Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Sarajevo in the springtime. julia

Here is almost the last installment - sorry it's been so long, both in content and in the posting.

KRALJEVA SUTJESKA
This delightful little town has a lot of history. It was once the home of medieval Bosnian Kings, Tvrtko (1338-91) and StjepanTomas, whose wife Queen Katarina (1424-78) was very much loved. She lived here until Kraljeva Sutjeska was taken over by Ottoman rule, and she fled into exile in Rome. Her tomb is in the Aracoeli church. She was very beautiful – there is a copy of her portrait in the Historical Museum, and the original is in Rome in the Capitol Museum. It is attributed to Giovanni Bellini. You can see it half way down the page in this link…

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/katarina.html

To this day, Bosnians regard her as a role model for women. Women from Kraljeva Sutjeska wear black scarves, even at weddings, in memory of Queen Katarina.

Kraljeva Sutjeska is around an hour from Sarajevo. There are no direct buses or trains, but both run several times a day to Kakanj (pronounced Kakkan) which is the nearest large town. We had thought to get a bus, but then decided on the 10.40am train. Buying tickets was easy, a return was only 8KM (4 euros). The train was a few minutes late, but we found two seats in a compartment. The trains have a long corridor running along the length of each carriage, and there are many compartments each with 8 seats. Smoking is allowed on the trains but only in the corridors. The seats were comfortable, so much so I wondered if we were in first class by mistake! The route followed the course of the River Bosna, pretty enough but not especially scenic, and again there was so much litter and rubbish along the river banks and in the water. You get a good view of the ‘Pyramid of the Sun’ towering above Visoko.

After an hour we arrived in Kakanj – which we would not have known had not the nice young law student sitting across from us told us! The station platform was tiny, but the train did not stop at it – we had to get out by jumping literally 3 feet down from the train directly onto the tracks – and then cross a good few more sets of tracks to the road! Luckily Mo is fit and agile for a woman in her mid-70s, but it could have been a problem.

Once across the road we headed into town. It all seemed very sparse and uninteresting. Well, I suppose Kakanj doesn’t itself have much of interest, except the big ugly asphalt factory and other industrial stuff on the outskirts. Anyway we knew that to get to Kraljeva Sutjeska we would need to get a taxi, though the guidebook did say there were several buses a day I only found evidence of one when searching online..

Close to the bus station, Mo had managed to cross the road, I was still waiting for a gap in the traffic when a taxi came by, so I waved and he stopped. He drove us out of the unattractive town and out into the country. There were lots of signs for Kraljeva Sutjeska which is 12km from Kakanj. The taxi dropped us at the top of the village in a small open place; the fare was 13 KM.

We could see the monastery up ahead, to our left were some old houses, to the right was the river and a shaded area with tables where 2 policemen were sitting smoking, but that was it. Total silence apart from the birdsong and sound of the river. It was also quite hot and the mid-day sun was very bright. It was so pretty too, with all these white-painted houses set amidst the lush green grass and trees of the valley and the tumbling stream, sparkling clean and free of litter and rubbish

I approached the policemen and attempted to ask where the tourist office was, and received shrugs in response. Mo and I started to walk back down another street – there was a small grocery shop on the corner and a café just down. We went in and ordered a coffee each, used the toilet (which was clean and OK!). We were told they were not serving food. Well, the guidebook does say it doesn’t operate on a daily basis. We giggled and thought we’d have to get something from the shop and have a picnic. The policemen came in, and this time I got out the guidebook and showed them the written words! There is supposed to be Tourist Agency Katarina

http://www.turist-katarina.vze.com/

and 'a tourist information office by the bus station' – presumably that means in Kraleva Sutjeska, but I’ve no idea where that might be in this tiny town.

This time one of the policeman took me outside, pointed down the street and I sort of got the idea that I should turn right by a parked car. Well, there were only houses here, so we carried on wandering, we found the tourist agency Katarina but it was closed up. A little yellow bus came past and turned round, but the driver wouldn’t let us on it! (We found out later it was a school bus.) Mo was quite fed up by now, and I was feeling the tension…

I wished I’d brought my phrase book/dictionary. The guide book has some useful words and phrases, but it’s very basic stuff. So far no-one seemed to speak any English at all, and my very limited Croatian/Bosnian was totally inadequate.

I thought we would return to the café or shop and ask someone to call us a taxi. But first I decided to call the telephone number on the window of the tourist agency.

