Berlin as a Canvas Part 2

By Katie Hammel

El Bocho is one of the most well-known street artists currently working in Berlin. Originally from Frankfurt, he has several highly recognisable motifs around the city. One is Little Lucy, a cat-hating little girl inspired by a 1970s television series of the same name. Little Lucy can be seen all over Berlin, devising ever more inventive ways to kill her cat, including ripping him in two, carving him like a kebab and serving him in a sandwich, drowning him, boiling him in a pot and hanging him with a rope.

Here, Little Lucy has wrapped her cat up in a box, perhaps to give him away.

Little Lucy. (Katie Hammel)

Most of the Little Lucy art is done by paste-up, meaning the artist creates the piece on paper and then affixes it to a wall with paste. Some artists prefer to work this way as it allows them to create intricate works in a safe place and then quickly put it on the streets. The less time an artist has to spend putting his art in the public space, the less chance he’ll be caught by police. Additionally, paste-ups carry a lesser charge than other street art; it is considered littering and is punishable by a lesser fine than graffiti, which can range from 100 euros to two years of jail time.

The work of London-based, Australian-born artist James Cochran, also known as Jimmy C, looks almost impressionistic. His paintings, on canvas and on the street, are made of thousands of tiny dripping dots that – when viewed from farther away – create beautiful human portraits. His work can be seen around the city, but one of the most intriguing is his self-portrait, the Artist’s Tears (pictured). Originally painted on canvas in 2002, it was recreated as street art on Revaler Strasse in 2012 in the Friedrichshain neighbourhood.

The Artist’s Tears. (Katie Hammel)

Revaler Strasse is a popular place for street art. The street and surrounding area make up a former industrial site that built in 1867 as home to the Royal Prussian Railway Workshop (the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, where German railway carriages went for repair). The neighbourhood was later used by the German Democratic Republic until 1989 as a site for industrial factories. When it was officially decommissioned in 1994, artists moved in and began using the empty buildings and crumbling blank walls as their canvas. The area is now home to the Skalitzers Contemporary Art gallery, which focuses its exhibitions on street art.  

Down the street from Skalitzers on Revaler Strasse, Spanish artist Rallito-X has left his mark with a mural of a grotesque multi-eyed monster with several legs (and a few other extra appendages), painted in 2012 (pictured). The message above the monster, “Greetings from Spain”, reveals the monster to possibly represent the EU financial crisis that began in 2009 when several European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece, hit hard by the global financial slump turned to the EU for bailouts.  

Greetings from Spain. (Katie Hammel)

Mein Lieber Prost’s work (pictured) is more enigmatic. It hides in doorways or high on walls; the faces and characters quietly point and laugh, possibly mocking the passerby who might not even notice. No one knows the Berlin-based artist’s identity, but his simple work, which began popping up as early as 2009, is now so ubiquitous and instantly recognisable that he often doesn’t even sign his name.  

Ubiquitous Prost. (Katie Hammel)

The work of another anonymous artist, Alias, is more complex, both in style and in meaning. Done with stencils, most of his pieces depict solo figures in black, white and grey, with deep reds and blues occasionally used for emphasis. A faceless teenager in a hooded sweatshirt sits cross-legged, another boy rests on a skateboard with his back turned to the viewer. In one of Alias’ recurring images, a small boy sits, looking dejected, on a bomb with a lit fuse. While Alias, who started in 2004, works mostly on the street, he also creates images on found objects like metal scraps and cardboard, some of which are sold at the Open Walls Gallery, a site that commands as much as 600 euros for a piece of graffiti.

Alias' boy. (Katie Hammel)

Over the last 30 years, street art has become a core part of Berlin, as synonymous with the city as the wall that once divided it. The images that decorate the city tell its stories – sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, sometimes controversial and, sometimes, beautiful.  

 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the location of Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood. This has been fixed.

