(Sarajevo, 22.06.2025-25.06.2025) Sarajevo is renowned for its lost places. Such a lost place and a street art location of superlatives is the Olympic Bobsled Track, which was built for the 1984 Winter Olympics. The Trebević Cable Car takes you up to 1,160 meters in seven minutes, and it takes an hour and a half to walk down to 583 meters. A lost place of a completely different kind is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Sarajevo. It is the largest Jewish cemetery in Southeast Europe, founded by Sephardic Jews as early as 1630. In Naples, I was still a film tourist, but here I am already an urbexer; that's short for an urban explorer, someone who discovers lost places. Is the whole of Sarajevo one big lost place? No, not at all, but you do get the impression that time passes more slowly here. I was last here about forty years ago, and the city hasn't changed that much. The ice cream and lokum seller in Baščaršija, the bazaar in the historic old town, is as loud and witty as he always was. Old men play outdoor chess in the city park. A chain of stores is called "sovietlostcommerc" and the convertible mark is the national currency, which was first pegged to the German Mark and then to the Euro. Did you know that? The Bosnian War, which created these lost places in the first place, or at least affected them, ended thirty years ago, but its traces can still be seen at every turn. Whether it's the images of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić, a war criminal serving a life sentence, on the route to Sarajevo, or the Eternal Flame in the city center, which commemorates the victims of World War II and the Bosnian War. "Swords to Plowshares" becomes "Bullet Casings to Ballpoint Pens"—who needs plowshares anymore...?!
https://www.amazon.de/photos/album/b_KIDBapRdSFLfWMJw-ilg
Additional photos of the Old Jewish Cemetery:
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