It was Katarina who answered. She and her husband Josip run the agency, and run tours DURING THE SEASON (either booked direct or in conjunction with Green Visions). Note - these tours need to be booked THREE DAYS in advance.

Early April is still out of season, even though it was a glorious spring day. Then a man came running down, and told us to ‘come, come’. He took us to one of the houses on the street by the parked car – so the policeman had understood me and told me the right place to go after all! We were seated at a table in front of the house where Josip was sticking labels on bottles of plum brandy. We were offered some, but declined and accepted some water.

Shortly two young boys arrived from school, one was Josip and Katarina’s son. He and his friend spoke remarkably good English though their understanding wasn’t quite so good, However we were able to communicate better with these lads than anyone else so far. Most of the communication was about football, but Mo and I can say Rooney, Lampard and Cole with the best of them!

Mo was wanting to leave, but they insisted that they would show us round and then take us back to Kakanj. They told us we were the first visitors of the year, and they were not ready for us. Well, that was obvious, but I still felt a bit bad for not considering this. I felt we were imposing on them, but the boys were bouncing around asking about football, and it would have been churlish to have refused the little tour they were trying to arrange – Josip was calling the monastery trying to get the library opened.

Then an older brother joined us, and we set off up the hill to the big white church which towers over the village. Below us by the river were several large cars parked and lots of suited men who were laying wreaths by a memorial – this was something to do with remembrance of WWII.

We entered the Church of St Francis, which is surprisingly large considering the size of the town. It is designed is designed in Venetian style, with a massive statue of Queen Katarina to one side, the oldest organ in the country, and a very modern carved wooden altar. It was very peaceful and quite lovely, even if there are large cracks in the plaster of the ceiling. The boys took us outside where there is another statue of Queen Katarina, and we could see the outside of the monastery buildings. It is a very large monastery, apparently there are only six monks living there now. We were not able to see the museum or the library on this day though, but that didn’t matter.

The boys led us up the hill to the ruins of the old palace and castle. This was the most glorious place, high above the town and a wildflower meadow. So many pretty flowers, it was an idyllic place and would be lovely for a picnic.

A 5km hike from Kraljeva Sutjeska is the Bobovac Fortress, which was built centuries ago for the inhabitants to take shelter when under attack. It is an hour or so walk from KS so we didn’t visit it. On the way back down through the town we admired the very old houses, many seeming to be on the verge of tumbling down, certainly in need of restoration, and saw the Dusper House, the oldest house in central Bosnia, dated back to the 18th century. It is open to visitors during the season, but we couldn’t go inside due to the time of year.

Then we got into Josip’s minibus and were taken back down to Kakanj. They were all so nice and kind to us. We gave the boys each 10KM which they tried to refuse, but when I told them to buy sweets they accepted. We also gave Josip something for his time and petrol.

I’m really glad I got to Kraljeva Sutjeska, it is lovely, but I still feel a bit embarrassed. It was like turning up at a party uninvited and the host making you welcome, but nevertheless you feel like you shouldn’t be there.

We found out that a bus was leaving shortly for Sarajevo so we bought tickets for that. It would have been a 2 1/2 hour wait for the return train and Mo had had enough for the day. The bus tickets were 7.50KM each. I couldn’t understand the time on the tickets, but there was a bus with 'Sarajevo' signed on the front and it was all locked up, though some girls were waiting by it. I asked if this was the right bus and they nodded.

We were well hungry by now! The fast-food shop had greasy looking stuff which we didn’t fancy but there was a little grocery shop close by, so we bought water, bread rolls, a pack of crisps and what Mo thought was a tube of soft cheese spread.

We had just sat down on a bench outside and started to tear the rolls when a young man rushed up to us and told us the bus to Sarajevo was going. I could see it still parked up, and said yes we are going to Sarajevo, but he said no, the bus is going now, and we realised there was a large double-decker bus that had recently come in that was going! The driver was just stubbing out his cigarette and about to get back into his seat – so we bundled up all our food and ran for the bus! We got seats up on the top level, and sat and laughed. We laughed even more when we discovered that it was not soft cheese in the tube but mayonnaise!!! However mayonnaise sandwiched in those rolls with sour cream and chive crisps tasted surprisingly good!

At Visoko we were able to move into the very front upper seats of the bus, and so it was a nice journey back into Sarajevo, after our adventurous day trip.

Once again, the No 1 tram took us back to the Bascarsija and Hotel Safir.