Dubioza Kolektiv - Schwer verdächtig

Als nächsten Beitrag in dieser Serie der unverstellten Eitelkeiten kommt hier ein Interview mit Dubioza Kolektiv (DK), inklusive einiger Verhaltensregeln für das tägliche Leben in Südosteruopa. Viel Spaß dabei...

BalkanJoe: In den letzten Jahren sind Balkan-Partys überall in Europa sehr populär geworden. Ist euch das aufgefallen?

DK: Ich mag diese Entwicklung eigentlich nicht, denn das was unter Balkanmusik läuft ist im Grunde nur Zigeunermusik, aber es gibt so viel mehr verschiedenen Stile und Beats vom Balkan, die für Westeuropäer zwar ähnlich klingen, aber im Grunde total verschieden sind. Balkanmusik ist nicht nur Zigeunermusik, aber in Deutschland, der Schweiz usw. haben die Leute noch nichts von der anderen Balkanmusik gehört. Allmählich fangen sie an sich zu langweilen, weil es immer nur die gleichen Zigeunersongs sind, die sie zu hören bekommen, aber von der anderen, der innovativen Balkanmusik, haben sie noch nichts mitbekommen.

BalkanJoe: Was macht den Balkan denn so sexy?

DK: Ich denke die Leute haben in dieser Musik irgendwie eine verrückte Art von innerem Frieden gefunden. Sie können rauchen und trinken soviel sie wollen und tanzen als ob es kein Morgen gäbe. Wenn du willst kannst du dich nackt ausziehen und trotzdem wird dich niemand schräg anschauen – dieses Gefühl ziehen sie aus der Musik, das ist es was sich so sexy anfühlt. Es ist eine neue Generation von Hippies. Balkan-Hippies sozusagen.

BalkanJoe: Könnte man sich denn auf dem Balkan so benehmen, wie die Leute auf den Partys in Deutschland?

DK: Ehrlich, wenn du in einem Club in Zagreb oder Belgrad den Scheiß abziehen würdest, den sich die Kids auf den Partys in Berlin erlauben, wärest du in zwei Minuten, mit zwei blauen Augen, wieder vor der Tür. Es ist bloß das Bild das die Leute vom Balkan haben, das Bild das sie aus Filmen von Kusturica kennen. Der Einäugige Zigeuner mit den goldenen Zähnen und dem Truthahn unter dem Arm. Das ist das Zigeuner-Bild des Balkans, aber mit der Realität hat es praktisch nichts zu tun. Das ist nicht der Balkan. Das ist nur ein verzerrtes Bild das die Leute romantisch finden.

www.myspace.com/dubioza

Marko Markovic - Auf dem Weg zur Venus

Nun ist es endlich soweit: Das erste Interview aus der Reihe "Die Balkanwelle", brandet an die Strände des WorldWideWebs. Den Auftakt gibt Marko Markovic, der Pin-up boy der serbischen Blasmusik. Und bitte...

BalkanJoe: Was macht den Balkan so sexy?

Marko: Auf dem Balkan gibt es unglaublich viel zu sehen und zu erleben. Leider konnten die Menschen für viele Jahre nicht dorthin, wegen des Krieges, aber inzwischen kommen sie wieder mehr und das ist gut.

BalkanJoe: Inzwischen ist der Balkan ein beliebtes Reiseziel für junge Leute geworden. Was denkst du, woran das liegt? Hat die Region jetzt ihre „Boomphase“?

Marko: Die Menschen auf dem Balkan sind sehr nett, sehr gastfreundlich und hilfsbereit, sie haben keine Angst vor Fremden. Es kann dir leicht passieren das dich jemand in sein Haus einläd, oder sogar auf seine Hochzeit, den du erst am Abend zuvor in der Kneipe kennengelernt hast. Diese Gastfreundschaft unterscheidet sich sehr von jener in Westeuropa und das macht es spannend für die Leute auf den Balkan zu fahren.

BalkanJoe: Was denkst du, wird es irgendwann enden mit der Balkan-Verrücktheit oder geht es immer weiter?

