Fashion in Bosnia

Sarajka

Random photos of downtown Sarajevo, taken this Spring, the capital of Bosnia:

^ The Crescent moon around her neck, though most Bosniaks are secular, Islamic symbols are becoming popular again.

Sarajka

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The best of Bosnian fashion designers:

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Wez

Omg! I'm actually moving to Bosnia! Some of those girls are seriously hot!

Sangre

Its probably because they're 'models'

cormie

He's got a gun

Sarajka

It's a magazine/brochure. Bosnia is rabid for tourists to start returning in the same sort of numbers we enjoyed before the war. Press companies spit out thousands of brochures/postcards in every imaginable language. Hotels even have "cloudy day refunds" - if you come, and it's cloudy, you stay for free. It's just madness.

Then people in the West forget, because of the war, that we also experienced the fall of communism. Even if it had happened peacefully, we would be as crazy for western...everything...as much of East Europe pop culture is. So the bottom shelves you see is mainly western magazines.

Wez

So basically, if you go there, is it like Russia? Is it pure dodgy? You can't even trust the police? Cause it sounds pretty good for me and a few of the lads to head over, especially if there's a cloudy day refund.. Go mid winter

Victor

Sarajka wrote:

Who you lookin' at Willis?

Sarajka

^ Hahaha, it's only the summer that refund.

Dodgy, I think you mean...hit or miss regulations wise? Depends on where you are. In rural Bosnia there are no police, so no worries there - hahaha. A little money does fix all problems, but tourists don't get any troubles, not that I'm aware of. You even hear of people giving back tips they feel is too big from tourists. You won't meet any big dangers. When we're not killing each other, there's very little crime :P .

The mafia is very, very, very active and powerful but that's the same in Italy, no one is afraid there. You'd have to really, really try to in any way get mafia-involved on a vacation here. Unless you try to leave the country with a Romanian hooker rolled up in a carpet, or a few packages of cocaine in your a--, you'll be fine.

It's a generally good rule not to piss off a Muslim woman in any way. They all have well-armed male relatives. You can point out that she was bent over a pool table yelling for someone to smack her a-- all you want, they'll still hunt you down. Be careful of having vacation relationships here. Many do it in the hope of getting married and moving to the West, and of that many - a certain percentage will make sure you ask them, whether you want or not.

Landmines is the biggest "OH MY GOD!" thing for tourists. But they're all well-marked and there is absolutely no danger within the city itself. Just don't walk on the grass when you're out in the countryside.

That's about all of the bad things, I suppose.

Karl Hungus

Sarajka wrote:

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You know, that's a pretty damned cool haircut!

Sarajka

^ She's obviously a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. They're the only ones who can pull off a mullet.

Sangre

Whats cosidered Western in Bosnia? Anything that wasn't Communist or behind the Iron Curtin?

Sarajka

Sangre: We were never really behind the iron curtain. We have rights and freedoms unheard of in the USSR - from property rights, to minority rights, and everything in between.

Bosnia is heavily influenced by Islam, and the Orient. Even Bosnian Christians and Jews drink "Bosanska kahva" (Bosnian coffee, Turkish coffee but with different sweets), they listen to the same Turbofolk/Balkanfluff pop music, and so on. Instead of learning French and Spanish, many Bosnian students learn Persian and Arabic:


^ Miss Bosnia 2003, Irna Smaka, speaks Bosnian, Arabic, Persian, and English, in that order.

So the term "Western" probably includes as much as it does for people in the former USSR, but differently. It includes music, for example - this song by Nina Badric is very popular in Bosnia because it is so "Western":

http://www.zaza.lookingat.us/MP3/www.tanasic.netfirms.com%20-%20Nina%20Badric%20-%20Takvi%20kao%20ti.mp3

It would include movies, books, foods - but above all else, it includes a lifestyle. Bosnians are building cottages in the countryside, they are going for drives for the sake of going for drives - silly things that seemed foolish in our culture.

A perfect example, brought about by the Olympics, was skiing. When the ski resorts were built around Sarajevo, no one had much of an idea what was happening. There is a now infamous video of a Bosnian reporter asking a skier what he was doing, and he explained what the, in her words "twin sticks" were for, and what he was going to do. She leaned back, hand on her chest in amazement, and exclaimed "Zasto!?" (WHY!?)

