Weekend of International Dancing and Yummy Food

This past weekend i finally explored the late night life of Sarajevo. (The date is wrong on this; i had to remove the original post from last weekend and re-post it yesterday, but it's actually from the previous week.) Anyway before that, on Friday I attended the final day of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Conference on Genocide Prevention in Ilidza, which is right outside Sarajevo. There were definitely some good talks, but i found myself more frustrated by it than satisfied. There was a serious disconnect between alot of the conference participants on what genocide actually is, and that resulted in arguments on the definition that really took away from what could have been very meaningful conversations.

It mostly took the form of non-lawyers/non-academics vs. lawyers and academics, with the lawyers/academics trying to work with the legal definition of genocide as found in the Genocide Convention (and used in courts) and the non-etc. becoming frustrated with the limitations and actually becoming quite insulted and angry that certain situations are not considered genocide, like apartheid in South Africa, war crimes committed in the DRC, and even slavery in America. I got the feeling from several people that held this position that they were shocked and disgusted with the lawyers etc. here, and thought that because we do not consider such situations to constitute genocide, that we were diminishing the seriousness of the crimes and were somehow being inhumane. And of course the lawyers etc. were frustrated with the lack of substantive conversation due to this obstacle. This could have been avoided with better conference organization; panelists were grouped together whose topics really were not that related and contributed to alot of confusion. Also, there were some very prominent human rights activists and academics who live in Sarajevo who were not invited to this conference, from what i saw and heard, for political reasons.

So i was obviously pretty frustrated, as were some other participants, who suggested we all go out for a drink. So we went to Celtic Pub in Sarajevo. Here is a photo. Yes, that man is wearing a kilt.



















Then someone had the idea to go to a club, so we went to Hacienda for some serious dancing. I went with several Bosnians, Serbs, Rwandans, South Africans, Americans, and a Pole. My Polish friend taught me "Polish dance" which was quite fun- all i know is it involved a lot of twirling and flying around. I really wanted to take photos, but my camera battery ran out. We danced till 4am, and the place was still packed when we left! So fun, i really needed that.

Saturday I walked around the old town and was very tempted to buy a Persian/Turkish style carpet. Here is a photo of one of the markets; some of the carpets and made in Bosnia and some are imported from Turkey.





















I wandered into a war exhibit and saw some old weapons and relics from the war here.




































Sunday my friend who I met at the conference and I decided to go to a restaurant we had both heard about that is on the hills surrounding Sarajevo. It has gotten rave reviews for the food, atmosphere and stunning views of the city. People told us to take a cab, but we decided to walk. Oh wow, what a walk... the roads leading up the hill were very steep and winding at many points, but we kept going. The walk took about a half hour to an hour, with several photo (rest) stops.






















There were some beautiful grassy areas and places that looked fun to explore, but once you leave the city you're supposed to stay on paved road, due to some landmines left over from the war that may have not been found yet.


















After a long exhausting walk, we arrived at the restaurant, dripping in sweat, ready for some yummy food. It was closed.

We then walked around and asked a few people if there was another restaurant near by, and they pointed us to one that was about a 10 minute walk further up the hill. But it was sooo worth it. When we got there and sat down, the views really were stunning.


































When we asked for the menu, the waiter said "No menu. Is just lamb, fresh. Good?" Oh, it was so good. Fresh salad with veggies and a huge hunk of lamb with fresh-baked bread. It was so worth the long walk. But we definitely took a cab back down the hill.

The next night, we went to Baghdad Cafe, in the Turkish Quarter of Sarajevo, and had mohitos. After that, we decided to check out this famous club called Sloga. It has 3 floors, I think the first floor is for small shows; acoustic guitar etc. The second floor is for concerts and dancing, which is where we went, and the third floor plays old school Yugo rock and has some concerts as well. It was Salsa night, and the dancing was amazing. My stupid camera drained the batteries again, but here's a photo from a Bosnian website of the second floor:




















The best part was that in the middle of all this salsa music, the DJ puts on the theme song from Dirty Dancing. There were some professional dancers there, and they really tore up the floor Patrick Swayze/Jennifer Grey style. I loved it.