NOW there is glass in the window frames of Sarajevo's Holiday Inn.
Weeds still grow along the tram lines, but yesterday afternoon rusty trams packed with Sarajevans rolled up and down what was once the deserted boulevard known as "snipers' alley".
As the cars carrying the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, the European Commissioner, Mr Hans van den Broek, and their entourage drove from the airport into the centre of Sarajevo, it looked like a city recovering from four years of devastation. And it is.
Tangled masses of metal and glass that once were modern buildings still stand along the route as monuments to the greatest carnage wreaked upon a European city since the-second World War. But the lights were on all over Sarajevo last night.
The electricity has been back since early this year. Water flows from the taps in every house, at least some of the time. Last winter, in a city where the temperature drops well below freezing, gas heating returned.
As Mr Spring met President Izetbegovic, children played football outside in open spaces and young people walked the streets and sat in pavement restaurants. The snipers who paralysed street life and killed hundreds have gone.
What used to be a 9 p.m. curfew has become an 11 p.m. curfew and is ignored by many. In the centre of town, the night noises of cracking gunfire and explosions have been replaced by throbbing music from bars and discos.
The new confidence is best symbolised by the decision of the Holiday Inn to replace the plastic in the window frames with glass.
Once residents and guests, freezing in their rooms, crawled past their windows so as not to attract the attention of snipers. Now you can stand and look out at the new signs of life amid the wreckage.
There are cranes on the skyline. Police now drive the streets in patrol cars. Mr Spring's convoy passed a motorist being questioned about his driving licence or his insurance, concepts that would have aroused an ironic laugh until very recently.
A car from a driving school with a big L-plate on the roof drove up towards "snipers' alley" without a care in the world.
"A year ago," said Jasmina, a translator working with the EU Monitoring Mission, "the only thing you thought about was how to survive. There was no tomorrow. Now there is a tomorrow."