Gračanica // My Father's Son

According to the ever-reliable nameless search engine machine, 451.5km lie between Tuzla and Gračanica. The drive takes eight hours and two minutes (the route extended by the need to go into Serbia, obviously), while those mad enough to walk can expect a journey of 95 hours, depending on stride length and the like. Armed with that information, the bus ticket seemed fabulously affordable. Win some, lose some.

Continuing the theme of utilising the internet as a proxy for actual knowledge, our old friend Wikipedia informs me that there are 10 places in the former Yugoslavia called Gračanica. Six of those are in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a village in Prozor, one in Gacko, another in Trnovo and one near my beloved Bugojno. Within the Tuzla canton are two; a village near Živinice and a town 42km northwest of the big city. If you’ll pardon the extended introduction, it is the latter that we’re talking about here.

You knew that.

Still, it brings up some quirky thoughts about identity, no? Gračanica is a town of substance, but how can it blossom when it must share its name with two hands worth of other places? Yes, it is the biggest, but that doesn’t mean anything on the identity front.

The bus from Tuzla to Gračanica didn’t take eight hours and two minutes. It took just over an hour, stopping in Lukavac and several villages before dropping its ragtag collection of punters off in a town known for its tower. Gračanica had been on my radar (I don’t have radar) for years, but for whatever reason, I had never ventured this way on my many jaunts into the region around Tuzla. The time had come. The time was now.

Any initial excitement I may have had about Gračanica was tempered by a sky that could best be described as vexed. Indignant clouds lay ahead, and I’ve experienced enough rain (Ja sam iz Velsa, sećaš se?) to know when a shower is coming. My hotel was a solid 2km outside the centre of town, leaving me little option but to find some ćevapi and wait it out.

Woe is me! I must eat delicious grilled meat while I wait for the rain to stop. Život je težak, težak.

Again, John, there is little value in this. What does it matter if you ate food while it was raining? What does that have to do with Gračanica? People want to read about the town, the tower, the history. You never know, they might want to read about that identity stuff you opened with. You can do this, buddy, you can.

The town we know today as Gračanica grew from a nearby iron mine, as much an influence as the old royal town of Soko, today 7km north of here. Soko was a big deal back in the day, a town that belonged to Duke Radivoj, the brother of Stjepan Tomaš, the pessimistically-titled Penultimate King of Bosnia. I will run that joke into the ground, and you will like it. I hear Breaking Bad is quite good. There is no W in Oman.

Gračanica starts making waves with the inevitable arrival of the Ottomans, their first run coming in 1463. It lasted less than a year before the Hungarians took the town, but by 1520 it was securely under Ottoman control. Gračanica was ready to bloom, and by 1600 it had become a major craft centre, a magnet for merchants. Sure, Prince Eugene of Savoy burned the place down in 1697, but Svarožić burned everything he touched, a sort of Midas of fuel, oxygen and heat. What’s more, Eugene’s arsonist tendencies gave Gračanica a blank slate from which to rebuild, and rebuild it did.

John, that is a callous way to refer to a fire that burned an entire town down.

At the centre of it all is the famous Sahat kula, the clock tower. Mechanical clocks were the shiny new toy of Europe in the 17th century, a convenient way for townsfolk to know the time. Watches were for the wealthy, and building a big ol’ clock in the centre of town made life much more convenient, especially if a significant portion of the population was expected to down tools to pray five times a day. The Ottoman Empire built 21 of the things in Bosnia, and they quickly became the defining feature of the čaršija, identikit stone towers with pyramid roofs. A steep staircase was built into the tower to allow for repairs, with intricate loopholes in the stone allowing light in so that, you know, the repair folks didn’t fall and die.

The clock tower in Gračanica is the second tallest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it famously leans to the northwest. That slant wasn’t immediately obvious to me as I glared at the thing, but my eyesight is famously bad. I love clock towers, and I am yet to meet one that I didn’t want to photograph.

It didn’t quash any questions of identity, however. Gračanica shares its name with many other places. It has a famous clock tower, but another 20 were built across the country. Does any of this matter? My father is called John Bills, his father was called John Bills; does that make me more of or less of a John Bills? That question doesn’t mean anything, but certain identity queries pop up when you are the second most important human in your existence with your name.

None of this matters with Gračanica, because it is the most important town in Bosnia and Herzegovina with that moniker. The centre of town was quietly winsome, lined by cafes, restaurants, shops and history. It has always been this way, despite the plagues, famines and fires. Other towns in the region may have been prioritised during the Yugoslav years, but Gračanica knows what Gračanica is. The gentle hills, the abundance of water, the delicious ćevapi, the leaning tower. Gračanica is Gračanica, and it can only be that.

Hours passed, and I stopped at a bar for a beer. After the usual exchange (I order in Bosnian, the waiter says something, I tell him that I’m not from here and I’m learning the language, he asks where I am from, I tell him), the man with the wallet stopped to try and remember what he knew about Wales. Gareth Bale? Tom Jones? Ryan Giggs? No, it was some meme, he said. What could it be? The lightbulb flickered on, and a smile spread across his face as he told me what he knew about the Welsh.

“Sheep fuckers.”

Gračanica, you were doing so well.

Gračanica // My Father’s Son

Konjic to Hadžići // Somewhere, the Sun Has Risen

Travnik // Stockholm Syndrome