Kostajnica // Colour Within the Lines
© John Bills
How do you build a town from scratch? You are asking the wrong man. I have never built a town. Come to think of it, I was the one asking the question. I put it to you, the reader; how do you build a town from scratch?
I’m not talking about literal buildings, homes, lives. I’m talking about institutions. For a town to function, it requires administrative headquarters, places where decisions are made, formal institutions that keep the place humming. I assume that town-building isn’t easy at the best of times, but doing so in the wake of war? On the border? I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Kostajnica is in a difficult position. You can take that however you please, as a comment on geography, politics, history, whatever. Formerly known as Bosanska Kostajnica, the town is directly on the border with Croatia, with the imaginatively named Hrvatska Kostajnica sitting just across the Una river. The population of Kostajnica is around the 5/6,000 mark (hiljada, not sto), a number that is falling as more and more people make their way to the European Union. The EU is across the river, but it isn’t as if Hrvatska Kostajnica is a metropolis. The population there is half that of Kostajnica.
Neven and I spent our morning walking around the centre of Kostajnica, taking in the sights and discussing the past, present and future of the town. Of course, that meant spending some time near the border, a blessing and a curse with the scales tipping towards the latter every passing day. Being a border town has its historical benefits, but trade from centuries ago doesn’t mean much to people today. Vigorous trade in Roman times doesn’t pay rent today.
© John Bills
Wait, hold on. John, let’s not get mired in the negatives, not yet. My day in Kostajnica began with Neven and Branka, the indomitable duo working in the town’s tourist department, and we drank coffee while discussing all the above. Good people are universal, never forget that. Kostajnica is a small town (the above statistics should make that clear enough), but one of the central points of this entire exercise is to celebrate small places. The centre of Kostajnica is one street, but both sides of the road offer plenty of history, culture and charm.
City Hall is the place to start. A recent earthquake has rendered the building unusable, but its aesthetics remain. A pseudo-Moorish beauty built towards the end of the 19th century (1887), Kostajnica’s City Hall makes magnificent use of an acidic palette, reds and yellows that allow the stripes to jump out, all coming together with a corner balcony the rival of any in the country. The windows are decorative. The whole thing is very much of the ‘small but perfectly formed’ variety, the old ‘good things come in small packages’.
Further down the street, we come to the Sv. Trojice Church, the town’s Orthodox house of worship. Constructed in 1886, the church makes use of a subtle white and pink combo, subtle in all the right ways, with a wedding cake style build adding to the charm. It was razed to the ground during World War II before being rebuilt in the 1970s.
© John Bills
At the other end of town is the Azizja Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the Republika Srpska entity. The mosque is of the triangular-roofed variety, and its jutting porch creates a sense of welcome. Constructed in 1862, the church was razed to the ground in 1992 before being rebuilt in 2008.
In between all of this, we stopped for coffee at the town’s library, lovingly named after Nevenka Stanisavljević. We don’t know a whole lot about Nevenka, but her name lives on in the literary corridors of this church of books. We talked about books, small towns, generational differences and creativity, but the conversation always came back to Kostajnica. The coffee was good, and the chatter was even better.
© John Bills
But still, the border. When the border was built, it was built on the Bosnian side of the Una, as opposed to the middle of the bridge traversing the water. This meant that people lost land, unable to plant seeds and monitor their growth without crossing a newly recognised border. This became even worse when Croatia joined the EU. Not even football was safe; the town’s pitch is practically on the border, with players needing their passports if forced to collect the ball from the woods. Just by playing, players cross the ‘border’ constantly. You can draw conclusions about imaginary divides here if you so wish.
Things aren’t going to change for Kostajnica. The border is here now, the only option the town has is to work within it. Colour within the lines. Discuss, debate, but largely defer. How do you build a town from scratch? What does it need? Spiritual centres, libraries, city halls, schools, roads, lights, and closed rock cafes, in no particular order. Kostajnica has all of the above, but the goalposts constantly move. That is hard enough to deal with without even considering the need to carry your passport when they do.
After some rather delicious pljeskavica in a restaurant near the border, I wandered back to my hotel to get some sleep. I stopped at a gas station on the way, engaging in an animated chat about the magic of crisps with the weary-eyed gentleman behind the counter. No matter where I am in the world, my first instinct is to see what crisps are available. There are no borders where habits are concerned.
