Sarajevo Roses

The hill that boosted my ass a quarter of an inch each time I climbed it from the center of town to reach our hostel. The car wash outside of the bedroom window, running at all hours of the night and every turn of a door knob echoed down hallways. The sleep deprivation and subsequent delirium; the irritation and a meltdown in the stairwell. No escaping the gravity of blood rushing, soul shaking emotion. An awareness of how delicious it is to be so fully immersed in the human experience.

The spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. The shot heard round the world, a spark to set off the flames of human conflict that seem to be waiting always. The Olympic flame burning still hot from the year I was born, 1984; just seven years later, the fall of The Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. “Sarajevo Roses” painted gunshot holes on the sidewalks, reminders of how fast things can, and do, change. I reveled at Islamic details in the architecture, juxtaposed with the incredible socialist-era architecture, awed by the existence of this incredible place in the world; its people and its history.