Like pretty much every other morning so far on this trip, Day 3 started with not nearly enough sleep.
I blame it on the Canadian girls.
Anyway, I woke up nice and early to have the chance to take a quick shower, then head on over to a bakery that Amy and Courtney had told me about that had what were supposedly the absolute best chocolate-filled pastries. In fact, they were so sure of it that they made me promise to go there in the morning to try them, and to post pictures on Facebook to prove it.
And, I did. Which turned out to be a great thing – the pastries were hot, chocolately, flaky, and everything a good chocolate pastry should be. I promised I’d get one. I may have gotten two.
Next door to the bakery (more or less) was the pizza restaurant La Luna. Notable for two things this morning – one, the group of Americans sitting on the balcony speaking American (!), and 2, as the place where I was to be picked up for my day tour to Mostar.
Mostar is a city in Bosnia-Herzegovina. More accurately, it is a city in Herzegovina; as the tour guide and pretty much every other person we encountered told us, the country is NOT called Bosnia, as much of the western world refers to it, but more accurately is called Bosnia & Herzegovina as it is actually a merging of two territories – Bosnia in the north, and Herzegovina in the south. For my trip today, I was in Herzegovina.
Most people know of Bosnia, as the capital of the country, Sarajevo, is there and it was a major part of the Yugoslavian war that resulted in NATO (including the US) intervention in the 90s. More people probably know it from the Savatage song ‘Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)’, which they also recycled onto one of their Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums. It is a tourist place – and one where you can still see the damage from the war everywhere. Many of the people I talked to wondered if the damage is still there not for its historical significance, but for its touristic significance.
Who knows.
Today, though, I was heading towards Mostar.
Mostar is a city, as I mentioned, in southern Bosnia & Herzegovina founded in 1452. It is the cultural capital of the region and is considered the most important city in Herzegovina. Its most famous site is the Stari Most, or Old Bridge, that crosses over the Neretva River. Built by the Ottomans in the 16th century, the bridge is considered one of the best pieces of Islamic architecture in the Balkans and the city is named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who looked after and guarded it in medieval times.
To see this amazing piece of architecture, first I had to get there; the first step to that goal was waiting in front of the aforementioned La Luna.
Around 8:10, right on time, a small van pulls up. Myself and two others who were waiting are summoned by the driver with a loud shout of, “Mostar?” The van itself is a Mercedes, and a nice one. Comfortable seats, blasting AC, and not a single warning light on in the dashboard. Pretty amazing.
The van drives us about 15 minutes to the other side of town, pulls to the side of the road, and the driver says, “Now we wait.”
For what? Well, the bus. The name of the tour was ‘Mostar Small Group Tour’, so I naturally assumed that the van itself was to be our transportation. It wasn’t.
Instead, a full size bus pulls up, the driver has us get out, then we trudge on over to the bus, get on, and find a seat. It still was what I would call a small group – no more than twenty people were on the bus, and probably a few less. The bus also was very nice – well functioning AC, very comfortable seats with lots of leg room, and even hard wood flooring under the seats. Pretty classy. There was also one other thing I had never seen before: a flat screen TV perched above the windshield that actually showed video live-streaming from the front of the bus, so you could always see what was ahead no matter where on the bus you sat. It was pretty neat.
On the bus were the driver and the tour guide. The tour guide was most likely local, though she spoke English with a very definite British accent. Once we pulled out of the bus stop she kept up a running commentary on what the plan of the day was, the places we were passing, and some of the history of the region pretty much the whole way to Mostar.
One of the interesting things about Dubrovnik is that it is not connected by land to any other part of Croatia. In order for any resident to get to Split, or the capital of Zagreb, they have to either take a ferry over water, or pass through Bosnia & Herzegovina, passing through border checkpoints every time. From what I understood, in order to keep the city of Dubrovnik safe back in the time of the Ottoman empire, the Dubrovnik rulers gave up a stretch of land to their north to the Turks in order to protect themselves from the Ottomans. It provided a buffer protected by the Turkish armies, and kept Dubrovnik safe from attack. To this day, the land still does not belong to Croatia, but rather to Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Since it’s impossible to describe, I will just say that the scenery coming out of Dubrovnik was as spectacular as ever…including the Royal Caribbean cruise ship docked at the cruise port!
So, about 40 minutes outside of Dubrovnik, we hit our first border crossing. What’s interesting, is that as long as the buses are transiting straight through, and not taking the single turn off that leads inland into the country, there are no actual passport checks – the bus driver or guide just has to give a count of how many persons from each nationality are on board, then they are waived on through. I would assume that if there is someone from a country that requires a transit visa that they would then check them but we did not have any such passengers, and were quickly through the border.
On the other side of the border, once in Herzegovina, you quickly come to the town of Neum. This little waterside city (?) seems to exist mostly for tourist and transit buses. There were plenty of rest stops with little restaurants, bakeries, and souvenir shops, and each had a plethora of buses and cars parked in front. We stopped for about 20 minutes to grab some snacks, take a few pictures, and use the restroom, then we piled back on the bus and headed out.
After another short drive we passed back through the border into Croatia once again. Same procedure here – quick count of nationalities, then a wave through the checkpoint.
Once back into Croatia we turned inland, and finally crossed the border back into Bosnia & Herzegovina. This time, the crossing was more ‘real’, and we had to provide our passports, though we didn’t actually have to get off the bus. The border crossing was interesting – it was in the middle of a small town, right in the parking lot of a shopping place. Just a little, one lane each way type thing. We actually waited there a while, as the crossing was pretty busy.
