Day of the Disappeared

Today is International Day of the Disappeared. On 30 August every year, families and loved ones remember those who have disappeared and for one reason or another, never came home. 

These are not simply cases of a person running away or falling off the map: these are cases where a person is taken away by a state agent or a person acting with the approval of the state. There is a refusal to acknowledge their arrest, their detention or their treatment. They are placed outside the protection of the law. This silence and this secrecy means they can be subject to a range of abuses without public knowledge or legal consequences: arbitrary or indefinite detention, interrogation, torture, extrajudicial execution. Meanwhile their families wait. The initial crime of the disappearance has not ended: it continues each day that a family waits for news and wonders and worries. 

Right now this is happening in Syria. It happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the well-remembered conflicts and dictatorships in Timor Leste, Chechnya, Argentina and elsewhere. It also happened in many other places less well remembered: Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, and elsewhere.

I took these pictures in Pristina in June, the week that I left Kosovo. My camera is not faulty: the photos are faded from years of sun, rain, snow, and inaction. They have been hanging outside government buildings for 13 years, with no information forthcoming about the fate or whereabouts of the faces which fade slowly into the shadows, year on year.

Amnesty International reported today that at least 40,000 people had disappeared across Yugoslavia during the conflicts of the 1990s. The fate and whereabouts of over 14,000 are still unknown today, 10,500 of whom were in Bosnia. Up to 20 years later, family members may have accepted at this point that their loved ones will not come back home. Nonetheless, they have not been able to receive their remains for burial, they do not have a grave to visit, they may be denied access to pensions and other benefits for victims, and  perhaps more emotionally, they may never learn the truth about what happened. 

An estimated 1,797 persons - both Albanian and Serb - remain missing following the 1999 Kosovo conflict. Theirs are the faces which fade in the sun in these pictures. 

#DemandJustice with Amnesty International for victims of enforced disappearance and their families: http://demandjusticenow.org/enforced-disappearances/

The Arrest of Mladic

I suppose it was quite inevitable that I would have to make some comment on this. I never planned on making this blog a political forum, I thought of it only as an extended travel diary - a sort of consolidated place which might form a more innovative improvement on sending tedious group emails. Maybe the frantic pace of news this year has kept me alert and opiniated, maybe it is simply that I've realised that this is a good place to raise awareness of some terrible things that have happened recently to people I knew. But it's also true that something as topical as the arrest of Ratko Mladic provides an interesting insight into one of the places I have been writing about, and for those of you who might have been interested on my musings on the subject, I feel that the large amount of press that this arrest has generated about Bosnia - a rare occurrence these days, now that both the international media and the internationally community itself is moving onto sexier, racier events and places - that some of this coverage might atone for the background information and the overall picture which I never really felt myself capable of providing.

So I felt it worthwhile to post an article which I found both powerful and moving today. It's written by one of the journalists who originally uncovered the existence of concentration camps in Northeastern Bosnia in 1992, exposing the details of ethnic cleansing internationally for the first time. "Ratko Mladic's arrest is a hollow victory in a country that refuses to apologise", it is entitled. It's not particularly long and I highly recommend reading it for anyone interested in the current state of affairs in Bosnia, because it is for me at least a response to my inner dismay that for all the extensive coverage of the arrest - the headlines, the reporters running back to the Balkans, the statements of praise from international dignitaries - none of it was really about Bosnia at all.

All the stories and the face-to-camera commentaries talked instead about Serbia: about it's EU candidacy, about its previous reluctance (now amended and forgiven) to arrest a man whose whereabouts was well known, about the implications for geo-political realignment and economic development in the region. None of the stories were about Bosnia, no one went and reported from Sarajevo. Glib statements that the survivors and the families of the victims of Srebrenica welcomed this news that "justice would finally be done" were left unsubstantiated. I really wished that I'd been back in Sarajevo last Thursday, to see and feel the reaction there. But my suspicions that there would be little celebrating were later confirmed by friends who mentioned the air of sadness, disappointment and anti-climax. It must have been a day for remembering - both in terms of the good memories of the individuals and the unbearable memories of what happened to them - and for the bitterness of futility.