Berlin as a Canvas Part 1

By Katie Hammel 
 

Art in every corner, as shown here in a courtyard off Rosenthaler Strasse. (Katie Hammel)

The streets of Berlin – and the art that adorns them – have long had a story to tell. From murals that depict the trials of German reunification to paste-ups that comment on current events, the city's graffiti is a record of its history and its people. And many of Berlin’s finest international artists use streets, buildings and public spaces – not canvases – to host their masterpieces. But if you don't know where to look – or don't know what it is you're looking at – it's easy to miss the narratives being told.

When the city was divided between East and West Germany, early street artists like French artist Thierry Noir used the western side of the wall as a place to share political messages and commentary on Berlin and the world at large. Noir is known as one of the first and most prolific of the wall’s artists; he began painting graffiti on the wall in 1984 and now his work is now featured prominently in the East Side Gallery, a 1.3km section of the wall that displays more than 100 murals by artists from 21 countries. The paintings were done in 1990, a year after the city was reunited.

Today, however, the gallery is under threat of demolition to make way for luxury housing and a 14-storey hotel. A 6m stretch was temporarily removed during construction, and the hotel’s developer has asked for 20m of the wall to be removed permanently to accommodate a driveway. For now, however, the wall remains one of Berlin’s most evocative examples of artistic expression.

The East Side Gallery. (Katie Hammel)

After the fall of the wall, artists from West Germany moved to neighbourhoods like Friedrichshain in the former East Berlin, lured by cheaper rents and an abundance of untouched canvases. They covered buildings in political statements and popularised tagging – the art of signing one’s name and expressing one’s identity – after years of being forced to blend in as part of the Communist machine.

Today, street art in Berlin ranges from tiny tags to massive murals, and two of the city’s most famous pieces sit side by side on four-storey buildings along the river in Kreuzberg.

Both pieces were done by the Italian-born artist Blu. The first (pictured here), painted in 2007, has been called both Wall and Brothers. It shows two masked figures; one is upside down and forms an E with his fingers, the other is right side up and forming a W with his. The two men, making the signs for East and West, are trying to rip one another’s masks off. It’s a powerful symbol of the challenges faced by the people of the formerly divided city as they reunited after living side-by-side as strangers for more than 30 years.

Blu's social commentary. (Katie Hammel)

The other piece (also pictured), painted a year later, shows a headless man in a crisp shirt, straightening his tie. On his wrists, gold watches form the chains that shackle him. Painted in 2008, Blu’s commentary on a professional’s enslavement to time, money and materialism speaks to the conditions in Berlin today. Residents worry about rapid gentrification, as housing costs rose more than 30% from 2007 to 2013. Berlin is also fast becoming a major hub for innovation: by the beginning of 2014, there were more than 2,500 start-ups in the city, including the popular music-sharing platform, SoundCloud. 

Another mural by Blu, painted in 2007, encourages similar reflection. Located on the western side of the Oberbaumbrücke Bridge in Kreuzberg (recognisable from the 1998 movie Run, Lola, Run) a pink monster threatens to eat a tiny white figure (pictured here). The pink monster, with its white lifeless eyes, is actually made up of hundreds of tiny pink humans, perhaps illustrating that conformity creates an individuality-killing monster. In a city where residents were once forced to bend to the will of the majority, it’s a sobering reminder that individuality, for so long stifled, is now a freedom to be prized. 

The pink monster. (Katie Hammel)

Though street art remains illegal in Berlin, many building owners have chosen not to fight the inevitable. Rather than wait for their buildings to be tagged, owners sometimes pay artists 300 euros or more to create murals for their properties. Tagging over another artist’s work is considered a great insult, so commissioning a piece is a smart if counterintuitive way for owners to be sure that the art on their building will at least be art that they like.

Stephen King’s Hotel of Horrors Part 2

By Lindsey Galloway

 

Forget the film

Though a classic in its own right, the film adaptation of The Shining – directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson – has long been disparaged by King for not being true to his story’s characters.

The film does not feature any scenes from the Stanley; there was not enough snow in Estes Park at the time to recreate the snowed-in Overlook. The exterior shots instead show the Timberline Lodge in Mt Hood, Oregon. Even so, the Stanley plays the original movie on a constant loop for guests on its own channel 42. 

