Day 22 – Mostar

My night was rather short, it ended around 3 with the return of the drugged kids but I had to get up at 5:30 anyway to catch the bus to Mostar.

I spent most of the way asleep but got woken up 4 times for border controls as Dubrovnik is basically a “Croatian Island” surrounded by Bosnia and Herzegovina. I arrived at Mostar at 11:30, checked into a hostel and got a perfect introduction to Bosnian history right away.

Mostar pertains to the Herzegovina part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and although many of the Balkan countries share large parts of history, the remains of the youngest historical episode are especially visible here, as Bosnia was hit especially hard by the war. Already on my way from the bus station to the center I had witnessed many buildings with bulletholes, others completely in ruins. These damages stam from the Balkan wars that started in 1991 when orthodox Serbia attacked its neighboring countries, claiming them as Serbian territory and trying to create a “greater Serbia”. These wars succeeded the long period of Yugoslavia in which Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Slovenia were united under Tito. Unlike the communism under Hoxha in Albania, people in Ex-yugoslavia generally talk very positively of the socialist episode under Tito which seems to have been a kind of “light communism” wich provided a very good life to its citizens.

Yugoslavia had begun to crumble when Tito died, people say Tito died at 1 o’clock and war began at 1:05. It is incredible how recent this part of history is. I must admit that until now I had not much of an idea about any of these successions but I do remember hearing the name Milosevich and places like Belgrade and Sarajevo every night in the evening news during my childhood. Visiting these countries now, all this suddenly begins to make sense and fit together.

I walked from my hostel towards the old town with its famous old bridge that was also destroyed during the war and rebuilt in 2004. I even got to see one of the famous bridge jumpers. Young boys have been jumping down this 27-m-high UNESCO world heritage bridge since 450 years ago, as some kind of maturity test.

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Mostar’s Bazar streets in the mainly Muslim-ottoman-influenced old town were packed with tourists but all the people were concentrated in this area, the streets outside being pretty empty and quiet. Despite the obvious presence of tourism, this little town didn’t spread the same stressfully Disneyland-vibes as Dubrovnik had done. Mostar is still a beautiful little village spread to both sides of a stunning crystal-clear and deep river. One side of the river is muslimic with many mosques, the other part is christian-croatian with several churches. It seems like Albania is the only country (maybe in the world) that really manages a completely harmonic coexistence of different religions that entirely respect each other. This can be a great example for the rest of the world. Here, however, there seems to be still some conflict between different religions and cultural belongings, even between the neighbors of such a small city.

I walked around the upper part of the town and along the “Bulevard” , the main street in which the war fights had taken place. Every other building was still a complete ruin, the rest newly constructed.
This street still separates Mostar in Catholics and Muslims; on one side of the road it’s all churches and 99% Christians, on the other side 99% Muslims.

For lunch I finally had the opportunity to try some safe local food because there was a gluten-aware restaurant in town. I got two traditional dishes: Dolma (stuffed peppers with beef mince, spices and rice with potato mash and cream) and Japrak (beef mince with rice and spices in wine leaves) and they were very delicious.

Afterwards, I tried to join the walking tour but I had remembered the wrong location so when no one showed up I strolled the streets for a bit and met a volunteer from my hostel. We talk for a while and I finish my day with a visit to the war and genocide museum, which was extremely depressing of course.

The evening in the common area of the hostel was dominated by political discussions about the war, Serbia, current EU politics and Syria, with an Irish volunteer and the owner of the hostel. This gave me very personal and interesting insights into this extremely complex Balkan conflict. It is very hard to believe that the guy that provides me with a hostel bed tonight has been living in his basement chopping and burning his furniture to cook some water from the river for several years while I was attending primary school just 1000 km away from here.

It would be a good thing if everyone studied these parts of history and came to see real places like this with real people. Maybe then we would have less probability of doing it all over again.

Bosnia has given me back the fascination and interest that had arose in me in Macedonia and Albania. It is different and exotic again and I’m thinking about not going back to Croatia like my plan was but stepping by Serbia instead.