Tag Archives: World War

Hiroshima in a Day

From Kyoto, Hiroshima is a must-see day excursion on the shinkansen train. It takes about 1.5 hours on the train and nothing can quite prepare you for how beautiful this city is and how extraordinary the full day excursion including Miyajima Island and the Hatsukaichi Temple are. Hiroshima was the first city, Nagasaki the other, that were obliterated by a nuclear bomb in August 1945 which effectively ended the second World War. 200,000 people were killed.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Hiroshima is a vibrant, modern city with wide boulevards and beautiful parks. We took the shuttle bus to the Peace Memorial Park and Museum. After a short walk from the stop, we saw the mangled structure of the Atomic Bomb Dome. Preserved in a sea of rubble and surrounded by the beautiful Peace Memorial Park, it is a melancholic and beautiful place to walk around. The bridge close to the dome carries two pieces of the original bridge. It is then a short walk to the Peace Memorial Museum where the tour of the museum takes 30-40 minutes. It is one of those places that you enter with apprehension, you see the after effects of a nuclear explosion, and you come out understanding why it is called the Peace Memorial Museum.

We then took the train back to the main station and connected to Miyajima – a completely different experience from the heavy heart of Hiroshima. Now we were back to the temples and a beautiful stroll through a town filled with deer freely moving throughout the streets and walkways. There were eateries and food stores that tumbled into the lanes.

Eventually we caught sight of the beautiful torii gate there that sits in the water with a 14th century temple that sits in the background. Sadly for us, the breathtaking torii gate was under wraps as they were sprucing it up for the Olympic games this year. But even so, walking out at low tide and looking at this incredible structure sitting in the sea, was enough. Looking back at the shrine also sitting in the sea, was breathtaking. This place was one of the great highlights of my tour to Japan and it is something that everybody should do.

Frankly, after a couple of hours of weighing the value of nuclear power, it was refreshing to get back to a little bit of Shintoism. We then took the train back to Kyoto in time for sushi and miso in the Gion area.

Sarajevo’s History and Haunting Beauty

I am not sure why Sarajevo sounds so haunting but it simply has a beautiful lilt to the name. Nestled in a valley, it is one of the most extraordinary places you can imagine. The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the last dominoes to fall in the once powerful Ottoman Empire. Its strong Muslim culture is very much alive and vibrant today. The mix of history in this city is extraordinary, almost overwhelming. Imagine this – the first world war started here on the tiny crossroads in the center of town by the Miljacka River at the end of the Latin Bridge. That was in 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated. That was one bad turn! You could say that the first world war begot the second world war and the second world war begot the expansion of the Soviet Union but more importantly, the emergence of Yugoslavia as a country. As the disintegration of the Soviet Union took place, so did the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Then all hell broke loose during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990’s.

Sarajevo, the Olympic city of 1984, became a city under siege from 1992 until 1996. It was the longest siege of any capital city in the history of modern warfare. The siege lasted 1,425 days and about 14,000 people were killed, including over 5,000 civilians. It took the tragedy of the Markale marketplace massacre in 1994 for NATO to become involved and ultimately for the siege of Sarajevo to be ended. This was in 1996 – only 21 years ago. Now Sarajevo is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe and is ranked as one of the most popular destinations for tourists in 2017.

We walked by the town hall and library that was destroyed in 1992 by Serbian forces. Most of the important manuscripts and books were burned beyond recognition. Today it has become a monument to regeneration and reconstruction. To walk through the streets of Sarajevo, you are always reminded of the siege. We visited a tunnel by the airport where supplies were secretly shipped into town outside of the Serbian perimeter. It was the only way that the city could maintain its food and ammunition supply. The entire city was literally cut off except for this extraordinary tunnel link that the Serbian forces never found.

We stayed at Hotel Europe, delightfully central and reasonably priced, did an incredible walking tour with a local guide, and visited the old bazaar, Bascarsija. Sarajevo is unique in that in the same neighborhood, you can visit a Catholic cathedral, a mosque, an Orthodox church, and a synagogue. You can hear the call to prayer while walking through the city and listening to the church bells. Essentially, it is the story of the great Ottoman Empire. When you walk through the streets of Sarajevo, you can almost feel the pulse of tragedy, rebirth and the imprint of the centuries that have been left behind.