Rules of the blog

What a great invention, weblogs. I know that I am late with creating one, and I know that this remark is neither new, nor original, and even foolish but: Weblogs are the summum of democratisation. Every idiot with an opinion can have a audience of 6 billion people: quo patet urbis. Unbelievable. I never really realised what the impact of the whole phenomenon of blogging can be until I got myself (sort of) acquainted with. I think it is the same as with watching soap operas as a guy: once you start doing it you realise how many other guys do it, too, and how fun it is. The some goes for writing a blog. It is not unique at all....

In the light of the above, my blog better be interesting than- having an audience creates expectations and responsabilities. Henceforth this blog will for the time being be about Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) through the eyes of a foreigner. About things that I find interesting and worth mentioning; it is therefore not an objective journalistic blog.

I am interested in polictics. The political reality in BiH is rather different from the one in Holland, and I am being mild here (if you want to see how it is different, have a look at the following website, where the constitutions (!) of the country are published: http://www.ohr.int/dpa/default.asp?content_id=372).
On the first of October of this year general elections will take place again, and according to people who know more about it than I do, the political situation is quite tense. The prime minister of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of BiH, wants to part from BiH, and uses old 90's retoric to get his point across, which leads to responses in kind from Muslim and Croat politicians. It reminds my neighbour and friend Nenad of the time just before the outbreak of the war in 1992.
The day before yesterday the grave and 'shrein' for the first President of BiH after the war, Alija Izetbegovic was bombed. The grave is gone, a 70 centimeter crater is almost all that is left. In the streets it is said that this is a done by Bosnian Serbs, who are outraged by a video that was shown last monday om Serbian TV, in which the execution of an unarmed man by Bosnian troops during the war was shown. Whether this is true, or whether it has anything to do with the elections I do not know. In the time leading up to the elcetions I will regularly inform you about it. My upstairs neighbour Nick is the BBC correspondent for the Balkans, and according to his assesment are the comming elections in BiH, and the decision of the UN Security Counsil regarding Kosovo the two big 'equalisers' for the region. If those go well and if the results are accepted without too many troubles, this region can look forward to a more prosporous future than it could in a long time

As said, fact is, that the electionperiod is a hot period. Hotter than summer in this country. When I left for Sarajevo two years ago (7 August 2004), my dad warned me that this is one of the hottest countries in Europe. Boy, was he wrong. Nenad told me two weeks after my arrival that winter lasts 8 months a year in Sarajevo. Trusting my dad more than I did him, I laughed away his words. While typing this blog I remember his words, and while watching out of my window I see rain. And rain. And even more rain. And I think of June 8 2005, when it was snowing in the mountains around town, and I can't stop wondering where my dad got his intel from.....