Sarajevo...sort of

So this morning (which as I post this, almost a week has passed...oops) I had to go to the physio with a few other girls and Nikola to get my shoulder looked at. Good news! They weren’t able to translate it into english exactly, but the diagnosis was “I don’t know for english, but not dangerous”. Ummmm, ok? Bojana explained to me a little bit better that it is from repetition and it is just a muscle tightness. So what is the up side of this? I think I will be getting daily massages. (I can deal with that!)

For treatment, I undressed and they wrapped this really hot towel around me for a little while, which felt great considering it was snowing outside. Then, the physio came in and did some stem for a little while, then proceeded to give me the weirdest massage I have ever received. He poured on literally half of the bottle of baby oil to where it was dripping off of me (no exaggeration), then he gave me little slaps all on my back. Every once in a while he would throw in some traditional massage, but mostly it was just like he had brooms for hands and was slapping/sweeping dirt off of my back. Strange. After that, we went to Sarajevo to meet up with the team.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to see the city. We walked through old town which is the Muslim part of the city, called Bascarsija. There were mosques throughout and we heard the call to prayer while we were walking though the little windy streets. Everywhere they were selling little trinkets made of gold, silver, nickel and copper. There were pepper grinders, tea kettles, and other various things that were beautiful. Each was handmade and looked like something you could never find in America. 

Then I went to a hookah cafe, which is typical for the Balkans. I sat in there and enjoyed a cappuccino and then met up with the rest of the girls and headed to lunch. We went to a little restaurant and Luka told us we had no choice, and he was ordering us all cevapi, which on the english translation of the menu it said “minced meat fingers”. Sounds delicious, right? I’ve actually had these before and I know they’re delicious so I didn’t really pay much attention to the awful translation. They’re like little sausage links served in a pita. It was the first meal we ate outside of our “dorms” and it was awesome! 

Sarajevo as a whole seemed really fun to explore. It had a great Balkans feel with a little more Muslim influence, which was new to me and exciting to see. Hopefully we will be going back on Saturday so I can explore a little more. If not, at least I was able to see a little piece of the city.