The "hostel" had very good reviews online, but when we arrived at the office, we realized that we weren't really staying in a hostel. More a collection of rooms and beds spread throughout the city.
After we paid, we loaded back in the van for a drive to a kind of shady little apartment with three dorm rooms. Not going to lie, it is VERY basic and probably the least nice of the places we've slept. But as Clay said, what else do you expect for like, 10 dollars a night.
The good news is we are a 10 minute walk from old town, and it is pretty lively.
So far Bosnia has been completely different than anywhere else we've visited. Despite more than ten years since the end of the war here, the evidence is still in plain sight. One of the Bosnian women who works at the hostel was explaining to us that the money just does not exist to make repairs to all of these buildings (although it has certainly come a long way since the way it looked in the 1990s).
Today Clay and I did a tour around Sarajevo. It was crazy- we went to visit the tunnel that was built to carry supplies in and out of Sarajevo during the 3-year seige of the city. We walked through the part of the tunnel that still remains (the rest collapsed), and visited the museum there. So hard to believe all of this happened in my lifetime.
One of the other crazy things we visited was the Olympic bobsled track. We actually walked down what remains of it (if you walk outside of it, there are still landmines, apparantly only 5 percent have been recovered). Hard to believe this was an Olympic host city in 1984. Crazyness.
We also got some great views of the city from a place where the snipers set up during the war (Sniper Alley).
Clay and I still have another day of exploring to do, but today was a great intro to Sarajevo. It is a special place, and I am glad we came here. It has a distinct flavor to it, and it has inspired me to do some more research about the war here, as I realized how little I really know about it.
On the upside, Bosnian food is pretty good. Meat and rice balls (with spices and things) stuffed into various vegetables, with potatoes. Can't really go wrong with that. And of course, coca-cola is cheap!
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