Eurotrashing around in Sarajevo

The bus to Kotor was leaving at 8am. It was 5am and I was in a stupor. Drinking beer to wind down and prostrate on the couch in the hostel after an evening of salsa dancing at that bastion of eurotrash, Sloga.

I’d arrived five days prior after a harrowing and aforementioned train trip and within an hour of checking into the hostel was boozing with Australians Dan, Andrew, Danielle and Melissa, as well as the American Potato Mike.

This was the beginning of a three day binge of which the overarching theme was Sloga’s and Pingvin. Arriving on Thursday, the Eid al-Fitr loomed in the 60% Muslim city of Sarajevo, and as the bulk of the population prepared to break the month-long fast of Ramadan, us delinquent travellers were keen for some shenanigans. So we made our way to Sloga.

While quite fatigued from the discomfort of a 9 hour hung-over train ride and thus in not much of a mood to dance, I was entertained watching the locals. They seemed to fall into two categories: either sitting sullenly at a table, smoking, drinking and scoping out the crowd, or performing the most vigorous and loose-limbed dance moves you’ll ever see.

Drinking games

Balkans love their local music, Turbofolk, and at Sloga one can look forward to hearing little else. Turbofolk, by the way, is a combination of traditional regional or gypsy music and modern pop. At Balkan clubs the women are all dressed to the nines and wearing outrageously high heels, and the gentlemen err on the side of buzz cuts and unfriendliness. Particularly towards liquored up tourists who are sloppily getting down.

What is particularly notable is that the women are dressed like this all the time. Looking good seems to be very much of the culture, and the ability to negotiate the extremely steep hills of Sarajevo and its cobble stone streets in heels is the sign of a true local.

In subsequent nights, however, Sloga’s took it to another level. Packed to the gills with eurotrash and with spectacularly bad live bands playing between DJs, we wiled away many hours and took many outrageous photos which might eventually emerge and capture in terrifying stills some small degree of our collective inebriation.

Partying with three guys who have worked in hostels for extensive periods of time is quite a dangerous thing. Not only do they love to party, they are also quite proficient drinkers. Dan, a man of the wrong decade in his bell-bottomed jeans and Andrew, a boisterous and bearded Sydney lad with an endless appetite for cheese, shared a dangerous passion for vodka, a spot of eurotrash, and a late night sandwich. Potato Mike, too a hostel-veteran, was slightly more restrained, but that isn’t to say too much.

Sloga

Enter Pingvin. What a place. Home and hearth of revellers all. Distributor of the finest sandwiches you can get in Sarajevo at 3am in the morning. So good Andrew would buy two; one for the walk home, one for breakfast tomorrow.

Aaron arrived the second night in Sarajevo just in time to play drinking games with the assorted crew in a bout of bacchanalian excess such that Potato Mike couldn’t even make it out of the hostel afterwards. Joining us that night at the hostel was an Irish man, Kevin, who’d just arrived with his girlfriend. With rakija, vodka and an endless supply of beer, Aaron and I convinced Big Kev to proclaim, “I’m excited!” every time he had a shot or a drink.

But before I get distracted, Sarajevo. The city is staggeringly beautiful. Rippled out around the core of the Old Town and cradled by mountains up through which the meandering streets creep. The Old Town is of Arabic styling, built by the Turks and full of low slung buildings of intricate enamelling, beyond which lies the Austro-Hungarian styled inner-city, beyond which lies the soviet-styled city sprawl built when part of Communist Yugoslavia.

Bob-sled run

But Sarajevo’s most striking features are the bullet holes.

Wandering through the streets with Aaron we took in all of this, but with our rather shabby knowledge of modern history we were just gawping and snapping photos. Finally we went on the hostel owner Haris’ city tour in the driving snow of a Sarajevo Monday with a group of fellow hostelliers and had all the pieces put into perspective.

The history of Sarajevo is brutal. Having weathered three wars the scars are easy to see with bullet holes pockmarking so much of the city. Sarajevo played host to the longest siege of modernity, with Serbian troops encircling the city for four years and laying waste to much of it and its citizens. The tunnel built by the locals, some 800 metres of five-foot-high dankness is all that allowed them to continue to resist, as it was what they used to ferry supplies in and people out.

Bracing for sunset

Only ending in 1996 and with almost 12,000 killed, the wounds are still fresh and hearing Haris speak about that through which he’d lived as a child was harrowing. But his love for the city and entreaties for us to recommend it to our friends were heartening.

Our first stop was the remnants of the tunnel, and after we’d seen this we drove up the mountain to see the bob-sled run from when Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics, its heavy concrete punctured every dozen metres by Serbian forces during the war and used as improvised gun points. The forest around is still unsafe to walk in, riddled with unexploded bombs and land mines.

The only appropriate reaction to a day of such learnings was to get horrifically drunk. And this we did at the hostel, supping from what was dubbed by German sisters Gizi and Alfie as “the fountain of beer”, before heading out with Haris to an old cinema turned into a bar that is only open on Mondays. It was here that we drank to excess and Aaron and I developed nicknames for the company, rolling with Hazza, The Warrior, Freedom, The Doctor, Clunt, Martin, Jizzo, The Fonz, P-Dog and Hollywood.

Sunset from the fort

As we transitioned from here to Sloga we made the most of the snow and our boozy energy as Aaron and I built up a cache of snowballs as we waited outside the bar for everyone to emerge. This assault transitioned into a running battle that took many balls to resolve.

Finally it was time for Haris’ favourite salsa dancing, something at which everyone was completely inept. Stumbling home after being kicked out of Sloga, somehow I knew I wouldn’t be on the bus the next morning.

 

Bullet holes

Thankfully this enabled me to enjoy more of one of my favourite things in Sarajevo, Bosnian coffee. With a strong Turkish presence in the city the coffee is quite similar in style, except that in Turkish coffee the sugar is added into the boiling water, while in Bosnian coffee it is added post-brewing. At the coffee shop at the bottom of the hill from the hostel we would partake in some caffeine every day under the incredibly friendly eye of Hussein. Long haired and lavishly dressed, he presided over his tiny empire of tea and coffee, keen to explain the subtle artistry. One must stir gently, spoon some crema into the cup, then pour. Dip your sugar cube into the coffee and suck it, then drink some coffee intensely dark and earthy.

Moreover, one doesn’t just have a coffee. According to Haris you must sit for at least 30 minutes to an hour over your coffee and talk of life, family and politics.

The other Bosnian speciality is cevapi, grilled fingers of meat.  Served with some bread like a pita, raw onion, cream cheese and a grilled pepper and aubergine sauce (ajvar) they are quite moreish.

Old man chess

But perhaps the coolest feature of Sarajevo was the old fort up the hill another ten minutes from the hostel. From here you can see the city unfold before you almost in its entirety. Coming up here with the hostel crowd and a bottle of wine on my second day in Sarajevo to watch the sunset from the exposed ledge was one of those moments that cannot help but engender silence. Soaking in the last of the day as the sun washed ocean green into darkness and the call to prayer heralded the gathering night

I finally did end up getting out of Sarajevo, but headed just two-hours south to Mostar with Aaron. We wandered around the old city and had a pizza made for us by two of the more sullen Balkans across whom we’ve stumbled, before in a moment of tragic bromance parted ways at 5.30am in the morning as I headed at last to Kotor and he back to Sarajevo with plans to reunite in a couple of weeks.