Deciding on a starting point--Sarajevo

I had to put my upcoming sabbatical out of my mind for the month of July as I was punching above my weight in an National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar, studying Existentialism at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. It was an enriching, yet quite humbling, experience. Lots of really smart, articulate people; lots of deep and voluminous readings...As much as I enjoyed it, I came to the realization that I'll never be more than a dilettante in most things; especially philosophy!

Over the last few days I've been refreshing my memory on the various historic sites and other things I want to see and do. Since the focal point of my sabbatical is to try to gain an understanding of the diverse viewpoints of the various participants' involved in the Yugoslav wars, I will focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where the conflict was prolonged and involved shifting alliances.

I've been of two minds, whether to hit the ground running, using my initial burst of enthusiasm to explore the many outlying areas of BiH that experienced significant upheaval and suffering during the conflict, or to start in Sarajevo, soak up as much as I can there, while networking for potential contacts with firsthand knowledge and friends they may have in the periphery.

 After hours of trying to plan several itineraries using different geographic parameters, I finally came to a decision to trust my intuition and make Sarajevo a starting point, at the risk of  permanently narrowing my scope to the many stories of Sarajevo (which I'm sure, in the end, would be just as revealing).

Several other advantages come to mind by taking this approach:

• Learning rudimentary Bosniak phrases and customs before traipsing around in the countryside will make life easier, as the percentage of the population that may speak English usually drops precipitously.
• Trying to live frugally,finding a central location to rent an Airbnb place by the week or month cuts your rate by 20 to 50%.
• No matter how much knowledge you gain from books and the internet, locals are the experts. Hopefully a few are willing to take me under the wing and enlighten me over a few rounds of rakija.