We arrived in Sarajevo, about two hours late. Turns out, the nice man who had been to Gothenburg was welcomed at the station by a younger man who spoke with an almost perfect Gothenburgean accent. For those of you who know Swedish, the Gothenburg dialect is one of those homey and good-hearted kinds and I have real trouble imagining anyone speaking it being a bad person. Which, obviously, is naïve and stupid of me. But in this case, it turned out to be true. The young man helped me with my bag and explained to me how I could get a taxi into town. Such a lovely person, really. My first impression of Sarajevo was great, thanks to him.
My second, though, wasn’t as good. I found a taxi, which was driven by a young smiley guy, wanted to seem helpful – but I’m pretty sure he cheated me on the taxi fare. I said a price (the one the helpful man had told me to expect) and the taxi driver said it was way too low. So I agreed to his price. I simply didn’t feel I had the authority and momentary intellectual capacity (I had been sitting in a train for eleven hours after all) to argue with him. But when I sat there in the passenger’s seat on the short taxi ride into the city center, I started calculating with the currencies in my head and realized that the amount he had asked actually was almost comparable with what it would cost to go with taxi in Stockholm. Or maybe not, but still. I paid almost as much for the 15 minutes taxi ride as I later would pay for one night at the hostel. I was a stupid, blue eyed Swedish girl in a strange city, and this cunning young man thought I would be an easy victim. Which turned out to be true.
If we’re talking pure economy, the amount I paid him was not really that much when compared with other things I’ve had to pay and it won’t affect the economy of the rest of my trip at all. But I hate feeling like a fool, being the stupid girl. He put me in such a terrible mood, and I hate him for that.
My hostel in Sarajevo is of the cheaper kind, which means that the rooms are small and the beds stand very close to each other. However, it is clean and right now it seems like I’ll get to have this entire four bed dorm all to myself tonight. Which feels nice. I’m exhausted and am planning to sleep in tomorrow. The internet isn’t working, but the guy in the reception said that they will fix that tomorrow, and the hostel is full of young people that go outside and smoke right outside my open window, but other than that, things are great. I made it to Sarajevo all in one piece. I’m so proud of myself.
Katja Malmborg 