Touched by history: Meeting a witness to WWI assassination
He paused and I said, "World War One."
It's now the 100th anniversary of that shot heard 'round the world. Over the years, I've seen many sites key to WWI history -- the killing ground of Flanders Fields, the fortress of Verdun, the Italian mausoleum built after the disastrous Battle of Caporetto.
Compared to them, the nondescript street corner in Sarajevo might disappoint some travelers, but it still gives me goose bumps. This is the spot in Bosnia-Herzegovina where the assassination took place. It was across from Sarajevo's Latin Bridge, now home to a plaque and the humble Sarajevo 1878-1918 Museum.
This museum traces the four decades when Sarajevo was part of the Vienna-ruled Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a special emphasis on the assassination. There's a map showing the sites relating to the assassination, life-size mannequins of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, and clips from a film about the killing (www.muzejsarajeva.ba).
If you want to see the car Franz Ferdinand rode in, the uniform he wore, and the murder weapon, you'll have to travel to Vienna's Museum of Military History (www.hgm.or.at), where there's an exhibit devoted to Sarajevo in 1914.
While World War I was fought a hundred years ago and there are no more survivors to tell its story, the WWI sites and memorials scattered around Europe do their best to keep the devastation from fading from memory. Many of these sites have been restored in honor of the 100th anniversary of the war's beginning.
My own memory is as fresh as that day in the Danube village in 1969. I'll never forget how the old man's eyes twinkled, as if he understood that a seed was being planted in this wide-eyed American kid. That seed would grow to be a lifelong love of European history -- and a career in travel.
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Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.
(c)2014 RICK STEVES DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