In 1997, King adapted his book into a mini-series. He shot it on-site at the Stanley Hotel as a tribute to his original muse.

True tragedy

In September 2013, King’ published Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel to The Shining, which follows Jack Torrance’s son Danny, now in his 40s – all the way back to the site of the Overlook. The Stanley Hotel found itself in the spotlight once again.

But the excitement was overshadowed by the devastating floods that struck Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park that same September. The region received more rainfall over two days than it usually sees in an entire year; 11,000 people were evacuated and more than 1,500 homes destroyed. 

Thanks to its elevated location above the valley, the hotel itself suffered relatively minor damage. However, much of the US Highway 36, the main road between Boulder and Estes Park, was washed away, and with it went much of the tourism the town depends during its elk-showcasing fall months, when hundreds of elk descend from the mountains and make their mating calls near prime viewing areas (one of which is the Estes Park golf course).

The town of Estes Park has mostly recovered; most businesses have re-opened, though some have closed completely while others are still working to repair property damage. US Highway 36 also reopened in late November 2013, but construction is expected to continue throughout 2014, causing regular delays until its completion in 2015. The Colorado Department of Transportation has construction updates for those making the drive, and suggests visitors take the more northern US 

Highway 34 or Colorado Highway 7 entrances if possible.

Meanwhile, the Stanley, which is open year-round, has continued to draw visitors from around the country. As part of its effort to attract even more guests, the hotel is offering a special “Doctor Sleep Package” through the end of 2015, including copies of both The Shining and Doctor Sleep and possible upgrades to room 217 by request. Ghost sightings are not guaranteed – but in this hotel, and with one of King’s books in hand, a few scares certainly are.

A New Look For Old Montreal Part 2

By Emily Saladino

 

Fresh, youthful energy spread throughout the area. In 2012, historic square Place d’Armes, which was created as a town square in 1836 and is located two blocks from Rue Saint Paul Ouest, unveiled a C$15 million renovation. The sleekly redesigned plaza now has unadorned benches filled with lunch-breaking locals, 20-somethings on iPads and, of course, travellers – ducking into the Gothic Revival Notre Dame Basilica or taking selfies in front of the 1895 statue of Paul de Chomedey. 

Nouveau Vieux Montreal truly came into its own, though, with the June 2012 debut of arts institution Centre PHI. Located around the corner from Olive + Gourmondo, a few steps from Rue Saint Paul Ouest on Rue Saint Pierre, Centre PHI is a multimedia gallery and event space. It hosts free exhibitions by the likes of Canadian politico Gátean Nadeau and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, as well as fashion shows, filmmaking master classes, children’s theatre workshops and neighbourhood parties with late-night DJ sets.

 

Now, young artists and entrepreneurs abound in Old Montreal’s sloping streets. Denis Gagnon, an award-winning Canadian fashion designer with a branded Lancôme beauty line, opened a flagship store on Old Montreal’s Rue Saint Paul in 2011. Swell Fellow, a hip boutique selling one-of-a-kind neckwear and carefully curated objects of art – including sculptures made from repurposed parking meters by painter Erik Furer – debuted a few blocks away in April 2013. Four months later Maison Christian Faure opened, bringing perfectly brewed espresso and haute French pastries like macaroons, Bordelais canelé (miniature cakes) and sugar-topped brioche – not to mention cooking classes in both French and English – to Place Royale, the former fur-trading square that dates back to 1892. Guide Vieux-Montreal, a free iPhone app created by SDC, helps locals and travellers alike keep track of the area’s activity. 

More is yet to come. Bonaventure Highway, an elevated eyesore that cuts between Old Montreal and its southwestern neighbour Griffintown, is currently being dismantled. A more bicycle- and pedestrian- friendly roadway will replace it within the next three to four years. Citywide initiatives include the C$8 million, Unesco-approved Promenade Smith project, which will transform a previously desolate area of Griffintown into a public park.

