Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Karen Darnell
- May 16, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: May 18, 2020
I’ve eaten in two Bosnian restaurants and have four more on my list that I want to try in California. The first was Aroma Café in Cheviot Hills. The owner is Bosnian and they serve food from all over the former Yugoslavia. My friend Gladys and I had Shopska Salad (tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper and feta), Cevapi (ground beef kebabs in pita), chicken with grilled vegetables, grilled potatoes, Hurmashice (a cookie soaked in syrup), and Tufahiya (baked apple stuffed with a nutty cream). So many new foods and all delicious!
The second Bosnian restaurant I tried was Euro Grill in Santa Clara. It’s a little place, only open for lunch, and not expensive, especially compared to other restaurants where I’ve eaten in the San Jose area. They had many of the same items I had seen at Aroma Café so to try something different, I had the chicken skewers with a pepper sauce, sour cream, and salad - all really good! The man who took my order explained that what I was ordering was plenty; I didn’t need a borek as well. Other customers were speaking Bosnian. The owner told me they often have Croatian and Serbian customers as well. They can understand each other because the Slavic languages are similar.
I’m hoping it won’t be long until I can enjoy and support additional Bosnian restaurants. More options in California include Buqqa Mediterranean Grill in Santa Ana, Sofra Urbana in Fountain Valley, Arslan's Gyros in San Diego, and the food truck Bosnian Grill and Mediterranean Cuisine, also in San Diego.
While we’re waiting for everything to open up again, both at home and in Bosnia, we have many options for traveling to Bosnia online. I’ll start with a very pleasant time in that part of the world, the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in 1984 which were highly successful and led to a tourism boom. The official webpage of those Olympics (https://www.olympic.org/sarajevo-1984), a documentary showing what events happened each day and who won (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGocsDtpu7w), and winning ice skating routines (Torvill & Dean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8obUdxnTlc and Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG-lzKrFi4A) are all available online.
But even in 1984, Bosnia was changing. Tito had already died and the cold war soon ended. Foreign aid to Yugoslavia plummeted, the economy collapsed, and religious fanaticism exploded. The basic outline of Yugoslavia’s civil war which created Bosnia along with other Balkan countries can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiSgAiM0d8A.
From that point, much that I found online for Bosnia consisted of war movies and war books. Of the movies available on Amazon, fiction movies risk being called "war porn," so I chose to watch those based on true stories:
· Welcome to Sarajevo (a reporter smuggles out an orphan who turns out to have a mother). This movie has the most violence of those listed here. There are some images I wish I hadn't seen.
· The Hunting Party (a buddy movie of reporters who try to hunt down a war criminal). This is the lightest of the movies listed here.
· The Whistleblower (a UN Peacekeeper discovers a human trafficking ring among her own ranks). This is the most thought provoking of the movies listed here since it shows that we can’t point to just one group as the bad guys.
· The Cowards' War (an Australian documentary on Bosnian refugees who have come to them).
I also chose to read Pretty Birds by Scott Simon. Simon got the idea for this novel when interviewing a teen girl sniper in Sarajevo while reporting for NPR.
There are other books, there are other movies, but that was as much dark tourism as I could handle at once. I originally thought that few people would choose to travel in a war zone, but I learned that in Bosnia, a hotel attracts guests who are greeted by staff in military uniforms, lights are powered by car batteries, and there are sound effects of bombs going off all night. More information is available at this war tourism site https://balkaninsight.com/2016/11/29/war-tourism-flourishes-in-bosnian-capital-11-28-2016/
Since the conflict, tourism has returned to Bosnia as seen in Rick Steves' Eastern Europe: Dubrovnik & Balkin Side Trips (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Buk6NPVPg) and DIY Destinations Budget Travel Show: Bosnia and Herzegovina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnRxaOTsbSE). In addition, both Amazon and Zazzle have puzzles of beautiful scenes from Bosnia including Old Town in Sarajevo and Mostar Bridge - I find puzzles to be just what I need to lead to a moment of mindfulness after focusing on such dark history.
If you were actually planning a trip to Bosnia to follow this pandemic, here are some of the places you might see: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-bosnia-herzegovina/. I highly recommend that in a country that has recently been unstable, you use a qualified travel advisor to make sure you choose options that are safe and meet your needs. Here’s my shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive - may we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Bosnia and throughout the world.
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