I love the Cheese Ladies in Zagreb. Every day they come to the main market and set up their displays in the outdoor area. The cheeses they sell are made by their husbands either in the Alps or, during Winter, in barns at home. In spring the men take their cattle up to the alpine pastures and stay there until the cold weather sets in. The women go up once a week taking food and supplies, when they come down they bring back cheeses and yoghurts to sell at the markets.

There is a whole row of outdoor cheese stalls set in the freezing cold of a Zagreb winter. The women have a real sense of humour and have the cameraderie that is nurtured by the shared trials of a tradional way of life. In other parts of the market are the Zagreb Potato Women with their gnarled hands, another section is home to the Saurkraut Guild, and so on. It is the same throughout Eastern Europe.

Regular customers are greeted by name, foreigners are still provided with banter and laughter despite an inability to communicate in a shared spoken language. And, at closing time, there are small amounts of produce at most stalls left out for the homeless and hungry to collect – dignity still intact as there has been no need to beg for food or money.

In Australia this has all been stolen from us by Woolworths and Coles – our communities are so much poorer because of it. I would willingly trapse through snow to buy my potatoes from an ancient woman with dirt-worn, arthritic hands. I don’t like saurkraut enough to stand in a queue but I love watching it being sold.  I am still moved every time I see the little piles of cabbages,  packs of saurkraut, or mounds of fruit and veg left out daily for others to collect at closing time. Also, I would really love to be able to go to the market each day and listen to the stories of the stoic but cheerful Cheese Ladies. Sigh…. We have supermarkets that make sure this will never happen at home. I must be dreaming ….

F C-S

Miss Moneypenny  (yes, her real name) was educated in an all-girls school in Brisbane, and did teacher education in Brisbane. She was the first person I knew who had travelled overseas, been to an opera or eaten snails. The snails impressed us. She could speak three languages, she could play a number of musical instruments and had done ballet. In 1969 however she was assigned to my class- Rosewood Yr 8 -to teach French, Music and English. Miss Moneypenny had been thrown to the Rosewood wolves.
I am just a litte ashamed now to reflect on the lengths the boys in our class would go to in order to make her life hellish. She required a hearing aid, my best friend discovered that blowing through a Bic pen would set up some kind of weird interference that drove her mad. We all bought and blew through Bic pens. We realised that if we took it in turns to start miming in music lessons she would eventually turn up the volume of her hearing aid. We took it in turns to start miming then, when the hearing aid went full volume we would all start yelling.

Her English classes were standard fare for the time but they always had the potential to be made more interesting by her worldliness. I’m sure she could have shared stories of Paris, Rome, or London – but may as well have been telling them in French. This was a town and a time that saw a trip to the Brisbane Ecca as an exotic, once a year adventure.

Miss Moneypenny started taking more and more sick leave, then one day she didn’t come back at all. Our Principal took us for music – he would put on a record over the loudspeaker and we would do marching on the parade ground. Another teacher took us for French and English, she didn’t have a hearing aid and was obviously told to belt anyone who caused disruption. Bic pens lost their appeal, as did French,  English and Music. But Miss Moneypenny did leave one legacy. I became fascinated with all things French or foreign. I didn’t study any language after Yr 8 but still have some (very limited) comprehension of French. I have a deep and abiding  love of travel and music. I sometimes even watch dance and enjoy it.. And I have eaten snails many times.

Miss Moneypenny, I am grateful for a year of French, albeit in a Rosewood kind of way. I am grateful for the fascination with language, travel and gastronomy that ensued. And I do wish to apologize about the Bic pen thing -it really was Steve Clark’s idea. And it was his idea to mime during music lessons, not mine. 

For all of this, I really am so sorry. (Kevin Rudd, eat your heart out)

F C-S

Linda did the research. Incredible views over Sarejevo is what Trip Advisor said. The taxi cost 20BM  each way. 

This was the view, and they didn’t serve breakfast.

You can’t win them all Remington!

Bosnia doesn’t really seem to have weekends, and it is primarily Muslim. Therefore, Christmas on a Sunday in Sarejavo has about as much effect as Diwali falling on a Thursday in Brisbane. We, however, have been in contact with family, have managed to put presents under a tree and will have a meal suitable to the -6° outside. I must say that Christmas Sarajevo is by no means the only new experience.

We had a small earthquake yesterday (4.1 was the judges score).  I have never experienced an earth tremor until now – and we have seen plenty of things that leave us scratching our collective heads..

Merry Christmas all from Bosnia

Don’t die with the music in you. He dances like a maniac on a drug of some sorts for hours every day in the city centre. No idea why -a boy just needs a hobby I guess.

The only thing we have not witnessed is seeing people holding hands in yellow underwear. Way too cold for that nonsense!

“Fatima, our sign’s not working!”

No comment – because I have no idea what this is about.

The Pigeon Man goes to the square at different times every day and the sky becomes filled with pigeons. How do the pigeons know?

