A day of contrasts

 11/19: Our evening last night went well, with the kids doing some schoolwork while Bob and I scoped out the dining options in our hotel and in the food court at the airport next door (Three McDonalds within steps of each other!). We decided to eat at the hotel restaurant, as Bob had a CMT call and the kids had their school call that evening. I got to chat with Elisabeth while my family had their calls. We enjoyed playing Hearts at our table, then watched a Rick Steeves video on Sarajevo before bed.

We awoke in the middle of the night to the crackling sound of power/electricity turning on/off. The only thing that made the noise stop was taking the key card out of the holder by the door, which turned off the power to our room (ie none of our devices could charge). When we got up, we all went to the workout room, cleaned up, and left the hotel by 0930 - plenty early for our 1240 flight. We notified the gal at the front desk of the issue with our room, and she told us we should've called the front desk when that happened (she was the same one who checked us in yesterday and was not the friendliest). Bob asked her what good that would've done, and she said they could've sent maintenance (Really?! That's not what we wanted at 0200).

We walked next door to the airport, and started the *what would turn out to be* long process of checking in. First the security to just enter the airport, then trying to tag our bags and only 3 out of 4 tags printing. Next we stood in line to have assistance in printing the fourth tag, to be helped by an unfriendly Pegasus employee. Through passport control, more security, and then to find some food (now 1030). A cup of fruit cost $15, croissant sandwich $12. Once again I reminded the kids how healthy and economical it is when we bring our own food (currently impossible as we've been in hotels for the past 2 nights). Bob and I refused to pay 8 Euro at Starbucks for one black coffee. There were so many people everywhere; it was hard to move around and my backpack and I were constantly being bumped.

We had drank all of our water in our two thermoses before security, and now we could not find any station to refill them. We just cannot handle this anymore - everyone around us is only drinking water out of small disposable plastic bottles ALL THE TIME. Even in other airports (Toulouse) where there were very few water filling stations, you could still hand your bottle to someone at a cafe and they would fill it with water. But here in Istanbul, you have to buy plastic bottles. This is the ONLY airport we've been to where you can't refill your bottle, and even the cafes/restaurants just open bottle after bottle of water. It absolutely blows our minds. So, in order to have any water, we used the last of our Turkish lira to buy a few bottles. Ugh.

We made our way to our gate when it posted at 1110; the whole area was just jammed with people (not just our gate, but all the gates in a row - people everywhere). We still had almost an hour before boarding, so we wanted to find seats for the kids and Bob to work. Bob ultimately found 4 seats in a row, and they got to work. At one point, Simone went to use the restroom, and a woman came and sat in her seat (Simone's backpack was in the floor in front of the seat). The woman did end up moving when Simone came back,  as Simone ended up standing there looking at the woman with a very confused look on her face.

A short while later Bob left to use the restroom, and an airport employee pushing an older woman in a wheelchair motioned for me to move Bob's stuff on his seat so this woman could sit down. Bob came back and ended up standing trying to work on his laptop. A few minutes later, the same thing happened to Quinn and Simone's seats, when two more people arrived in airport wheelchairs. This time, the airport employee seemed quite impatient as he motioned for the kids to get up and move (speaking in Turkish). This whole time I've been standing up, getting pushed and bumped and feeling more and more irritable with my personal space feeling totally violated. We told the guy to hold on and give us a minute to put our things away so we could move - unfortunately we had picked the seats closest to a gate entrance and that must be where the people in wheelchairs get dropped off for their flight (but there were no signs indicating this).

Now we're all standing, trying to maneuver through the people to find a place to go to wait for our now delayed flight (1 hour). Ugh. I stood there just fried - so done with getting bumped and jostled, done with unfriendly people around me (not many people smile here), done with overpriced items in a secondish world environment. This day seems so long and it's only 1:30pm.

Thankfully, we boarded and got to Sarajevo safely - my coping mechanisms would've been slim if we had to stay another night in the airport hotel. Bob had been in communication with our Sarajevo host, Esmir, and he offered to pick us up at the airport! Wow!