There is a desire, in this transitional times, to ensure that Europe considers us European, and not Asian like Turkey, or Arab like the Middle East. We are Slavic, European Muslims and it's a desperation here to ensure that we are included in the European arena.

Sarajka

Another example of how "Western" is considered to be better...our nationals for Eurovision.


Left to Right: Neda, Pamela, the guy, Ivana.

"Feminnem" won with their song "Zovi" (Call). The lyrics were changed when the English version was written, but the original meaning was as "Western" as the music:

Zovi, kad na srcu rana boli - Call, when the heart is hurting
Ja sam ona sto te voli - I am she who loves you
I za tebe sto postoji - And for you I exist
Vec godinama, samo zovi - For years, just call
U bilo koje doba noci - Any time of the night
Istog trena ja cu doci - I will come to you that instant
Da prije no zatvoris oci - To, before you close your eyes
Usne tvoje poljubim - Kiss your lips

Here is the MP3 - notice how "Western":
http://www.eurobosniamp3.com/Feminnem%20-%20Zovi.mp3

Now, to give you something to judge. Two of the songs that placed lowest were HARDCORE, traditional Bosnian songs.
Carolija, by Jasna Gospic (Who was a member of the band Ambassadori, one of the biggest bands in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s):
http://www.eurobosniamp3.com/Jasna%20Gospic%20-%20Carolija.mp3

And U Ocima by Nedim and Maja, both very, very, very traditional Islamic singers:
http://www.eurobosniamp3.com/Nedim%20&%20Maja%20-%20U%20ocima.mp3

And it's not enough to say "But it's Eurovision?". Serbia came in 2nd last year with a beautiful, traditional Balkan ballad - and even knowing this, Bosnia voted Western again.

Sarajka

Something for a laugh, and the bad side of Bosnian fashion...

As the first openly gay celebrity in what is a predominantly Muslim country, Deen has changed a great deal since you last saw him at Eurovision...


He went from a fairly sexy, extremely feminine gay man...

...to a transvestite with bad taste:


What's scary, is he's the 2nd prettiest blonde in this photo. On the left is Pamela, who desperately needs a nose job. Then on his right is Neda, probably the only truly beautiful girl there. On the far right is Ivana Maric...who, I think, is also a transvestite. Look at how she is touching his leg? I bet she's got a little surprise between her own.

^ Here's a video that proves Neda can be gorgeous:
http://www.keithm.utvinternet.ie/Bosnia05V.wmv

stagolee

yikes!!! :eek:
that guy is the least convincing drag act since tarzan went rumaging through janes handbag and ate her lipstick

Sangre

How does the one on the left need a nose job? Talk about high standards.

Sarajka

Maybe it's just not a clear enough photo:


Pamela


Pamela and Neda

Sarajka

Some photographs of the Melody Mostar festival, held last week; it's similar to Pop Idol, and attracts new talent from all across Bosnia.

The first photos are of Feminnem (Pamela, Ivana, and Neda), who performed at the festival:




Other performers. Most of these guys have no stylists or anything. They choose what they wish to wear, and get it approved by the organizers.






The group ET won:

Pet

You know, that's a pretty damned cool haircut!

It is, isn't it! Shame she looks like a BOP-type..

It's a generally good rule not to piss off a Muslim woman in any way. They all have well-armed male relatives. You can point out that she was bent over a pool table yelling for someone to smack her a-- all you want, they'll still hunt you down.

Do the muslim women wear headscarves there or is it just a guessing-game?

Bosnia is heavily influenced by Islam

Does that not make it quite a conservative society then? How does all this fashion and glamour exist in an islamic society?

Oh and that girl should NOT get a nose job, she has a perfectly straight roman nose, it would be a travesty to reduce it!

PlayaFlow

*sarcasm* oh thank you for sharing and trying to show that bosnia is ultra cool and ultra modern !!!....if its so great then why is it not entering the E.U!...i do believe Bulgaria and Romania are next in line!

MY best friend is from bosnia(sarajevo) , and he said its a crap hole and that many mines from the war are still around and the buildings are still covered in bullet holes!!......Hence no Tourists.

Victor

PlayaFlow wrote:

*sarcasm* oh thank you for sharing and trying to show that bosnia is ultra cool and ultra modern !!!....if its so great then why is it not entering the E.U!...i do believe Bulgaria and Romania are next in line!