Serbia and its politicians have been heaped with praise for doing something that they had the ability to do years ago. The timing alone strikes me as politically suspicious (Catherine Ashton's visit, Serbian state TV apologising for the propaganda it broadcast in the 1990s). The arrest has not been accompanied by the repeat of previous apologies or acknowledgements, only by Mladic and his supporters' insistence that he stands wrongly accused. Like Milosevic, he is in poor health and might potentially die before a trial is concluded. He won't be tried in Bosnia by Bosnian courts, prosecutors or judges. Even if found guilty, the trial is unlikely to provide information about the whereabouts of victims (or their remains) which are still missing, still buried in undiscovered mass graves. The arrest will make no difference to the fraught political situation within Bosnia, where those referred to as "the victims" of Sarajevo and Srebrenica generally feel that the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign was a success, resulting as it did in the Serbian-controlled Republika Srpska - one of Bosnia's federal entities, taking up about half of the country's territory - which shows no sign of wanting to share a state with those eternally-referenced "victims".

As Ed Vulliamy puts it in the article mentioned above, "the Republika Srpska makes no secret of its desire to accede to Serbia proper, or to make Bosnia such a dysfunctional state that it becomes pointless".

I specialised during my Masters in international law, particularly international criminal justice. Obviously I am pleased that this man has finally been arrested - and that unlike some others on the 'most wanted' list, that this problem wasn't solved with several bullets to the head, administered by the agents of a foreign country. I look forward to pondering the legal issues in his forthcoming extradition and the upcoming legal battle and inevitable delaying tactics. And I don't argue that this Vulliamy's article is an impartial or objective account of Bosnia today or of Mladic himself - far from it, really. But at least it bothers to stop take a look around Bosnia and see what the arrest means for this beautiful, troubled, tragic little country, and that's something that has been sorely lacking since last Thursday.

The Next Step: Kosovo

Time to make an annoucement: very shortly this blog will no longer be about life in Bosnia. It doesn't feel like very long ago, but when I started blogging again back in October I mentioned that my contract in Sarajevo would run for six months. And how those six months have hurtled past: I finish my job here tomorrow.

I know that I've never written about my work here, and have rarely if ever mentioned The Organisation. That has been a deliberate decision on my part. Not that the work I do is so very confidential or secret, not that I can't talk about it - at least in a generalised sense - with family or friends, and I'm sure they'd tell you that I certainly don't hold back in doing so when the mood strikes me! But talking about how you spend your days and the issues you work on is different to broadcasting them in print over the airwaves. Perhaps particularly given my recent discovery that you out there in the great unknown are reading this, I am glad I made this decision. Any opinions I might have expressed here would have been entirely my own and not those of my employers or of the International Community in Bosnia per se. But it's hard to separate personal opinions and professional responsibility, and I have never felt that this was the appropriate forum.

Suffice it to say now, as I tidy up my desk and hand back my identity card, that my time here has been an amazing professional experience. I have been working on issues in which I have a great personal and academic interest and which I feel are significant indicators for the path of transition in this country - namely, war crimes trials taking place in the local courts here, conditions in prisons, protection of victims and witnesses and In particular, and perhaps closest to my heart, I have focused on gender issues: sexual violence and rape which took place during the war, as well as post-conflict domestic violence. It hasn't always made for pleasant days at the office, and at times I have found it tough going to immerse myself in the graphic details of these phenomena on a daily basis, but legally I find these issues fascinating and getting to work on them has been a privilege. I won't go into it any more than that here. I have been given some amazing professional opportunities, and my colleagues and supervisors have been wonderful - I can't thank them enough for the faith they've showed in me, willingness to help me learn and, I have no doubt, their patience. It's been a great working environment and that has made a huge difference in fitting in.

You might not have known about it reading this, but my professional experiences have impacted strongly upon the personal observations I've been writing about here. The two are very much intertwined and I'll be honest in saying that I'm pretty gutted to have to finish now. I didn't know what to expect of Bosnia before moving here and, to be honest, never expected to develop a huge affinity with this city and country. But now that the narrative has taken a sudden turn and events are moving quickly, I find that I feel a certain sadness in leaving. I still feel like I'm only getting to know Sarajevo as a city, am comfortable with a great little personal set-up. I've met a really amazing group of people: interesting, well-educated, open-minded and adventurous, together they created an environment which was always stimulating and challenging - in a way reminding me of LSE, for those of you who've heard me talk about my time there. They've made my time in Sarajevo the formative experience it has been, and although most of them don't know about this blog, I feel that I owe them a thank you: the coffees and the house parties and the political arguments would have been meaningless without them.

