This time arriving in Belgrade, passing through Sarajevo, the theme song of "Walter Defending Sarajevo" sounded again in my ears, as if I had returned to the age of green onion.
Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the economic and cultural center. After World War II, Sarajevo was the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Bosnia and Herzegovina, near the upper bosna river, a tributary of the central Sava River. Surrounded by mountains, the ancient city is surrounded by beautiful scenery. The population is nearly 500,000. It was built in 1263. The assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary here on 28 June 1914 by Serbian nationalists became the trigger for World War I.
Sarajevo, the older generation Chinese familiar names, the new generation Chinese strange places. From familiar to unfamiliar, the upheavals of Europe have constantly updated our knowledge, and the transformation of the past two decades seems to confirm the complex roots of the region's changing changes for thousands of years. What kind of city is Sarajevo? Everyone who comes here will have different feelings.........
At the end of the 12th century, the Slavs established the Principality of Bosnia in the Balkans. In 1463, the Ottoman Empire invaded the area with religious spread and force; In 1878, it was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the spiritual connotations of Eastern and Western civilizations intersected, and the cultural blood of different religions flowed here. Today, more than three million Bosnians in Bosnia and Herzegovina are made up of about 44 percent Islamic Bosnians, 33 percent Orthodox Serbs and 17 percent Catholic Croats.
We entered the border from Nem, the only outlet to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and drove up rugged winding roads with towering cliffs and gentle alpine meadows. In the valley, the cottages are withered, cattle and sheep are scattered, the houses are crumbling, and the new white tombstones are very striking. Red sign warning: There are mines in the jungle and meadows! Reminds you that there was once a bloody struggle for survival here. How could this be in Europe?
Sarajevo is sandwiched between a narrow valley. Stepping into the Gezi Husereberg Mosque amid the chanting of the Quran, you can see the exquisite five-arched porch, several domes of varying sizes, and the call of the imam to lead muslims in prayer from the loudspeaker on the 45-meter-high minaret. On the same street, the towering bell tower of the Orthodox Church rings the bell of the hour, and the bells of the Catholic Church with its spire straight into the sky also ring loudly. Sarajevo is known as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" for its ethnic, religious and cultural diversity.
Orthodoxy and Catholicism were introduced during the Roman period. The Ottoman Empire ruled Bosnia for more than four hundred years, forcibly Islamized the local people, and gave birth to a very tangled ethnic group: the Slavs, who spoke Slavic and used the Latin alphabet and believed in Islam. Tito (1892-1980) defined the Muslims among the Serbs as a new ethnic group: the Bosnians, in order to maintain the unity of the Yugoslav state and weaken the serbian nation, the most powerful Serb nation in the country.
The Bacasan district on the north bank of the Miriac River was founded in the 15th century. The small streets and alleys are connected like a cobweb, which can be described as a condensed Arab world. One of the emperor's mosques is solemn and solemn, the oldest of more than a hundred mosques in Sarajevo. Pavilion-shaped public fountains are used for Islamic believers to purify and drink. Carpets, carved coffee pots, colored porcelain and lamps in the Grand Bazaar are all in full swing. At the entrance of the tea house and the barbecue, people lie down smoking shisha and drinking Turkish black tea, much like the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem.
Sarajevo was once a bustling metropolis, pioneering the opening of Europe's first tram line. On the south bank of the Miriats River, there are European-style churches, post offices, art schools, etc., which are magnificent. Built in 1896, the town hall combines a Moorish façade of east-west architecture, elaborate arched windows, zigzag roofs and sightseeing balconies that highlight the glory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire of yesteryear.
In the middle of the Fehadia Pedestrian Street, a line of intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, "Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures", is drawn. Without the need for this line, it can also be seen that the west of the street is a European-style building, and the signature dish is the Bosnian stew pot (pea, carrot, cabbage and meat yards are boiled in clay pots); To the east of the street is an Islamic building where people like Turkish soup (beef, potatoes, tomatoes stewed in one pot).
In fact, Bosnians, Serbs and Croats are homogeneous Slavs of the same species, living in the same country, but with very different national identities, and religious conflicts are still chaotic, so that Sarajevo cannot erase the fall of war for a hundred years.
The Latin Bridge over the Miriats River, a stone arch bridge rebuilt in 1791, saw the outbreak of World War I from here. Emperor Joseph of austria-Hungary was unfortunate, and in 1898 Empress Sisi was stabbed to death in Geneva, and his only son, Rudolf, committed suicide in front of him with his lover at the age of 31, and his nephew Ferdinand became crown prince. When Austria-Hungary moved eastward, the front line of contention with the Ottoman Empire was in Bosnia. On 28 June 1914, Crown Prince Ferdinand and his wife visited Sarajevo and walked out of the town hall holding hands.
As their convertibles slowed down around the Latin Bridge, the Serbian nationalist Princip rushed out of the bridge café and shot and killed the Crown Prince and his wife. Austria declared war on Serbia, Russia, the Serbian ally, declared war on Austria, then Germany declared war on Russia, France declared war on Germany, and the European powers opened the curtain on The First World War. World War I killed more than 10 million soldiers and more than 7 million civilians, and poor Emperor Joseph witnessed the fall of austria-Hungary.
Today, the Bridgehead Café has been converted into a museum, with several black-and-white photographs and a bronze plaque on the façade showing the moment of the assassination. A stone on the sidewalk marks the location of the Assassins at the time of the attack. The crown prince's car, military uniform, assassin's pistol, etc. are in the collection of the Vienna Military Museum. The Assassin was 19 years old at the time, under the age of death, sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis a few years later.