Because Bulgaria and Romania haven't been at war with each other in the last 10 years?

Sarajka

^ Very, very, very few Muslim women wear headscarves. In fact, Christian widows probably compose a significant percentage of women who wear headscarves in Bosnia. In an urban setting, it is very rare to see headscarves. I see, at best, 12 women in headscarves each day; and I live in a city with at least 150,000 Muslim women. There are many exceptions. Religious holidays, funerals, and cold/foggy days. Many women, myself included, will put on a headscarf to go to mosque for prayers. The weather influences it also. Anytime you would wear a hat, here women often will chose a headscarf. It's considered more beautiful, fashionable.

For example: Here are a series of photos. The first shows a winter headscarf, for fashion, we would wear it instead of a hat:


This shows the scarf worn to a funeral:


And here is an example of how a woman who always wears a scarf would look:



Our society is both conservative and modern. It is modern in the sense that, on the surface, you would have a difficult time telling it apart from an Italian city. It is conservative in a backwards sense. Women are expected to always look nice. You simply can't go out on streets with your hair a mess, without a nice outfit. There is also high levels of domestic abuse and wide gap between what men can do, in terms of occupation, and what women can do.

Alcohol, premarital sex, and these sorts of things are as common here as elsewhere in Europe - but a lot of girls do get in trouble. There are no honor killings, as you hear of in India, parts of the Arab world, and so on...but it's no big surprise for a Father to catch his daughter doing something, and to simply say to the boy she is with: "Take her away, and tell her never to come back."

Sarajka

RE: Playa

Yes, most buildings in Sarajevo still have bulletholes. They are a costly thing to fix, and the building has no structural damage so it is not a priority. First we are rebuilding everything that fell down, the badly damaged buildings. Fixing little aesthetic things will come in later years.

As for being a s--thole, it is his opinion. My cousin, Dejana, moved to Norway and never looked back. She hated it here. My cousin Danijela, her sister, moved away - she lasted less than a year, had an emotional breakdown and ended up in hospital she was so homesick. It depends on the person.

But we do have a beautiful country. A beautiful, poor, struggling country. You can feel about it how you wish, in the end.

PlayaFlow

well good luck , im happy that you feel so patriotic for your country, and i admire your effort in trying to show this to everybody

Sarajka

You can see we have come a long way in just 10 years.

Sarajevo, 1994:



Sarajevo, 2004:

Sarajka

One more up-close demonstration...

The Holiday Inn (left), and the UNITIC Towers (right); 1994:



Same buildings, 2004:

Pet

What's the live music scene like there? I've been thinking about doing a tour of Eastern Europe, and Bosnia was going to be a stopoff. What's the public transport and accommodation like?

Sarajka

^ Transportation is good, and cheap. You must remember we were one of the first cities in Europe with an electric tram line. Public transportation has always been a weird symbol of Sarajevo. There are trams, trolley buses, buses, mini buses, taxis, blah blah blah. No "underground", though. A ticket costs about 0.2 pounds if I converted it correctly.

Music, in my opinion, is very, very, very good here. Every cafe, bar, club has live entertainment at some point, generally in the afternoon or early evening. There are constant festivals, etc. Everything is on overload for two reasons: 1. to attract more tourists. 2. Because of the war, for years we did nothing but just hide in basements and go out only at night to look for food, etc. So there is a joy for life here you can only find in places where life was denied for so long. The only catch is, you might not like the music.

http://www.sarajevo-x.com/muzika/mp3
Sarajevo-X has a wide selection of MP3s from local, unknown Sarajevo bands. You can get a good idea of the type of music that is played here.

Here are a few examples of my choice:

Spava Sarajevo, a disco song:
http://www.sarajevo-x.com/_skok.php?akcija=mp3&id=59

To Nije To, an alternative song:
http://www.sarajevo-x.com/_skok.php?akcija=mp3&id=48

Sarajevo, New York, Rome - a rock song:
http://www.sarajevo-x.com/_skok.php?akcija=mp3&id=41

Sangre

PlayaFlow wrote:

*sarcasm* oh thank you for sharing and trying to show that bosnia is ultra cool and ultra modern !!!....if its so great then why is it not entering the E.U!...i do believe Bulgaria and Romania are next in line!

MY best friend is from bosnia(sarajevo) , and he said its a crap hole and that many mines from the war are still around and the buildings are still covered in bullet holes!!......Hence no Tourists.

