On the afternoon of May 16, 2018 we came to this long-awaited city - Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina **** and the country. The B&B landlord was very hospitable and specially arranged for her father to drive to the coach station to pick us up. The B&B is located on a hill near the Fountain Square in the Old Town, a 10-minute walk to the square, very convenient for traveling. The B&B house is spacious, clean and cozy, and the landlord even left us a bottle of wine and some snacks on the table in the living room with a note wishing us a good time in Sarajevo, which made us feel warm and at home.
Sarajevo's Old Town, built in 1450 during the Ottoman Empire, is the most prosperous part of the city, with tens of thousands of stores, more than a hundred mosques, an indoor bazaar, public baths, libraries, and madrasahs in its heyday in the 16th century. European and Ottoman merchants and goods were dispersed here, and it was the largest center of commerce in the Balkans and the second largest Ottoman city in the Balkans after Istanbul.
Fountain Square is located in the center of the Old Town, in the middle of it stands a wooden tower of a fountain called Sebili, the landmark of Sarajevo, the tower is octagonal, the upper part is a green circular dome, spring water for Islamic believers to purify themselves and drink. Originally made of marble, the tower was hit by shells during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was rebuilt in 2006 when it was converted to wood.
One of our wishes before coming to Sarajevo was to find Walter's footsteps in the movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo". As we walked through the old town, scenes from the movie began to unfold before our eyes. I remember that in this square, the German SS called the people with a loud speaker to claim the bodies of those who had been shot, in an attempt to capture the partisans who dared to come forward. What the Germans didn't expect was that all the people in the square followed Walter in unison without any fear, and the Germans had no choice but to withdraw from the square in frustration.
Built in 1531, the Gezi Husere Beg Mosque is the largest mosque in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkans, and was designed and built by Heenan, the most famous architect of the Ottoman Empire in its heyday, who presided over the construction of a series of famous buildings, such as the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. The mosque was partially damaged during the Siege of Sarajevo and has now been restored.
In the movie "Walter's Defense of Sarajevo", the Germans lay heavy forces near this mosque in an attempt to trap Walter. The old watchmaker Shedd got the information and rushed to the place, killed the fake liaison officer to give Walter a warning, but unfortunately died. Walter and his comrades arrived at the news and fierce gun battle with the Germans here, the Germans in the nearby clock tower set up a machine gunner attempted to shoot Walter, but witty Walter quietly touched into the clock tower, eliminated the ambush of the enemy there, towering over the enemy, covering the retreat of his comrades. When the Germans finally rushed into the bell tower ready to capture Walter, but Walter from the high bell tower threw a rope, calmly slid down, quietly disappeared in the vision of the German army, Walter that athletic stance still remains in my memory.
We came to the mosque and the bell tower where Walter fought in those years, to relive the scenes in the movie, and to feel the tragic journey of the people of Sarajevo who fought for freedom, liberation, and independence with blood and lives in those warring times. Although the movie has fictional components, but the history of Walter is really a person, his real name is Walter Peric, during the Second World War as the leader of the resistance movement in Sarajevo. 1945 April 5, Walter in the liberation of Sarajevo's final battle, in order to defend the power plant unfortunately died at the age of 25 years old. Later, the Yugoslav government recognized him as a national hero and built a statue of him in Sarajevo, and the movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo" is based on his legendary experience.
Less than a year after we left Sarajevo, on April 6, 2019, the Museum of the film "Walter Defends Sarajevo" opened in Sarajevo, featuring wax figures of the main actors, props used in the film, and a restored scene of the watch store from the film.
The clock tower was built in 1592. When I passed by the clock tower, I realized that the time shown on the clock was different from the time on my watch and I thought it was broken. I later realized that it is the only public **** clock in the world that uses the Islamic calendar time, which starts the day with sunset and is set at 12:00 p.m. The timekeepers have to adjust the clock every day due to the different lengths of the day.
As you leave the mosque, you hear the sound of clanking and banging, coming from nearby Coppersmith Street. In the movie Walter and others from the mosque after the withdrawal, the Germans in hot pursuit, when they chased here, but found that Walter they disappeared, when the street full of artisans coincidentally began to knock their hands of the work, clanking sound of the knocking covered the withdrawal of Walter, the Germans to see this infuriated, but there is nothing they can do.
The street, built in 1489, has changed little from the scene in the movie decades ago, and we instantly recognized the street's symbol, a large coffee pot on the roof of a store. The stores on both sides of the street are filled with an array of exquisite copperware, including copper tableware, vases, lamps, pots and jugs, jewelry, and decorative paintings depicting the old town, with the most popular being Turkish-style coffee sets. The crafts here have a centuries-old tradition of being handmade, with the patterns on the brassware being made by artisans using small hammers to strike them out bit by bit. Interestingly here we saw some airplanes and tanks made from bullet casings that were left over from the three-year siege.
The photo below was taken from the Yellow Fortress in the highlands to the east of the city, where we had a clear panoramic view of the city of Saralevoo. At the end of the movie, Gestapo Colonel von Dietrich is recalled to his country because of the failure of his operation, and as he leaves he laughs to himself and says that he was looking for Walter as soon as he arrived but didn't find him, and that he's about to leave finally knowing him. The officer next to him asked him who Walter was, and von Dietrich said grimly to Sarajevo in the valley from where I was taking the picture, "Do you see this city? He, that's Walter."
The Serbian actor Bata Zivojnovic, who played Walter in the movie "Walter Defends Sarajevo," is a favorite of Chinese audiences and has visited China many times. He played the lead role of Tiger in another Yugoslav film, "The Bridge," and a close friend of his, ethnic Croatian actor Boris Dvornik, played the role of explosives expert Zavadoni in the film "The Bridge. In 1991, during a military conflict between independence-seeking Croats and Serbs trying to keep Yugoslavia together, the two friends, who had known each other for decades, publicly declared themselves estranged because of their political differences, making the breakup of Yugoslavia a landmark event. 15 years later, in 2006, the two men met and reunited via video on the television screen," Bata said. Bata said, "There was no hatred between us in the past few years", and Boris humorously replied, "Only misunderstandings", as the saying goes, "A smile between the two is a smile that clears up the enmity", which also represents that the two peoples are finally moving towards reconciliation. The two nations are finally moving towards reconciliation.
Bata is not only an actor, he is also the vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia and a member of parliament, active in the political arena for many years, in August 2002, he ran for the president of Serbia, but only 3% of the vote, he said self-deprecatingly, people like the actor him, not the president of him. He also wryly remarked that he would have been elected if voted for by the Chinese audience.On May 22, 2016, Bata died in Belgrade at the age of 83 after a long illness.