Marš mira: Day 1

¡At last, the continuation of our adventures in the Balkans! For this post I will switch to english for my new friends to understand and have some fun with my irreverent words.

As you know, we were on the brink of starting the Peace March, the first part of the Summer Research Program. Just for you to know we were supposed to go to Srebrenica, settle down, store all the precious belongings of the postgrads (ipods, lap tops, books, mobiles) and then travel to Nezuk. But since we stayed longer in Sarajevo for the Congress we just had to improvise -remember, bosnians are terrible at planning but good at improvising- and go directly to Nezuk with all the luggage.

The trip to Nezuk was a personal hell for Alejandro because the driver speeded in the old and badly maintained bosnian roads. I personally think he believed he was Michael Schumacher because he entered the turns at 80 km/hr and even passed big trucks carried with logs in the middle of the turns. Hopefully neither Alejandro or Julia (my first italian friend) poked and we arrived Nezuk safe and sound.

Maybe you don't realize it but when I say all the luggage I mean it (just look at the photo). The driver just dropped us at the camp with all the stuff meanwhile all the people in the camp were laughing at us for bringing all that stuff for a march across the forests. A journalist for a Bosnian newspaper even took a picture of the luggage mountain parked outside the military tents. I guess the title of the photo would be something like stupid foreigners at the beginning of the Peace March. Hopefully, some ours later they came to pick all the bags.


We arrived Nezuk the day of the World Cup Semifinal between Germany and Spain. As you can imagine, Alejandro was reallly nervous because he wouldn't be able to watch the match menawhile his girlfriend and all of his friends in Barcelona would be drinking and screaming in a cozy bar. A heavy summer rain made it more difficult to find a place (a home in the town) to watch the match, but suddenly a rumor was spread that the bosnian military were watching the game in one of the trucks. So Alejandro and Christian (our German friend) didn't waited too much and asked the soldiers if they could watch the match with them. ¡They let them! Sop we watched the match in a TV set installed in the back of a military truck connected to an electrical generator. Just to let you know everybody supported Germany and Alejandro was the only lunatic screaming and commenting the game in Spanish. As you all know Puyol scored (without a catalan flag to kiss) and Spain won the game so there was no aprty at Nezuk and we were all supposed to go to sleep.


We were supposed to sleep in the military tents like everyone else but we had the bad luck of sharing our tent with some drunk turks that began molesting the women of our group. Luckily some Nezuk women offered their houses to all of the girls and since some of the girls owned camping tents they lend them to us.


Just before going to sleep one local guy approached to us and began talking to our friend Ajdin (one of the organizers of the Summer Program). He translated us the words of the man and we found out he was kept in a concentration camp when he was a child and that he saw how her parents and brothers were assasinated. Fortunately for him he could escape, but before some soldiers fractured his kneecap and tried to cut his finger. He showed us the scars so we had to believe him. Ajdin offered an empty space at our tent and he accepted. He smoked inside our tent all night long and when the police came to quiet some of the drunk turks he confessed Alejandro that he was carrying a granade in case of problems. So, basically we shared a tent with a genocide survivor that carried a granade for self defense, cool!