Marko: Es wird weiter gehen, immer weiter und weiter. Wir gehen bis zum Mond und noch weiter. Von mir aus kann Shantel den Mond haben, wir gehen auf die Venus! Irgendwann wird das ganze Universum mit Leuten vom Balkan bevölkert sein. Das gibt eine Party!

www.myspace.com/bobanimarko

Die Balkanwelle

Nach langem Winterschlaf ist euer BalkanJoe mit einem neuen Geniestreich zurückgekehrt.

Wie schon die Ausstellung im Sommer 2008, so ist auch BalkanJoes neuestes Projekt von dem Gedanken beseelt, den Lesern Ex-Jugoslawien und überhaupt ganz Südosteuropa ein gutes Stück näher zu bringen.

Lange Zeit war die Welt zwischen Ungarn und Griechenland ein schwarzer Fleck im geographischen Gedächtnis der meißten Menschen in Westeuropa. Landkarten veralteten, noch bevor sie überhaupt in Druck gegeben worden waren, die Flüchtlingsströme schienen zwischen 1990 und 2000 kaum noch abzureissen und wer überhaupt wußte welche Länder zu Jugoslawien gehörten, galt entweder als Klugscheißer, als Nerd oder beides.

Das hat sich inzwischen geändert.

Nachdem Balkan-Beatz-Partys inziwschen aus keiner deutschen Stadt mehr wegzudenken sind, DJ Shantel auf jeder alternativen Feier gespielt wird und Serbien auch noch die Mitgliedschaft in der EU beantragt hat, ist es an der Zeit einmal mehr zu fragen, warum man in Deutschland überhaupt so Balkan-fanatisch ist.

Dieser Frage geht BalkanJoe nun für euch nach. In einer Reihe von Interviews mit Kulturschaffenden vom Balkan soll ein simple Frage geklärt werden, die unglaublich viel enthält:

Was macht den Balkan so sexy???

Die Reihe startet mit einem Gespräch zwischen BalkanJoe und Marko Markovic, Sohn von Boban Markovic, dem Elvis der balkanischen Blasmusik.

Also, freut euch auf die Tage die da kommen werden und bleibt eurem Joe wohlgesonnen.

So long, au revoir und dovidenja...

Balkantour - Bilder aus Bosnien und dem Kosovo

Im Sommer 2007 fuhr ich als balkanjoe für drei Monate nach

Ex-Jugoslawien. Zehn Jahre nach dem Ende des Krieges und acht Monate vor der Unabhängigkeit des Kosovo machte ich mich auf, um den „Hinterhof Europas“ zu entdecken. Von Zagreb aus reiste ich durch ganz Bosnien, nach Sarajewo und weiter ins Kosovo. 30 Fotos aus zehn Städten habe ich von der Reise mitgebracht, 30 Bilder, jenseits der Klischees von Bürgerkrieg und Elend.

Von Anfang an ging es mir darum hinter die Kulisse zu schauen. Ich wollte meine Angst vor dem Unbekannten verlieren und gleichzeitig meine Neugierde befriedigen. Kurz hinter Zagreb und noch bis zu meiner Ankunft in Jajce beschlich mich immer wieder ein komisches Gefühl. „Du solltest überhaupt nicht hier sein.“

Viele Leute in Deutschland hatten mich gefragt warum ich nicht nach Italien, nach Frankreich oder Spanien fahre. Damals wie heute kann ich keine Antwort geben außer, dass mich Bosnien und Kosova viel mehr interessieren als Westeuropa. Viele zeigten nichts außer Unverständnis. Das war in Bosnien nicht anders. Oft hat man mich gefragt woher ich komme. „Aus Deutschland“ war nie eine befriedigende Antwort. Stets glaubten alle ich hätte bosnische Wurzeln, denn „warum sonst solltest du hier sein?“ Neugierde ließen die Menschen nicht gelten, das ist kein Grund. Warum sollte einer aus einem reichen Land wie Deutschland freiwillig nach Bosnien kommen? Entweder er hat dort Familie oder er muss verrückt sein.

Damals war das auch richtig, ich war ein wenig verrückt.

