Beads

Sarajevo

I bought that pale brown bead that is touching the old guy's sleeve.

Although some areas are evidently scarred, Sarajevo has seen more renovation than Mostar. It's a vibrant city, full of cafés, funky bars and great food. Some houses on the outskirts keep the scars of the war on their brick work and the odd window in the centre of town is framed by bullet holes.

The old city was crammed with antique stalls where you could buy anything from communist hats and guns to Nazi arm bands or old soviet cameras. Next to the antique shops were metal workshops that would blink white with the welder's flash.

Later on in Sarajevo though, we were naughty and got into a little bit of trouble on the trams. Like every other tram user, we didn't bother getting a ticket for a couple of reasons A. because no-one checks. B. because no-one else got them and C. because there was nowhere to buy them. It was a bit of a pisser, therefore, to see the conductors getting on at one of the stops. They checked a couple of tickets on the way down the tram but only had eyes for us backpackers. Playing the naive tourist we attempted to buy tickets of them, as if we thought that they were the ticket masters. The conductors didn't speak a word of English so it was hard to understand what they wanted. One of them took Fiona's passport and started taking details from the back. So, quite rightly, Fiona was insisting on getting her passport back and demanding to know why he needed to take these private details. The main worry really though was not the price of the impending fine but the fact that we had to get off at the bus station to catch the night bus to Split.

We pulled up at the bus station and stood up, the conductors started telling us to sit back down. We refused and told them to get off the tram with us. Fiona and I got off with one of the conductors but Jen and Sarah had the doors closed on them and were stuck with the the tram with the other conductor. Fi and I ran back and banged on the tram door to get it opened and the other conductor finally got off too.

It was pissing it down with rain and I was glad, get the conductors wet too. Serves them right for being so antagonistic. We dragged them into the bus stop to speak to one of the ticket vendors who could speak English. We were trying anything to not pay the fine. Why should we? There was nowhere for us to buy tickets... how were we meant to know that you could buy them from the driver. Also, no-one bloody else had them. Anyway that didn't work so we were frogmarched to the ATM. And that wouldn't take our cards for some reason. How long would this go on for? We have a bus in 20 mins. We ended up scraping together all our Bosnian Mark and all our Euros to pay the 13 Euro fines. We made it as hard as we could for them to get out money. I think our backpacks made us an easy target.

In a last move of defiance though Fiona demanded that her details were ripped out of the notebook and ripped up. Awesome. In hindsight the whole ordeal is hilarious but at the time we didn't know what was going to happen.