Artist Erik Furer lives in Griffintown now, but he plans to move to Old Montreal. “This is where my business is,” he said, gesturing around his shop. His atelier is one story upstairs. “I want to be here too.”

Stephen King’s Hotel of Horrors Part 1

By Lindsey Galloway

In 1974, famed US horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha lived for a year in Boulder, Colorado. In late October, they spent a night in the mountain resort town of Estes Park, 40 miles northwest of Boulder. They checked into the historic 155-room Stanley Hotel – and found that they were the only guests for one of the last nights of the hotel’s season.

King’s imagination went wild as he wandered the abandoned hallways, ate alone in the grand dining room and talked up the bartender. By the end of the night, he knew he had enough material to start writing his next book.

The Shining, published in 1977, quickly became a horror classic, in no small part due its scarily secluded setting: a snowed-in hotel with a haunted history, hidden away in the Rocky Mountains.

Ghosts of the past
Though King called the hotel in his book The Overlook, the fictional Overlook and the real-life Stanley not only look alike, with sprawling front porches and crisp Georgian architecture, but both were completed in 1909. Founder FO Stanley, who invented one of the era’s best selling steam-powered cars, The Stanley Steamer, in 1897, came to the Rocky Mountains from Massachusetts in 1903 to find treatment for his tuberculosis. He and his wife Flora fell in love with the region and founded the hotel six years later. During its early heyday, the resort hosted celebrities including former US president Theodore Roosevelt, Titanic survivor Molly Brown and Emperor Hirohito of Japan.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the Stanley has retained many of its original features, including the entrance’s sprawling veranda, its founder’s favourite billiard room and the grand staircase that graces the lobby.

The Stanley’s original MacGregor Ballroom, with its raised stage and large windows showcasing expansive mountain views, was reincarnated in the pages of The Shining. Late one night, main character and hotel caretaker Jack Torrance finds himself at a magnificent masked ball attended by 1940s-styled guests – even though he, his wife and son are the hotel’s only inhabitants, and all the roads to the hotel are blocked by snow. 

Apparitions are nothing new for the Stanley’s ballroom. People report seeing the keys on the room’s piano being pressed with no one there, and hearing music fill the space. Hotel historians believe the musician is Flora Stanley herself: she loved the piano and often played it for guests.

Room 217
“It was a perfectly ordinary door, no different from any other door on the first two floors of the hotel,” King wrote. “It was dark gray, halfway down a corridor that ran at right angles to the main second-floor hallway. The numbers on the door looked no different from the house numbers on the Boulder apartment building they had lived in. A 2, a 1, and a 7.”

In the book, the room beyond door 217 turns out to be far from ordinary – it is the site of a gruesome haunting. In real life, it was the room where King stayed.

Long before King’s stay, the room had a history. In 1917, the chief housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson was lighting the hotel’s acetylene lanterns during a storm in case the electricity went out. When she went to light the one in what is now room 217, the lantern exploded, blasting out the floor beneath her feet and sending her falling down to the storey below.

She survived (albeit with two broken ankles). Even so, guests of 217 report her spirit stops by on occasion – usually to tidy things up, sometimes putting stray items away or unpacking a suitcase.

The hauntings, both the fictional and the ostensibly real, hardly deter guests. In fact, room 217 is usually booked months in advance. That said, the fourth floor rooms receive the most reports of unusual activity, from the sounds of children playing in the halls to lights turning off to faces appearing in windows.

Embracing its reputation as one of the United States’ most haunted hotels, the Stanley offers regular 90-minute ghost tours of its most supernatural sites. The hotel even offers a five-hour paranormal investigation, complete with specialized ghost-hunting equipment like EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors, once a month for die-hard ghost hunters.

