Artists and Astronauts: BOSNIA (Part I)

Welcome to Bosnia

This blog has been neglected like a brace-faced, sunburned, and uncombed red-headed step child. I intend to post a ton about art in the near future. However, as it goes in the summer, the art world takes a vacation and as it so happens, so did I. I journeyed long and far to distant Eastern Europe, where my boyfriend, a native, has been staying for a while. Having been there once before, I knew the language barrier would be my biggest obstacle, so I brought along books in English by some authors I came to think of as friends: Willa Cather, Gustave Flaubert, Ernest Hemmingway, Vladimir Nabokov, and Dave Hickey. I also brought a travel case of art supplies, and a suitcase of clothes I imagined epitomizing chic European travel. While I ended up taking a break from art completely, I did take in my travels like an artist would, focusing on beauty and details. Here are some moments of beauty and culture I found myself inspired or surprised by.

In case you don't know, (and it's OK if you don't- I spend a lot of time explaining this to my family), Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very, very old country on the Western end of Eastern Europe, situated close to Italy and Germany. It became part of communist Yugoslavia after WWII, but like Germany, eventually went back to the way it was, (for the most part), after forty or so years of Communist ways.

There it is- that little green country across the water from Italy's boot.

Unlike Germany, however, Yugoslavia had to endure a very bitter and bloody breakup with Serbia and Croatia first, leaving scars of genocide and fucked up reminders of human cruelty scattered across the Muslim towns and villages of Bosnia. It's been 15 years since the war, and there has been a ton of development and revitalization. It's still a terrible world economy, however, and countries like Bosnia bear the brunt of a lot of the world's financial instability. I was reminded many times of my privileged American expectations in a still-developing country, like, where are the art galleries? That said, it also has so many amazing things that we don't have, like a wealth of history, amazing, normally-free range and organic food, relaxing night life, and cheap beer.