Unchanging, in many respects - that is how I could describe the flight from Vienna to Banja Luka. On a small propellor aircraft, across unbroken farmlands, little appeared different from the sky. This was not like Thailand to Cambodia; this was something different. This was, in theory, a war ravaged and partitioned state in Europe.

I was greeted with a warm overcast day, and indifference from the border police. A stamp in Cyrillic sealed my fate, although a dark skinned man was being pored over meticulously by four of those police. I grabbed a taxi, and made a deal in German, with 25 Deutschmarks being the standard fare from the airport into town. Rather expensive - but the airport is far from the city, easily twenty kilometres. And so we went.

The roads were much better than Albania already; cars were in better shape. Little evidence of "war" could be seen along the highway; in fact, little evidence of anything remotely out of the ordinary. We reached the end of the road, and wound into the gridded streets of Banja Luka, and I was dropped off beside a bank. Yugo Bank I believe was the name. I went inside and changed money - a vast, cold, empty building with women sitting around doing nothing. I changed a hundred US dollars into Konvertible Marks - the Bosnia-Herzigovinian currency, although in name only - as it is pegged 1:1 with the Deutschmark. Completing this task, I headed outside and into the town.

Banja Luka is quiet, unassuming, and overall, rather boring; I wandered through the central park, filled with families and park benches and little else, then across the street to a market promenade with plenty of street stalls selling music and knick-knacks in front of busy cafes; plenty of muscular brush-cut men could be seen wandering around, but few of them in actual military clothes. I headed north to an old fort, which inside had a children's playground and a restaurant. On the south end of town were large stretches of tree-lined boulevards, reminiscent of Bucharest; but nothing damaged, no implications of unrest. Banja Luka would prove to be a dull town, with a few monuments, plenty of Cyrillic signs, and a prominent red, white, and blue Serbian flag that could be seen everywhere. I do not remember seeing one flag of the Bosnian federation here.

A mosque was being rebuilt, in the centre; this struck me as odd, but perhaps it would be a gesture of goodwill. There are UN vehicles to be seen as well, which is an odd sight as I could imagine in a town like this - which looks and feels like anywhere else in Europe. It is not nearly as dirty a place as anywhere in Romania, or backwards and destitute as anywhere in Albania; Again my mind goes back to Albania - and how unique that country is.







There is also little infrastructure for travellers in Banja Luka. Perhaps a day here to see what it is like, this quiet and unassuming place so bereft of grandeur; but more powerful testaments to the convoluted and complex politics that keep the Bosnian-Herzegovinian federation glued together are available in these territories. I found a hotel for a rather unfriendly price of 75 Deutschmarks, rather high for eastern Europe; but it was the least expensive of perhaps two or three hotels in the city.

It's six years later in Banja Luka, but it feels like a century, almost as if nothing ever happened. Perhaps it is curious to begin a journey through Bosnia-Herzegovina in this unlikely of destinations, although what I would stumble upon further south would be all the more shocking. Banja Luka is the capital of Republika Srpska, the semi-autonomous republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina that comprises 49% of the total area of the country. It has its own parliament, its own elections, its own representative head of state, and is much more closely tied to Serbia than it is to the other parts of its own country. The common second language here is German. And everyone is white - perhaps that can go without saying.









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