Short Stories: Sarajevo & my "rough guide"

Sarajevo & my ’rough guide’

I reach Sarajevo, Bosnia after a 10 hour overnight bus ride from Zagreb, Croatia. At 5:30 in the morning, and after the insistant chatter of the two guys at the back of the bus throughout the entire night, all I want to do is find my hostel, drop my bags, and perhaps at least fall asleep on the nearest couch until my room is ready.

In a disorintated daze I study my travel guide’s ’not to scale map’ and see that the hostel is north-west from the train station, which is north from the city centre. Having no compus with me, I ask a few people which direction I should go to get to the train station. A man on the bus offers me his place to stay, and he tells me he works for the United Nations and has spent the past year in Sarajevo, but he has no clue where the train station is. Somehow his conversation doesn’t really add up, so I politely decline his generous offer.

Feeling fairly confident now, I stride to what looks like the main highway. I see a derelict building, filled with bullet holes, and part of it completely demolished... a-ha the train station, which is home to many war refugees, who years later, are still ’shell shocked’.

I walk, and wander & walk. The sun is rising over the hillside of white crosses, a memorial of civilians & soilders who were senselessly killed during the Bosnian war. My guide states: ’from the train station, turn left at the gas station, and follow the signs that say ’Penison Train’. I am at the gas station, hmmm, no signs, but I continue to walk left. Still no signs... I walk around again, hmmm. I ask but no one knows of ’Pension Train’.

My faith in my guide book deminishes, I am tired, and I am hungry. I check the map once more. Losing all hope of ever finding ’Penison Train’, an angel appears, by the way of a baker doing his morning deliveries.

Not a word of English is spoken between us, but he offers to help me find my hostel. He gives me fresh loafs of bread to eat, and drives me around Sarajevo for the early morning, delivering his fresh bread & asks people where ’Pension Train’ might be. We are told that ’Pension Train’ doesn’t exsist anymore, and it has been closed for the past year. I am ready to throw my guide book in the bin! The baker drops me off to another ’Pension’ in the centre of town.

Driving into the main centre of Sarajevo, it is ironic that amongst the ravages of war and splatterings of red rubber, marking where a grenade landed only years previously, an ’eternal flame’ burns in honour of World World II, marking PEACE. Hmmm.

I settle into the Pension and relax for a couple hours. The actual Penison is a make-shift shack, with paper walls. As the staircase gets smaller & narrower as I climb higher to my room, it is obvious that perhaps they do their own renovations and add extra floors when they need to. But I’m happy I have a place to lay my head, despite my ’guide book’ running me around in circles.

Ok, so I should have called ’Pension Train’ in advance. But when it’s a spur of the moment trip, and you rely on your guide book to be up-to-date, with their information of: ’located close to the train station, open all year, no advance bookings required’, you think you are in pretty good hands, especially if the guide book was updated only a few months before.

Being an extensive traveler many of my trips have relied on hostel information in guide books, regardless of whether I call in advance or just turn up!

Perhaps it’s just luck of the draw if your guide book is actually up to date. But now I think if it wasn’t for my ’rough guide’, I would have never been able to tell this tale and found an angel in the way of a Baker!