Bosnia with scooter

content:
photos:
Vote this travel review

Sarajevo, ONCE AGAIN
(The tunnel)
The last day in Sarajevo, after the intense experience of Srebrenica yesterday I decide to take a taxi to Butmir, near the airport, to see the tunnels dug during the siege.
My taxi driver was talkative and saw that the road is long with the return my lame English. I discover that Trieste and knows that his father we were to buy Jeans and gold from 14 parts of the train station, Jeans and gold that sometimes after a long trip could end in Prague or Budapest, and even in the boutique in Moscow.
Butmir to the taxi driver shows me the mountain Igmar where in 1984 took place the Winter Olympics. When I say that I remember very well the mascot "VUCKO, a small baby wolf bursts into a laugh disruptive: "Ja, ja vucko, emblem!" Just before the turn for the museum, tells me that the neighborhood where we are now called Dobrijnia and it is here that it was hard fought, building to building, house to house, and the population of the district has suffered much during the siege because the Serb militia had come to win half of this quarter that housing, down less than 15 kilometers from the center of Sarajevo. A Dobrijnia had occurred kidnappings, rapes and killings here, all non-Serbs were driven out from their homes and the men were finished in the camp.
Finally we come to the house-museum whose facade still bears the marks mortars. I do watch a DVD on the construction of the tunnel and life in besieged Sarajevo. I am with a group of English whose guide, a Bosnian woman, unable to hold back tears. With a slight gesture of the hand removes the cheeks as if ashamed to let them slide freely on the face. I found that gesture her yearning and a great dignity. We joke and laugh about for exorcize imagine the fear that one day could quell'orrore
return. The first attempt to build an underground tunnel provided the use of a tube drainage for groundwater but in the chaos of Sarajevo under siege, it was not possible to find drawings of the sewer and project was soon abandoned. But at the end of 1992 we decided to intervene because the population was in dire straits. The General Rasid Zorlak managed to find two engineers can make the project. The work began in secret. The project provided a tunnels that pass under the airport runway, so it was necessary have the authorization of the UN, which was under control, and ensure that the calculations were very precise in order not to cause
damage to the runway and its stability. Were established entrance holes and output in order to halve the execution time digging simultaneously from both sides. The excavation began in January 93rd Three or four hours of work per day, not more, because the work were slowed by the continuing bombing and also because it could
using only picks and shovels. Were used for lighting bowls filled with oil edible with a small fuse. By April, to hasten the work isorganized three shifts of eight hours each to cover the entire day. The water that filled the tunnel was being sucked by a pump water but, more often, for the continuous interruption of the current electricity were used buckets and jerry cans. In the meantime assedianti, accortisi of work, began to systematically bomb the area the excavated area to discourage the continuation and slow down work. On 30 July 1993 at 21, after seven months of work almost uninterrupted, the two sections were connected and that the men in that When we were digging his hand tightened. Sarajevo now available of an underground link from where to bring weapons and soldiers and food, and evacuate wounded in areas controlled dall'Armija Bosnian. The tunnel measured 800 meters long and 1.5 wide and height and linking Sarajevo with the free territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The tunnel was essentially an instrument of military strategy extreme importance. Twice the grenades did the massacre of Serb civilians waiting to cross the tunnel. Dug under the house of the family Kolaric, now has become a museum. The two old owners, grandfather Alija and grandmother Sida, became famous during the war: there was always a piece of bread and a glass of water for the weary soldiers returning from the front and heat in the chat room heated by a stufetta wood. The next morning, good hours, I leave Sarajevo and after covering the busy and chaotic "avenue of snipers," I take a detour to Zenica.