I feel in many ways like I was only getting started here. Having to leave just at the point at which you start to feel effective is extremely frustrating - and after almost two years of short-term work like this it doesn't get any easier living out of a suitcase, finding short-term accommodation, constantly saying goodbye to friends and worrying about what will come next.

But such is the nature of work in this line of business, and the good news is that I'm not going far and will be staying in the region. I'm transferring to The Organisation's Mission to Kosovo at the start of May, and will be based in Pristina for the summer. After that - who knows. But stay posted for some new observations and musings and random adventures from a new (to me) part of the Former Yugoslavia.

And if anyone has any buddies in Kosova or any recommendations for the best pivo in Pristina, that's what the comment box is for!

In the meantime, I'm off on a roadtrip to Belgrade this weekend, making a midweek jaunt to Croatia to (hopefully) soak up some sun on the coast, and throwing one last party of a Sarajevo weekend. At least I'm easing myself gently into making the next move.

Travelling, Balkan-style

There are two ways to travel around the Former Yugoslavia. You can take a flight with a national airline through an airport in a third country, which remains startlingly expensive (remember what flights used to cost before the budget airline revolution?). Or you can travel overland, which is extremely cheap but requires vast reserves of time, patience and ingenuity. By necessity, that's how I travel.

I recently went for a visit home to Ireland. Flights out of Sarajevo itself cost between 400-500 Euro, involve a stop-over in Budapest, and an overnight stay in Dublin for both incoming and outgoing flights (the curse of living in Kerry). On the other hand, Aer Lingus have just started flights from Dublin to Dubrovnik which are much cheaper, require no change of planes and get into Dublin airport in time to make a train or flight to Killarney. As my flight left Dubrovnik on the Monday morning, I decided that I would use the opportunity to have myself a pleasant day of Adriatic sightseeing. So I booked a sobe (guesthouse) and bought a bus ticket from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik for the Sunday morning. How very pleasant and straightforward, no?

Except... a wild Saturday night got in the way. What can I say? This 'problem' of spontaneity and random adventures is the very reason I love Sarajevo so much. We started out in the former Olympic stadium watching our friend's ice hockey team win the Bosnian championships - it was shown live on television, I'll have you know - before going to a friend's house to watch the Bosnian football team beat Romania in a qualifying game for the European Cup. Within minutes of the game ending, it seemed that everyone who owned a car in Sarajevo had taken to the streets, and was parading around town beeping their horns. The city centre came to a literal standstill as traffic gridlocked and played a symphony of car horns. Following which we ran to Mash, a bar of pulsating trip-hop, sofas and "group" cocktails which come in a wine carafe with long straws so that you can race each other to the bottom of the drink. From there we had to run to Sloga, an old theatre turned into a nightclub where bands and DJs alternate throughout the night. Sloga's Hollywood-style tat and greased up Bosnian menfolk and fog of smoke and dirty beer all literally stink of Yugo-chic - and it's fantastic. Danced for hours. Except that I kept staying for "one more song", and then the clocks changed for spring, and when I left the nightclub after 4am I realised that it was in fact, well after 5am. And I had to get up at 8am.

Fast forward several hours of unconsciousness, and I gradually surfaced from sleep only to realise that my bus had left town two hours earlier. The only bus to Dubrovnik. Queue frantic stumbling around the apartment and panicked phone calls to friends who speak Bosnian and could call the non-English-speaking bus station for me to find a bus - any bus! - that would take me somewhere - anywhere! - remotely near Dubrovnik.

Twenty minutes after I woke up, I had left the apartment and was running up and down my street looking for a taxi to take me to the most far-flung bus station in the city (of course), where I managed to make the last bus out of town with only moments to spare. To be quite honest, in hindsight I'm amazed that I didn't forget my suitcase, wallet or passport.

