Mostar

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 Dubrovnik
We just got back from a mini-van trip to Mostar. We left from a Hilton parking lot about 5 minutes walk from here. We noticed that parking at the Hilton is 400 kuna for 24 hours. That’s $80 Cdn. Another good reason not to be driving. The van showed up at 7:45. It was an English speaking tour and there were 12 tourists and the driver/guide. Four of the tourists were girls from Turkey, 2 were a couple our age from Sweden and the others were young couples.
To get to Mostar, we had to drive northwest along the coast through the little bit of Bosnia Herzegovina , stopping for a break at Neum, and back into Croatia. Along the way we saw oyster farming that was begun in the middle ages and is still going on. There are hundreds of buoys anchored in 2 to 10 metres of water in the protected bays, with oysters clustered around the ropes below them.
Then we left the coast and drove along the Neretva river valley towards Mostar. There’s a huge farming area, about 100 sq. km., that was a swamp that was drained. It supplies a lot of food for this part of Croatia. After a while we went through the border again into Bosnia Hercegovina. The customs stops didn’t take long.
Our first scenic stop was at a little village called Pocitelj, which means resting place. It was an old fort above the river and has a very old Islamic mosque and school. The mosque and minaret tower were destroyed in the recent war but have been rebuilt exactly as before. The little school was unharmed but doesn’t look used any more. The steep little street up to the mosque was made of round stones about the size of baseballs., set in mortar. Not a smooth surface, but we’re used to that. Pocitelj was interesting but it didn’t take long to see it.
After another ½ hour, we arrived in Mostar at noon. It was a cool cloudy day, about 25 degrees. That’s probably a good thing because Mostar is the 2nd hottest city in Europe, after Athens, and temperatures at this time of year are often 45 degrees. Our driver showed us a few sites, including the famous old bridge that was originally built about 400 years ago. Then he gave us maps and left us on our own until 3 pm.
There was quite a thunderstorm so we decided that lunch in an outdoor restaurant overlooking the bridge was a good idea. We sat with the Swedish couple from our group and had a good lunch conversation with them while Anita and I shared a huge plate of the “mixed grill”. We’re still stuffed. Apparently it’s only a 2 ½ hour direct flight from Sweden to Dubrovnik. It’s easy to get here from almost anywhere in Europe. We’ve been seeing lots of Brits both here and in Split, who probably just take direct flights for short vacations.
After the thunderstorm while we were just finishing lunch, the bridge jumpers started work again. There are apparently less than 10 guys in Mostar with the nerve to jump off this high bridge into the fairly shallow, cold water. They climb up on the rail, get tourists to gather up at least 25 euros for them and then they jump. If they think they’ll hit bottom, on the way down they curl into a ball and hit the water that way. If they’re confident, they jump straight in and do the “needle”, not making much splash. It’s quite a tourist draw.
The current bridge is an exact replica of the original, which was shelled in the war and destroyed. According to our driver, Mostar is about ½ Moslem and ½ Catholic. They’re all Slavic people, (the only difference being their religion), who co-existed and intermingled for many years without problems. Most of the Moslems lived on one side of the main street around the river and most of the Catholics lived on the other side. They allied to successfully defend Mostar from the Serbs during the war.
Then they bickered more and more with each other until they started fighting in 1993, the battle line being the main street. By the time NATO intervened and stopped them they had killed about 1,200 on one side and 800 on the other, destroyed many buildings and the old bridge. There is obviously still some very hard feelings. We were mainly in the Moslem section where there are lots of little signs saying, “1993, Never Forget”.
International aid has poured in to rebuild the bridge and the town but there are still quite a few pock-marked buildings from shells and bullets. It’s frightening to see how people in the same community can turn on each other. It’s apparently true that the veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin.
Bosnia Hercegovina is composed of 3 different groups or faiths: Serbs who are Serbian Orthodox, Moslems and Croatian Catholics. (Again, this is a simple version of a complex issue that we don’t understand, so some of the details may be wrong.) Because the Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet, all road signs along the highway are in both alphabets. All the way from the border to Mostar, we could see that the Cyrillic lettering was painted over with yellow or black spray paints, like taggers use for graffiti. The fighting was very heavy in this area and clearly the Serbs are not popular.
Oddly enough, one aspect of the tourism in Mostar is to see all the destruction that the inhabitants wrought upon themselves. It’s more than a little unsettling.
Anyway, it was worth seeing but only once. We’re glad we decided to go there on a tour rather than take the bus and stay a couple of nights. Tomorrow it’s off to Lokrum Island just across the bay from Dubrovnik.