Day 17: The Journey to Sarajevo

Following our time in Kosovo and our subsequent denial by Serbian authorities to enter their country, we spent the night in Montenegro on our way back into Serbia (please look back on previous post for more details). 

We left Montenegro at 10:30 AM and had absolutely no problem entering Serbia.  They simply took our passports and annulled the stamps the Kosovar authorities had placed on our passports. This time we were entering Serbia from what Serbia considered to be an international border.  Thus, they saw our Kosovo stamp and annulled due to it being a stamp they believed was not legitimate.  However, in contrast to the previous day, they allowed us to enter their country due us coming in from a state (and an international boundary) that they fully recognize.

Although we were a day behind schedule, we finally re-entered Serbia on our way to Sarajevo.  That day our professors decided to stop at the sites we were supposed to stop in the day before.  On our way through the beautiful mountainous terrain of southern and western Serbia, we stopped in Novi Pazar and in Mokra Gora.  Novi Pazar is a small town without anything truly special.  It is interesting because it is a Serbian town with a Bosniak majority.  Mokra Gora is a town situated in the mountains of western Serbia.  It consists of wooden houses built by a Serbian film director.  It is quite bizarre and it resembles a theme park.  Primarily, this “town” is a tourist stop for people that want to see the beautiful countryside and mountain views, and see the quirkiness of the village.

When we stopped at Mokra Gora, we had already been on the road for around 8 hours.  We still needed four more hours to reach Sarajevo.  Not before long, we reached the Bosnia-Herzegovina border, which we crossed without any complications.   

Before nearing Sarajevo, we made a quick stop in Visegrad, a town in Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb legal entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which controls 49% of the country’s territory).  We decided to see the famous bridge (Mehmed Paša Sokolović bridge) over the river Drina, which is immortalized by Ivo Andric’s novel.  

At around 11:30 PM, we stopped at a gas station 20 km away from Sarajevo.  We were so close to reaching our destination.  It seemed as though our epic journey to Sarajevo, which had taken us from Serbia through Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia once again, was coming to an end.  However at that point Professor Sullivan made an announcement.

He could barely contain his laughter.  I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but I grasped that we could not continue forward because of a rockslide.  That’s right – a rockslide.  A rockslide had blocked the road, and busses were not allowed through.  At that point, the ridiculousness of the journey reached its peak, and I could only laugh at the situation.  Seeing how the main road was blocked we had only one alternative: retreating and taking a more perilous road through the hills surrounding Sarajevo, thus taking an extra hour to enter the city.  However, we took the news and the change of rout with great humor and enjoyed our final descent into the city at around 12:30 AM.  For a couple of days we had tried to reach the Bosnian capital, but had been confronted with border difficulties and illegalities, slow and winding mountainous roads, and finally a rockslide.  It seemed as though some sort of higher power did not want us to ever enter this city.  However, after a trying few days, we had finally reached our destination.  It was a moment of bliss, relief, and excitement mixed together.  Exhausted, yet jubilant over our arrival, we rested and prepared ourselves to see Sarajevo the following day.