Once through we drove a little while longer and made our way to a small village called Pocitelj. This village is also set up for rest stops, and has a small bakery, a restaurant, and lots and lots of vendors. It also is a bit historic – with medieval baths, an old fortress-like outpost up on a hill, and an old mosque, all connected with cobblestone streets. We were left to our own devices for 30 or 40 minutes to wander around, use the restroom, or just to do whatever. I really wanted to walk up the hill, but my ankle wasn’t having it. Even so, it was a neat little stop.
Finally, after about 3 hours of driving, we made it to Mostar.
Mostar, to me, is interesting. Before you get into the old town, you drive through the new town, and it looks as modern as any other Eastern European city I’ve seen. There really is no sign of the medieval part, its all hustle and bustle.
What you CAN see, though, are remnants of the fighting in the 90s. Buildings have bullet holes in them, and some are destroyed, left in the condition they were in when shells landed on them during the war. It’s a little bit eerie to think about.
Then, you cross a bridge.
From the bridge you can see down the river, and in the distance you can see the Stari Most. It is a pretty cool sight, and one that gets you ready to actually get there and see it up close.
The bus pulled into a bus parking area, right near a church with the highest bell tower in town (so high that it can literally be seen from anywhere in the city), and we all shuffled off the bus to be met by a local tour guide. Supposedly the bell tower was destroyed in the war, and then, just because they could, they rebuilt it even higher than it was before…
In my opinion, the name of the tour package is somewhat misleading – it’s not really a guided tour; its really a transportation, with some commentary, and an orientation class. For pretty much everything we were left on our own.
Which was fine. The tour guide that met us basically walked us down to the old city, showed us the bridge, and gave us an orientation to where everything is, as well as some restaurant recommendations. After about 30 minutes, most of it spent walking from the bus parking to the bridge, we were left to go explore on our own.
After our little orientation walk, we had just about two and a half hours to wander around; and wander I did. The old town itself is like a scene right out of an old medieval movie. Narrow, cobblestone-lined streets, vendors and craftsman on either side, with cafes and people selling snacks along the way. While this might be somewhat irreverent, I couldn’t help but think of Aladdin the movie. Just made me think of it. Or maybe Robin Hood – the one with Kevin Costner. I could see Morgan Freeman’s character, Azeem, walking down the street, scimitar strapped to his back.
One thing I thought was interesting about Mostar is it is a crossroads of cultures – in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and especially in Mostar, the people identify themselves by their religion, not their ethnicity. If someone asks what you are, you are Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish, not Bosnian or Herzegovinian. Before the war the people of each ethnicity lived by themselves, but it was common for intermingling. As the war drew closer and ethnic lines were drawn ever so sharply, the people stayed away from each other, and segregation was the name of the game. There was the Muslim side, and the Christian side. Literally – each side had their part of the city.
The war came and basically destroyed everything, and, now that its been over for a number of years, the tour guide and others we met were quick to point out how much they have now come together as one people. That didn’t always seem to be the case, but it was definitely an intermingling of backgrounds.
The interesting part of this, though, was that Mostar’s population, whether Christian or Muslim, is of the more liberal variety (not that it means they aren’t observant, just not as conservative in daily life. For example, the Muslim women wear what any women in the West would wear, and not traditional dress. The guide made sure this was very clear, and kept pointing out that any people we see in burkas are tourists, and not locals. It was a point she kept making, over and over and over again.
At the center (almost literally) of the old city was the Stari Most, the old bridge. It is a pretty impressive sight. It spans the river below that cuts the city, both old and new, in half. Built between 1557 and 1566, it was rebuilt in 2004 after being destroyed during a bombardment during the Yugoslavian civil war. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The bridge itself is 24 meters tall, just under 79 feet, and has two towers ‘protecting’ it on either side. Most notable, however, is the water down below. The river that runs beneath the bridge, and splits the city, is not very deep. I honestly can’t remember how deep exactly, but not very. The reason this is notable is that one of the ‘traditions’ of the city is the bridge jump.
To prove their manhood, young men would dive from the bridge down into the water below. If they survived – they proved their manhood.
Nowadays, there are ‘professionals’ who do the jump. Considering you are diving into shallow water from a height over double that of a traditional high dive competition height, these divers literally train their whole lives to do this. The way it works is that they stand around on the edge of the bridge, as tourists come by and give money. Once they have enough collected (usually around €30), they will climb to the apex of the bridge, and launch themselves off. It’s really interesting to see, and the fall is kind of scary – once the diver’s head pops back up above the surface everyone nearby stops and cheers.
In the past, there were problems with tourists trying to dive just to prove they can. Still to this day you can find websites advertising this ‘activitiy’. The problem is, not only is the water so shallow you really have to know how to land the dive safely, but the water is COLD. Even on a warm, sunny day, the water can be 20-30 degrees colder. So much so that it literally can shock the body and cause heart attacks or other fatal reactions. According to the tour guide they used to have 100s of people die each year from the dive for one reason or another, and even now there are always a few who ignore the warning and don’t make it.
After a few hours wandering the old city, looking at crafts, and visiting the small little ‘beach’ (I use the term loosely) down below the bridge, I made my way back to the bus, following the ever present church tower, and climbed aboard with all the other people on the ‘tour’. Right on time, we pulled out of the parking area, and after a few brief comments, the tour guide basically stopped talking for the entire ride back. Three border, two countries, and a rest stop in Neum later, we made our way back into Dubrovnik.
Instead of having to catch a second little van to transfer back to La Luna, the bus actually stopped at various places in the city dropping us off. My stop was 2nd, and off I got. Since it was RIGHT THERE, I headed on in to La Luna, grabbed a pizza to go, and climbed the ever present stairs up to the guesthouse were I was staying.
After a failed attempt at having a conversation on Skype, I took a quick shower, tucked myself into bed, and fell asleep.
It was a pretty good day.
Doing It Twice 