The American Tourists - Donald Strawn (fun books to read for adults TXT) 📗

over to meet her brother and his family. Feda, their son has taken up coin collecting. Many of the coins he has traded for, and others he has dug up himself. One of these that he has unearthed was lying beside a copper coin about the size of our 1/2 dollar, with the date 1743, and old Hungarian inscriptions on it. The strange smaller coin had parts of a picture or writing on it that was not legible. It was very soft, about the size of a nickel. It bent easily and scratched a silver color. It may have been silver or zinc.

He shared some of his coins with me. Most were Jugoslavian coins. One is dated 1920, during the time when they had a king.

On December 21-22 we visited museums around Sarajevo. The first place we went to had a display of regional artifacts dating from the Stone Age through the Iron and Bronze Ages. Most were from about the 4th century B.C. Some were skeletons still decorated with burial jewelry.
Most amazing to me was the variety of things that I thought were “modern” (within the last 200 years) inventions. Yet, they were dated from the Roman Invasions in the first and second centuries B.C.
There were hair pins, safety pins, sunglasses, coping saws and a scythe. The sunglasses were made like our glasses frames, but instead of glass they had coils of brass wire filling the lens part,
effectively cutting the amount of light reaching the eyes.

The second place was a historical museum of the city of Sarajevo. It traced the development of the city under different occupations. It started about 1300 A.D.

A couple blocks away is the home of a famous Turkish merchant in the 1400ʼs that has been restored and opened to the public as part of the historical museum.

The two-story house surrounds a courtyard, None of the rooms are very big, but the place is huge. Just inside the gate is the quarters for the men- servants. Off to the left and up the stairs is the largest of the rooms. It was used to receive guests and business associates.

Every room had a shower area beside the fireplace. Everyone that visited for business or pleasure, was expected to wash before coffee, meals, or prayers. The Turkish carried bathing to the max!

In the womenʼs area, every door was doubled, the outer door being iron. The windows had both bars and iron shutters. I asked about the iron doors and window coverings and was told that the Turkish women
were not allowed to be seen by men other than their husbands.

“But it doesnʼt take iron doors and window shutters to keep out peeping eyes,” I protested.
“It was also for fire protection,” the guide continued.

“Sure, but I bet the bars on the windows didnʼt keep flames or lusty looks out,” I replied. “It just kept the rebellious women in.”

On December 23, we attended the Sarajevo Seventh-day Adventist Church. It appeared to be newly remodeled. Many of the buildings around it were in sad disrepair.

There are about 165 members, far more than Nina knew existed in all of Jugoslavia! Contrary to what you would see on the street, nearly everyone was fair-skinned with light colored hair, except for one negro lady.

Miro went with us, but stood in the foyer talking to a deacon.

The next morning we all sang “Happy Birthday” to Evelyn.

All during this week a civil war has been raging in the neighboring country of Rumania. Since there are quite a few Croatians living there, there was very good TV coverage. About 6 hours a day was spent on
blow-by-blow coverage of the street fighting and interviews with the freedom fighters.

Cameramen were running alongside the tanks for protection while they did their filming. They showed corpses being dug out of mass graves to
be identified and given proper burials. They even documented a French reporter being gunned down by government soldiers.

One lady, with tears streaming down her cheeks cried out, “We long for the day that we have all the freedoms that you (Jugoslavian reporters)
have! I was just a little girl when I breathed without fear.” Very sad time indeed.

We left Christmas morning with our guide, Nina, on the “Chicken Express,”so named because of its frequent stops to pick up farmers. Destination... Beograd. This train was fairly comfortable, but it stopped at nearly every village. At one point two older ladies and an older man pushed their way out of the crowded hallway and into our compartment and squeezed onto the bench beside us. About 20 minutes later a conductor made them move because they werenʼt ticketed for First Class.

