15 years ago this month a shooting in Sarajevo launched one of the bloodiest conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the so-called Bosnian war, which claimed the lives of around 200,000 people.
A Serb man taking part in a wedding procession in Sarajevo was the first death of the war.Lasting from March 1992 until November 1994, it forced 1.3 MLN people to leave their homes.Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, now live side by side in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but everybody remembers the bloodshed that started 15 years ago.A constant reminder of the war is the country's division: the Muslim-Croat federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serbian national entity – the Republic of Srpska.However, despite some villages remaining ruined, everyday life in Bosnia and Herzegovina is similar to life in other Balkan states.Banja Luka, the capital of the Republic of Srpska, is a university town with attractive night life possibilities.Furthermore, in the republic's east, a folk village called Stanisici has been erected to preserve Serbian national traditions.