So far, I covered how one can enjoy two of the nearby green mountains that surround Sarajevo’s city center, Skakavac and Trebević. However, what if you want to enjoy your time walking around in nature, but do not want to go through the hassle of doing any walking uphill or downhill? What if you just want to enjoy your day, take your time sitting around on benches, see some pretty natural wonders, and maybe have a little picnic? To review a place that offers just that, this week, we will take a close look at the Bosna Spring and do a little side quest by visiting the nearby so-called Roman Bridge.
It is very easy to get to Bosna Spring. You just need to take a tram to Ilidža, which happens to be the last station on this end of the town. From Ilidža, you need to walk for only about ten minutes until you arrive at Park Banjska, from where you can walk directly to Bosna Spring.
This is how that final stretch of the road looks like, and while I wish it was a dirt road, there is a reason why it is not. Plenty of cyclists, the occasional cars, and a ton of horse carriages ply this road every day. Using concrete just works the best for most.
With that being said, if you do not wish to walk for about half an hour on this road, you can use one of these horse carriages yourself or just rent a bike. Honestly, the former option is reportedly needlessly expensive, and carrying the bike around just cannot be all that fun in the actual Bosna Spring, so I highly recommend walking there yourselves.
While the main road is not necessarily built for pedestrians, there are usually some side tracks which are left in a more natural state, and there are even some benches to sit on and enjoy the views. Furthermore, thanks to these wonderful trees, you will always be shielded from the sun during this journey.
Besides, you do not really want to skip enjoying this walk or even cut it short. Other than the usual natural beauty of the area, you may just get lucky like me and see some military aviation practice with your own eyes. Can you see the tiny helicopter in this photograph?
Well, here is a much closer look. It is not like it is the first time I am seeing some military choppers, but it was certainly the first time I had multiple of these flying so close to the top of my head.
After that short walk, you will be done with this lovely stretch of road and see the other resting spot for horse carriages. These did not seem all that popular at the time I was there. I have seen only four of them ride past by me when I walked traversed that path myself. One can only hope that the animals are taken care of well enough and take some solace in the fact that they at least did not seem overexerted.
As you may have already guessed, Bosna Spring is the name of the park that encompasses the birthplace of Bosna River. This tiny stream is one of the many small springs in the area that feed into the river.
You do need to pay a small fee, 6 BAM to be precise, to enjoy the Vrelo Bune, as Bosna Spring is known in the local tongue. It is well worth every penny, as you can see for yourself above. The natural beauty of this place in unparallelled in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), though the likes of Kravica Waterfall, which I could not visit during this trip, may be able to match it.
I believe the main attraction in this park are these few ponds, where the river is presumably formed initially. Some of these are tiny, some are rather big, and yet all eventually feed parallel downstream currents to give birth to the river itself.
There is an enormous tree in the middle of the biggest pond, and there even seemed to be a small doghouse next to it when I was there. I do not think that it was actually a doghouse, but it may have been built for the many swans that call this place home.
This park also offers a rather sizeable area with restaurants, cafes, picnic grounds, tables, benches, toilets, and so on. It is by far one of the more developed tourist attractions in BiH, at least among the ones that I could see so far.
After spending around an hour trying to figure out where some of the underground water surfaced to form these ponds, I decided it was time to leave the park. However, at this point, it was not even noon yet, and I had time to kill before lunch. This gave me all the necessary energy to take the long way back and see yet another point of interest nearby.
This proved to be a rather fruitless decision. I ended up walking for forty minutes or so on paved road with little to no coverage just to get to this small bridge, which is known as the Roman Bridge. I had hoped that I would see an actual Roman Bridge, but my quick research beforehand clarified that this is in fact an Ottoman Bridge. It just happened to be built near the site of an older Roman Bridge that also crossed the Bosna River, hence the name.
To be fair, it is a rather beautiful bridge, but it is probably not worth walking on asphalt for that long just to be able to see it. There are simply no proper pedestrian roads that lead here anyways, and walking on a highway is never enjoyable. However, there were plenty of people enjoying a BBQ to this view, so renting a car and properly making use of this place could be a decent option for those who have some time to kill in Sarajevo.
Nevertheless, I never really regret doing these weird little walks in between places that do not really connect to one another in a meaningful, or at least pedestrian-friendly, way. Walks like these allow me to see some really lesser visited parts of these countries, which can be quite rewarding. For example, while plenty of tourists visit BiH every year, probably only a handful ever notice this little memorial. It seems to have been dedicated to a doctor who died quite young. However, I cannot help but wonder what the Wolkswagen logo is doing on it. Is it the gentleman’s favourite car brand? Or the brand of the car that he owned? We may never know.
What we do know is that Bosna Spring, or Vrelo Bune, offers the most convenient green escapade from the urban sprawl of Sarajevo, not that Sarajevo is a concrete jungle by modern standards. If you want to enjoy a slower day by taking things easy and getting lost in nature, I visiting this fantastic park is an excellent option. It can get crowded on weekends, so I certainly recommend going there early in the morning in a weekday if you have the time for it.