Radmilla, one of the exchange students that I had placed in the Richfield, WA High School in 1985, met our train right on time. She has been married since last August to a young lawyer. She has been
working as a Hostess for HAT airlines for the past 3 years while she attends law school herself. She has been flying quite often to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Vuk, her husband, seems to be a really nice fellow. The two of them probably make twice the money as Ninaʼs parents. Their apartment is filled with state-of-the-art electronics; disk player, 2 VCRʼs, projection TV, and a 386-PC computer.... you know the stuff I mean! But then, unlike Nina's parents, their only dependent is their dog.

We spent a day and a half snooping around the streets, shops, and museums of Beograd. On the whole, we found it to be much more affluent than any of the other Jugoslav cities we visited, with the possible exception of Dubrovnik. The parts that we visited were much cleaner than downtown Sarajevo.

The Karamehmedovic week-end home is in a beautiful valley that was destined to be flooded by a hydro project within a few years.

But in less than three years this entire valley and everything in it was destroyed by an un-civil war, not a hydro project.

This warm December 24th, the crocus thought it was
Spring!

Life is where you find it...even in a cemetery.

Mid-way up the valley we found this old Muslim burial ground in a sheep pasture. Notice that the lawn is mown and stacked for future reference.

In this Muslim family plot the husband is under the marker with the hat, the ruling wife is straight
ahead, and 2 minor wives to the left.

Back "home," it was an awesome sight to watch this river boil up out of the ground in several places.

It formed beautiful ponds that mirrored the graceful birds...




...Then rage onward in its search for the sea.

The ski jumps of the Winter Olympics are high
and ste

e
e
e
ep... and are hurting for snow.

The jump on the left is covered with nylon bristles.
In the Summertime they are kept wet with sprinklers and the jumping practice goes on.

One thousand and two steps make the heart pump overtime!

The black and white dot between the bleachers is Miro.

This is the site of the slalom races. Not much activity here for a mid-December day! It is about 45o F.

Avenue of Flags.

These beautiful buildings were already showing signs of low-budget maintenance.

In the coffee shop were a total of seven clerks and waiters. We three brought the total of paying customers to five... but the service was still slow!

I tried out the bobsled run, but it was pretty slow without the required snow and ice.

The Sarajevo city lights were pretty and crisp, on clear nights, and there were a few while we were there.

Enka’s kitchen window is on the 12th floor of the left twin tower Saying “cheese” on Nina’s balcony.

Saying “cheese” in the elevator. They are fortunate to have one of these contraptions, many do not.

A unique cemetery concept. It is divided into Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Atheist sections. At the bottom of the hill is an arena of mortuaries.

Miro standing
near his family plot in the Atheist section.

At many of the grave sites were these granite “family boxes.” The lids are removable, so that the next family member can be added when they die.

National pride is with Tito, from white stones on the mountain tops...

...to the store fronts, and even the offices. But some of that display, I found, was mandatory.

The girls got us to the bus station in time, and with a few tears we were
on our way again. We had to take a “Jugo” bus as far as Zagreb. It was comfortable enough, I guess, but it just didnʼt have the class of the tour bus that we boarded in Zagreb for our return trip.

The ferry ride on this passage was much cleaner than the first one. The sauna and shower were great, and the drunks were under control. We slept much better on the couches just outside the barroom doors.

We met several interesting people each time the bus stopped to take on new passengers. One was a young lady about 18-20 who was half Italian and half German. She and her German boyfriend were headed for Stockholm to spend the holidays with friends. He spoke fair English, and she spoke very good English. She had spent about six months the year before in Washingtonʼs Olympic Peninsula. She has spent a lot of time backpacking and she loved it. She especially like the well-maintained trails where you could hike for days and see almost no one.

Another was a Finnish fellow who started straight off the ferry with two liters of hard cider, and quickly graduated to Johnny Walker. He sipped his way into a stupor, and dozed most of the time. Between naps he would stagger back to the water closet, then back to his seat and another swig or two. A real pathetic sight indeed. A few times he tried to light up a cigarette or offer one to those around him. It was at these times that he would be interrupted by a Finnish-speaking American, who would jabber something to him and point at the NO SMOKING sign over his head.

The American was an MBA student returning to the University of Helsinki after a semester in Spain.