Sarajevo Survival Guide

[puška]

A little light reading from my hometown newspaper:
http://www.famacollection.org/eng/fa.../04/index.html

Given the real life publication history of this little book, it would not be unrealistic to have excerpts of this published in-game as The Survival Guide to Occupied Poland or some such.

RECREATION

Wear and Footwear
Everyone is in sports clothes, for they are warmer, more comfortable, and enable you to run quicker. Most of the members of the Bosnian Armed Forces wear deep white sneakers with the logo of Yugosport. Their uniform, at the beginning, consisted of jeans, [camouflage] ingeniously [improvised] of bright colors. Bulletproof jackets are very rare...Citizens renew wear and footwear by moving into abandoned apartments.

Running
That is the favorite sport, practiced by everyone in Sarajevo. All cross-roads are run through, as are all dangerous neighborhoods. One runs with stolen wood, to the line where others are standing.

Soccer
Often played with soldiers of UNPROFOR. On the other side--Bosnian Armed Forces, police and professional city players who are still here. Games take place in the hall of the burned Skenderija. The game is hard, masculine, with lots of injuries. Foreigners lose here, as they always did.

Tree-cutting
An entirely new city discipline. Tools for this sport are an electric saw and axes, small and big. One gets trained by cutting, trimming, splitting, and piling wood on a balcony or in a room, where they don't suffer so much humidity. Wood is stacked in the bedroom, hall, living room, in the next apartment whose owners have left or disappeared.


GAMES

Cards
The basic mode of comradeship during the long winter nights. Takes place on staircases where it was the first possibility for frightened neighbors to finally meet each other. For those who know how to play and win, it becomes part of the survival-struggle. No one plays for money, but for a lunch packet, canned fish, a liter of oil--that is serious capital!

Pinball Machines
They work despite the electricity. Their owners learned how to solve that minor problem.

Children's Games
Counting of grenades fired on the city, trimming fallen trees, collecting bullets, shells...Exchange of collections.

Speed
Dismantling the parts of abandoned cars and taking them away, into "security." Rules of the game: as quickly as possible. No age limits.

Ladies' Talk
Exchange of war recipes: who can prepare the better meal made of nothing?