After he showed us the village bear, Enes continued driving us to Banja Luka, capital of the Republika Srpska

The city and region around Banja Luka were once multi-ethnic, divided between Serbs (Orthodox), Bosniaks (Muslims), and Croats (Catholics)

During the war, ethnic cleansing forced the Bosniaks and Croats to move out of the area. Today, it’s almost exclusively Serb

We were nearing the edge of the majority-Muslim region, ascending through mountains and the villages that dotted them. At one point, we emerged into a beautiful vista of steep rock faces

Enes pointed to one of them: “Serbs killed a lot of Muslims by pushing them off that rock”

Enes worried that war would return to Bosnia

“If [Republika Srpska leader] Dodik declared independence, that will be our war. 100%, if he declared independence.” Dodik has repeatedly threatened to do so. “They would just give me a gun and send me to war in the forest,” Enes said

“I hope not war again,” he added, saying how grateful he was for the current peace

“Thank God,” I added

“Thank God and the United States,” he said, referring to the NATO bombing campaign that helped end the war in 1995

After an hour-long drive, Enes dropped us in a Serb mountain town where the Republika Srpska began. We were still in Bosnia but upon entering the region the alphabet switched to Cyrillic, the flag switched to the Serb one, and memorials stopped commemorating the victims of massacres and started celebrating the Serb leaders who oversaw them

The town was desolate. Walking through it, the only person we encountered was a drunk homeless man who approached and begged for money. Now late afternoon up in the mountains, it was dark, cold, and foggy

While wandering, we passed a building with two names graffitied on it: “Radovan” and “Ratko”

Radovan referred to Radavan Karadžić, president of the Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996. In that position, he oversaw the Bosnian Serb armed forces, which committed numerous atrocities including the Srebrenica massacre. After the war, a UN court found him guilty of genocide and issued a warrant for his arrest. With the support of the Bosnian Serb authorities, he lived in hiding until 2008, when he was arrested

Ratko is Ratko Mladić, the officer who led the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. Like Karadžić, he was wanted for war crimes but evaded arrest with the help of Serb authorities. He was eventually arrested in 2011 and found guilty of genocide and other crimes

But to many Serbs, especially in Republika Srpska, Ratko and Radovan are heroes. One Serb told me it’s simple: “They f*cking won the war. I don't care if some tribunal said that they were criminals. Okay, they were criminals, but they provided us with a country. F*ck whatever somebody thinks in Belgium. I don't care what happens in Belgium. So go f*ck yourself!”

Walking past this nationalist graffiti and through the gritty town, it was so uninviting that we almost decided to take a bus rather than hitchhike out. But within minutes of setting our bags down on the side of the road, a black SUV pulled over and offered us a ride. The driver was blasting jazz but turned it down to talk to us. He was a young English-speaking man named Bogan

Bogan couldn’t have been more different from the bad vibe of the town

He had repeatedly visited the US and bore no ill will against us for being from there. When I commented on the nationalist graffiti he said, “Where I picked you up is a redneck town. This is just some kids writing this. Big arms, small brains”

When we said we were learning about the region’s politics, he said, “Politicians are shits”

He said Milorad Dodik – the region’s pro-Putin president who has repeatedly threatened to pull Republika Srpska out of Bosnia – is the “biggest shit. Everyone hates him. He buys votes with roads, he buys votes from the poor”

On our hour-long drive to Banja Luka, Bogan cleared out all the bad vibes from the day before. He was the first of dozens of Serbs we’d meet in the coming weeks whose overwhelming hospitality and warmth confounded the negative stereotypes spread about them in Bosnia and elsewhere in the Balkans