My traveling partner Ollie and I arrived in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a bus from Sarajevo, where we’d spent a few days at The War Hostel, learning the history of the Siege of Sarajevo — the longest city siege in the history of modern warfare.
Our friends in Sarajevo had told us NATO forces broke the Serbian siege, saved the city, and the lives of every Bosnian living there. Before that, we’d been in Belgrade, Serbia, where a huge banner flying in front of parliament memorialized fallen Serbian soldiers as “Victims of NATO Aggression.”
Same story, two sides.
This is what you will find anywhere in this region of the world, a geographic region in southeastern Europe, collectively known as “The Balkan Countries.”
I encourage anyone who believes in the concept of absolute, empirical truth to spend some time in the Balkans.
That’s because in the six (or seven) nations that now occupy the space on the map that was former Yugoslavia, there is no one truth. There’s not even agreement on the number of independent countries in the region: Kosovo may or may not be included on maps of the region, depending on who made them.
