Baljvine is a village in the municipality of Mrkonjic Grad.
Village Baljvine is publicly known for the fact that there has never been inter-ethnic conflict, not in the past nor in the World War II, although the population belongs to two different ethnic and confessional groups.
This village, for years known for its peacefulness, hides one of the most beautiful collections of stecak tombstones in the country, and these marble boulder are hiding story of this region much older than us.
Recently, Baljvine were included in the tourist offer of the surrounding cities of Banja Luka, Mrkonjic Grad, Sipovo and Jajce.
Ivan Lovrenovic has written that “since the World War II, for residents of Baljvine was always said that neither one of them “did not miss single hair from their head.”
“They were protecting each other as the eyes in their heads. In the early seventies, in the midst of socialism, I watched Bosnian mountain horses laden with sand and water from the green river, material for mixing concrete, for the construction of Baljvine’s mosque. Serbs from Upper Baljvine took time off from companies in which they work in Mrkonjic Grad, Jajce, and Banja Luka, slapped their horses, and – helped their neighbors to build a mosque!
While visiting Baljvine those years (which are glory and gold in memory now), because of tombstones and because of people and their marvelous language, I heard a simple little story in the old man’s Seido Zahirovic home:
“In our house there was always some bacon and brandy – separately, not to get mixed with our food. You know how it is: the road is next to my house, neighbors from the upper village walk by, they have to stop by. And it is nice to offer them what they like,” said Ivan Lovrenovic.
(Source: 6yka.com)