It was only when I was safely installed on the bus, bouncing up and down rhythmically on my seat above the rear wheel, that I started to realise how unwell I felt. Last night's mixture of the potions and brews of three different bars and a house party would haunt me for the next five hours. The bus wound it's way along curved roads between hills, through gorges and over mountains. Oh it was beautiful, but oh did I curse the gods who made it impossible to build a straight road anywhere in the whole damn country. We stopped and started at every village in Eastern Bosnia - and picked up any number of people who just stood by the side of the road. This was not a coach service between cities but the closest thing Bosnia has to a public transport system. Most of the pickups only went as far as the next town, and all of them seemed to have to squeeze in and out of the only remaining seat beside me on the back wheel, with their shopping bags and boxes and children. And amidst all of this, I was fully sure that someone was going to take my suitcase out of the hold, even if only by accident. It was a long, long afternoon.

I finally ended up in Trebinje, a very small town in southeast Bosnia, just across the border and about 30km from Dubrovnik. Trebinje is surprisingly beautiful. Although inland, it's built entirely of white Adriatic stone and even in March had the mellow warmth of a Mediterranean evening. But it was 6pm on a Sunday in the off-season, and other than a few cafés everything was closed and dead. Something had possessed me before I left Sarajevo to look at the single page of the Lonely Planet that describes Trebinje and to make a mental note of the name of a single hotel. I took one look around the deserted streets and decided that there was no way I was going to walk around town looking for a guesthouse. Ten minutes later, a taxi had dropped me at the door and the young woman who single-handedly ran the whole hotel alone was checking me in, somewhat in shock that someone actually wanted to stay there, unannounced, on a Sunday night.

I was the only person in the hotel. A laminated list of prices was taped to the reception desk. For 30 Euro I had a clean, crisp double room with an en suite bathroom, a small plasma screen TV on the wall, and a large plateful of eggs, cheese and ham in the morning. On the other hand, special rates which were advertised as "The Daily Rest" cost only 20 Euro for a double room. What wonderful value for an afternoon in bed; the problem that I gleefully imagine is the difficulty in this small town of getting in and out of a hotel in daylight without being seen by prying eyes.

I decided to venture out and "see" Trebinje, seeing as how I had gone to all this trouble to get there, but it took all of 20 minutes to circumnavigate the whole town, all the while getting incredulous looks from the locals who were out strolling around in exactly the same manner I was. A new girl walking around town? By herself? A foreign girl? Who on earth is she and what is she doing here?? No one could understand why I, a solitary pizza-eater, was standing on their bridge admiring the sunset. Perhaps it wasn't the most orthodox way to have dinner.

I bought a slice of pizza from a hatch in the wall, got some of Bosnia's best snack food from a kiosk - pretzel sticks filled with peanut butter in the middle, they are genius - had the increasingly startled hotel lady make me a large mug of Bosnian-style coffee, and then at 8pm got into my hotel bed, watched the History Channel - the only English-language channel on my plasma screen - and finally cured my hangover.

I was cheered by the sheer absurdity of watching, in these ridiculous circumstances, the overblown pomposity of a documentary about The Blitz ("Facing everything that Hitler could unleash upon them, the British airforce was Fearless. Organised. Airborne - and Ready").

Until I saw the next documentary, a literal history of torture. Each episode examined a particular historic method of torture, running experiments and reenactments on animal carcasses and then bringing in doctors or scientists to examine the damage and explain in medical terms how the torture worked. Lucky me, I caught an episode about the Rack, which used a pig's leg to demonstrate the effectiveness of the process. The doctor in question was absolutely amazed at how - contrary to all expectations - the crack heard when tightening the rack hadn't in fact snapped the ligaments but only broken the bone - a femur. I was - and still am - profoundly disturbed by this program, which is the reason that I'm writing about it. I watched, dumbstruck, until I eventually managed to snap myself out of my trance of horror and change the channel. I didn't even want the station to take the credit for high ratings for this show. The profound irony of airing this in - of all places in the world - Bosnia defies belief, and elevates this example of alarmingly bad taste to a position where it becomes downright shameful.

Next morning Keko came to pick me up and take me to the airport. Keko's number was given to me by a colleague who had made a similar detour to Trebinje some months back. He drives a silver GTI Volkeswagen Golf, specially modified so that he can drive using only his hands. Keko does not have the use of his legs; as he told me along the way, he had a motorcycle accident a few years back, and now makes a living driving people around. He's not a taxi, he told me repeatedly. "I only drive my friends. Friends like you" he said with a wink. Keko's quite the dude - he's probably about 30 and told me he used to be a DJ, and I imagine he's a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the ladies.

