In the fall of 2024, I began planning a trip that involved a guided tour of the country of Georgia. I then began searching for airline frequent flyer mile deals. I ultimately found an interesting flight combination where I could start my trip with three days in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then fly to Tbilisi, Georgia.
One of the things I have discovered over the years in my hunt for frequent flyer bargains is that you have to accept that flight days and times are almost always less than ideal. While a number of airlines can take you from Dallas to Sarajevo with just one connection, the miles required were outrageously high. This flight combination had two connections (boo), but no long layovers (yea). The first of my three flights began at 3:50pm on a Monday afternoon; a ten-hour Lufthansa flight from DFW to Frankfurt. My first connecting flight was to Vienna. Because Frankfurt and Vienna are both in the Schengen area, I had to go through passport control to “enter Germany”. The good news is that passport control in Frankfurt took no more than five minutes. After my short flight to Vienna, I had to go through passport control at the Vienna airport to “leave Austria” to go to the “non-Schengen” gates. I then had a short flight from Vienna to Sarajevo, where I once again went through passport control to enter Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was a first in my travels: 3 passport control checks in 3 countries in five hours. I arrived in Sarajevo right on schedule at 2:00pm on a Tuesday, where a driver with my name on a sign was waiting to take me to my Airbnb for the next 3 nights.
Even though exchange rates moved against me by about 7% in the last few weeks before my trip, things were still very inexpensive in Sarajevo. My airbnb was about $40 a night. It was clean, the location was great, and it was all easy. A large draft beer from the local brewery was $3.50. My private car from the airport was $20. My taxi back to the airport on departure day was $7.50.
Sarajevo is an amazing city. It is quite lovely, because it sits in a valley where a river runs through, surrounded by mountains. The city is an interesting cultural mix of people–part Bosniaks (Muslim), part Croats (Catholic) and part Serbian (Orthodox). Everyone mixes and mingles readily. The city had a nice livelihood to it. The history is incredible here. Two events, among many in its past, were the assassination of an Austro-Hungarian empire leader in 1918 that started WWI, and the siege of the city from 1992 to 1995 when it was an ugly war zone with thousands of innocent civilians gunned down.
I had a wonderful four-hour group “food tour” the afternoon of my first full day there. I was the only person on the tour. My tour guide grew up in Sarajevo, but she was quite not old enough to have experienced the siege of the city in the 1990s. The tour was wonderful. I was able to try ćevapi (mixed lamb and beef sausages in a pita-like bread with onions) from the restaurant with quite the family history of a recipe, and then burek (pastries filled with meat or vegetables) from another restaurant known by the locals as the best in town. And fun, we had a stop at Sarajevo Brewery where I had a large dark beer.
I planned a cable car ride to the top of the mountain overlooking the city for my second day. That did not work out, as the cable cars were not operating due to high winds. I toured the historic Sarajevo City Hall, went to a museum, went back to the brewery, saw a few churches, had a terrific lunch, and also did some laundry. I got caught in the rain my last night hunting for a restaurant that could seat me. I ended up having “fast food” burek. That may have been a bad choice, as I will explain in the next post.
I left the Airbnb Friday morning around 7am to head for the airport. The Sarajevo airport was very efficient. Security and passport control took less than five minutes. And soon I would be on a Turkish Airlines flight for the first time.
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