Bašcaršija, back to fifteen century.

Bismillah,

This is basically a name of a place in Sarajevo. Let’s say this word together shall we? Bašcaršija. Huh? Bashasha? Nope. Try again. Basharsha? Maybe this way is better. Bash-char-shi-ya. Got it? Hehe. Hey, it took me three weeks to say it correctly, after lots of practice, of course. ;) It is actually a Turkish word. Okay, I’m done with that.

So, what’s with the place? Bašcaršija is part of old town and one of the main street in Sarajevo. It is built in 15 century from the Ottoman Empire from Turkey. Basically, our first small tour happened there. My officemate, Edin and Haris, they voluntarily offered themselves to be our tour guide.  Since my house is located near Bašcaršija, we just walked there.

Hvala puno (thank you so much), guys!

 The first place that we visited is the cathedrala (cathedral) of catholic. It is the oldest cathedral in Sarajevo. Followed by the church of the orthodox.

Then, we walked in the town. At the beginning, the buildings around us are influenced by the Austrian-Hungarian architecture.

 As we walked further, we were actually approaching shop building from the Ottoman period. Both are amazingly still standing until now!

On that day, we successfully covered three museums. The Pre-historic Museum, the Ottoman Empire Museum and the Austrian-Hungarian Museum. Each of them only cost us like 2KM per entry. Well, those museums are not that big actually. J

Then, we ‘sailed’ through the old town. There are lots of small shops that sell scarfs, clothes, shoes.

 But most importantly, they sell various crafts from silver and bronzes such as their traditional coffee pot and cups together with the tray. It is like a must for a Bosnian family to have at least one of this coffee pot in their house. I’m so going to get one of those for my house back in Malaysia!

There is also a mosque there, Gazi Huzrev’s Bey Mosque. It is named after a Turkish soldier who opened the territory there.



Wudu' spot



 Just outside the mosque, there is a water spring. The local said that if we drink this water, we will come here again. Wohoa! Only Allah knows best. But, I drank a lot! Hehe.



This water  is like an ice cold


Pigeon Square is my favourite spot there. I like those birds! There are like thousands of them.



Haiyakk!

So, now let's have a little more practice on pronouncing Bašcaršija yeah. This might help if you plan to come here and say the word correctly to the taxi driver!