The once war-torn city of Sarajevo is re-emerging against the odds to reclaim a title as one of the cultural capitals of the world. Former Otago Daily Times reporter Joe Dodgshun gets a crash course in diversity in the centre of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
His name is Hadij. His feet are hanging out of the window of our now smoky railway carriage, an anchor for his lanky frame which is suspended across the room as he swings from the overhead luggage racks. Beyond his dangling shoes, colour drains from the grim beauty of the Bosnian hillsides as our Sarajevo-bound train shudders towards dusk and its final destination.
He is a mine removal specialist, a busy line of work in the former Yugoslavia. He grew up orphaned, is a veteran of the '90s conflicts and today is tipsily intent on practising his English.
My American travel partner and I have today gained Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian border stamps in a journey only made possible after the railway line was reopened in late 2009.
An architecture student in our compartment, a cosmopolitan lad whose attention is torn between textbooks and a smartphone, translates as Hadij introduces us to the industrial outskirts of the city he loves and proclaims himself willing to fight for, if necessary.
With this introduction we alight in a sunset of gold on concrete, taking our bearings from the garishly hued Holiday Inn Hotel, the refuge of foreign press during the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo.
Bullet holes are ubiquitous, sprayed across the walls of Soviet-era apartment blocks, and trees grow in the hollow skeletons of a handful of abandoned buildings, but as our electric tram passes through narrowing streets the feel is stately, homely.
Extensive coverage of the Yugoslavian conflicts can make it easy for Westerners to forget Sarajevo has long been a centre where civilisations converge. The city has been a vibrant confluence of East and West for millennia as the home of Illyrian and Celtic civilisations, emerging Slavic populations, and later as territory of the Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.
The history is tangible as we reach the Ottoman-styled old city (Stari Grad), disembarking by the Miljacka River, a famously shallow body of water spanned by the centuries-old Latin Bridge.
Here a wrong turn by the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria led to the near-point-blank assassination of both him and his wife on June 28, 1914.
Close by, gorgeous stone streets accommodate stylish bars and cafés alongside regal mosques and churches (both Orthodox and Catholic). Coppersmith St is so named for the metalworkers who continue to hammer out their trade alongside jewellers and assorted other artisans. Its religious diversity and tolerance earned Sarajevo its reputation as the ''Jerusalem of Europe'' and while only one synagogue remains, the city's latent wealth of culture last year saw it nominated as the European Capital of Culture for 2014.
Despite its increasing popularity as a tourist destination we easily find a hostel, which, like most things in Sarajevo, comes at a price to delight even the thriftiest travellers.
Right next door is the pekara, or bakery, where locals and backpackers alike flock for Balkan specialties such as burek, a spiralling filo pastry filled with meat, or cheese and spinach. For those with a voracious cultural appetite, the best time of the year to come is July when the city hosts the vast month-long Bascarsija Nights festival. The mainly free programme has highlights such as the swirling dervish dances of men in flowing skirts, theatre, folklore and musical performances from all four points of the compass.
August brings the prestigious Sarajevo Film Festival, an event founded in a spirit of artistic rebellion forged during the war, which led to its first edition, during the siege, in 1995. It presents ground-breaking cinema with a more relaxed air than its European contemporaries and, like November's Sarajevo Jazz Festival, draws great numbers to the city.
The nightlife caters for all tastes: flashy nightclubs for a bawdy expedition out, plenty of live music, quiet spots for the ritual enjoyment of a Bosnian coffee, or bars to sit sipping fruit brandies with the old-timers.
Once you head out for a drink downtown you will find the locals are relaxed and affable and while the city bears physical and emotional scars, travellers are soon made to feel welcome.
Sarajevo's Stari Grad can be crowded with visitors at times, so the best way to get a feel for the city can be by exploring its labyrinthine hillside streets.
The next day we set off, our ears ringing with warnings against leaving paths and exploring abandoned buildings. Some of Sarajevo's surrounds are yet to be cleared of landmines.
Bijela Tabija - the white fortress - and Zuta Tabija (yellow bastion) are worth the ascent through winding alleys and provide fantastic, minaret-studded views of Sarajevo, which lies in the middle of a long valley, surrounded by the Dinaric Alps.
From these vantage points it is easy to see how Bosnian Serb forces stationed in the hills could have besieged the city, a point reinforced by swathes of white hillside graveyards, representing more than 11,000 people killed.
Those interested in the Balkan war should visit the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina for several eye-opening exhibitions. The first is a photographic portrayal recently adapted into the Angelina Jolie-directed film, The Land of Blood and Honey, and the second is the story of Sarajevo's siege told through objects donated by Sarajevans. If you have not managed to grasp the scale of the human loss in the Balkan conflicts up to this point, the bloodstained schoolbooks retrieved from a shelled classroom cannot fail to drive it home.
Daily tours also take visitors to the ''Tunnel of Hope'', a route gouged out underneath the airport runway to smuggle essential food, fuel and munitions into the city. A family home serves as both the entrance and a museum. If you have time to explore outside the city, the 98m Skakavac waterfall is only 12km north of Sarajevo and is set in a wild part of Sarajevo Valley unscarred by conflict.
More exciting still for budget snow-fiends, Sarajevo is within easy striking range of excellent skiing at a fraction of the price of the European Alps, and hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. While it may be naive to think the recent reopening of transport links in former Yugoslavia will immediately break down other barriers, it is a step in a more hopeful direction. In fact, the young men I met from each country while on the road from Serbia to Croatia all had one thing in common - not a hatred of their counterparts across the borders, but a genuine curiosity about one another.
If you go
Currency: Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark (BAM) 1 NZD = 1.26 BAM.
500ml domestic beer: $NZ2.37.
Burek: $0.80 - $1.60.
Typical dining out at a Cevapi grill house: $5.90.
Hostel dorm rooms: From $7.75 (Hostel Ljubicica).
Five-star double accommodation: about $200 (Hotel Bristol Sarajevo).
Getting there: Daily trains from Budapest (Hungary), Zagreb and Plo.
Cheap flights to Sarajevo Airport from Western Europe and Turkey.
Daily buses from Podgorica (Montenegro), Split and Dubrovnik (Croatia), Mostar, Banja Luka and Tuzla (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Pristina (Kosovo) and Belgrade (Serbia).