He doesn't have much English and I don't have much Bosnian, but we had the chats regardless. I tried to tell him the story of how I had ended up in Trebinje, because I had too many parties on Saturday night. "Oh, me too!" he interrupted. "I had very hard party Saturday night. I got out at 6 in the morning!" Oh, so Trebinje has good parties then? "No, not really", he shrugged, shaking his head. Well, full marks for effort regardless then?!

I ask him about being a DJ. He used to like playing "different stuff, not the Balkan stuff. I like this," he says pointing to his car stereo. "Something different for club, you know?" I like it too - mellow, funked-up jazz mixed with some trip-hop. I ask him who is the musician or DJ. "No no! This is mix!" Oh. Oh right then. I knew that. "But this not for club!" He looks at me wildly, amused because I'm a total amateur. "This is too quiet. I make it better for parties". Well, of course you do.

Keko has friends, lots of friends. "I have many friends in Dubrovnik, and even in Sarajevo. Maybe I'll come there in August. For parties. Sarajevo has good parties."

"Sarajevo does have good parties," I say. He nods sagely. "Yes. You like Sarajevo?" I do. "Well, maybe I'll see you in August. I'll come with some friends. This is your number for Sarajevo?" He gestures to his mobile phone. It is. "You have apartment in Sarajevo?"

I'm amused with where this conversation is going. "I do," I say, "But I think you would have a problem there because I have many stairs". He says "Yes!" and looks delighted. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what 'stairs' means.

Just past the Croatian border we're stopped by plainclothes police at an informal roadblock. Their detailed questions about where we are from, where we are going and what we do make it clear that this is not a routine check. My guess is they're looking for someone specific, probably following a tip off. Afterwards I ask Keko if this is normal. He shrugs. "No. But this road is for Montenegro. You see Montenegro? It's over there." So it is; we're high on a mountain road, with a magnificent view of the coast, and those hills just over there are another country. "After Montenegro is Albania," Keko shrugs, "and there are bad people there". Hello, organised crime. Well, it wouldn't be a proper road trip without a few of the best Balkan clichés along the way.

When Keko finally drops me off at the airport he wishes me Sretan Put and asks if I'm on Facebook. I smile and say that I am but it's very hard to find me. He laughs uproariously, beams a big Balkan smile, shakes my hand and zooms off.

Inside, the airport is deserted. I have started to panic that after all of this I've come on the wrong day, before eventually seeing one little check-in desk lit up in a far corner. The girl tells me that only 15 people will be on the flight - it's Aer Lingus' very first flight out of Croatia since October last year; the schedule has just restarted for summer. Sitting at the gate, I watch the Irish brigade shuffle off the incoming flight. The word 'shuffle' is not an exaggeration: 80% are of a certain age and are undoubtedly pilgrims going to Međugorje. Many are using walking sticks, and there is more than one pair of crutches on the plane. Međugorje is, in fact, in Bosnia, and I've talked to people before about what a shame it is that Bosnia gets absolutely no benefit from it. Almost all pilgrims fly into Croatia, stay in Croatia, pay in Euro or Croatian Kuna, and probably don't even realise they've entered another country when going to the shrine on day trips. It's a heartbreaking waste of potential for Bosnia.

As I enter the plane I see those homely, freckled Irish faces wearing those blue-green uniforms, which is the point at which every Irish person begins to feel like they're almost home. My assigned seat - of course - is in the very back row of seats, so I'd only walked halfway through the plane before I asked an air hostess with a smile if I won't cause too much trouble by sitting somewhere closer. She laughed and told me it's no problem.

"To be honest though," she confided, "We're surprised there are even 15 of you flying with us today. We didn't think there'd be anyone". I try to surpress my smile - this might be the first direct flight to Ireland out of the entire Balkan region in six months, but it's hardly difficult to get here. How isolated and remote a place - how different a world - does she think this can be, after all?

The air hostess watched me for a moment, and then continued confidentially, "Do you mind me asking? But.... how exactly did you get here anyway?"

Oh, if only she knew.

