Jonathan and I decided that it would be a good idea to get a better view over Sarajevo, something the city makes remarkably easy by providing a cable car up the slopes of Mount Trebević. The Sarajevo Cable Car carries passengers from its lower station in Bistrik to the slopes of Mount Trebević, climbing from the city to more than 1,100 metres above sea level. Our journey lasted for over ten minutes, rather longer than I had expected, although the spectacular views meant that I was in no hurry for it to end. I videoed the entire journey and that footage will soon become available for particularly fortunate readers of this blog. Unfortunately, it must first undergo the demanding technical process of me remembering to upload it, so that will have to wait.
The original cable car opened on 3 May 1959, following a route of just over two kilometres between Sarajevo and Trebević. It became one of the city’s best known attractions and carried generations of residents into the mountain air, later providing access to the area used for the 1984 Winter Olympics. The original journey took around twelve minutes, so our slightly leisurely ascent was historically authentic. Years of wear eventually took their toll and the system was closed on safety grounds in 1989, before the outbreak of the Bosnian War.
During the Siege of Sarajevo, the cable car and its stations were extensively damaged and the system was left unusable for more than two decades. A complete reconstruction finally began in 2017, with 33 modern gondolas installed along the historic route, and the cable car reopened on 6 April 2018, Sarajevo City Day. The reconstruction received crucial support from Dutch born American businessman Edmond Offermann and his Sarajevo born wife Maja Serdarević, who donated around US$3.9 million towards bringing the cable car back into service. Offermann had travelled on the original cable car with Maja in 1991, shortly before the war, and later became one of the driving forces behind its restoration.
Its return represented considerably more than the restoration of a tourist attraction, reconnecting the city with a mountain that had once represented leisure, then war and finally recovery. It now provides an exceptionally scenic journey and, more importantly, allows visitors to climb several hundred metres without undertaking any of the traditional and deeply unnecessary uphill effort. This suited me perfectly, as mountains are things I prefer to admire rather than ascend manually.
Until the full cinematic production becomes available, here are some stills from the journey.
The rooftops of Sarajevo gradually receded beneath us as the gondola climbed away from Bistrik.
The higher we climbed, the clearer the city’s position within its surrounding mountains became.
Approaching the upper station, the dense city gave way to the wooded slopes of Trebević.
Perhaps the only lingering mystery here is how the Communications Officer of the Long Distance Walkers Association has constructed a personal definition of walking which apparently excludes anything going upwards.