There is a house with four floors and an attic right on the bend in the Vogosca – Sarajevo road. Today it is completely renovated both inside and outside, not without architectural sense and taste, with a new facade and many balconies and windows. It was heavily devastated during the war, so its owner had more problems renovating it after the war than if he had built the same one from scratch. Both before and after the war, it showed the same senselessness – despite its size, decoration and comfort, no one ever lived in it!!!, BHRT reports.
E.Dz.
I knew the owner and his reasons for building conservatory upon conservatory in that house close to the heavens. When he was twenty years old, he went to Germany and worked hard and diligently as a builder, in the rain and snow, in the August heat… Over time, he started a family, raised a daughter and a son with his diligent wife, and at one point, in middle age, decided to buy land and build a house near Sarajevo, “to have when he returnshere“. He and his wife, he says, will live on the ground floor, the first floor for the son and the second for the daughter, so that it is wide enough for everyone and that no one bothers anyone.
And the fourth floor and the attic, I asked him, marveling at his spatial and apartment math, which almost doubles even the most luxurious needs of an average family. He paused for a while, as if he hadn’t even thought about it and as if he didn’t even know the answer, then he replied unconvincingly: “Well, let it be, someone will need it.“
Time and hard life have taken their toll. One morning heappeared on the back page of the newspaper. They say he fell sound asleep and did not wake up. The son and daughter do not intend to return, the wife stays with them in that small town near Dortmund – what would she do if she came back from abroad? The house remains empty as it has been since it was built, and the impeccably landscaped yard shows that someone is being paid to maintain it.
Traveling as a journalist throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH), I became convinced long ago that there are thousands of such houses. They are large, in beautiful places, richly furnished both outside and inside, they are worth a lot, but – they are empty. It’s not just a habit of people from the diaspora, and many in this country are guided by the same logic of that mass construction, it’s just that those who worked abroad had a much easier time building those large buildings.
Even if our children do not join the decades-long disastrous trend of going to the west, even if they stay here with good jobs if this country ever turns ”green”, the question remains – what will the new generations do if we build everything for themwhile struggling in this time to the utmost limits of our abilities. Neither will they need it, nor will they know how to appreciate the effort invested in so many squares of useless space.
