Sarajevska Summer: The Tunnel

Saturday i visited the famous Tunnel in Sarajevo, which was the only way in to or out of the city during the 4-year siege. It begins in the garage of someone's house who lives near the airport in Sarajevo, goes underground and emerges outside of Sarejevo. It is 1.5 meters high and wide, and 800 meters long. I don't know what that is in feet, but it apparently took about a half hour to walk through.

This is a plaque on the side of the house commemorating several people who died after Serb soldiers discovered the tunnel and shot a mortar at the entrance.

This is the mortar blast. If you look down on the pavement in Sarajevo, there are alot of those.

So the owners of the house have turned part of it into a museum, which i think is pretty amazing. The tunnel collapsed after the war ended (i don't think anyone was in it at the time) but a small part of it is open. It's tough to explain- there are two entrances because they knocked out part of it so people could walk through a little bit of it and emerge, then there is a space of about 10 feet in the open air (the part of the tunnel they knocked out) and then the tunnel opens again to the long portion of the tunnel that you can no longer walk through.

This is the actual entrance in the house.

Walking down the steps...

Not really sure the warning was necessary...

Inside the tunnel...

It was actually kind of dangerous; they put a lightbulb inside now so tourists don't crash into the walls, but during most of the siege there was no electricity, so there were no lights inside- walking in the pitch black for a half hour through a tunnel knee-deep in water dripping from the walls... people did it every day. And i almost knocked myself out bashing my head into the ceiling in the little bit that i was able to walk through; people over 5 ft. tall had to walk hunched over for part of it.

People used it to escape Sarajevo and anyone who needed to come in; aid workers, journalists etc., used it to enter the city. But mostly it was used to bring water, food, medical supplies and arms into the city. Saturday after i got back, i had a really informative conversation with Elvira, the woman with a 7-year old daughter (Hena) who works at the store downstairs and stays with Tetka Kimeta until she gets better, about the tunnel, which turned into a conversation about how different people survived during the war. Elvira was in the Bosnian army during the war, and made many trips back and forth through the tunnel to transport supplies into Sarajevo.

I found out some interesting things during this conversation, over sereral Bosnian coffees and Turkish delights, about Tetka Kimeta as well. She and her husband were both economists for the JNA (Yugoslav National Army) but when it was purged of all non-Serbs, they lost their jobs. Tetka Kimeta had a house on one of the hills surrounding Sarajevo with its own running well, so every day she and her husband distributed water to hundreds of Sarajevans who lived in the main part of the city (below in the valley) who had no water because Serb forces cut it (and electricity) off. Serb forces shot a mortar at the house, destroying one of the vital water sources for the city. Most other homes on the mountain sides surrounding the city were destroyed.

Elvira and Tetka Kimeta then showed me how the apartment was arranged during the war. A shell came through the windows on the street side, blowing out all the windows and alot of the wall. Fortunately, no one was there at the time. They showed me the hole in the side of the wall outside from the blast- i had somehow never noticed it before. They put sheets up over the opening in the wall so snipers on the mountainside could not see and target them inside.

Anyway this is the entrance that comes after the blown out part that leads to the long tunnel that is no longer accesible.