Well, that was a difficult journey. The difficulties, of course, are within, in the flesh. A rock could have survived it without a second thought. Or, for that matter, a first one.
The old city was remarkable. By the end of it, I was back to the morning runs. I would run past the cathedral, down along the river to the university, and then turn around and run to the top of the hill above the bend in the river, called the Yellow Fortress, because it's yellow. Actually, the toponym is a bit misleading, since the overlook is on the old city walls, which were far outside the boundaries of the building proper. Walter Scott would have undoubtedly seen the relation though, and understood the nature of the fortifications. Curiously, both of the early fortresses are off limits, without being ostensibly off-limits. At any rate, then back down the hill (walking the first bit -- running up cobblestones is brave, running down cobblestones is natural selection), and into the old bazar, and back up the adjacent hill. By the end, I could make it to the top of the second, whereupon I stopped in at the convenience store (like the 7-11 at the top of Everest in the cartoon adage) for a bit of milk and yogurt. Then back to Humble Quarters for some brewed coffee and muslei. The coffee was from an old roastery adjacent to the 16th c. mosque, ground in a pestle, and very reasonably priced. Immediately across the alley was the 500 year old bakery with the excellent local circular bread (not the oily street food type that is filled with sausages, but the old country style bread), also very reasonably priced at less than a dollar.
At the first overlooking point of the run, I could see the nature of the place, which was the telos of the run -- the old city immediately below, with the bread and the coffee just beyond the leaden roofs of the religious buildings, and then the city of the enlightenment, down the river, past the university, concrete towers rising into the morning mist, and then beyond, a different sort of world, and the mountains ahead.
After the journey, I headed right to my usual station at the Sbux across from the national legislature, to regroup and get the ducks back into some appearance of orthognonality. It is useful to have a chain coffeehouse in which is is socially acceptable to appear a bit haggard at the end of a journey, and then show up in proper form later on. Interestingly, the artificial restriction on the price of the Americanos appears to have slipped, they've gone up a bit, and a nonstandard item has appeared on the menu above the rest -- "home brewed" coffee, which I assumed to be the filtered type, but it turned out to be the local brew (domache) on offer at the other coffeehouses. That stays cheap, and the Americano is an extra four or five bits. Minor bakshish, but interesting. There's also a Cyrillic version of the name on the marquee -- perhaps new, perhaps I didn't notice it before, though it's the primary version of the marquee at the one I never go to in the tourist center by the castle.
On the walk back across the bridge, stopped to look at Andric's old rooms overlooking the river (near the vantage spot of the fellow in Houses of Belgrade, perhaps). I didn't see a plaque or anything, just a nondescript cafe beneath. Perhaps the Old Lady from Sarajevo moved in afterwards. Said a quick hello.
Vistas and horizons. Or, in the Greek Οριζον. The limits of our view, the περασ, are the view in its fullness, so we see things most completely when we become conscious of the outer bounds of our vision. The point, though, are the things within the vision, as they exist within the field of of our vision. At play in the fields of the mind. Between the chalk-lines traced so that meaningful action can happen. A sense of justice within, one that largely comes from the fact of this meaningful action, and then above the horizons, still, or perhaps moving beyond percept or precept, the stars.