We woke to more rain on Wednesday morning. Michelle optimistically suggested that once we drove out of the Bosnian hills into Herzegovina, we'd have lovely weather. With her instructions to make two rights and then just keep going, you can't miss it, we headed out alone in one of their cars to Mostar, which is over 100 kilometers away from Sarajevo.
The road to Mostar took us through beautiful green hills and eventually along the gorgeous Neretva River in a gorge to rival any in Tennessee (it actually reminded me quite a lot of home). We passed entire villages that had been torched during the war and were no longer inhabited. We resisted stopping at one of the many "Bosnian fast-food joints," as I termed them, which were basically little huts with a lamb-roasting spit. Marco swears by them but Michelle said they were a little too rustic; plus, we'd had the best lamb around the night before. All along the route were policemen at intervals, who would wave motorists to the side of the road with little stop signs on a stick that look like oversized lollipops. Our guidebook had informed us that they were usually just looking for coffee money and to play the dumb tourist if you get stopped, but fortunately our diplomatic plates kept us from ever getting pulled over.
It took us several hours to make the trip, despite the short distance, because the roads are narrow and not in the best shape. They're better than you might expect, since they started out pretty well thanks to Tito's infrastructure reinforcement agenda. We were pleased that the tunnels that we encountered had lighting, since we'd heard from our guidebook and Michelle that at one point none of them did. And these are long tunnels. Another fun thing is Bosnians' very confident but surprising driving style; they like doing things like passing on hairpin curves. I'm glad Drew was driving so that we didn't run off the road when I put my hands over my eyes.
Upon arrival in Mostar we crossed one of the several bridges, the original keepers of which (mostari) likely provided the town with its name. Like Sarajevo, Mostar was part of the Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, and the architecture of the bridges and older buildings reflect that. Also like Sarajevo, Mostar was severely damaged by bombs during the war, although the brunt of the damage was on buildings, not civilians. The front line of the war became the river, which divided the Croatians from the Muslims (originally the conflict here was between the Serbs and the Bosnians/Croats, but then the Croats attacked the Bosnian Muslims). During the course of the war all of the bridges across the river were destroyed, including the Stari Most (Old Bridge), which is the bridge for which the city is famous. It was a great tragedy that it collapse, leading to a great triumph when it was reopened after being rebuilt in 2004.
After looping the town we parked just above the Stari Most and walked down cobble-stoned streets to the neighborhood near it, which is filled with restaurants and inns. Small tributaries also crossed by Turkish bridges lead to the river, provided postcard-perfect views. As we neared the Stari Most we found ourselves in the midst of a large band of French tourists, who had just arrived on two buses. That tainted the experience a bit, since French tourists are even less considerate of locals overall than Americans, but we persevered.
Nothing could take away from how incredible that bridge is. Pointed in the middle, each side is steep to climb up or down; the views of the rushing river below and the town lining the sides are incredible. On the other side of the bridge we entered the old bazaar and perused the shops. We stopped by the courtyard of the Koski Mehmed-Pasha Mosque, which has a beautiful fountain for pre-prayer cleansing and a peaceful garden. The mosque and the minaret are theoretically free to visitors, but that day they had a temporary sign charging 10 Euro for entry, probably due to the infusion of French tourists who were fine with paying. We opted out and moved on, finding lunch at a nearby cafe. They had burek there, so we finally got to try the pie with meat, as well as a slice of the cheese variety, sirnica. Both were tasty, but I really dug the burek.
We did some shopping in the bazaar, sniffing out some great deals deeper in the market away from the French folks, then climbed the hill to the old clock tower, which is mostly in ruins but sufficiently intact to tell what it is, trees growing our various parts of it. We kept going all the way up the hill and out of town a bit to a completely ruined building that must have once been great; the ruins themselves were ginormous. We couldn't figure out what they were, but snapped a photo of the sign near them telling about the construction project happening there in 2005 (guess they ran out of funds, too), and kept climbing. Drew stopped me from wandering off the paved path and onto gravel, which might house land mines. Yikes, forgot about that for a second. Silly me. The view over the city below was lovely, although a bit sad with the destroyed buildings visible.
After hiking back down we returned to the bridge and stopped in a free photo exhibition that showed the bridge before its collapse, during the war, after its collapse, during its rebuilding, and during its grand reopening, which was attended by dignitaries from around the world. There was also a short video that showed footage of the bazaar and bridge during the war, places where we had just stepped, that were completely destroyed. It was absolutely shocking to see scenes of smoking ruins, entering from the street that had been rebuilt. It's wonderful how far the city has come.
That's about it for Mostar. I found an ice cream cone and we wandered a bit more, but took off shortly after that. Our return driving trip was incident-free, a few wrong turns in Michelle's neighborhood notwithstanding. We were relieved to pull back into her courtyard with our persons and the car intact.
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