6 April

Today is the City of Sarajevo day. 19 years ago today, the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia and fighting began in Sarajevo: two women were killed by shots fired on a crowd of peace protesters marching towards the parliament building. Shelling of the city began not long afterwards. The siege was fully established by 2 May 1992.

A memorial service was about to begin when I passed by the Eternal Flame on my way to work this morning: men in suits were collecting wheel-shaped, beribboned wreaths from a florist across the street while policemen in dress uniforms stood by the flame, looking rather proudly self-conscious wearing their best brass.

Just as you've become comfortable in Bosnia and forget the things that happened here - as you go about your everyday business, busy and distracted by important matters like getting to work on time - Sarajevo has a tendency to bite back with incidents like these.

Back in February, I was on my way to my local fruit and vegetable market one Saturday lunchtime to do my usual weekly veggie stock-up. Except that my local fruit and veg market is the Markale, and there was no market that day. As I approached I noticed that the road alongside was cordoned off to traffic and inside, the rectangular concrete space was filled with men and women in suits, heels and fur coats, solemnly standing with shoulders joined as the national anthem was played over loudspeakers. As it ended, a middle-aged man in an army uniform began to slowly read out words which I didn't initially understand. As the minutes went by and the words continued, I realised that it was a list of names: victims of the Markale massacres, whose anniversary was being commemorated that day. So no fruit or veg or haggling over prices with farmers, just an endless list of the names of the dead on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. I stood at the back and listened for a few moments, watching persons in the crowd who were clearly still bowed with grief 16 years later. I didn't stay long before I crept away, feeling like a voyeur who had no place intruding on their memories.

Incidentally, the main war crimes for which Radovan Karadžić - you'll remember him as the one who was found moonlighting as an alternative healer in Belgrade in 2008 - is currently on trial in the Hague include atrocities committed during the Siege of Sarajevo, particularly the Markale incidents. He has defended himself by claiming in court that Bosnian Muslims shelled their own civilians as they queued for food and water, in order to win the public support internationally which eventually led to NATO intervention in the conflict. I thought of that as I watched the crowd of mourners remembering death on an ordinary afternoon.

Today on the City of Sarajevo Day, I heard some stories from colleagues about their experiences of the start of the war. Although I'd talked to one particular colleague in the office every day for the last six months, for instance, it was only today that she told me that on 6 April 1992 she happened to be at a friend's house when the fighting started. She couldn't get back home to her family in the part of the city where they lived because they had been separated by the front lines. She managed instead to get out of Sarajevo some days or weeks later, and eventually borrowed some Deutschmarks and managed to get to Croatia, because she happened to have a friend there who offered her a place to stay. She didn't see her family again until 1996, after the war ended. All because she happened to be in a friend's house when the war began.

It tells you everything about postwar Bosnia that only the start of wars are commemorated here, but not their conclusion. Unlike celebrations which still mark Armistice Day in 1918 or VE Day in 1945, for instance, Bosnians only remember the days that it all started. The 15th anniversary of the Dayton Accords - the peace agreements which marked the official end of the war - would have passed entirely unnoticed last December if Richard Holbrooke, the diplomat mainly responsible for the conclusion of the agreement, hadn't died by coincidence on the same day.

No victory in this war, just victimhood.

Spring

It has sprung.

Although it was snowing in Sarajevo last week, and it wouldn't surprise me if it would do so again next week, the past few days it's been 16 or 19 degrees, sunny, blue-skied and winter is a distant memory. While usually only half of Sarajevo is out drinking coffee and wandering around during the afternoons, the past few days everyone has been out blocking the pavements, acting like they're on holidays in a new city, buying ice cream for the children, and showing off new sunglasses (you can get Ray Bans in the market for about seven euro here - I'll be stocking up before I ever come home).

It's been quite lovely.

A group of us spent yesterday hiking up the hills outside of town to visit out favourite mountain-top hut, where Dragan serves up ustipči doughnuts with sour cream, sausages, rakia and beer. I think everyone in Sarajevo seems to know of Dragan; from his ramshackle hut constructed from sheets of plywood and corrugated iron, he has earned a reputation as a legendary host. A sticker on the window inside states that "this is the best place in Sarajevo", and I don't really doubt it. Yesterday however it was too hot for the wood stove inside, so we sat outside in the sunshine playing with the dogs who belong to Dragan and other hikers, staying far longer than planned and really drinking more than we should considering that we had to walk back down the mountain again.