Alleine zu reisen ist nie ganz ungefährlich, in Spanien so wenig wie in Bosnien. Tatsächlich habe ich in der ganzen Zeit aber nicht nur keine brenzlige Situation erlebt, wie man sie als Tourist in westeuropäischen Großstädten doch öfter erlebt. Tatsächlich habe ich während meiner Zeit in Bosnien und Kosova mehr Hilfsbereitschaft und Gastfreundschaft erlebt, als es in Deutschland je möglich wäre. Mein Mut und auch die Verrücktheit sind mehr als nur belohnt worden.

Seit dem Sommer 2007 habe ich eine Art Familie auf dem Balkan. Menschen, Freunde, die ich in der Zeit dort kennen gelernt habe. Nun sind es nicht mehr bloß die Neugierde und die Verrücktheit die mich dorthin zurückziehen, nun sind es auch meine „balkanischen Wurzeln“.

Sarajevo, Sarajevo

"Sarajevo, Sarajevo" the city’s name kept spinning around in my head. "Sarajevo, Sarajevo..."


Since I had started my trip, more then a month ago, this had been the city which I was most eager to see. I felt drawn to it like a moth to the light. When I arrived, it was almost midnight.

The city lay spread out in the valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. It was those mountains, from which the Serbian army had fired round after round of artillery shots into the city. From these mountains, they kept Sarajevo under siege and had thereby added to the strange fame, the city had gotten throughout the world.


"Sarajevo". The name in itself sounded like a promise to me.

The high towers of novi grad stood out in the south, while stari grad lay almost tucked away, on the northern end of the valley. During the night, it looked as if a spaceships had landed in the southern part to take the old part under siege again.


I sat on the terrace of the house I stayed in, drank a beer and glanced out over this endless ocean of flirring and jumping lights, illuminating the night's sky. I was so eager to go and see the city, that I didn't fall asleep for another hour, even though the bus drive from Beograd had been exhausting. When I finally did, the city’s name was still on my mind. "Sarajevo, Sarajevo..."


The hot sunlight shone in through the windows and made sleeping impossible.
Anyway, I wasn't around to sleep. Hell no!


I took a bus and drove towards the city center. As in many Yugoslav and generally former communist cities, it was easy to see where the new part of town ended and the old one part started. Just like in Zagreb or Beograd, the two parts lay separated from each other, as if someone had chopped them apart with a butcher's knife. What they shared was the name and the holes from the uncounted bullets and grenades which had struck the city during the war.

Looking around, I felt funny.
After I had been to so many war ridden towns, the bullet holes didn’t frighten me anymore, like they had done in Jajce or Tuzla. In fact, they looked so familiar, that seeing them gave me a strange feeling of being at home.

Down in the center, I walked around for hours, looking at the old Austro - Hungarian architecture in the main roads and the Turkish style bazaar. With the many dwells, mosques, the copestone streets and the open market houses around, I started to believe that, I had once more passed into an entirely different city .

When I came back to the center, hell had gone lose.

The Sarajevo Film Festival (SFF) had started two days before and the city was overcrowded with moviemakers, producers, actors, tourists and both national and international journalists. Nearly everyone had an accreditation tag hanging around his or her neck. At some point, I felt that it should have been me and all those who didn't have one, who deserved a VIP area, for we were really the ones who were exceptional.

Later that day I met a woman who worked at the festival, instead of just standing around, zipping free drinks and having smalltalk.

I had been introduced to her through a friend of a friend of a friend...With her it was always "just five more minutes". Already on our first meeting, I started to feel bad for stealing her time. With more than a 170 official guests, I, as the inofficial #171 came along to ask silly questions about the festival and her work. She rushed from one end of the festivalcenter to another, with her cell phone in one hand and the other free to shake the many ones which reached out to her.

Thanks to her, I got to see some excellent movies (amongst those "Its hard to be nice", a movie, where just the title in itself made me feel that I would like the piece) and to go to some of the dinner parties, where "the industry", as all of the moviemakers called themselves, gathered round to cook in its own juice.

