Snowy Start in Sarajevo

Snowy start in Sarajevo

The mystery of the Spanish student unraveled, and more

Written by

Dieter

Published

March 10th, 2022

In

Sarajevo, Bosnia

DOBER DAN! THAT MEANS GOOD DAY IN BOSNIAN.

When I thought I would be going back in time when coming to Bosnia, I expected it to be a few years, not a few weeks. Winter is still hanging around here; completely with freezing temperatures, icy winds and snow falling at random times of the day. Instead of fighting it, I decided to hang with it. Luckily there weren’t many school related obligations, so hanging out was a perfect way to spend the last few days. To fully engage with the story, I’d suggest you grab a pivo (a beer), some butter, meat and bread, and eat yourself a heart attack the real Bosnian way!

The Bosnian Way

I’m kidding of course, you shouldn’t eat all those fatty carbs without also smoking a few cigarettes before and after if you want to look like a believable Bosnian. And yes, you should definitely smoke these inside. Whether that’s in your car, in a restaurant or in the main entrance hall of the university. Extra points are added if you do that with children or babies nearby. While the rest of the world struggled with covid, Bosnian lungs were too damaged already for the virus to do any real damage. That is most likely also the reason why a real Bosnian doesn’t wear a mask, and why he hasn’t done so in the past two years. As an outsider it’s amazing to live that amount of freedom again, and to properly and consistently damage your lungs with cigarette smoke, literally everywhere you go.

Be careful though, because going everywhere you want is not always that easy, here in Bosnia. Thinking about catching a train? Better not, since they’re very unreliable and might not show up. Trying to take a bus to the other side of town? Be mindful to look at the paper signs at the bottom of the driver’s window, because most buses still only show Dienstfahrt from their time in Swiss service. Wanting to hop on a coach to another city? Be sure to also have payed the entrance fee to the bus station, which is totally unrelated to the ticket fare.

But there are many things Bosnians do well. Their most endearing quality is without doubt their tendency for chaos (although they use the term flexibility). Leaving the arrival of international students unprepared until the moment they show up at your reception desk is a shiny example. Casually mentioning that the internship you’re here for can’t actually go on because of a law change in the last 15 days, is another one. Don’t worry, it will be fine. Over the past few days (when my internship should’ve already started), we have had a few meetings with international relations directors, or vice-deans. Those meetings lasted between five and twenty-five minutes (I kid you not) and ended with all of us in a bar drinking coffee or alcohol, paid for by aforementioned directors and vice-deans, where we more than doubled the meeting time.

Apart from walking up six flights of stairs, only to walk them down again before having fully regained my breath, and sitting in bars with important people who all know the famous city of Sint-Niklaas, I’ve also been busy with important things of course. Those include – but are not limited to – buying cutlery to eat breakfast with, eating my way through the menu of the student restaurant, doing my laundry in the bathtub, rooting for familiar faces at the Redbull Paper Wings Paper Airplane competition, and learning Bosnian swear words in smokey dorm rooms. In flexible terms this would be dubbed “Introduction Week”.

Snowy Sarajevo

Because both my fellow Belgian students and I arrived a few days (which turned out to be weeks) early, we decided to start our stay off right and do some city tripping. Zenica is not very big, and the capital Sarajevo is only a mere one and a half bus hour ride away, so on Sunday we went there.

The snow made for a beautiful background in a very large spread-out city where mosques and churches are standing right next to each other, and large shopping malls with known brands made it feel a little more like home. As a huge fan of mountains, I also loved seeing them embracing the city all around. They did make walking around very interesting, though, as steep hills were followed by even steeper descents while we were discovering the city.

The old town felt a little too touristy for me, which in turn reminded me how nice Zenica is for not having (m)any English speaking inhabitants or internationally branded stores. Apart from walking around and seeing the sights, we also spent a lot of time inside eating cake and drinking (Bosnian) coffee, which is just really strong coffee with so many spoonfuls of sugar that even Mary Poppins would not dare feeding it to children.

But what happened with the Spanish student?!

So there you have it, you have caught up on Bosnian culture and on my adventures here. As always, don’t take my words for granted, and take them with at least as many grains of salt as Bosnians would put sugar in their coffee. As much as I like to make fun of their flexibility, all people I met here have been nothing but friendly, proud and helpful and it’s been amazing so far. By next time I hope I can share some nursing experiences as well, but until then I’ll leave with the story of the Spanish student.

Over the last few days, I’ve been gathering all pieces of the puzzle. The first interesting one came from the girls who at first expected me to be him – one of them had seen him in real life and he clearly did disappoint, since she ended her review with “I really shouldn’t be so shallow”. A few days later I met him during drin… I mean, a meeting. It turned out he was supposed to share a dorm room with me, but after reading the reviews and seeing the pictures online, he decided to book his own accommodation somewhere else. Whether that is the real story, or I should really feel offended because he didn’t want to share a room with me? I guess we’ll never know…

But since I love drama and I’m excellent at being offended, I’ll go for the last option. Hvala na čitanju. Cao!