Berlin’s newspaper “Die Tageszeitung” published a text written by their Balkan correspondent Erich Rathfelder, in which he stated that “his friends, colleagues and acquaintances from Germany are traveling to Bosnia again.”
“When my friends, colleagues or acquaintances tell their friends, acquaintances or colleagues about their intentions to travel to Bosnia, they have to explain certain things. “What, you are going to Bosnia? How can one travel to the country where so many crimes were committed and so many women were raped during the war 25 years ago? Isn’t that dangerous,” wrote Erich Rathfelder in Die Tageszeitung.
Erich Rathfelder started his text by describing the scene where he sits with his friends in a café right across the cathedral in Sarajevo. “We can hear the bells. Couple of nuns came out of the church. Children are playing on the plateau in front of the church, where we can see the statue of the Pope John Paul II, which was set up there three years ago. I asked my friends is there anything unusual. After a long silence, Georg from Traunstein responded: “I do not see any graffiti”.
“In deed. In the city with a majority of Muslim population (85 %) there is a monument to the pope and no one in the city came to an idea to desecrate the statue of the pope, who is originally from Poland. The building of the Jewish community, the synagogue and the Jewish Museum have never been attacked. Sarajevo is the only city in Europe in which there is no need for police to guard Jewish institutions.”
“Tourists are very surprised. So, a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of coexistence of different religions and peoples still exist in this city. Despite the horrible war and the siege by Serbian troops in the period from 1992 to 1995.”
Rathfelder also wrote about tourist destinations in Sarajevo, especially Bascarsija and its small craft shops, Bosnian fast food restaurants and taverns with alcoholic beverages. He noted that, despite the fact that millions of artillery grenades fell on Bascarsija, the traces of war are almost completely gone.
“Now I say to my friends, more than 20 years after the war, Bosnia has become the safest place in Europe. There are no attacks here, and women can go home alone at night. After that I stop talking. That, although it is completely true, sounds like a tourist ad. I did not mention that Bosniaks, i.e. Bosnian Muslims, do not seek for a revenge although they were victims in the war and they were mass murder in Srebrenica.”
He also noted that a large number of tourists visit BiH, both from neighbouring countries, such as Serbia and Croatia, as well as from all over the Europe, which includes Italy, France, Germany, Austria, as well as Turkey and Arab countries.
(Source: faktor.ba)
