Trip to Sarajevo

Standing where WWI started.  Pretty cool!

In July I got the opportunity to drive to Sarajevo for business and see the city.  I was pretty excited, Sarajevo has a tremendous history.  One of the great European capitols, crossroads of culture (Ottomans, Orthodox, Catholics), '84 Olympics, ground zero for a devastating war in the '90's.  To be honest for all its history it is still a city trying to recover from the war.  Everywhere you look there were reminders (commonly known as bullet holes) in the facade of nearly every building.  What once was a melting pot of culture is now mostly an outpost for European muslims.  The influence of the middle east was apparent every where as new modern office buildings and malls were being developed throughout the city funded by oil.  You know progress is being made when a McDonald's sits right in the city center.    Despite the city's beauty and history it was an eerie place to be.  The whole city is only about 6 miles long, it sits in a bowl with huge mountains all around, there is one road in and one road out.  All that to say I can not imagine living there during the war.  The most amazing thing to me (it's really not that amazing just to me) was the way Sarajevo vendors are still living off the Olympics.  With all the amazing gifts and souvenirs you can get there (lots of Turkish things) by far the most popular item was '84 Olympic souvenirs.  Postcards, magnets, lapel pins, stuffed animals of the mascot Vukic, you name it they were selling it.  It was like the Olympics Just happened - very strange.  Which also leads to Olympic mountain, that is one big imposing mountain that can be seen anywhere from the city and there were at least 1,572,789 signs pointing you to the mountain as you drove through town.  I would go as far as to say 1984 may have been utopian in the eyes of Sarajevans.