This is real -- Blogging from Bosnia & Herzegovina

The plane is gliding into the valley and i see high rise buildings down there below us. I set foot on the grounds of Sarajevo's international airport. Right after i pass passport control i investigate the new stamp that is now printed onto my travel document. Out there at the arrival gate no one is waiting for me and was never supposed to. I am here, but where am i? I realize i do not even know the name of the local currency and need to make some investigations in order to know how much money to get out of the cash machine. Again i departed on a trip without much of a preparation.

I know where i want to get now, namely to my first couchsurfing host ever, but how do i get there? The taxi drivers ask me prices i was by far not told to pay. I decide to go by foot. But there is no map, i have no idea of where i am nor where i am exactly headed to go. Showing my address, i am told to sit and wait for a bus that arrives twice the hour, but i want to get moving now. A man, with no English, points his hand in the direction i should keep heading to. I get back into the building and buy a phone card to call my local friend. She equips me with the name of the district - Alipasino Polje - i should ask people for. So i do. The man at the exit shoves his hand in a direction north (?) of us. I want to thank him, i say 'thank you' and ask him how to say it in his own language. He does not understand me. But we smile broadly at each other.

I start walking and leave the taxi drivers behind. I still do not have much of an idea of where i will be heading to. Just at best 'there' where the hand pointed. I notice there are not many sidewalks next to the road. I almost get run over by a huge car immediately. The grass is very green and of very intense, full smell. Spring must have already been around for a while. Will there be mosquitos around here at night? It is pretty warm and damp already for an early May - to my understanding at least.

Any time i cross the path of a person, i ask for the district i am heading to. I sort of speak in English, merely calling the various names and descriptions of my desired destination, and they answer me in Bosnian, but to my surprise i understand them well. This is another of these moments, in which i silently thank my parents for their determination to have their daughter learn Russian. I notice that people smile back at me here and this is all that counts. I walk on and wonder where i will get to in the end. I laugh at myself. I did have the address last night already and could just have googled it for a virtual map. I am so unprepared, so 'jule', but i am not in a hurry and this is my adventure.

I get to the svetophor (crossing with street lights), where i am supposed to turn left, following the track of the trolleybus. A big apartment building sits at the corner. I see hundreds and hundreds of bullet holes that give witness to the artillery of the war that ravaged this country 15 years ago. I am about to get out my camera and take a picture of it, but come to a halt the next second. I suddenly feel awkward about my own impulse. Am i a 'sensational war tourist' if i take photographs of traces of past destruction? Right here and now, years after war-time insecurity and chaos is gone and over? I leave the camera in my bag and keep on walking. Two women, wrapped in dark fabrics except of their eyes pass my way. What do I look like to them? I see and pass several mosques and the minarets reach high into the sky. People keep pointing me the way. Nobody seems to speak English. My next days and week in Bosnia are going to be but one adventure.

And there she is, my host for the night. I have found her in the street where she had been waiting me all along and we exchange broad smiles. I have been awaited with open arms. This is real. This morning i boarded the S-Bahn in Berlin towards the airport and a few hours later, with a short lunch stop-over in Budapest, i am nibbling away on cookies and having coffee in a cozy apartment in Sarajevo, chatting away on Bosnian history, humanity; taking a ton of notes on things i want to check out in more detail later, sitting right here with a kindred soul and spirit, who could have been my friend for years already, and most important of all we never stop to smile. If you want to say thanks in Bosnian, say 'hvala'. Hvala.