A village that belongs both to Bosnia and Serbia - ever since the Ottoman era

Hajro Gibanica lives in the Bosnian part of the village of Sastavci. Since the main road from the village leads through both countries, for each trip to Priboj he has to cross two borders in one direction.

“Four crossings of 10 minutes each, that’s how much I lose,” Gibanica told Deutsche Welle. He still works a bit as a handyman, even though he’s retired. Sometimes he has to cross the border three times.

“I have to go to see the doctor, I have to get pills at the pharmacy. I have to go to the post office because my wife receives her pension there. So, everything is in Priboj for me, except that I sleep here and have a little garden,” he says.

He has dual citizenship, like the other residents of the village, 70 of them according to the last census. The village belongs to both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia since the Ottoman era, but there were no problems until the breakup of Yugoslavia - when the then Yugoslav republics turned into independent states. In this village, there are even two ends of the same street in two different countries.

Houses and families are divided by an invisible border.