Tuesday was International Women's Day - you might think that's just an excuse for me to give you a human rights-themed lecture, except that its a serious occasion here (as in most post-Soviet and post-Socialist countries), where it functions as a sort of Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Little Christmas all rolled into one.

Sarajevo in newborn sunshine on Women's Day was lovely. Each and every street corner had an over-coated man selling red roses and carnations, and people buy flowers and chocolate not only for their female loved ones but also their colleagues. Businessmen in suits carried armfuls of bouquets around the city, and teenagers in scruffy runners trailed long-stemmed roses from their backpacks. Girls walked around with flowers giggling. The restaurants and cafes were full of women either being taken out to lunch by someone male, or having lunch out with groups of other women.

In fact it's such a special day that at 10am we got an email telling us that all the Organisation's female staff could leave after lunch. Not all the staff - just the female staff. How an international organisation gets away with that kind of discrimination, even on such a pleasant and generous basis, is entirely beyond me. I imagine it would trigger strikes and court cases in Ireland. But hey, I wasn't complaining about this gender-sensitive example of positive discrimination! The men didn't even seem particularly displeased either.... but that was because, as I suspected, they merely waited until 3pm and then went off home themselves. And because they had plenty of opportunity for remarking that this was most likely the decision of senior management so that the women would go home and cook for their menfolk on this most auspicious of days. How original. How we rolled our eyes.

So, it ended up that I too was one of those women having a boozy lunch. Three lady friends and I went for a meal which involved several glasses of wine, and spent most of the afternoon swapping inappropriate stories related to body hair, bras and much worse. Well, indulging in feminine clichés was entirely appropriate for the day that was in it, no?

Luckily for everyone concerned, Women's Day by coincidence was also Pancake/Shrove/Fat Tuesday, so with great assistance from a fellow Irish pancake-obsessed ex-pat, I hosted what I think I can presume was Sarajevo's only pancake party. Pancake extravaganza ensued: three different types of batter (crepe, fluffy, and a posh version involving mascarpone), a entire block of butter, three different types of jam, four varieties of fruit, two types of syrup, cheese, whipped cream, and a very large jar of nutella, amongst many other goodies.

Five days later, I'm literally still digesting it.

Skijati, skijati

Spent last weekend away skiing. A group of friends (we were 17 people at one point on Saturday night) rented a cabin on Jahorina, a mountain near Sarajevo which was a competition venue when the city hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984, and which somehow managed to avoid being laid with landmines during the war.

It's an unseasonably mild winter this year and the snow was terrible - some of the main lifts are closed because the mountain is reverting to spring-time brown muck - but we skied regardless and although I'm by no means a good skier, I feel myself making a huge amount of progress since about a month ago when I skied for the first time in four years. And that's satisfying enough for me.

Bad snow is a disaster for beginners; terrible patches appear which are either smooth ice or else actually smooth rock. Imagine what happens on ice or rock: skis cant turn, can't grip, can't slow down. Normally you can dig the edge of your ski into the snow and/or turn them parallel to the slope to slow down or stop - but on ice or rock, the ski just falls out from underneath you. More or less the same rules apply as when driving a car on ice: no brakes, no gears, no steering allowed. Hold your breath and hope for the best.

So I fell. A lot. Not a nice soft thump into snowdrifts, which you normally don't even feel, but fell on ice and rock.

This weekend wasn't too bad: I had lots more adventures my last time up Jahorina two weeks' previously, when I more or less fell over the side of a little cliff. We were chugging along a track cut along the side of a hill, perfect for beginners as you can glide along and practice turns. Everything was going great, except suddenly I was going too fast and I couldn't stop, couldn't slow and couldn't turn. And instead of veering right (into the hill and snowbanks, thereby braking) I went left, where there was a perpendicular drop of maybe 10 feet - a mini cliff - at the bottom of which were big trees. Two people were standing at the side of the drop and I very nearly knocked them off before me in a good imitation of human bowling. Instead I found the ability to start screaming IZVINITE!!!!!!!!!! (pretty impressed with myself I managed to scream in panic in Bosnian, I must say), they moved aside, and I went clean over the side of the cliff in between the two of them.

