Snipers Valley

I try to run at least twice a week. The run is not very long, about half an hour, but it leads me through some hilly terrain. It is enough to keep me in shape, but too short to call it training for a marathon.

The run leads me along the zoo, were I turn left and run through a street were all the houses that are there are still ruins. They were part of a hospital before the war- now they are just bombed-out rebble. Usually I am all by myself in that particular street. There is nothing to do, the road does not go somewhere interesting, and there is nothing to see. However, yesterday I was running there with Ian the Monitor, and there were a lot of cars. It was dark, but there were lights between the rebble. I have learned never to go into bombed houses or to walk over unmowed grass since there is a chance that it is still mined, so I was surprised to see a crowd antzing through the debris. We stopped at a van, where people were unloading boxes and asked what was going on. The persons we asked were very dismissive, almost hostile. We insisted, and eventualy, after we spoke Bosnian, German and English to them, they told us, in English with a leftenant Grueber kind of accent, that they were shooting a movie. Obviously it was a warmovie- why else would you weant to fim in this part of town? It was a German warmovie and they told us that the working title of the movie is "Snipers Valley". We laughed a bit, in surprise. Snipers Alley was a street in Sarajevo during the war, and it was for most internationals the epithomy of the ludacrisy of the war here. We asked whether they were sure that they did not meant "Snipers Alley", but they were adament that the name they gave us was right. We walked away, joking about the ignorance of the film makers. The next van we passed by had a sign KFOR on it. A new surprise for us, since KFOR is the UN military force in Kosovo- therefore not the kind of vehicles you would expect here. So again we asked, to a much friendlier guy this time. A bit embarrassed he told us that they were filming a movie about the 1999 war in Kosovo, but that Kosovo was quite well rebuilt after that war, and that Sarajevo in movies still looks like a better war zone......

You can be appalled by this. One can say that the international community and the Bosnian society have partly failed in rebuilding the country, especially compared to Kosovo. However, I would like to see it from a different perspective: every country has its attractions, with which it makes money. Holland has it tulips, BiH has it ruins. And if that makes the filmindustry work, and if it generates money, why rebuild this small part of town? However, personnaly I would have asked the German moviemakers to change the name of the film......