"It was the only time ever that I did not use my roots knapsack with a flag on it"

... told me my journalism prof, Alan Conter, referring to an assignment in Bosnia in 1999. He arrived in Sarajevo on the last flight before the airport closed down. It was also the same day the war started in Kosovo.

Conter then headed to Banja Luka, a region whose status I haven't quite figured out- it is "the capital of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia". The geographic and ethnic complexities in the Balkans is the depth of something which I am just starting to plume.

My prof and another journalist were there to talk to Bosnians of Sarajevo and to Bosnian Serbs in Banja Luka. The Canadian embassy didn't want them there at the moment, fearing agitation. "It was a little scary, the week before there was an anti-NATO demonstration," my prof told me.

"It’s a very drab Stalinist-style city, it must have been badly damaged during WWII. A lot of architecture was Tito-inspired gray yuckness."

"I didn’t have major expectations. Sarajevo was part pretty, part shelf-shocked. Driving to the Croat part of Bosnia, we drove through villages that were completely destroyed. You are advised not to drive to the shoulder of the road because of mines and stuff. Sarajevo seemed cosmopolitan. Banja Luka was tense. It’s a very drab Stalinist-style city, it must have been badly damaged during WWII. A lot of architecture was Tito-inspired gray yuckness. The hotel we stayed in was from the 1950s, it was one of the most hideous hotels I've seen- purple wallpaper, "disco gone mad" style."

Another one of my teachers (and a writer at The Gazette), Donna Nebenzahl, had been in Sarajevo to write a section for a book about activist women in the world. Along with a photographer, she visited an organization called Women for Women International, a house where women can learn different working skills.

"They were kind of viscerally afraid. I felt really guilty that we had done this to them."

"We met two women who worked for Women for Women International who had been there all the time through the fighting and had been there through the war. They talked about the stress they had gone through.

One of the ideas was to use one of those two women as examples of this organization. So we went with them to the countryside and thought we would photograph them around the ruins of a village. We went out there. Because Nancy [the photographer] needed a strong visual- we walked around one of the derelict houses. One of the women had a total breakdown. She couldn’t stay. I felt horrible because it brought all of this stuff back.

The strange thing about Sarajevo is that it looks so benevolent. And then you realize, because somebody tells you, don't go off the road because some mines are strewn here and there.

People are trying so hard to rebuild houses and homes. When you go into the city, you see a Holiday Inn in the main drag of Sarajevo. They gave it a name I've forgotten.

It was like an alley of snipers. There were so many buildings that were just pockmarked with guns. There we craters from grenades and shells filled with red cement which people called Sarajevo roses.

It must have been a Sunday on a beautiful hillside that was covered with graves. There were many families there at the grave of an 18 year-old that died during this thing...

When you travel with a photographer. You realize how much people are willing to do. It’s not because there’s anything huge at stake. They let photographers do a lot and maybe my friend was good at that.

These were women that understood what they had gone through. They helped other women come to term with their loss. But they simply could not step back. They couldn’t go anywhere that was the past. They were kind of viscerally afraid. I felt really guilty that we had done this to them. But on the other hand you go to the house and there were women who would actually learn to do things- build furniture. You really could see how important the connection was. What would these women have done without Zaneb [the founder of the project]? This is emotional, psychic help, a way to rebuild their lives."

Speaking to some of my profs who have gone to the Balkans is just part of my preparation for my upcoming departure there. I've already gotten in touch with some people on-location, Canadians working in Kosovo.

All in all, my preparation is going quite well. I've just finished my last exam and now I'll be able to read, interview and pitch as much as I can in the following two weeks.

Oh, and pack!