Lodges Robinson Crusoe Would Love Part 2

By Rooksana Hossenally

West of the Samaná Peninsula, about 200km from El Cabito, I stopped at Natura Cabana, an isolated beachside boutique hotel outside the lively surf town of Cabarete. Originally built as a home in 1996 by Chilean migrants Soledad Sumar and Pablo Garimani, the bungalows evolved into a lodge almost by accident. “My parents’ guests just never wanted to leave,” said Soleded “Lole” Sumar, one of Sumar and Garimani’s four daughters who today run Natura Cabana. “So eventually we made it bigger for them to stay or come back to, and then it slowly became our 10-bungalow hotel.” The stylish rooms are made of highly polished wood and exposed rock, all adorned with bright bedspreads of Indian silks and cottons, and there’s the added bonus of yoga classes every morning and evening, included in the cost of the room.

 

Casa Maravilla, located next door, is owned by Belgian immigrant Marc Bautil and his wife Elvira, who was born in the Philippines and grew up in the US. The highlight of Maravilla is the beautiful multi-storey wooden bohio (a shack made of straw or wood, whose main living area has open sides and a view of the beach), providing a real Robinson Crusoe feel. At night, guests fall asleep to the sound of the ocean waves. “We wanted to provide a different experience that was closer to nature,” Marc said.

 

My next stop was a small hotel in the small village of Tubagua, located about 33km west of Cabarete. Flanked by green, leafy hills and overlooking sugarcane fields toward the turquoise Atlantic, the Tubagua Plantation Eco-Lodge has spectacular views. It also had a charm – and a roster of delicious, home-cooked local food – that made me want to stay for another year, if not a lifetime. Owned by former Canadian journalist and Puerto Plata province’s current Canadian consul Tim Hall, the accommodation features rustic bungalows and one private cottage. Each bungalow room has its own open balcony and a mosquito net. The doors don’t lock (or even close properly), speaking to the safe, familial atmosphere of the bungalow and its openness to the natural world just outside.

Even with the recent boom of small, sustainability-minded hotels, many owners said that most visitors to the Dominican Republic continue to assume that the big resorts are the island’s only accommodation choice. Yet, according to Hall, these “impersonal” structures don’t represent the reality of Dominican. “The reality is so much better than that,” he said. After experiencing some of the country’s most beautiful views, delectable food and the local culture’s warmth, I had to agree.

A New Look For Old Montreal Part 1

By Emily Saladino

 

Filled with traffic and camera-toting tourists, until recently the 350-year-old streets of Old Montreal resembled a Canadian Times Square. Trendsetting locals bypassed the district, opting instead to spend time in other neighbourhoods, dancing in the nightclubs of Plateau Mont-Royal or sipping craft beers at microbreweries in St Henri and Griffintown.

 

But changes are afoot along Old Montreal’s cobblestoned streets. City-funded urban development projects are installing a pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, and a real estate boom is enabling a young, creative class of artists and entrepreneurs to open hip boutiques and restaurants. Suddenly, the city’s oldest neighbourhood is all anyone can talk about. 

 

“I call it ‘Nouveau Vieux Montreal’, or ‘New Old Montreal’,” said Mario Lafrance over coffee and croque monsieurs (grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches) last October. An earnest man in a plaid sport coat and Kissinger-chic eyewear, Lafrance leads the Société de développement commercial du Vieux Montréal (SDC), Old Montreal’s nine-year-old economic development organization. Since 1993, he said, the number of people living in Old Montreal has grown from 100 to 6,000. Nearly 40,000 people work in the district, Lafrance said, manning the shops and restaurants of the SDC’s 2,000-member local business alliance.

It is not the first time Old Montreal has been a community hub. Montreal’s founding father Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, installed Montreal’s first road, Old Montreal’s central Rue Saint Paul Ouest, in 1692. The street provided easy access to the St Lawrence River, and throughout the 18th Century prominent denizens like de Chomedy lived and worked there, building mercantile outposts and grand private residences near the port. Now, after almost three centuries of expansion, real estate speculation and tourist infestation, Rue Saint Paul Ouest has re-emerged at the centre of Old Montreal’s 21st-century revival.

One of the galvanising forces of Old Montreal’s revitalisation has been the development of an adjacent professional district called Cité du Multimédia. Over the past 20 years, Cité du Multimédia has grown into a media mecca, housing technology, marketing and design companies like creative agency Sid Lee and design consultancy Nurun. The neighbourhood’s youthful work force of writers, filmmakers and designers produce a stunning 70% of the world’s animation projects.

