A group of young people from Sarajevo, who was lucky enough to meet Michael Schumacher during his post-war visits to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), launched an initiative to name A Transversal in Novi Grad after this great man.
For the initiative in honor of the legendary Formula 1 driver, who is now in serious health condition after a difficult fall while skiing, they received the “green light” from the Municipal Council of Novi Grad Sarajevo, where they presented this idea.
Fahri Frlj, one of the initiators, explained that in this way, on behalf of the entire city, they would like to repay the great humanist, who did a lot for the children of Sarajevo. Frlj, who is from Stari Grad, was lucky to be in Dobrinja at the time of Schumacher’s arrival in 1996, and then he met Schumacher, who gave toys to him and his friends.
“I thank the Municipal Council of Novi Grad, which supported the initiative. This is a first step when it comes to our initiative. In addition to them, we also sent a notice of the initiative to the German Embassy and Michael Schumacher’s wife,” emphasized Frlj.
He expects that he will also have the support of other competent institutions in the further procedure so that the street leading from Sarajevo Airport to Mojmilo will eventually be named after a great friend of BiH.
“In this way, we would have sent a message that we had not forgotten Schumacher because he did not forget the children of Sarajevo either. We want to support him in further treatment and recovery because he came to Sarajevo to visit and support children who needed treatment. It is a big deal for such a champion to say, ‘If the children of Sarajevo are guilty just because they are children, then I am also a child of Sarajevo.’ We cannot forget that,” explained Frlj.
He and his colleagues are full of ideas for this project and have imagined that, if the transversal is officially named after Schumacher, they will make a huge event, which would undoubtedly attract the attention of the world media. Then they would invite Sarajevo children to decorate the sidewalks in this street with red and white colors and thus create the atmosphere of the Formula 1 race track, where Schumacher used to be inviolable.
“Every child in the city could give their contribution in this way,” concluded Frlj, who said that the initiative should be easy to implement since the street is relatively new and there are no houses and businesses registered with address A transversal, so citizens would not have to change addresses.
Among the initiators of this project is Damir Vatres, who was wounded in the war and who was photographed in the hospital together with Schumacher, Klix.ba writes.