Banja Luka Farm

The capital of the Serbian Republic and largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina after Sarajevo is Banja Luka, a city that could be considered in many ways the polar opposite of Sarajevo.

Before the war both these cities consisted of a mixed population of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. During the war, populations were forcibly resettled based on religion and Sarajevo became mostly Muslim while Banja Luka became mostly Christian Orthodox.

In Banja Luka one won’t see tea shops, shisha lounges and women in headscarves, but rather night clubs, bars and women in short shorts. The streets are free of trash and the river is clean enough that people swim in it.

Banja Luka doesn’t have the atmospheric old town of Sarajevo though, nor the rich history and Ottoman-era buildings. Besides a medieval castle along the river, most of the buildings in the city are new. The old Orthodox churches of Banja Luka were demolished by the Catholic Croat Nazi regime during World War 2 and the old mosques were demolished by the Bosnian Serb army during the war of the 1990s.

We arrived in town a bit earlier than our scheduled arrival time of between 12:00 and 1:00 pm, so we piled our luggage on the sidewalk outside of our apartment building and waited. When booking apartments online, there’s often some element of surprise upon arrival. Sometimes our space is the second story of a family home and all we do is knock on the door when we get there, other times it is an apartment in a guesthouse and there is a reception. In this case, the space is in an apartment building and the owner lives elsewhere so the scheduled meeting time is kind of important.

At exactly 11:59 a middle aged man walked around the corner, a fresh ice cream cone in one hand, and almost jumped out of his shoes in surprise to see us camped out on the sidewalk. He seemed ready to have a leisurely wait for us in front of the building while enjoying his ice cream, but unfortunately for the ice cream we were early.

“Luka?” He asked me and I nodded.

He took a big bite of his ice cream and dropped the rest into a gutter drain and then grabbed our biggest suitcase and led us up three flights of stairs to the apartment.

To eat and to drink are the two things to do in Banja Luka. There are a hundred restaurants, bars and cafes within a five minute walk from our apartment. And there seems to be an ice cream shop on every corner. The walking streets are busy throughout the day, but gradually become dense with pedestrians as night approaches. It can be hard to find a free table as it seems the entire city goes out for coffees, drinks and meals.

Not only is the food excellent, but it’s so inexpensive that we are continually overeating. I also get into the habit of stopping by a local cafe every evening for a beer and a homemade sljivovica, a local plumb spirit. After a couple visits, the owner has the beer and shot ready for me before I even sit down so that I feel like a regular.

With the kids returning to online school, I figured it would be a great idea to spend the first week of school (and our last week in Bosnia) on a farm so after a few days in the city we moved up into the hills above Banja Luka.

Only a mile from the city center, the city begins to give way to farmland and animals. The road rises steeply and there is nothing here but orchards and pastures.

The kids spent the week working hard on schoolwork and playing with the farm dogs in their free time. Tola and I made the trek down to town a number of times. It’s an easy 45-minute walk downhill to the city, but a painfully steep couple of hours up in the dark after a big meal followed by beer and sljivovica.

We came across many animals on these walks, including friendly donkeys looking for a handout and dogs that walked along with us. Each farmhouse seems to have a collection of animals that wander around. After dark though, the wild animals come out. A couple of badgers surprised us at one point, flying out of the undergrowth right behind us. I also tripped over a hedgehog in the dark, scaring the little guy into a spiny ball and leaving my ankle full of pin pricks.

Sometimes the images that stick in one’s mind are not the big things, the towers, the waterfalls, the landmarks, but rather the little things: the cold beer overflowing its glass, the view of the city in the dark from halfway home, the curled up ball of spines waiting for you to leave.

And that sums up Bosnia and Herzegovina well. It’s a country of little things that stick in one’s mind.