Bosnia, Bosnians, Sarajevo...ah hell, it's pretty much a stream of consciousness post

As some of you may have already discovered, quite a number of my pictures have now been added to Flickr, which you can access from the sidebar. I haven't finished adding the captions, though.

I'll start with Sarajevo and Bosnians, since that is how my trip began and ended. I arrived in Sarajevo on the tail end of the Sarajevo Film Festival, which meant big names like Bono and Nick Nolte were in town, according to Maja. Their national theatre was all decked out, complete with red carpet. I've already posted an entry shortly after arriving in Sarajevo, and I don't mean to repeat myself, so here's a picture from a restaurant high up on a hillside, overlooking Sarajevo at night.


Besides the nightlife, and shopping in old town, we also did the salon thing...Maja got a pedicure and had her hair done, I got a bikini wax for the equivalent of less than 2 pounds. When we arrived at the airport on Sunday for our flight to Bodrum, I had my first experience with Bosnians en masse. They are loud, rude, and have no concept of lines, or queueing, whatsoever. Someone stepped up to the podium to announce that our flight was now boarding, and schwump! there was a big knot of disorderly Bosnians swarming around the podium, pushing and angling to get onto the jetway. On our very first day in Turkiye, we were offered a free "walking" tour of Bodrum by the agency Maja had booked our package through, which was more like a bus tour with one stop on a hill with old windmills above the harbor overlooking the castle, another stop at King Myndos' Gate (which the guide incorrectly identified as one of the seven wonders of the world- there was one of the seven in bodrum, which used to be called Halicarnassus, but it was the Mausoleum of Maussollos), and then stops at a gold factory, candy factory, and then leather factory. We were finished with all of this around 8pm, and while it would have appeared the best plan to drop off all the other Bosnians first since we were near their hotels, we actually went out to the hotel Maja and I were staying at first (about 8 km outside Bodrum) because that was what made the most sense for the bus driver as he ended his night. The Bosnians, once they realized this, began to yell, and quite quickly to curse out the tour guide, which even though I couldn't understand exactly what they were saying, the tone made me very uncomfortable. Maja was embarrassed for them, and said it was because they were "hicks."
This photo is of the old windmills, which were used in the not too distant paste to grind grain for bread. And the picture just below is me standing on the hillside that overlooked Bodrum's harbor, with the castle being on the right side of the picture in the distance. I knew the style of it looked familiar, and wasn't surprised to find out when we explored the castle on our last day that it was built by the Knights of St. John, who also fortified the Greek island of Rhodes (which I visited in 2004 with Kristy).




Maja developed the habit- er, not developed, more like continued, but I hadn't seen her in over a year, and had forgotten this tendency of hers- to use her nickname for me without any explanation. With the Bosnians, that name- Cosa- is very similar to a word they have for hair. So when she'd be talking to them about something Cosa had done, or said, or where I was from, there was quite a bit of confusion and/or laughter. And this was the case throughout the trip with people who spoke English- the Israeli guys we met, the Turkish guys we met, other people staying at our resort (though there were no other tourists from the UK there, some Germans, Dutch, Iranians, Serbians, French, etc). If I got to introduce myself first, I'd always say, "Hi, I'm Allison" and as we'd get into conversation, Maja would just start referring to me as Cosa. I have to give the Israeli guys the most credit for waiting the longest length of time before finally giving in to curiousity and asking what the deal was. And in case some of you haven't heard this story, I don't remember exactly why it began, but it was a collaborative effort between Maja and our other roommate Becky, Cosa meaning "thing" in Spanish...kind of like an "alright YOU (smartass)". Maja was constantly commenting this trip on what probably gave birth to the nickname in the first place, with my jokes and one-liners and sarcasm and witticisms that apparently seem to come out of left field for a lot of people, given that everyone seems to see me as a sweetheart or someone who is always nice, caring, whatever. Why IS that, by the way, since I have the same faults as most people? I really don't seem to see myself the way that other people see me, a reflection which once I voiced aloud one night, Maja rather bluntly said, well I think most of your self-perceptions are wrong. I do believe I kept Maja highly entertained this trip. But anywho, what Cosa came to represent is "Miss Thang" because all three of us decided it suited, and there was too much room for not understanding the meaning if you just left it at "Thing". Or sometimes Cosita if Maja or Becky were trying to be cute, or trying to get my goat, or felt I was being particularly soft or thoughtful or whatever. I'm not sure Maja has called me Allison ever since the morning I was woken up by her moaning from her bed "Coooossssaaaaaa" because she couldn't get up due to a horribly painful muscle spasm in her neck. I hadn't heard her calling out my real name, it was the nickname that worked, and that's all she's called me ever since.

Waaaay off track here, I was talking about Bosnians wasn't I. The other thing I remember is how upset they got standing on the hill overlooking Bodrum harbor while the guide talked about how there wasn't much to see in the area immediately surrounding Bodrum, just poor people and cows. As voices started to raise, Maja translated for me that a lot of them were villagers or "hicks" themselves, and wanted to know what was wrong with cows?! I guess our tour guide had never heard of village tourism. Anyway, we didn't see too much of the Bosnians after that first day-- quite a few were on the all day boat trip we did, but after we made friends with the Israeli guys, we didn't really interact with the Bosnians at all on that trip.

When we returned to Sarajevo, I got to spend a little more time with Maja's mother and her stepdad, who thought Maja looked like a gypsy, and made fun of me...where had I gone for the week, since I obviously hadn't been in the sun?! For me, I am actually pretty golden, and could show people my tan lines as proof if I had the inclination, but I have long since accepted the fact that I always look white because I pretty much always am white in comparison to everyone else...even when I'm tan, because they are tanner. Meanwhile, Maja got me to drink Turkish coffee with her, from a pitcher that is some of the most gorgeous metal-working I have ever seen. I toured around that shop in the old town, and bought something I cannot picture here, since it's a gift. However, I also got the silver belly chain I'd bought in Dalyan shortened and have a cool picture of the silversmith working on it. He did the work for free (bonus), which may have had something to do with my tattoo peeking out when I bent over, or just generally that Bosnian men try to get every pretty girl they meet into bed, according to Maja.
This theme continued through our last day in Sarajevo, where I got a lot of attention for my tattoo any time I bent over to get something from my backpack. Maja made it her mission this entire trip to tell me when I was being given the up-down, which on the boat trip and any time we were in Bodrum generally went something like "Girl, you are getting checked out left and right!" And generally speaking she was right. It is definitely true that European men are more forward and forthright than most American men...something Maja thinks is annoying (the American men), and I must say Europeans are refreshing in a certain sense. I was beyond the instantaneous blushing and wanting to cover myself up reactions by the time we got back to Bosnia, and I wandered around old town with my belly chain and tattoo peeking out without being totally self-conscious. It's more fun to check them out right back. And it's probably why I wasn't all that worried about being surrounded by the Bosnian youth football squad who were on my flight to Prague, and wanted to practice their broken English on me. Very handome lads I must say! I have a couple more pictures from Sarajevo that I'll post separately, and I'll move on to Turkey probably tomorrow night.