On Mostar

"We will fight until we die because we have no choice. We have nowhere else to go."

- I'm paraphrasing, but it's something one of the soldiers during the Mostar seige.

I'll be in Dubrovnik for five days. The ferry for Bari only leaves once a week in winter, and I lingered in Belgrade and Sarajevo a bit too long, I suppose. Oh well, Dubrovnik is warm and beautiful, and I probably wouldn't mind staying here for the rest of my life. After the cold of the Balkans, it's nice to see the clear blue sky reflected in the clear blue sea.

But this one's on Mostar.

I stayed there last night. I was curious about the town after I'd watched a documentary in Sarajevo about the siege in Moster. It was the craziest thing - in Sarajevo, Croats and Muslims were allies and fighting for their lives against the Serbs, and yet 100 kms to the south, the Croats were shelling the hell out of the Muslims in Mostar. It makes me wonder what the guys up in Sarajevo thought about it.

Mostar's much like Sarajevo, only the rebuilding isn't as far advanced. They've fixed up the Stari Most and the Old Town, but there are still abandoned buildings in the streets around the Old Town. It's a bit confronting to see the mortar holes and the bricked-up windows. And itćs uncomfortable to walk around taking photos of places where people died only fifteen years ago.

The Stari Most is sparkly and white. It's quite a dramatic sight, really - a perfect, slender stone arch across a picturesque mountain river. It's the kind of view that postcards are made from. And as a symbol of reunification and reconciliation, it's just about perfect. But it's a bit disappointing to actually walk across it. It's a bit short, with these bumpy stone slats in the ground to stop you from slipping. Not quite like the tourist shots.

But it's cold, windy and miserable on a winter's day. I'm glad I came to the coast instead. The bus drove along the coast as we wound our way south to Dubrovnik. And the scenary was breathtaking. What was it that my sister-in-law said about Croatia? Oh yes, it's like the Mediterrenean as it once was...

Snowfall in Sarajevo

"It's amazing the transformation when it snows. When you think about how gloomy the city looked when it was raining, and how it looks now..."

- Andrew, musing about the snow, from across the Turkish Quarter

The guys are watching Hostel in the common room. There must be some kind of inside joke amongst hostel owners in Eastern Europe - in every place I've stayed, there's a DVD of that film. Now, I've had nothing but good experiences in the hostels from Eastern Europe, but still... I'm not going to watch that movie while I'm over here. 

Ever. 

It just fucks around with your brain. When you're travelling alone, just about  everyone you meet is a stranger, and everywhere you go is a strange place. Often, you're dumped on the outskirts of a strange town, and you're practically blind, deaf and dumb. By some strange reason, it always works out - there's a helpful local who happens to speak English, or there's a bus waiting at the right spot, or you just stumble the hostel by plain dumb luck. 

But when you watch a film like Hostel, you realise that the world's not a big cradle of warmth and serendipity, that there ARE jackals out there waiting in the shadows, and that when they've got you in their sights, there's probably not a lot you can do to walk away. It really, really fucks with your brain. I cannot emphasise that enough. 

But I don't want to talk about that. I took a walk through Sarajevo tonight and saw snow falling for the first time in my life. It's amazing. It looks light and flurry when it's falling down, but it turns into ice on the streets. It's a powdery white when it's pure and fresh, and it turns into a muddy, icy slush when it's been trampled upon. It covers everything in a soft white haze, and it makes the city look magical. 

You don't get much snow in Australia. You normally have to drive a couple of hours to the snowfields, and nowadays, much of that snow's artificial. Snow in Australia is purely recreational. It's so different when it's falling in the street where you live. It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen so far. 

Here's a photo of one of the orthodox churches:

Oh, and the Arsenal beat Dynamo Kyiv 1-0 tonight to qualify for the knock-out rounds of the Champions League. I caught the last ten minutes and watched Cesc make a 50 yard pass for Bendtner to score. Awesome goal, but I gather it was a poor performance overall. 

Oh well, whatever - we still love you Arsenal.

Sarajevo and the captaincy

"It is a great honour for me to captain one of the biggest clubs in the world. It is a proud moment. I know it's a big responsibility but together with my team-mates, I know we have the spirit and commitment to get back to winning ways and fulfil our potential."

- Cesc Fabregas, on his appointment as the new Arsenal captain

So Cesc's the captain.

It's the right choice at the wrong time. In August, Cesc said that the captaincy would be a great honour, but in one or two years. He's got enough on his own plate, I think, without having to worry about lifting a struggling team. It's definitely a risk. But there really isn't much other option. Toure's not a vocal leader, Clichy's too inconsistent and Sagna's... I'm not sure why he's not an option, but he's not. Maybe because he's too French. I don't know.

