A few weeks ago Outside magazine hired me to write a story about Bosnia’s snowboarding scene and the revival of the old Olympic resorts. So here I am, in Sarajevo, about to begin my reporting. I arrived today from Belgrade, after a six-hour drive across sooty villages and snowy mountains, up and down snaking roads lined with seedy motels, gas stations with weird names, and the mandatory vulkanizer. Except for the occasional pockmarked wall or the blackened wound of a burned-out house, I saw few traces from the civil war that ravaged Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. There is, however, a sort of heaviness in the air, a silent burden that weighs on the heart. As beautiful as it is, you can’t feel cheerful driving around Bosnia’s countryside.

Sarajevo is a little different. Life seems to have returned to the city, where just a few years ago the trees in the public parks were cut down for firewood and the Olympic ice rink was used as a makeshift morgue. What was known as “Sniper Alley” is today a busy thoroughfare with brand-new buildings sheathed in reflecting glass, malls, offices, supermarkets. Even the sickly-yellow Holiday Inn, the hotel where all the war correspondents used to stay, emits cautious optimism. The trundling streetcars are covered by ads. New cars with ski and snowboard racks are stuck in traffic. This must be a good sign.

Favorite word of the day: lanci za snijeg, aka snow chains.