other direction and you are in Istanbul:

And at another spot, the Eastern Orthodox and western Roman churches met centuries ago.  Sarajevo really is an amazing place.

In the afternoon, I signed up for a Sarajevo War Zone tour.  The 3 1/2 year war here claimed over 11,000 lives with 1600 of them being children.  Signs of the war are everywhere some twenty years later.   The outdoor market very near my hotel was hit with 67 people killed.

Since over two million rounds were fired into the city, hardly a building avoided damage.  Some areas of Sarajevo looked like those photos of Hiroshima after we dropped the bomb in WWII. We went through the Sniper's Alley today but I couldn't get photos out of the moving vehicle.  I may walk back down there tomorrow and spend some time.

Sarajevo was surrounded throughout the war except for a small area in the mountains.  When the United Nations took over the airport in 1993, the airport connected the city with that small area but snipers kept Bosnians from getting food, weapons or supplies since the UN was "neutral" and wouldn't allow them to arm themselves.  In response, the Bosnians built a half-mile tunnel literally under the runway and used it to supply themselves during the war.

The tunnel was literally built inside someone's house on one end and finished inside someone else's house on the other end.

After that we went up into the mountains and looked at some of the Serbian artillery and tank sites where they bombarded the city below.  The United Nations was completely useless to the Bosnians--actually keeping them from arming themselves for defense.  Technically the war ended when NATO took out the Serbian positions in the mountains.  As our guide pointed out,
NATO gets the credit but it was actually the US Air Force that did all the dirty work and did it very quickly.  He pointed out that Bosnia appreciates what we did for them but it could have been done three years earlier before 11,000 of them were needlessly killed.

Built by the Austo-Hungarian army in 1800s

Used by the Serbian Army 1992-1995

Destroyed by the US Air Force 1995

Built by the Yugoslavian Army post-WWII

Used by the Serbian Army 1992-1995

Destroyed by the US Air Force 1995

From here we went further into the mountains to the site of the 1984 Olympic bobsledding venue.  It was really neat yet kind of sad at the same time.  Even this "world peace games" venue was involved in the war here.

We actually walked the entire length of the track and met our driver at the finish line.  It's been taken over by graffiti artists, skateboarders and mountain bikes but still retains a lot of it's 1984 grandeur when the East Germans swept all the gold medals here.

It made a wonderful shield for Serbian snipers and they created holes in several places to fire down into the city.

The finish line:  My official time was somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes.

We then went even further up to the Alpine Village lodge/restaurant where Jim McKay and ABC Sports broadcast all the Olympic results from here.

There used to be a ski lift from the city center that brought tourists, journalists and athletes directly to this lodge.  It was hoped the 1984 Olympic venues would provide tourism and income for Bosnia for decades.  They lasted nine years.  If it was Bosnian, the Serbs destroyed it.

Sarajevo Roses

I find this incredibly sad.  Literally tens of thousands of mortar shells rained down into Sarajevo during the war.  Their scars are everywhere even today.

On impact, the shells created a scar with shrapnel marks.  In those places where the shells killed people, the Bosnians have filled in the scars with red epoxy, creating an almost floral effect.

There are literally hundreds of these around the city--if they are filled with red epoxy, somebody died here.  They're called Sarajevo Roses.

One last war-related note on the war today:

Serb-Bosnians raided the national library and used incendiary bombs to destroy over two million books including religions manuscripts from the four religions--some of which were over 1,000 years old.

Today was an educational day--tomorrow I have nothing planned except to be a tourist.  Monday, my last full day here, I've booked a day-long trip to five very old Bosnian towns in the countryside.

This has been a good trip.