This is part 2 of 2 describing our travels in Bosnia and Herzegovina (which will be shortened to Bosnia in further comments). Part 1 can be viewed here. As before, this is a continuation of our photo tour with Mehmet Özbalci of TurFantastic.

Before meeting up with our photo group, we explored the streets around the Old Town. At the photogenic Old Town Square was the historic wood Sebilj fountain, and behind it was where several hundred pigeons roost aka Pigeon Square. In this area were children feeding them corn that they had purchased from a vendor on the square. We spent hours just watching, photographing, and occasionally talking to the people in the area. Although it is was mostly children feeding the pigeons, one married woman in a full hijab and other adults were also delighted to have the pigeons feed from their hands (left-middle). If you sign up for a walking tour, you can also visit the site where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated that started World War 1.

During our wanderings in various Bosnian towns, we saw a diversity of people of different ethnicities and religions all living together. The men lower-right are praying at a mosque. Sometimes you could see a person looking out of an upper floor window at the passing crowd (upper right), and many young people were shopping for clothes or jewelry (middle-right). One painter with many good pieces of the Old Bridge spoke to us briefly through our translator, and happily posed while showing off the art he was currently working on (upper left).

We arrived in Sarajevo a couple days before the rest of our photo tour group. At Mehmet’s suggestion, we made a beeline to the cable car, for a view from above the city. We were fortunate to have a clear day, since it began to rain and be overcast the very next day. Above are views from the cable car trip up and down.

One afternoon we hiked up a very steep and rather long hill to see the fort at Pojitelj (upper-left). The other images are things we saw on our way up that climb. One item of interest was the very thick slate roofs that the buildings had (closeup of roof lower-right).

In this part of the world, you are never far from reminders of the destruction of war. We stopped on the side of the road at one such location, a bombed out hotel (above). This had been a luxury hotel, but was bombed by the serbs because it was being used by the enemy in the 1990s.

Grafitti is throughout Sarajevo. Some of it is just gang signatures. Some is a bit higher level, but still gang related (top-left and lower-left). One famous graffiti artists is Mr Chat. Though he has not been active for years, his signature style can still be seen in some places (upper-right) Much of the other graffiti is actually spray paint over templates, and thus repeated multiple times in town (middle, lower-right, lower-middle).

One such frequent template graffiti is calling for justice for Vedran Puljic (middle). In 2009, there was “football riot” at a game in town, a fairly frequent occurrence at soccer games throughout Europe. In this instance, an off-duty policeman opened fire on the crowd, and killed Vedran. That policeman was arrested, but then escaped and fled to Croatia. The graffiti is calling for Justice for Vedran, wanting that policeman extradited back to Bosnia for trial.

The Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo in 1984, just 8 years before the Bosnian War began to put the town under siege. The bobsled track was used for various events after the Olympics, but has not been used since the War began. It is now one of the largest platforms for artistic graffiti in the area, as seen above.

Watching vendors and street musicians (upper right) is always a favorite pastime of ours on these trips. The local indoor market was a treat, and we sampled several smoked meats and cheeses.

There are always souvenir shops in pretty much any large city in the world. Many of the items for sale in Sarajevo are made from old bullets (center and top right). Interesting, but also rather disturbing… There are also many silver and copper smiths shops (top left), creating bookmarks (top middle) or serving plates (bottom middle) and serving sets (bottom left). We even saw several Russian Matryoshka dolls (bottom right).

Any time you travel with Mehmet, you can be sure that you will never be hungry, and that you will have the chance to sample local foods in every country you travel in. The classic street food we enjoyed included cevapi, pite and burek. Above are a few of the dishes we sampled in Bosnia.