Ever hear of the GPO?

Also that woman does not need a nose job, are straight noses somehow unattractive in Bosnia?

Sarajka

^ Hahaha, no. It's just preference, I suppose. I think she has a big nose.

As for Romania and Bulgaria, it is a very sore point throughout the former Yugoslavia to see countries - not like Romania and Bulgaria - but like Poland and the Czech Republic in the European Union. 15 years ago, any one of these nations would have had given their souls to be half as well off as was Yugoslavia. Our stupid war really, really set us backwards. We would've been in the EU and NATO years ago.

As one of the EU officials from Croatia said when Slovenia joined the EU, she said:
"While we feel in our hearts the most pure excitement and pride for Slovenia's achievement, we cannot help but feel frustrated by the fact that we are still held back by a savagery committed against us, one for which we are still paying."

Sangre

Are you with the Bosnian tourist board?

Sarajka

^ That's twice in 10 minutes I've been accused.

No, not at all. I am not with this board. Hahaha.

I was under the impression this forum is global? But I see the Regional section is just the UK? Is this board just for the UK, should I leave?

Sangre

It is an Irish based board with its user base probably 90% Irish or Irish living abroad but of course everyone is welcome.

And just a side note, Ireland isn't in the UK anymore...we have a bullet ridden GPO to prove it

Sarajka

Oh s--t, sorry.

I'm sensitive about such things here also - hahaha.

I've been to Ireland. Dublin, me. I was in Scotland too.

joejoem

It looks great, the women are beautiful, I dated a girl from bosnia once or twice, she was very friendly too. I just went looking at flights though and its quite expensive, around €450 return from Dublin. What price should I expect flights to be?

PlayaFlow

now that she realizes its a majority irish board she F***s off to promote here country somewhere else more global.

She only came here to advertise , because she is a tours rep. and is gettin payed!

she only has like 10 posts and they were all about gettin tourists to bosnia , now that she finds out its an irish site, not global,she fecks off ......PS . Bosnia is a ****hole!!!

Sarajka

^ Not even worth a response.

briano

Don't you have anything better to do PlayaFlow? Like learning how roundabouts work or something?

Sarajka

Here are some photos from the highschool graduation of Zivinice. This tiny village is almost completely Muslim, and *very* strict by Bosnian standards. It will give you a view into the type of styles that the Muslim youth in Bosnia find attractive. Click the pic for a larger version:

Sarajka

^ The only major differences that I can tell between Muslim girls in Bosnia, and regular Eastern European girls, tends to be the fabrics and the makeup. Muslim girls like expensive fabrics, no matter how tacky, camp, etc. We also like a lot of eyeliner, I suppose it is a tradition left over from our Ottoman Empire days, when women wore more black under their eyes than modern American football players.

Zivinice is one of the poorest villages, in one of the poorest regions, of one of the poorest countries in Europe. So cut them a little slack, most of these gowns were certainly home made.

Bri

Sarajka wrote:

Perhaps I'm showing my ignorance but I'm amazed at how much skin is showing?

Sarajka

^ Well, in Eastern Europe most Muslims dress as do any other European women. The Ukrainian Muslims in the Crimea are probably the most traditional, even more so than Turkey. But even in Turkey, which is far more traditional than the Balkans, I would estimate slightly over 2/3 of women dress "normally" by Western European standards.

In a broader sense, the Western view of Islam, in my opinion, is actually a view of Arab culture. Arabs only compose 15% of the world's Muslims. Before the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Chechnya, there were almost as many white Muslims as Arabs. The vast majority of Muslims are Asian, followed by Africans. So the view of Islam as an Arabian way of life is somewhat skewed.

That said, in every Islamic country there are always exceptions - even in Saudi Arabia. Even in Mecca, there are nightclubs with belly dancers. These exceptions vary from country to country - they might include bridal showers in Bangledesh, or birthday parties in Indonesia, whatever. I imagine highschool graduation is an exception even parts of the Arab world.

Wez

She's just so hot! I love her hair too.. Was dreaming about her in school today. lol

Teslican

OMG Sarajka!

IN almost every singe post, you write about Bosnia's Muslims... HELOOW WE CHRISTIANS ARE ALSO ALIVE! I just want to make shure everyone knows: BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA IS A MULTI-CULTURAL COUNTRY!