Editor's note: Paula Kreiner

and her husband Ray lived in Sarajevo for much of 1999. She says she is

still sorting out her memories of life amid the devastation of 10 years

of war, and may never really understand the complex problems of a society

that became fragmented along religious and ethnic lines.

When she stepped from a restaurant

recently, she had a moment of insight that helped her understand, if only

slightly, what soldiers experience when something reminds them of combat.

It's been more than a year since she left Bosnia, but she remembered how

it was there: "As we exited a coffee shop, we'd hear this horrible

clank in unison. It was the slamming of magazines into automatic weapons.

It's little things like that a smell, a taste. For the first time I think

I understand what the fellows coming back from Vietnam experienced when

they had flashbacks."

Kreiner has consented to The

Citizen's editing and paraphrasing a small part of the voluminous correspondence

she and Ray sent to friends and family during their stay. Except for the

first paragraph, written to an elementary school child, the goal is to

portray everyday life, and not to try to interpret politics.

A terrible thing happened here

just a few years ago. War broke out among the people of the nation known

as Yugoslavia after WWII.

It was a nation comprised of

many different small countries, and of people of vastly different religious

beliefs. After the death of the strong leader Marshal Tito the central

government weakened and finally fell.

The former countries that had

been pulled together to make up Yugoslavia, among them Slovakia, Croatia,

Bosnia and Herzegovina, decided to fight it out to try to control as much

land as possible. Along the way, they also decided they wanted all the

people in their country to be the same both by heritage and religious

belief.

Even if your family had lived

next door to people for hundreds of years, and if that family was different

from what your leader had decided your new county was going to be, that

"different" family was to be killed.

Many people fled to other countries

to escape. Many cities were attacked with artillery shells, and consequently

there is lots of damage. All this happened here about four years ago,

but it is still happening a few hundred miles from here today in Kosovo,

and may be starting up again in Croatia.

The damage from the war is

massive. It hurts to see buildings, hundreds of years old, blown apart.

Then you look at the houses. All I could surmise was the shelling was

indiscriminate. Almost every house has something wrong, and many are nothing

more than shells.

Most houses are built from

a concrete frame, where we use 2x4s, with a wooden roof covered with tiles.

Next the "shell" is enclosed with windows and doors, concrete

walls are painted, and pine tongue-and-grove flooring is installed.

The outside of the house normally

is stucco over the concrete blocks. Although the interiors are beautiful,

on the outside lots of stucco is missing from the houses that didn't take

direct hits, and many like ours have been rebuilt from the shell up. They

are still working on the fourth floor here, and we have no stucco.

The fact that a building is

not taxed until its restoration is complete is a disincentive to finish.

Our town house is very warm, really hot, and I have turned the thermostat

down. The cleaning lady said she was cold, but I think she was worried

the clothes wouldn't dry for her to iron. The laundry is hung outside

even in the freezing fog.

Across the drive was a line

full of baby clothes that hung for three days. I feel sorry for the little

one that is going to have to wear them. We are drying ours in the house,

in the spare bedroom.

I am enjoying the humidity.

The air outside has a mild irritant in it that causes most Americans fits,

maybe the constant presence of smoke in the air. You have to guess the

weather here, because we get no forecast. I am learning to guess what

will happen from TV maps that show where the high and low pressures in

this half of the world are located.

Food in the markets is very

expensive, but if you eat out, it doesn't cost very much. Go figure. The

locals don't seem to like vegetables except as a garnish. The restaurants

just don't serve green vegetables; they are for the peasants.

This peasant usually stir-fries

herself a fourth of a cabbage for lunch every day. I love the local spinach,

but it is sold with roots attached and a small serving takes over an hour

to clean and prepare. Never will I look at a box of frozen vegetables

in the same way.

Salads are usually several

leaves of leaf lettuce with a sliced tomato that is almost green, and

slices of carrot and cucumber. Oil and vinegar is the only salad dressing

they have, although you see Hellmann's Mayonnaise in all the stores. I

wonder what they do with it.

I have tasted two traditional

meat dishes here, both made from ground veal. One was like a Swedish meatball

with a prune and half a walnut in the center, served with thick gravy

that has a touch of tomato paste in it delicious. The other was a meat

loaf, made with a flat layer of ground meat with herbs, bread crumbs and

egg, on which was placed a layer of bologna and cheese, then rolled up

and baked as we do regular meat loaf. When you sliced it, it was most

attractive with the lunch meat in the middle.

I have really had a hard time

adjusting to the time and to sleeping. There are two roosters behind the

house and they crow at all hours of the night and day. If I could move

the bed I would, but it is huge and there is no place else it could go.

Both of our bedrooms are on

the back of the house. You quickly learn to sleep with one ear open, and

Mr. Rooster goes off for early morning practice about 3:30, 4:30 and 5:30

for five-minute sessions. All hell breaks loose at 6:30, and for the life

of me I don't know why we set alarm clocks except to confirm he is on

time. Of course, If he misses a session, and he rarely does, we just lie

awake waiting...

Also there are packs of dogs

that roam the streets, sending the tied-up dogs into fits. People keep

dogs here for protection, for one of the ways the ethnic cleansing occurred

was by bombing the houses of sleeping victims. A barking dog is not quieted

even if it barks all night.

In the market we visited today,

it was great to see so much stuff, but every stall has identical food

(unlike those in Germany where individual vendors offer their specialties).

Everyone sells the identical same vegetables, so we bought from one, then

another. Today I found fresh mushrooms and spinach, complete with roots.

My Bosnian word for the day

is "pola," which means half. At least today I was able to purchase

a half kilo of items instead of a kilo. Do you have any idea how many

prunes it takes to make a kilo? Half a plastic grocery bag would be a

close answer.

Most items cost more than in

the U.S., and some lots more, like a bag of soap powder, a little over

$9. A can of peaches costs $2.80. I just don't know how people do it on

what they have. It rained some while we were at the market, but things

are freezing again now at ground level and I don't want to walk back on

the ice by myself.

There is a fence across our

small street the street in front of our house is really our drive since

it dead-ends in the middle of the block with "street" on both

sides of the fence. There is a narrow walking path around the fence, and

all the water from the melting ice flows though that particular spot.

You have to walk about five feet on solid ice, and if you fall down, you

will slide until you are back where you started.

I walk to most of the places

I go and the ice and mud are horrible. To get down the mountain and on

to where Ray's offices are located, about two blocks of my journey is

along a muddy narrow path that runs beside a very busy street. The path

is so narrow two people can't pass, and the cars seem to fly by, often

within inches.

Thursday we went to a wonderful

restaurant and to the ballet. The two ballets, "Carmen" and

"Bolero," were well done. It was delightful and the tickets

cost next to nothing ($4 each for box seats).

As we rode through town after

the performance, there were thousands of people, of all ages, all dressed

in black, walking up and down the streets in almost total darkness. It

was about 9:30 and all the shops were closed. I couldn't figure why they

were out on a cold night like that. Later I was told that this is normal.

They just wanted to see and be seen, I guess a form of visiting.

We found out later that during

the war, no one could go out after dark. That is why they walk the streets

at night, just because they can.