Sweet Saturday

I knew that I could not see so much places in Sarajevo since I came here and when I have time now after all school works, I have decided to go outside for discovery of the city. Indeed, to know it more might be a good start to feel more close and to love more -maybe as for the other things. Then we met with our lovely guide -who is my friend and my student :)- to go to Baščaršija (Başçarşı) where is the heart of the city, center of all starts and center of all meetings. First, we went to a museum which was actually turned from a house of Ottoman period during 1600s. As it can be seen below, each room of this house totally reflects the soul of past times.

The one which is on the left side above shows a big room and the other picture shows the heating system of those times. More pictures (about hand-made wooden door and a scene of the outer part of the house) inside this lovely house can be seen below:



















I just thought that they had quite much rooms in their houses before which are even arranged as comfortable for guests. However, nowadays, it is even so hard to find three-rooms apartment in Sarajevo.
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The next stop for us was another nice building which was from Austria-Hungarian times and now it is used as a theology faculty of Sarajevo University. We were lucky to go insdie on saturday and it was totally worth because I felt in love with the building. It was beautiful. I thought one can be a student there just to be close to this nice place everyday.

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Then Alija's grave... I especially wanted to see his grave when I am reading his famous book, Islam: Between West and East. His grave is locating on a hill with lots of graves belonging to the ones who died during the war between 1992-1995. Maybe sounds strange but for the first time I thoguht I can be under the soil together with all the other ones. There were so much flowers on each grave and there is a small lake going among the graves. It was really refreshing atmosphere.

The grave which has grey dome on it in the picture is the Alija's one. It was said that generally soldiers are waiting for his grave but when we were there, there was no soldier and we could manage to take so close pictures around it. The graves are locating just below a nother nice and famous place which is called Tabya. I need to confess that it was a bit hard for me to climb the whole way when my husband and our guide could go easily. They sometimes needed to pull me. I think I am really getting old. But the view after we settled was so beautiful. We could see almost all the city.

One of the pictures that we took from this upper part can be seen on the right side. Actually our guide said that it is especially nice to be there during sunset and during the night when the sky is full of with stars or a moon. On the other hand, we have learned that these nice places close to the hill were the ones which ruined most by Serbians. We have also learned that it is because that Bosnian people got used to use lime trees for making tea and even such kind of food, today those trees are the reminder of war times for them. Lime trees... They are all around our apartment and I really like to smell them when we are walking on the streets. Same smell but different memories for Bosnians and for me.

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Our walking continues through Vratnik mejdan. Small old streets... Was really nice to walk around. In Vratnik mejdan, we saw a new area which has walls full of with the names of people who died during the war from the area. And the day has finished in Morica Han via drinking Bosnian coffee.