Our second morning in Sarajevo started with an attempt to wake up for the sunrise. Our alarm was set for 5am assuming that sunrise was closer to 6am. Unfortunately this assumption was based on our experience in Istanbul and failed to take into account the 1 hour time change. We managed to hike across town and up a hill arriving at about 7am, so two hours after sunrise. However, the view was still gorgeous and it was nice to see the city slowly come to life.
After descending back into the streets of the old town, we spent a few hours in a café people watching and relaxing. We followed up by lunch and a tour of the Sarajevo History Museum with its touching exhibit of photos and items from the civil war.
After that it was time to catch a train for Mostar. Again the scenery that we drove through was simply amazing. As the train meandered along mountain ridges, high above valleys on both our sides, we lost count of the number of tunnels that we had to go through. While it remained light outside there was really not much point to sitting down, as every few minutes we would jump up to the window pointing out yet another gorgeous view.
Mostar was one of the most devastated cities in Bosnia following the war. By 1995 it resembled Dresden after WWII with all of its bridges destroyed and all but one of its 27 Ottoman era mosques utterly ruined. As such there is a stark contrast between the quaint cobblestone streets filled with endless millhouse restaurants and trinket sellers and the ruined buildings still lining many of the side streets.
Mostar’s chief attraction is the “Stari Most” or old bridge. The original survived 427 years including both world wars, but was eventually destroyed November 1993 by Bosnian-Croat artillery. It has since been rebuilt and forms a picturesque arc over the turquoise waters of the fast flowing river Neretva River and the medieval towers on either side of the bank.
We spent a day wandering these cobblestone streets and then headed towards what had only a decade earlier constituted the front line. There we managed to climb up the remainders of a staircase in a multistory bank that served as a sniper nest throughout the war. The building was completely gutted with parts of it burned out, all the windows blown out and much of it devastated by bombing and shelling. I think the photos speak for themselves. What was most amazing to me w
as that a mere meter or so from this building life continued as normal. As I ascended the windowless stairwell I could look into the apartments of the people living next door: I saw their tables set for lunch, the laundry hanging out the window, the things cooking on their stove. The scars were ever present and to them a constant reminder every time they looked out their window, yet life continued.
Our following day was to be spent with a much raved about tour of the countryside. Our hostel was ran by the fabulous Majda and her brother, Bata, organized these tours that everyone seemed to praise everywhere from Sarajevo down to Dubrovnik. The tour was to start at 10:30 am and to go until about 10:00pm if not later and was to take in the major sites in the vicinity including Medugorje (a pilgrimage site where the Holy Virgin apparently spoke to six local teenagers in 1981), the Kravice Waterfalls, Pocitelj fortress and Blagaj with its Dervish House.
Bata turned out to be an over-the-top, crazy, insane Bosnian. He was loud, did not stop with the rapid-fire jokes and puns and was simply a Bosnian reincarnation of Robin Williams on speed. As entertaining as this was for the first half hour it got a bit tiring when you had 19 people crammed into a cargo van that should officially have seated 10 or 12 people. Add to this his insistence to drive the van to the beat of the music, jerking on the gas and breaks respectively, blaring Serbian Turbo Folk music at absolute max with a subwoofer right under our seats making any kind of conversation with your sandwiched neighbor absolutely impossible and his determination to keep us all awake by swerving the vehicle from side to side tossing us against one another, the 14 hour tour without air-conditioning more closely resembled a nightmare than a highlight. I’m not quite sure how but others were surprised that we did not enjoy it, especially since some of them had done it three times already (at 25 Euro per tour where a vehicle rental for the day might have cost a maximum 50 Euro divided between the number of passengers). As informative as Bata was the tour simply dragged on and could easily have been completed in 6 hours.
The waterfall was a very miniature version of Iguacu Falls in Argentina/Brazil, quite pretty but not quite breathtaking. The fortress at Pocitelj offered spectacular views but we weren’t even given the opportunity of walking down to the base of the mountain to visit the mosque. The Dervish House at Blagaj was amazingly located, at the foot of soaring cliffs topped with the Herceg Stjepan Fortress and at the mouth of the Buna River emerging straight out of a gaping cave. However we arrived there when it had already become dark, were not given the opportunity to go into the Dervish House or to climb up the fortress. We arrived at the hostel just before midnight exhausted and disappointed vowing not to do any more tours on our trip.