Mostar is about 3 hours from Sarajevo by car and the bridge there is by far its biggest attraction. The original bridge was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557 (although Brian Griffin knows thats not a real name) and it was finished in 1567. For quite some time it was the largest man-made arch in the world. Then in 1993 the Croatians came to Mostar.

The bridge had survived earthquakes and numerous wars. In an act of pure cultural vandalism the Croatians dropped it wth 60 well-aimed  shells. The bridge had absolutely no strategic value – a steel bridge is 100m downstream. Sometimes the recent history of the Bosniaks reads a bit like the kid in your primary school who everyone beats up for no particular reason.

The bridge was later rebuilt using the same materials recovered from the bottom of the river by NATO divers and with Turkish and Croatian money. It is an exact reconstruction of the original. The rest of Mostar was just a wee tad underwhelming.  The stalls leading to the bridge sold souvenirs made in China to tour groups visiting from China – bridge pencil sharpeners, bridge paperweights, mugs with engravings of the bridge.

Our drive home was made interesting by the blatant corruption of our driver. Din’s dad is high up in the police force. Din finished Yr 12 and has never worked, however he now owns 10 apartments in Bosnia. In the summer he and his dad host rich Arabs who rent Ferraris to drive around and buy property in town, dad greases the wheels and the visitors grease the palms. He would say that nobody pays traffic fines, it costs 10 BM (about $7.50) to avoid charges for most offences, 20BM for drink driving or accidents. He was proud of the fact that it costs him nothing because of dad. And by the way did we want to buy an apartment in Sarejevo?   Tax-free of course.

Australia is a much simpler place, or at least we lead vastly different lives. I would be willing to take any of my reading public on a tour of Rosewood AND visit the Seven Mile bridge over the Bremer. We could eat a counter meal at the Royal George Hotel. Rhuno’s Drapery may even have a tea towel with some local sights printed on it. However Ted would never have been able to save me from a speeding fine, introduce me to rich Arabs buying properties in Walloon, or ever let me charge visitors for a drive in the country. And what a good thing that is.

Enough from me,

Best let you go Farquar

Farley C-S

Scattered throughout Sarajevo are red splashes on the footpaths or roadways. Sarajevo was beseiged by the Serbs for 4 years, the longest seige in modern history. More than 5000 were killed by artillery or sniper fire.

Where a shell or mortar exploded on the streets and claimed lives, the concrete scars were painted red – the Sarajevo Rose.

Using leftovers to make children’s toys and pens?

The Latin Bridge

There is a line on a street in Sarajevo’s old town where East did actually meet West. To the east of the line are the old markets hugging the walls of a mosque. Everything there and beyond was built originally by the Ottoman Turks. Everything west of this line was built by the Austro-Hungarians – Catholic churches and apartment buildings that could be in Prague, Vienna or Budapest.

Sarajevo’s position on the globe has seen it flourish at times, at other times rupture – often drawing other nations into this divide. In the last 200 years we in Queensland have had the the State of Origin as our main internal conflict – Bosnia has had 23 wars or major insurrections. Our beaches have been invaded by Kiwis and Poms – Bosnia since Roman times has been invaded by the Alans, Huns, Goths, Avars, Slavs, and Franks.

An indication of how bad the Spanish inquisition was for Shephardic Jews, many of them sought sanctuary in Bosnia and established a community here,  just as some Syrians are doing now. Bosnia was its own country from 1377, but not for long and not again ’til the 1990’s.

The biggest fracture to be sparked by events in Bosnia was triggered by a young Serb near the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. Archduke Ferdinand was a reluctant and a bit unlucky heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. His cousin and direct the direct heir shot himself when he couldn’t marry his girlfriend, his dad died of typoid, that left him next in line. He really didn’t want to be next in line, let alone be next in line in Sarajevo, especially after someone threw a bomb at him earlier in the morning. Because of some confusion over the itinerary (and because cars had no reverse gears in those days) his convoy created their own traffic jam trying to turn around outside a cafe.

Gavrillo Princip was eating a sandwich at the cafe, saw Franz and Sophie, thought what the hell and shot them both. World War 1 resulted. Must have been a really bad sandwich.  

The cafe has been replaced by a museum. You can buy all sorts of memorabilia, but there is NO WAY they are ever going to sell anybody a plate of egg and lettuce sangers. Just can’t be sure what might happen if they did.

F C-S

Shot above and below taken from East/West line

The bridge is quite high, though nobody would tell me about Ali and his goat….

Thoght we were getting 3 Bosnian Marks for the Aussie Dollar, it’s actually 1.3 BAM to the AUD. No wonder the taxi driver wouldn’t stop crying and shaking my hand when I gave him that tip……

Despite the rapid rise in the value of their currency, we are enjoying Bosnia. And I am slowly deciphering the signs on their trams

This one reserves seats on trams for monkeys dressed as old women, white ladies with a black face, black men with white babies, and pregnant black, blonde-haired women wearing white gloves.  Much more open and progressive than Gatton or Rosewood I must say, we didn’t have signs like these on the rail-motor to Thagoona!