Lads, incoming.
I sat bolt upright in bed and looked puzzled. I had had one of those incredibly realistic dreams where I had remembered every last detail in which I had shot an old colleague and was in London hiding from the authorities. It was one of those dreams from which anyone would have woken up startled and wondered in a panic 'where on Earth am I?'. What usually happens is that you quickly realise where you are and you slump back down on the pillow - not today. It was 5 am and I was in a mock Tudor hotel room in Sarajevo with the windows wide open and deafening Arabic screams coming straight in to my unprotected ear. It was prayer time. If Henry the Eight had walked in smoking with a kebab, it would have made sense. This is a verbose way of saying, I had an unusual morning and began the day confused and sleep deprived.
Today was to be truly game changing for this trip as I was expecting new arrivals. Two true legends of Oxford that had heard of my Odessey through Eastern Europe and battered no eyelids before signing up to be part of the adventure. Today, Nick Chapman and Will Gresford were arriving to add fresh material and humour to this Balkan Bandwagon of a journal which some (essentially my Mum) are now calling the finest travel writing in recent memory. I had a larger breakfast than usual expecting to need a stronger game than usual today.
The unspectacular Latin Bridge
As I went running around the edge of town, I wondered where exactly the Serbs had been hiding as the steepness and attacking potential of the surrounding hills should not be underestimated. It is very easy indeed to visualize exactly why the city could be besieged for so long given the perfect geographical make up of its immediate surrounding area. The houses are red roofed as I have come to expect on this trip but the hallmarks of war still remain at every turn. There's rubble and wall collapse on most hillside roads and even as you get into the centre, remnants of the attack still manifest themselves. If you find yourself in Sarajevo you will see the odd yet deliberate patches of red paint on the ground; this red paint was poured into holes left by bomb explosions. They call these chilling marks the 'red roses of Sarajevo'.
I made my way towards the Latin Bridge as I wanted to make a short presentation about what had happened there a fraction over 100 years ago. I would say that it's a wonderfully impressive landmark, but that would be a total lie. A narrow, unspectacular path runs over a light brown thick river that looks like it would not be out of place in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This makes sense now, maybe there were winning lottery tickets in their cigarettes after all. A few people were staring in its direction, but that's probably because there was some idiotic Englishman filming himself on an iPhone 5 trying to look sincere and actually just looking like an insane narcissist talking to himself. I was getting used to that look.
I did some shopping where nothing but 'genuine silver' was offered in my direction but I settled for a pair of wooly slippers. The silver bracelets were thinner than a liars excuse and with hallmarks that appeared more fake than a Chanell handbag, I passed on them and moved on to something that could keep me warm in a New York winter. I made it back to the hotel to shower and change and then prepare myself for my entourage arrival. A text from Nick saying 2 minutes away made my heart leap, but then his follow up text of 'just listen out for the tunes' deflated it all too quickly. As the black Peugeot 208 pulled up blasting rap music, I noticed Will in a wooly hat and sunglasses and then Nick just leaned out the window, looked up and down the road and said, 'it's on'. I wondered what I had done.
Will Gresford, Nick Chapman and your author taking obligatory opening night selfie
The injection of familiar company ignited my spirits and like I had spent my childhood in Sarajevo I launched them into a tour of the city announcing with undeserved authority almost certainly false historical facts of interest. Nick's intolerance to gluten provided both some difficulty in getting him exposed to local cuisine but also much entertainment as he googled and tried to pronounce the Bosnian for 'gluten-free pizza'. We peripatetically went from bar to bar exploring the varying flavours of grappa on offer before landing in the most unBosnian of bars, 'Cheers' - a local institution apparently and a halfway house between club 18 to 30 and a student bar during Freshers week. We watched some live music which proved to be ill pronounced covers of songs from the 90's and we met Melvin. Melvin was an interesting guy who had lived in America for years but was now back in his home country because, well, he hadn't behaved very well and he got deported. He told us a bit more about the city and we tried out a few more bars. Our conversations would have seemed totally directionless to any outsider but of course made perfect sense to us. Much more of that tomorrow.