Let's just hope it works out.

I spent the day yesterday looking at all the leftovers from the siege during the Balkans war. The guide was fifteen when it started, nineteen when it ended, and he fought in it for three of the four years. As we drove through the hills around Sarajevo, he pointed out the Serbian positions, the Bosnian positions, and that narrow wedge of disputed territory in between.

The strange thing was how innocuous the landscape seemed. The roads we were driving past where lined with houses, and gave great views of the city below. Except for the occasional ruined house or the leftover bunker, we could've been driving through suburbs of any town in the world. And excluding the four years between 1992 and 1995, I suppose they were just ordinary suburbs.

He mentioned the shrapnel holes that scarred the buildings along the way. I hadn't really noticed them before he pointed them out, but afterwards, I could see them everywhere. I could even see the Sarajevo roses that splattered the streets. It was a brutal siege, with 10,000 people killed, and the horrible thing is that world just let it happen.

The Serbians had taken positions in the hills around Sarajevo, encircling the city. The UN took control of the airport in order to get supplies through to the citizens, but because the Serbians took half of what was delivered, it wasn't enough. To get enough supplies, the citizens of Sarjevo dug a tunnel under the airport, linking with a corridoor of Bosnian control territory behind the hills.

The guide showed us the tunnel under the airport, through which the citizens could get supplies from the outside world. It started off in some guy's basement, wound 800 metres through a hunched-up, water-logged space, and ended up in some other guy's basement. Only about 25 metres still exist, and only from the exit side, but still, it's something to see. Again, it's startling to see how commonplace these things were. When you think of war, you imagine large theatres of combat and maps with coloured trianges - it's a bit confronting when you realise that sometimes things occur in people's basements.

Going to walk around the city a bit more today. It's all quite interesting, in other ways. The Turkish quarter is a tourist trap, but it's a lovely warren of twisting alleys and wooden houses. There's a park with a giant chess board and the old men line up in the morning to play with that. And then there's the Latin Bridge, where some Austrian Archduke got shot and gave the band Franz Ferdinand their name.

Pink Arsenal

"But what did they get here? A team lacking any form of togetherness and a centre-forward who decided this was a suitable occasion to wear pink boots. They were the brightest shade of Barbie-doll pink imaginable and unless Nicklas Bendtner was simply being ironic, the ultimate fashion faux pas for any striker who wants to be taken seriously."

- Daniel Taylor, from The Guardian, about the 3-0 win to Man City

I'm a bit angry right now.

I'm sure it was a throw-away line by Daniel Taylor, but that remark about Bendtner's pink boots is really irritating. A player should be free to choose the colour of his accessories without fear of ridicule or smarmy remarks from journalists. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, a centre-forward should be judged, not on the colour of his boots, but on the quality of his link-up play.

There is a common perception that pink is a frivolous colour. It's been associated with Barbie dolls and bleached-blonde bimbos. It's the colour that little girls choose when they're playing dress-up, and it's a colour that denotes femininity, tenderness and playfulness.

But it can also be the colour of brutal ruthlessness and utter bastardry.

It really depends on how you co-ordinate. If you combine pink with darker colours (black, grey, blue), you get this vivid, flaming pink that screams dynamism and rage. The black and pink combination, especially, is incredibly arresting. In feng shui, pink is the colour of fire, and black is the colour of water. The mix of the two provides an agonising, uncomfortable tension that has nothing to do with sugar and spice and everything nice.

I use pink quite a bit on this blog. I've changed the colour scheme a couple of times, but I finally settled on the pink-and-black combination. It's edgy, it's hip and it screams out in a kind of primordial, existentialist fury about the futility of the human condition.

Plus, the pinkness looks just darling, doesn't it?

Fuck it, I don't know how that slipped out.

Anyway, I'm in Sarajevo for a few days. Took the bus from Belgrade yesterday. Sarajevo's a remarkably pretty town - it's up in the mountains and ringed by hills. The bus came into Sarajevo as the sun was setting, and the sky was flooded in pink hue. Flocks of birds circled above. Really pretty. And pink. And not at all feminine.

Damn Daniel Taylor.

P.S. No, I'm not going to do a match review, or comment on the match. 3-0 to Man City. Fucking hell, there's only so much pain a gooner can take. I'd rather focus my attentions on inconsequentials, like a footballer's fashion sense. So stay tuned next week for an analysis of Alex Song's dreadlocks.