We were hesitant to accept, as we didn't want to imposition him, and doubted whether he had a vehicle large enough to accommodate us and all of our luggage, but he said he would be there. He told Bob to exit  baggage claim and he would be the tallest person there.

I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when all of our bags arrived. This airport already felt better than Istanbul - SO many fewer people!

Sure enough, we walked out to find a very tall (6'10?) man with a huge smile across his face. He and Bob greeted each other like old friends (I guess they had exchanged a lot of messages) and he was very excited to welcome us to Sarajevo. We were thrilled to get to his Audi wagon (our stuff WOULD fit!) and we had a lovely conversation as we drove to his Airbnb which we learned was right next to his home where he lived with his wife and 10 year old son. His 14 year old daughter lives in Istanbul with a "wall ball" prep club (Simone looked at me - and I whispered to her "volleyball" :-) Clearly she must rock at volleyball). We learned that he was awesome at basketball in his time, playing in the US and overseas until a knee injury forced him to quit and he had surgery in Qatar. He met his wife on the basketball court (she was working at the sideline table). His brother played basketball in Colorado for awhile! From what we could gather, he must have known some very wealthy men in Qatar who created a job for him in real estate managing properties that they funded. In the short time that we had with Esmir, we could tell that he is a very likable guy! In the back seat, the kids both whispered to me, "Mom - let's do a happy hour with them!" :-)

He grew up in Sarajevo and lived through the war (he was born in 1982 and was 10 years old when it started). He described a pretty normal childhood, and said they always had water and had electricity about half of the time. He said they had a pretty big home, and kids were always over hanging out at their place.

It was so incredibly kind and generous of him to pick us up and bring us to his place that we had rented for a week. We told him no other host had offered to pick us up - and it was about a 20 minute ride too - not exactly super close to the airport. We unloaded and immediately felt comfortable in his lovely home. We also learned from him that we could drink the tap water - YEAH! We started our normal routine: kids connect to wifi and start work while Bob and I walk to the grocery store - fortunately a super short walk down the road.

Amazing view from our living room!

We changed our google translate to 'Bosnian' and bought what we could - fortunately I didn't grab the first yogurt I saw as that turned out to be sour cream. We remembered milk was not refrigerated and found some on the shelf. We found some pasta and spaghetti sauce, plus a jar of interesting sauce that we decided to try. It did have ingredients in English, and it was just roasted red peppers, eggplant, and sunflower oil. Sounded pretty fresh! We are definitely missing our salads - we just do not see packaged/washed greens anywhere!

We came home, put the groceries away, grabbed the kids, and took a short walk into the Old Town, which was super close. I had read it was like a 'tiny Istanbul', which was definitely true. There were lots of little restaurants (Doner! We love that - it's the big spit of meat that they make delicious wraps with) and shops with jewelry and sweets. It was a lovely area to walk around!

The main fountain in Old Town

Call to prayer

We came home and started prepping dinner. Another new kitchen...cutting vegetables on a dinky cutting board, trying to figure out how to turn on the stovetop (finding a YouTube video to help me), not finding a vegetable peeler to peel our carrots and realizing we left the one we purchased in Bodrum behind at our place there. Argh! I thought I had it all under control, and could not find a colander to drain the pasta. I used the best item I could find, and proceeded to dump half the pasta into the sink. Here's where I almost lost it and started to cry...from the start of the day in our crappy airport hotel, to the personal space invasion for hours in the Istanbul airport, to the opposite end of the spectrum of thankfulness with Esmir picking us up at the airport, to figuring out a new grocery and language, to happiness walking around a cute area, to frustration just trying to drain pasta. I just felt wiped of all physical and emotional energy. Fortunately, Bob responded to my expletives when I dumped the pasta and salvaged my mess while I composed myself. The meat sauce with the mystery red pepper sauce turned out to be absolutely delicious (probably a combination of it actually being tasty, our hunger, and our delight at having a dinner at home after 2 nights in hotels). We wrapped up the night with some Wonder Years, a cup of tea, and in bed shortly after 9. Bob and I said we felt jet-lag tired - quite a day of contrasts and strong emotions. This town already feels so nice to us - smaller, friendlier, quieter. Excited to see what tomorrow holds.