I couldn't help but to think of Tom Wolf's Vanity Fair. The whole scenery seemed so unreal to me. Women and men, all dressed up in fancy clothes stood around, telling each other stories about movies they wanted to make. I was at the very center of it all. It was nice to be around as an informal visitor, but after a month on the road, all this was just too far away from me. Things and people seemed to perfect, to clean, to flawless.

I headed off to see tonight’s concert. During the one week I spent in Sarajevo, I saw four concerts and each one was fantastic. On the first night, it was the Boban Marcovic Orchestra playing.

At some point, I found myself standing in the middle of the crowd, waving my arms into the air, singing songs in a language I hardly even spoke.
When I had seen the show in Prague, during the summer of last year, I had come to love their music and all of the 'cigan' sounds. Now, a year later, I actually knew some of the songs they played.

It felt like XTC. The concert hall was filled with the sound of horns and trumpets. Breathing was impossible, due to both, the lack of oxygen and the surplus of smoke. I danced around without even looking. I started spinning and lost my balance, tipped over, almost fell, got hold of someone’s shoulder, caught a smile and started to spin again. When the concert finished, my shirt was soaked and the cool breeze that blew through the canyons of novi grad made me shiver, both with cold and happiness.

"Sarajevo, Sarajevo" I sang to myself in the tune of the music.
"Sarajevo, I'm here to get you!"

The next morning, I realized that Sarajevo had in fact gotten me.
My legs were soar and my hangover came from outer space. I chased both of them off with a shower and gallons of Bosnian coffee.

When I came by the festivalcenter later that day, I bumped into a girl I had met in Jajce."The whole world's a freaking village, even in Bosnia" I told myself.
We talked for a while and I became more and more happy that I had met her again. Here was someone who actually lived in Sarajevo and had not just come to see the festival or the scars of those darker days, the city had gone through.

We agreed to meet later that night and I went off to pick up Nik, my infamous travel companion. He and I had been on the road together more then once and it was he who had been to Beograd with me and Iza (a girl I knew from Prague days and who is nowadays one of my closest friends - Hi Iza!).

After I had been all by myself for month, it was good to see a familiar face. During all of this time, I had been alone, but never felt lonely. Now, we were out to explore Sarajevo together. Since Nik had been around when I fell in love with the Balkans, he was the best man I could possibly ask for.

We took endless walks around the city, sat in bars and cafes for hours and talked about the people, the women in the first place, who passed by. Sarajevo lay hot under the sun and hot was all the life that pumped through its veins.

Later that night, we went to see another concert and I met Leila from Jajce again. The band, Dubioza Kolektiv, played both English and Bosnian songs and just like the night before, I came out of the concert hall with my shirt cluthed around my shoulders like a wet towel.

The next couple of days became an endless continuation of Bosnian coffee in the morning, Bosnian beer in the afternoon and Bosnian rakija during the night. During the days, we went around to see sights and during the night, clubs, concerts and movies. It was impossible to get enough sleep, food or even just to catch your breath.

I saw the sun rise every single morning, when we walked back home. Especially in those moments, when no one except for Nik an me was out on the streets of novi grad, the impression that I belonged in this place somehow was stronger than ever.

Hasty, I noted a couple of lines in my diary, but Sarajevo didn't allow me to sit still for more than five minutes at a time. To focus and reflect, on what was going on around me, was absolutely impossible.

Every night, Nik and I ran into someone new, chatted for hours with the people we met, listened to their stories about the city, the country and the life in a place, that is practically unknown to the world, for anything but the war.

The war, the siege, the destruction. All of that, I didn't see, I didn’t feel it. The pain or the suffering. There was too much life in the place as to think of death. The morbid fascination which Sarajevo had had for me, when I started off in Duesseldorf, was all gone. It had been replaced by adoration for the intensity and the passion with which the people lived through every day and every moment.

Later, when I spoke with Leila about it, she said that this was partly so because the Bosnians knew what their lives were worth. Many of the people had stayed in the city during the siege and now, 12 years after the war, they were out to make the best of life.

