Virtual Sarajevo Tour, The Hotel

The night ended in the morrnig some how some where and I awoke next day with marcara spiders on my cheeks . Did I tell you about the hotel? Coudnt heve been more apt. It was the Park hotel. Which one would understant is synonym for some grandeur, and we did find ourselfs owerlooking a park, precisely a football park 3o minutes of graveyards and houses away from the center .

Sarajevo is full of sparkely new graveyards. Thousands of white obelixes and turbans sticking out of green grass of the parks and gardens of the pre war metropola.

Our hotel also belonged to that socialist era as the tiles in the bathrooms where chocolate brown as was the minimal furniture, on a blue floor of a 60 watt dim rooms. I found clementine peels in the bed stands, and my room mate found out the toilet flushed once an hour, and the tap falls off if used.

The reason for this diversion from the hotel Europa in cities center, contrasting new and comfortable at whose glass walls we stared at like Oliver Twist did at family homes, was the fact Bosnia and Portugal where playing football that Saturday filling hotels which had to be pre payed. Yet, as people on the Balkans pay everything in installations because they do not trust that they will get exactly what is promised, my coligues payed half the trip in advance, and we where housed far from our expectations.

Our hotel was owned by a member of a minority mafia who wear extravagant 18 century cowboy mustaches. I assumed that the curl at, and length of mustache over lip ,signified their position in the hierearchy but I truly could not tell which was the boss. They smoked. And stared at me. And I stared back. And the group of them journeyed from one lounge corner to the next following time which is not out own but where ever present .

The hotel was hosting the youth football representation, who played a parallel game to the national team with portughese youth, and UFC football trainers and all those who came to Bosnia on a course to receive the qualification. Bosnia is known for sales of all kinds of false certificates,licenses, and university diplomas. So as we descended each morning and night the mustache mafia and footballers uniformed in blue tracksuits checked all the girls out.

I had a bit of a monopoly on whose hair was clean in the morning parade having brought the seemingly only hairdryer.