Sniper Alley

“The first time I came to Sarajevo I drove from Split with the British photographer Tom Stoddard in a Lada we bought from [the ads]. We drove through the mountains via Jablanica, and got to the last Serbian checkpoint at the start of the ‘Sniper Alley.’ We had been told by another journalist in Zagreb that you could either drive straight down the road to the Holiday Inn, which was the most exposed way, or risk taking the back road where you might get lost and end up on the front lines, so we decided to drive as fast as we could straight to the Holiday Inn.

Tom drove the old car as fast as it could go, and we set off hoping that a sniper would not target us. We had gone just a few hundred meters when a soldier jumped out holding a Kalashnikov, and held up his hat for us to stop. We pulled up fast, afraid it was an ambush or the road was maybe mined. We wound down the window, and the soldier leaned in and said, in good English, ‘Are you from London?’ When we replied ‘Yes’, he said, ‘I thought so, you are driving on the wrong side of the road, here we drive on the right. Be careful, you might hurt someone!’”

British photographer, Paul Lowe

(taken from this Balkanist's story)