I mean, I was fine. I hung on to the top, and I was cushioned by a cloud of powdery snow which clung to the side of the hill. I even managed not to drop my skis or poles into the abyss. But helpful bystanders had serious trouble digging me out, my leg and ski were twisted painfully underneath me, and when I tried to help them pull me up by kicking and stretching, I only managed to dig myself further into the powder - which couldn't support my weight - and slip further down the drop. Anyway, it was fine in the end. A nice random man eventually pulled me out, and really I could see the funny side to it - the indignity, the inelegance of the whole thing. But of course I had just thrown myself off the edge of a cliff, and that feeling of helplessness is terrifying. So by the time they got me back up I was laughing my head off and crying hysterically at the same time.

I got off the slopes after that; it was nearing the end of the afternoon and I figured I had pushed my luck enough for one day. Unfortunately, I was at a different part of the mountain from our starting point and it was too far for me to walk back (walking in ski boots is a slow form of torture). So, I let the others ski off to finish out the afternoon, and I went out to the road and simply started looking for someone with a car who would give me a lift.

After a few false starts, I ended up making friends with Dvor. When I say I made friends with him, of course I mean that I looked for an unaccompanied - and hence vulnerable - driver, walked over and started batting my poor, defrosted, worn-out eyelashes. Dvor was burly and possibly about 30, with the inconclusive hair colour shared by most Bosnian men and cheeks flushed by broken capillaries. He had very little English and I have very little Bosnian, but we muddled on with a conversation regardless. I guessed I had to make some kind of payment for my lift, after all.

Dvor was interested to hear I was from Ireland - he seemed to think it was a big country - but I put my foot in it by asking casually if he was Bosnian. The mood in the car suddenly changed dramatically. Ne, he replied. No, no, no. Ne Bosanski. Ne. Shaking his head and scowling. Republika Srpska. Meaning - he was Bosnian Serb. And very emphatically not Bosniak. Oh right then.

Regardless of this faux pas, not long after he had driven off and was picking up speed - in other words once it was too late for me to jump out - he started asking me whether I drank rakia (homemade brandy) and whether I had a boyfriend. I said why yes, of course (by helpful coincidence my friend Eoin had just called my mobile) and when Dvor didn't believe me, I did what any girl in my situation would do. I smiled my best imitation of coquetry, shrugged flirtatiously, and politely but firmly told him that in fact I had two boyfriends (there were indeed two guys in the group that day). Well, Dvor did what any wounded male ego can do in such a situation: he shrugged, laughed and said, hey - you need three boyfriends minimum!

I think he was disappointed I didn't want a lift all the way back to Sarajevo.

Ireland v Bosnia

Here's an interesting link a friend sent me today: If it Were My Home, which compares your country of choice to another in terms of living standards, environmentalism and size, amongst other things. Sounds a bit dry when I describe it like that, but actually it's pretty cool, especially if like myself you've wandered to a few different countries and like to ponder and consider the differences to the Auld Sod.

I haven't blogged here about the utter implosion of the Irish government and economic situation lately, but trust me when I say I've been following it avidly and spewing my disgust, usually at coffee time, to the other Irish working at the Organisation. Except the truth is, things don't really seem all that bad when you pull up Ireland vs Bosnia. Maybe a little perspective is good for all of us.

It turns out that "If Bosnia and Herzegovina was my home instead of Ireland", I would have 3.3 times more chance of being unemployed, would make 85% less money, and have a 78% higher chance of dying in infancy. Then again, I'd also be using 85% less oil and 68% less electricity. Which makes little sense to me given that the air quality in Sarajevo isn't always it's greatest charm. And while I'd be spending 80.17% less money on health care if I was Bosnian, rumours about the hospitals here make me think I'd prefer to take my chances on the VHI.

That 12% unemployment rate back home doesn't look quite so drastic from this point of view.

As for perspectives, it's nothing new to say that it made me realise how tiny Ireland is... except it turns out, not that tiny at all by Bosnian standards. The only thing this has put in perspective is how ridiculous it is that a drive across Bosnia takes hours and hours longer than it would to whizz from Dublin to Cork. So I'll leave the condition of the roads here up to your imagination.