Imagine that, every time you want to go to the pharmacy, you have to cross a total of four borders. This is what an average day looks like for the inhabitants of Sastavci, a Serbian village on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This place was visited by a journalist from DW
The border at the triple border of Serbia, Montenegro and Serbia near Priboj has made the village of Sastavci unique in the world.
The river Uvac divides this village into two parts, so that administratively it belongs to the municipality of Priboj and Serbia, and territorially mainly to Bosnia and Herzegovina, more precisely to the municipality of Rudo.
Due to this administrative tangle, which has not been solved for years, the inhabitants of Sastavac have to cross the border in order to carry out their daily activities. Sometimes several times during the day.
A journalist from the Deutsche Welle portal in Serbian visited this unusual place.
Crossing the border - part of the routine
Hajro Gibanica lives in the Bosnian part of Sastavci village. Since the main highway from the village leads through both states, it crosses two borders in one direction every time it goes to Priboj. He must go to that city, because all the necessary institutions are located there.
"I have to see a doctor or get medicine in Priboj." My wife receives her pension there. "I just sleep over in Sastavci maltena," Hajro told DW.
Hajro has dual citizenship, like the other 700 inhabitants of this village.
The village belongs to two states since the time of the Turks.
The administrative problems of the inhabitants of Sastavak began in the 1990s with the disintegration of the former state during the war, when new borders were drawn, writes the BBC in Serbian.
Each of the six Yugoslav republics became a separate state.
In the following years, the inhabitants of these hilly villages not far from the Drina became victims of unsuccessful agreements between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The commissions for border issues of the two states met for the last time in 2010, but the geographical knot has not been untied.
In this village, the border divided the two ends of the same street, but also the bridge. Houses and families, and even the village cemetery, are divided between the two states.
A mountain of paper for a bucket of cheese
The president of the Sastavci local community, Sveto Vilptić, tells DW that the borders make life difficult for the locals, with a lot of unnecessary administration.
"If we were to set up one border crossing here at every necessary location, there would be 15 of them. Two brothers live in the village." One has a house in Serbia, and the other in Bosnia," Vilotić told DW.
He explains that the population is mainly engaged in animal husbandry. However, in order to sell their products in the markets, they first need to solve a mountain of paperwork due to borders.
"I sometimes write a receipt on behalf of the local community for a bucket of cheese, and the seller goes and sells it at the market in Priboj."
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