The days kept running and I just couldn't get a hold on myself.
When we finally packed up for Mostar, I had the feeling that not I had walked through Sarajevo, but that Sarajevo had walked through me.

Sarajevo had been the city I wanted to see in the whole of the Balkans.
I was sad, because our little love affair had only lasted for seven days.

Now that I write these words, its been almost a month since the train left the station and I leaned out of the window to wave good bye to the city. For the whole of this last month, I tried to capture the feeling I had in Sarajevo. I wanted to honor the city, its beauty and charm, its people, their passions and their lives.

I couldn't. Up until now, I can't.

Ever since I left, Sarajevo never really let me go. I lost something in that city. Something, that I can find there on every street corner, in every bar or mosque, but I can’t have it back. This little piece of my heart, which I lost, is now a part of Sarajevo, just like all the other hearts which have gone lost there.

In the end I guess, that this is the city’s secret. Once it has gfotten hold of you, you owe it a piece of your heart. You can go, but you can never leave.

Every time that I've felt sad since I left, the words just came running through my thoughts, easing my pain with their magic chant.

"Sarajevo, Sarajevo..."

Tuzla - Meeting the family

When I came to Tuzla, I had no idea what to expect.

Back in Germany, I had tried to plan my trip as good as possible, without getting too bureaucratic about it. After all, I was out to explore a country I had never sat foot in. One of the things I had done was to post questions in some German - Bosnian forums, asking people what I should see, where I should go and what I should avoid, other than landmines.

I got a couple of good answers, but the best one came from a girl named Nerima, who lived in Germany. She offered me to stay with her parents and her sister Jasmina in their house in Tuzla at "any time you like". What made her offer most interesting was the opportunity to live with a Bosnian family for a week.

Up to this point, I had a vague idea of everydays' life in Bosnia, but no clue about family structure and things like these. Afte all, it was very much worth giving it a shot.

I arrived in Tuzla and walked out of the busstation, looking for Nerima's sister. She found me right away. Big surprise, since I stuck out like a nun in a pornshop, with my huge backpack.

Having lived in Germany almost all of her life, Jasmina spoke perfect German, even better than some Germans I knew back home. Not so her father. It was easy to sense that even after all those years in Germany, he still didn't feel too much at home there.

After we had said hello, Jasmina went to visit her aunt, while her father and I drove off to the house. I didn't know it by that time, but situations like these were to become stereotypical for my stay in Tuzla.

In a single week, Jasmina and her parents went to visit about a dozen aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and other relatives. Also, they had about just as many people coming to their house and so I got a firsthand idea of Bosnian family life.

I realized how important family is to the people in Bosnia.

For each of their relatives, Nerima's parents had brought a present and her mom had also goten a dress and some candy for the neighbour's daughter too. Another thing that struck me was that literally ALL of the old people were living with their folks and that most of them still had jobs, or a fixed function in the household. To put them in an old people's home was not an option in any way. In fact, it would have been considered a sin.

For one week, I was now part of this very tight social network and it felt very, very good. Still, there were some things that made me feel uncomfortable, even though not in a bad way.

One was, that I was never allowed to help in the household in any way, or even wash my clothes myself. Since I had become fully independent householdwise by the age of 15, I was not used to have someone looking after me like this. It was very nice and I enjoyed it a lot, but at some point I started to feel ashamed. Not only was I unable to give back, I was not even expected to do so!

Luckily, my chance came along.

On the 4th day of my stay, the father went out to help his brother harvest the plums and I insisted on coming to help them. When I first did, he gave me a pitiful look that seemed to say:
"How in the world would a young German like you know physical work?!"

In the end, I proved that I do.

Early in the morning, we drove off to a village, where the family had lived before the war. It was named Koraj which, more or less, translates "like paradise". HELL, the place deserved its name! I'm afraid that no words of mine can describe the beauty of the village...

Right after we had made our way up the mountains and my soul started to feel at ease. The hills lay streched out as far as I could see and most of them were covered with trees. Apples, peaches, bulbs and of course plums grew everywhere around us and we spent the whole day doing the harvest.

