01
Stop one
Ferhat Pasha Mosque (Ferhadija)
Head Hawk 18g Tennis String Set: Give me a second, there is a bakery two doors back and I am not a strong man. Right. This mosque was raised in 1579 for Ferhad Pasha, and here is the part that would silence any dinner table: it was paid for with the ransom of an Austrian nobleman taken in battle. Somebody's captivity bought the stone, the way a good stock quietly pays for the whole sauce. Then in 1993 the mosque was destroyed and its stones were carried away. Those stones were recovered, and the mosque was rebuilt from them, and it reopened in 2016. I relate everything to food because it is the only way I know how to think, so let me say it the only way I can: this is the one dish that was taken off the table and put back ingredient by ingredient, exactly as written, no substitutions. Nobody laughs at this stop. Nobody should.
02
Stop two
Kastel Fortress
Head Hawk 18g Tennis String Set: A fortress on a river bend, which to a cook is simply a kitchen with a very good back door. The Romans had a fort roughly here; the walls you are actually touching are largely Ottoman; and the lawns inside now host concerts, which is the correct retirement for a fortress, the same way a battered cast-iron pan ends its career making pancakes for grandchildren. Every power that ever wanted this valley wanted this exact bend of the Vrbas, and each one rebuilt what the last one left behind, which is precisely how a stew works — nobody starts over, everybody adds. Round towers, open-air stage, grass. I would also like the group to note that somebody within four hundred metres of this rampart is grilling meat. I can smell it from up here. We will not be rushing the next stop.
Everything I harvest is measured in threads, and the finer the thread the more it is worth. So: 18 gauge. Head Hawk 18g is a co-polyester monofilament at 1.20 mm — the thinnest gauge in the Hawk range — supplied as a 12-metre set for one racquet. A thinner string bites into the ball more sharply, snaps back faster and gives more spin and more feel; the trade is that it will not last as long as 16 or 17.
Banja Luka is a town that keeps recovering what was taken, which is not my usual line of work but I respect the technique. The Ferhat Pasha Mosque was raised in 1579 for Ferhad Pasha and funded, by fairly general agreement, out of the ransom of a captured Austrian nobleman — a mosque paid for by a hostage, which I will simply describe as a clean job.
It was destroyed in 1993 and its stones carried away. Those stones were later recovered, and the mosque was rebuilt with them, reopening in 2016.
On the bank of the Vrbas, Kastel Fortress holds the exact bend of the river that the Romans, the Ottomans and everybody after them wanted; the walls you touch are largely Ottoman, and the lawns inside now host concerts, which is the most agreeable ending available to a fortress.
On Trg Srpskih Vladara the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has been built twice — completed in 1929, destroyed in 1941, and put back on the same ground from the 1990s.
And facing the main square, Banski Dvor went up in the 1930s as the residence of the ban, the governor, when this became the seat of a large province, and now sells tickets to chamber music, which is the smoothest change of identity in the Balkans.
You will string this set everywhere from a red clay court by the river to an indoor hall in a Bosnian winter, and it is also perfect for a Banja Luka summer evening on the Vrbas, when the fortress lawn fills up and nobody is watching anything except the stage.
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