My favorite places require you to go deep to even begin to understand. A brief glimpse might leave you thinking that Bosnia is unsafe, unwelcoming, unfinished. This country has many scars, most notably from the brutal wars in the 1990s. Only some are visible.
Look past the rubble, the ransacked churches and mosques, the empty apartment buildings. Linger a moment to notice the innovation: an energy to preserve and transform. Where some opt for total scraping, a glossing over of actions and history, Bosnia restores with a sense of time and place. It doesn’t want you to forget what’s happened. Bosnia asks you to remember that all of us, no matter where we’re from, are marked by layers of hopes, long-held traditions, and bad events.
In Mostar, a rebuilt bridge, a travesty of war, towers above the River Neretva. A symbol, of course. But it was also a literal rebuilding in a region that, for centuries, offered a peaceful co-existence to Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, among others.
The capital Sarajevo feels like the Ottoman Empire somehow existed a full century beyond its demise. Traditional wooden homes surrounded by a ring of modest glass buildings. In another place, these modern workplaces would hardly be noteworthy. But here they reflect cultures changing through the decades, the traditions that continue to survive. The Art Nouveau of many buildings, particularly along the river, might trick you into thinking you’re in Paris or Vienna.
Everywhere, the brightest light. Bleaching the broken roads and sidewalks and rubble, streaking the glossy new-builds, illuminating the wild scrub across the countryside. Light so bright you squint through sunglasses, you feel the warmth of the rolling green mountains, even if sun splotches make it feel dreamlike.
Stepping in doors, to a shop, restaurant, or bar, blinking your eyes to adjust to the lowlight, you realize that everywhere is unfinished. Inside, the people also radiate.
The round, thick clouds were always nearby. Hung low over the water, tucked deep into green hills. Occasional storms clear the smog for moments of sunshine, before prisming back to clouds.
A loneliness that’s grounded in the language barrier (I tell myself) still feels personal. Kindness, though, translates in different ways. Here, in a teeming city on a crowded island, kindness is space, privacy, no one prying as you stare out the window of an otherwise public place.
A perch atop the Pacific. A bed that floats. Sleep for days straight isn’t only possible, but necessary.
My husband leaves me, our sterile sanctuary, to explore his first Asian city. Giant boulevards of glass and global hotels, a city of any place, an anywhereness. Connected by thousands of skinny alleys and paths, where life actually happens. Buying, selling, smoking, eating, cleaning, resting.
Window to window, as he strolls, the next view is anyone’s guess. There’s no way to predict it. A shiny modern cafe, an ancient home tucked into a single room, some mix of it all. Grandparents schlep in wrapped fabrics and slides, kids hunch over smartphones.
A jagged jungle of an island, with sheer canyons and gorges. Taiwan sits precariously on the edge of the world’s largest ocean and the world’s largest population, reliant on both yet, somehow, maintaining clear independence.