Nerima's father and her uncle would climb up a tree and start shaking it like crazy, while I ran for shelter from the plums, which fell to the ground like little violet wallnuts and hurt just as much, when you got hit. We picked them from the ground one by one and sorted out thouse, which had cracked open. These, I was tould, would be used to make Slivovica. A hell lot of it...

The sun rose higher and higher, and burned my neck.
Sweat ran down my face and into my eyes. Bees were everywhere around us, attracted from the sweet smell and my hands got so sticky, that I could not even spread my fingers apart.

I felt fantastic!!!

After three years in university, this was the first time since my civil service that I was doing real physical work. I guess it is a bit decadent to say so, but all of the bureau jobs I had worked during those years of studying did not give me such a good feeling as this one day of harvest. After all, I was able to see the result of my work piling up in front of me, as more and more boxes got filled with big, sweet plums.

By the end of the day, I felt exhausted, but enormously happy. I had earned a good bit of respect from those two men, who were used to work like this, for keeping up with them.
It was the best compliment I could have wished for. I fell asleep the second I sat down in the car and only just woke up, when we stopped in front of the house in Tuzla.

On the last night, Jasmina took me downtown to the Korso, the main pedestrian street of Tuzla. All in all, Tuzla is not a very beautiful city. In fact, it is fucking ugly, just like any other industrial city in the world...

Maybe it is because of this that the people of Tuzla look double as good.

While we were sitting in a bar on the Korso, I was hardly able to follow our conversation, since there were hundrets of gorgeous women passing by. Jasmina explained me that it was all a big circus and I was glad that I had made it for the show.

The next morning, when I packed up for Sarajevo, I was honestly sad about leaving. Nerima's parents, her sister Jasmina, her uncle and grandfather had all been so nice and kind to me, that I had really started to feel at home.

In the end, they all squeezed into the car, to bring me to the busstation and it became the hardest goodbye of them all for me. In a way, this one week with Nerima's family was the best experience I had had in Bosnia, so far.

Even now while I'm writing these lines, I think of the sun shining through the leaves of the plumtrees and I can still feel the gentle pat that Nerima's father gave me on the shoulder, when he finally tould me:" For today, we're finished."

The ghost of Travnik

The bus stoped. I opened my eyes and looked out on the station. "Just another town on the way", I thought and set myself to go to sleep again. The last night in Jajce had been a rough one and I wanted to get some rest before I would come to Travnik.

Travnik. The only town I knew something about, except for Sarajevo. Travnik hab been the capital of Bosnia under ottoman rule. It used to be the political, financial and cultural center of the country. Also, it is the town where Ivo Andric, writer of the nobel prize winning book "Bridges over the Drina" and "The Travnik Chronicels" had been born. I was very excited to go to this place, but now, I only wanted to close my eyes again.

The drivers voice came through the speakers "Passengers for Travnik, please leave the bus".
I opened my eyes again. Was this it?!I climbed of the bus and asked a man standing next to me. "Je to Travnik?" "Da" came the answer, together with a quick nod of the head. "Poor idiot", he must have thought. I opened my guidebook and looked for directions.

The Bosanska was supposed to be the main street of town. I left the busstation and found myself standing right on it. Firts, I walked right, which turned out to be wrong. The center was down the left. After some meters I asked a women if the center was straight on. "Da", she said and gave me the same shake of the head. Three rounds later I had found the Pension.The guidebook had described it as noisy, which was a slight understatement. The house was situated right between the side of the cities main motorway and its central Mosque. It was so close to the street, that one could smell the exhaust fumes of the cars passing by and distinguish Diesel from normal gasoline. I slept about four hours that night, always waking up from the sound of the cars passing by, then falling back to sleep after some minutes. When I finally woke up, my head felt like a burned out racecar engine. Heavy and full of black holes.

Damn it, Travnik didn't make it easy to be liked or loved.

