Towards the end of the trip I was befriended when a Bosnian offered to host me. I got a bed and a homecooked meal (although I had trouble putting it down—I was SO sick of cevap and spinach-feta borek by this point in the trip). And I got to see apartment life in post-war, post-money ex-Yugoslavia. My host took me to a sixth floor walk up in a depressing concrete housing project. It was unheated. The weather is same as NYC in Sarajevo, so we had to build a trash fire in a metal box on legs. Some might call it a stove but it wasn’t that pretty; it was kind of junkpicked looking. In any case, burning the smashed up orange crate and torn cardboard scraps made the room very comfy in no time and, as an unreformed pyromaniac, I found it fun.
Many days I stopped by the best hangout in Sarajevo, a café annexed to the town’s mostly English bookstore, BuyBooks. The crew there was befitting of a small European capitol, educated, lively conversing. I managed to loiter at the BuyBooks cafe five times in four days. This is a goal of my slow visits, build up familiarity. The staff were all interesting to talk to. They were pretty, outgoing, and a good source of info on life in Sarajevo.
The oldest thing I saw in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the Bogomil cemetery in Radimlja, near Stolac. Here I hung out, sketched the carvings, and even stretched out on one of the flat stone tombs for a leisurely catnap, catching some luxurious rays and thinking about how this is as good as a Caribbean vacation except instead of sand I am reposing on priceless art, stuff that would make the guard at the Metropolitan say “please, don’t touch.” The medieval cemetery had about 110 of these large stone slabs, carved with various Bogomil motifs.
The most common figure on the gravestones is the big hand guy. He is carved with a crossbow behind one cocked arm and with a ring floating Tolkein-like over a grotesquely exaggerated upheld hand. His wears the gear of an armored knight. 
The Bogomils (also called “Patarenes”) were the original all-Bosnian, indigenous high civilization. (More on the Bogomil Heresy). Consequently, current 21st Century Bosnian nationalism uses them as a symbol. Religiously the Bogamil culture is interesting. They were heretics persecuted by Rome. Pressure from the Catholic Church eventually aggravated the Bogomils to the point where they either capitulated to Catholicsim, or,more often, were so turned off by Catholicism that they left Christianity and converted in large quantities to Islam when the Ottomans came, forming the backbone today of who we think of as “The Bosnian Muslims”. Whatever. I just know I like their tomb carvings.
I love the part about sleeping on the artwork that museums here would have one arrested for touching. What a fascinating cemetery.
Posted by: Peter | January 21, 2006 at 07:06 PM