 

 

These new media professionals need restaurants to eat in and bars in which to rest their weary ankle boots. By the mid-2000s, they started trickling onto Old Montreal’s centrally located Rue Saint Paul Ouest. Now, they chatter over brownies and lattes at popular café Olive + Gourmondo, or meet for 5-à-7 (happy hour) cocktails at the coolly industrial Philémon Bar up the road.

Lodges Robinson Crusoe Would Love Part 1

By Rooksana Hossenally

For years, a holiday in the Dominican Republic entailed staying at a walled-in, cookie-cutter resort. But not anymore. Beyond the touristy town of Punta Cana in the southeast, the country becomes a vast natural landscape of vibrant greens and blues, unmarred by large-scale tourism or commercial hotels. That is the area where, recently, several expatriates have opened smaller boutique hotels that provide what the larger resorts do not: a personal touch, local flavour and key emphasis on the environment.

 

“You have to love nature to come here; for me, that’s what this country is about,” said Italian expat and now resident Sarah Paradiso. Coincidentally, even her surname (which means “paradise” in Italian) reflects the lifestyle she adopted in 2001 by coming to the fishing village of Las Galeras on the east coast of the Samaná Península. Originally from Milan, she and her husband bought a plot of land near La Playita beach and in 2006 built Chalet Tropical: three two-storey thatched-roof bungalows, handcrafted by locals with wood interiors and stone bathrooms. Set back from the village centre, Chalet Tropical’s surroundings are green and wild, with a dirt track leading to the beach. “I would never consider going back,” Paradiso said. “I am living my dream.”

About 4km to the east, just outside of Las Galeras, I ventured off the tarmac roads and walked along a dirt track, passing both roaming horses and scooters carrying entire families. Perched atop craggy cliffs over the deep blue waters of Rincon Bay, I arrived at what looked like a manmade stone wall surrounding a cluster of huts. Catrin Krueger and John Matthijssen – from Germany and the Netherlands, respectively – opened El Cabito lodge in 2008, staying true to the idea of sustainability and local culture. Area artisans created the handmade furniture; the restaurant serves local food such as grilled fish and banana chips; and – in addition to a natural wastewater treatment process and four solar rooftop panels – the owners collect rainwater for the bathroom tank. By the beginning of 2015, Krueger said, El Cabito should run entirely on solar energy.

 

With two bungalows and a tree house, El Cabito is a rustic affair with shared bathrooms, mattresses on the floor, an open pavilion with hammocks, and a campsite. Lack of luxury aside, the views from its restaurant are more than worth the sweaty walk; brave visitors can even jump the 14m into the cool, transparent waters below. (The eco-lodge can be reached with a 4x4 or a motorbike, or the owners can arrange a transfer. Due to the poor state of the roads, driving a conventional car is not recommended).

Sarajevo Sees a Brighter Future Part 2

By Andy Jarosz

The Tunnel of Hope once provided cover to Sarajevo's soldiers. (Sameena Jarosz)

Now, Hatibovic’s eyes lit up as he saw a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) in the museum collection. The military-style food packets supplied by United Nations troops brought back happy memories because of the boiled sweets they sometimes contained. An MRE with meat, however, was another matter. “It was so bad even the dogs wouldn’t eat it,” he said.

Twenty years later, Sarajevo offers far more culinary options than food parcels. On the tour, we avoided the many cevapcici (minced meat kebab) shops, instead stopping at an intimate restaurant serving up freshly cooked dishes from a tiny open kitchen with space for only one cook. Called To Be Or Not To Be (although after the war, owner Amer Beširović permanently amended the sign, in typical Sarajevo defiance, to simply “To Be”), the restaurant opened just 20 days before the war broke out. Forced to close during the siege, Beširović reopened as soon as peace arrived. He has been serving home-cooked dishes to locals and visitors ever since, like his signature chilli chocolate steak, a chunk of tender beef covered in a spicy, cocoa-flavoured sauce.