From Mostar it was off by a 7am bus to Kotor, Montenegro. However, more about Kotor in a day or two after we have more to say about it aside for mere exultations on how beautiful it is.
After descending back into the streets of the old town, we spent a few hours in a café people watching and relaxing. We followed up by lunch and a tour of the Sarajevo History Museum with its touching exhibit of photos and items from the civil war.
After that it was time to catch a train for Mostar. Again the scenery that we drove through was simply amazing. As the train meandered along mountain ridges, high above valleys on both our sides, we lost count of the number of tunnels that we had to go through. While it remained light outside there was really not much point to sitting down, as every few minutes we would jump up to the window pointing out yet another gorgeous view.
Mostar was one of the most devastated cities in Bosnia following the war. By 1995 it resembled Dresden after WWII with all of its bridges destroyed and all but one of its 27 Ottoman era mosques utterly ruined. As such there is a stark contrast between the quaint cobblestone streets filled with endless millhouse restaurants and trinket sellers and the ruined buildings still lining many of the side streets.
Mostar’s chief attraction is the “Stari Most” or old bridge. The original survived 427 years including both world wars, but was eventually destroyed November 1993 by Bosnian-Croat artillery. It has since been rebuilt and forms a picturesque arc over the turquoise waters of the fast flowing river Neretva River and the medieval towers on either side of the bank.We spent a day wandering these cobblestone streets and then headed towards what had only a decade earlier constituted the front line. There we managed to climb up the remainders of a staircase in a multistory bank that served as a sniper nest throughout the war. The building was completely gutted with parts of it burned out, all the windows blown out and much of it devastated by bombing and shelling. I think the photos speak for themselves. What was most amazing to me w
as that a mere meter or so from this building life continued as normal. As I ascended the windowless stairwell I could look into the apartments of the people living next door: I saw their tables set for lunch, the laundry hanging out the window, the things cooking on their stove. The scars were ever present and to them a constant reminder every time they looked out their window, yet life continued.Our following day was to be spent with a much raved about tour of the countryside. Our hostel was ran by the fabulous Majda and her brother, Bata, organized these tours that everyone seemed to praise everywhere from Sarajevo down to Dubrovnik. The tour was to start at 10:30 am and to go until about 10:00pm if not later and was to take in the major sites in the vicinity including Medugorje (a pilgrimage site where the Holy Virgin apparently spoke to six local teenagers in 1981), the Kravice Waterfalls, Pocitelj fortress and Blagaj with its Dervish House.
Bata turned out to be an over-the-top, crazy, insane Bosnian. He was loud, did not stop with the rapid-fire jokes and puns and was simply a Bosnian reincarnation of Robin Williams on speed. As entertaining as this was for the first half hour it got a bit tiring when you had 19 people crammed into a cargo van that should officially have seated 10 or 12 people. Add to this his insistence to drive the van to the beat of the music, jerking on the gas and breaks respectively, blaring Serbian Turbo Folk music at absolute max with a subwoofer right under our seats making any kind of conversation with your sandwiched neighbor absolutely impossible and his determination to keep us all awake by swerving the vehicle from side to side tossing us against one another, the 14 hour tour without air-conditioning more closely resembled a nightmare than a highlight. I’m not quite sure how but others were surprised that we did not enjoy it, especially since some of them had done it three times already (at 25 Euro per tour where a vehicle rental for the day might have cost a maximum 50 Euro divided between the number of passengers). As informative as Bata was the tour simply dragged on and could easily have been completed in 6 hours.
The waterfall was a very miniature version of Iguacu Falls in Argentina/Brazil, quite pretty but not quite breathtaking. The fortress at Pocitelj offered spectacular views but we weren’t even given the opportunity of walking down to the base of the mountain to visit the mosque. The Dervish House at Blagaj was amazingly located, at the foot of soaring cliffs topped with the Herceg Stjepan Fortress and at the mouth of the Buna River emerging straight out of a gaping cave. However we arrived there when it had already become dark, were not given the opportunity to go into the Dervish House or to climb up the fortress. We arrived at the hostel just before midnight exhausted and disappointed vowing not to do any more tours on our trip.
From Mostar it was off by a 7am bus to Kotor, Montenegro. However, more about Kotor in a day or two after we have more to say about it aside for mere exultations on how beautiful it is.
