Arijan Kurbasic, manager of your hostel and former Sarajevo tour guide, believes he’s giving tourists what they really want: dark tourism. He claims that his goal is just not for making nostalgia for a period of bloodshed, but to supply guests a window to the discomfort of wartime. Kurbasic greets guests wearing military garb, and requests they phone him constantly Zero One, his father’s code name throughout the war.
According to Kurbasic, “Millennials come and say, ‘This is often so cool’…but it’s not cool. It is really not a sport. If you ever get older thinking war is a game, you will earn some horrible decisions.” For him, the hostel is his way educating those too young to keep in mind the devastating conflict. Kurbasic also insists that his hostel is not an political statement; he only wants individuals to do not forget that “what went down here can happen wherever there are actually people.”