Beširović invited us to sample some local wine to accompany our meal. Bosnia and Herzegovina is growing in stature as a wine-producing region, with Blatina (a spicy red variety) and Žilavka (a nutty, acidic white) the most popular grape varieties. Restaurants in Sarajevo are increasingly promoting home-grown wine as a quality option to the Old World classics, and Hatibovic told me that his guests are asking him to include visits to vineyards in their customised tours of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sarajevo's bobsleigh track from the 1984 Winter Olympics. (Sameena Jarosz)

Another industry that has begun bouncing back post-war is winter sport, with the mountains around Sarajevo once again becoming popular destinations. Since a ski break in Bosnia costs far less than in the Alps, Hatibovic has started organising skiing breaks aimed at international visitors. Still, reminders of the war’s destruction remain. On Trebevic Mountain which overlooks the city, we walked along a giant graffiti-covered concrete tube that was punctuated by holes made by mortar shells – the bobsleigh track from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

Despite the siege’s continued consequences, Hatibovic described how it brought about a remarkable camaraderie, with residents hosting improvised music concerts and even the first Sarajevo Film Festival. (In August 2014, the festival will celebrate its 20th year.) “It was important to bring back the human within yourself,” he said. And that, I realised, was what Hatibovic’s tour was all about: not merely teaching visitors about the war years, but introducing them to the spirit of survival needed to come through such a nightmare.

Where snipers once stood: the view of Sarajevo from Zlatiste. (Sameena Jarosz)

Sarajevo Sees a Brighter Future Part 1

 By Andy Jarosz

Five months into the Bosnian war, cellist Vedran Smailovic plays Strauss in the bombed-out National Library of Sarajevo. (Michael Evstafiev/AFP/Getty)

For me, the view over the sprawl of Sarajevo was stunning. For 28-year-old local Skender Hatibovic, however, the panorama we saw from Zlatiste hill, overlooking Sarajevo from the south, was not just pretty. At one point, it had been lethal. From here and other similar points on the surrounding hills, Serbian snipers besieged Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Over the course of nearly four years, more than two million bombs and countless bullets rained on the Bosnia and Herzegovina capital, killing more than 10,000 residents and scarring the lives of tens of thousands more.

Hatibovic was eight years old when the siege of Sarajevo began in 1992. Until its end in 1996, he and his family lived in a basement for shelter from the constant bombardment. He described how his father, grandfather and uncle defended the city, forming groups to organise defence against the snipers. His home was hit by bombs three times. Still, Hatibovic was one of the lucky ones. He survived.

Bullets and bomb cases from the Bosnian War are sold at Sarajevo's market. (Sameena Jarosz)

Hatibovic now runs Sarajevo Funky Tours, a business he started almost by accident. His father opened a hostel in 2004, and as guests began asking for tours of the city, Hatibovic took on the task of showing them around. Despite the company’s light-hearted name, Hatibovic’s most popular tour, the Sarajevo Total Siege Tour, focuses on the sites connected to the siege, providing both a history and a deeply personal account of the city’s darkest years. He is one of a growing band of young people determined to make a brighter future in a city whose mix of Muslims, Christians and Jews once earned it the nickname the “Jerusalem of Europe”.

Sarajevo's Tunnel of Hope Museum. (Sameena Jarosz)

On our tour of siege sites, we stopped at the Tunnel of Hope Museum, located next to the international airport. From the outside, the museum looks like an ordinary house. Inside, though, visitors can enter the tunnel that was constructed under the runway by Sarajevo’s citizens to provide a critical lifeline to the city. Before the tunnel’s construction, men leaving Sarajevo on foot to fight the Serbian forces in the surrounding hills had to run across the runway in a perilous two-minute dash, carrying loads of supplies weighing up to 60kg – without any cover from gunmen. The tunnel let them cross in relative safety and enabled a reliable flow of arms, medical supplies and food into the city – including the occasional goat for its valuable milk and meat. According to Hatibovic, “In Sarajevo during the war, owning a goat was far better than having a Mercedes.”