On the next day, it became clear that the three nights I had booked were way too much time for Travnik. In the morning, I had walked up to the castle to take pictures and enjoy the view over the town. When I arrived on the highest point of the fortress, I sat down and glanced out over the valley. The Bosanska was right in the middle. It ran from one end of town to the other, paralell to the motorway and the small river Lašva. The houses were all built into the hills and slowly climbed up on both sides of the mountains. I looked around and listened to the ominpresent noise of the motorway. Except for that, there was no sings of life in the streets on the hills and in the valley. Stoves and litterboxes were burning in some spots, children cried for the mothers, dogs were barking and the traffic kept flowing. All that, together with the moisture in the air lay spread out across Travnik and made it hard for me to breathe. Shit!

I had hoped for more. Much more. Too much as it seemed. I had come to Travnik because of Andric and his books, of which I had read "The Travnik Chronicles". I had come to feel the atmosphere of him and his books. I wanted to understand his descriptions and stories of Travnik. I wanted to feel them, the spirits of the ottoman days. For Travnik, these had been the days of glory, but there was nothing left of it. All of the inspiration and magic which had been in the air at some point was gone. All of the things which this city was once famous for seemed dead and vanished. The Ottomans were long gone, leaving no sign of their existence other then the castle and the arabic letters on the old tombstones.

I had seen Andrićs birthplace earlier that day. It turned out to be a disappointment. He had been born in a simple room, which his poor parents had rented, including the furniture. He had had no brothers, no sisters, close relatives or children of his own. Together with him and his stories about the great days of Travnik, everything this city was ever special for had died. The cities most famous son had died and been cremanted in Belgrade.

All that was left of Travniks once found fame and glory, was now ashes and dirt.There was no live, no progress, no spirit in anything. It made me sad. Travnik had been the town which I had expected the most from and now, everything that I had come for was gone and lost.

Jajce had been a total shot in the open, while Travnik had been in it to win it. Right from the beginning, the odds had been to high. Travnik appeared to be frozen in time, robed of the chance to stand out in the world for anything, ever again.The past was ominpresent and the people of Travnik seemed to exist, only to keep the memories alive. They fed the ghosts of the past every day, so that the world would not forget them, out here, by the motorway. The ghost of Travnik, Andrić, had written the chronicles of the city, about its people and their feelings, wishes, hopes and fears, long before the last one of them had died. He had condemned them to be ghosts.

I started to be angry.

Why in the world would I have to put up with all of this? Why was there no life what so ever in this town? I could not allow myself to think that Travnik had been trapped inside its own legend for ever. Then, I heard the voice of the muenzin.

I can not say why, but for some strange reason I rtopuld myself that going to the mosque would be the best thing I could do. So I did. When I though about it later, I came to realize that this had been the first time I had ever entered a mosque, during the ceremony on top.
During their schooldays, most german children go to see at least one syngogue, not to speak of the dozens of christian churches. In 23 years. I had never been inside a muslim curch ever.
That could not last.

At first, the feeling was very strange. I had washed my hands and face and taken of my boots on the dorstep, but when I entered the main room, it became clear that the chance that I would be overseen was close to zero. "Fuck it", I tould mayself. "Nobody is going to chop your head off".

I sat down in a corner and watched the ceremony. Islam is a very active religion, you know?!
In christian churches, you sit down and pray to yourself - end of story.
In a mosqoue though, everyone is constantly moving from their feet, to their knees and back on their feet. The religion demands a lot of dedication (also because you have to get up at 5 in the morning to say the first prayer of the day) and I came to like that. I looked around and all of a sudden, something struck my mind. "Islam!"

Islam was what was still alive in this town, living and moving. Of all of the public clocks I had seen around town, none had worked. Still, the little wooden clock in the back of the mosque, probably more then 100 years old, kept ticking.

This was the place where live was still goiung on and you could see it.

There were man and boys of all ages, at least 50 of them and an equally high nubmer of women.
With the practice of their religion, they gave prove of the time of the ottoman empire, of the time that Andrić had described in his books and which I had wanted to experience myself.
When I left the mosque, I felt relieved.

I had found what I had come for, even if that was totally different from what I had expected. The ghosts of Travnik had not scared me away and the inspiration I had hoped to find finally came to my mind.

I walked over to the hostel and took a deep breath of Travniks air.
After all, it was not so difficult anymore.