The former Yugoslavia was predominantly Serb, and the Assassin Princip was known as a patriot. His footprints are inlaid on the pavement near the Latin Bridge, and the black marble slabs are inscribed in gold: "It was from here that Princip used the sound of gunfire to express the people's resistance to tyranny and the centuries-old quest for freedom." The Latin Bridge was renamed the Principe Bridge. After the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, muslims were the majority, Serb patriots became terrorists, and the inscription was rewritten: "Princip assassinated the Austrian Crown Prince and his wife here." The name of the bridge was changed back to "Latin Bridge". History is written by the victors.
During world war II, the German army invaded Sarajevo, and in the movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo", which was once popular in China, walters sang: "If I die in battle tomorrow, please bury me in my homeland", recording the hardships and bravery of the Sarajevo people.
In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina became independent, and religious contradictions and conflicts of economic interests that had been feuded for hundreds of years broke out, which started the most casualties and the longest siege of the city after the "Second World War" in Europe. With advanced weapons and well-trained soldiers, the Serbs occupied 60% of the territory and besieged Sarajevo for more than 1,400 days. Sarajevo is located in a river valley depression, and snipers occupy the hills around the city, targeting the city's people. The documentary Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo depicts both a Serb youth and his Mu girlfriend sniped on the Verbania Bridge, both at the age of 25. 26 people on Tito Street were also shot by gunmen while lining up to buy bread, and all of them were killed. During this period, the city's population of 300,000, more than 13,000 people died in the war, and tens of thousands of people were wounded. In 1995, the Bosnian Serb army, police and police sent by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia burst into Srebrenica, killing some thousand Muslim Bosnians in the clashes.
At the beginning of the civil war, Serb tanks and cannons entered the ancient city of Mostar, a two-hour drive from Sarajevo, and were repulsed by a combination of Bosnians and Croats. The Croats then established the "Croatian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina" to build the capital in Mostar. But the Bosnians considered Mostar to be their home for generations, so the Bosnian Croatian Union broke down and the two communities fought each other.
There is a stone arch bridge on the Neret River, 4 meters wide and 29 meters long, traversing the river valley, 25 meters above the water, like a bend and a half moon, reflected in the blue water to become a full moon, elegant and light. The arch bridge was built in 1557 and was arduous and took ten years. The Croats besieged the old town of Mostar and blew up the arch bridge with cannons. A video of the destruction of the Old Bridge is still playing in the Muslim Bosnian Memorial. The weeping arch bridge in the picture collapsed under several rocket attacks. Nearly a year after the siege, about 30,000 Muslim residents in the old city died more than a thousand people. Today's old bridge was rebuilt in 2004 at the expense of Spain and the United States. A stone stele at the head of the bridge is inscribed with "Dont Forget", Don't Forget the War. In 2005, the Old Town of Mostar and the Arch Bridge, a condensation of ottoman time, were selected as World Heritage Sites.
Today, sad Sarajevo is full of the marks of the pain of civil war. The city hall converted library was bombed during the civil war, destroying 90% of the books in its collection. The parliament buildings were shelled by tanks, many of the buildings had bullet holes in their facades, and bronze plaques nailed to the walls bearing the names of the victims there, all from 1993 to 1995, with indelible scars in every household. In honor of the more than 1,500 Sarajevo children killed in the civil war, a green sculpture fountain was built in Xincheng Park, next to several iron cylinders engraved with the children's birth and death time, and on the grassy slope is the children's cemetery.
Viewed from the remains of a Turkish castle on the hill, the orange roof cascades down like a cascading waterfall, stretching from the middle of the mountain to the riverbank, with large areas of graveyard scattered between them, and new white tombstones lined up like pieces of unburied skeletons, clusters of unrecognizable life. A big mother held her son's tombstone and wept, tearfully writing prayers for the dead.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has been fighting a civil war for more than three years, with more than 200,000 people killed, more than 2 million people becoming refugees, and the people suffering from the ravages of war. More than half of the economic facilities and housing were destroyed in the war, leaving a large number of mines. 200,000 lives in exchange for the three flags flying over Sarajevo today: the flag of the blue and yellow stars of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the flag of the Muslim-Croatian Union, and the flag of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sarajevo ceased to be a melting pot of nationalities, but existed as two entities, the result of the signing of a peace agreement on November 21, 1995, between President Milosevic of the Republic of Serbia of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Tudyman of Croatia, and President Iszet Begović of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Dayton, Ohio. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina controls 51% of the territory, accounting for 62% of the population, mainly Muslim Bosnians and Croats; Republika Srpska controls the remaining territory, which accounts for 37% of the population, has an independent flag, government, parliament, police, and switches to the Cyrillic alphabet (like Russian, where the ancestral home of the Slavs is in Russia). There are two bus stations in Sarajevo, one for the Muslims and one for the Serbs, each with its own car and each with its own stop. Mostar is divided into Muslim and Croatian areas, where the sounds of chickens and dogs are heard but not exchanged. The Head of State of Bosnia and Herzegovina is composed of a presidium of one representative from each of the three ethnic groups, speaking the three official languages, taking turns in power and sharing power.
I hope that Sarajevo can erase the devastation of the war and bosnia and Herzegovina will no longer slide into the abyss of war. Writing here comes to mind a poem:
For the official, the family business withers; Rich and noble, gold and silver scattered; Those who have grace, escape from death; Ruthless, clear retribution; Whoever owes his life, his life has been repaid; Those who owe tears have run out: the retribution of injustices is not light, and the separation and aggregation are predetermined. If you want to know your life and ask about the previous life, it is really a fluke to be rich and noble. See through, escape into the empty door; Obsessed, lost his life. It's like eating all the birds thrown into the forest, and the land is really clean!