FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION
We successfully took the bus out of Sarajevo yesterday to Mostar, a small city in southern Bosnia that had the entire old city and surroundings bombed into oblivion just 13 years ago. There are two striking things here.
1) How fast they have rebuilt the bridge, mosques, cathedrals, and many, many other core structures of great pride
2) How the old dividing line between the Muslims and Croats is still a complete wasteland with clearly no one wanting to invest in this high risk area.
Mostar has much more of a tourist scene than Sarajevo since the old Stari Grad (old city) is much more compact and tourist friendly in a traditional tourist way. The bus loads of tourists you would have expected in Sarajevo are here instead, as it is also a popular day trip stop from the Coast of Croatia just an hour or so away. The photos of the various stages of the old bridge being destroyed over a 10 month period in 1992/1993 were stunning, as you could see the desperate attempts of the Bosnian-Muslims to protect this 500 year old gem with sand bags braces and other make-shift devices.
Luckily for the city, the bridge has been rebuilt and was rededicated in 2004 with much international fanfare as a great symbol of the reunited Bosnia? Will it last is the big question, but it seems on the surface that everyone gets along now, but apparently there is a great divide still under the surface. For now, tourism is clearly on the verge of exploding and new restaurants, clubs, and pensions are opening along the lovely river and creeks that run through the heart of the old town. The downside of all this new construction is that it all looks a bit “Pirates of the Caribbean” with little bridges, waterfalls, and terraces everywhere, but its still got enough soul to please even the most cynical tourist as myself.
Today we successfully went back to the bus station to get tickets to Dubrovnik and hopefully on to Kotor, Montenegro. It was rather comical as we switched to German first to try to communicate with Cheryl, and Cheryl got about 80% of the conversation, and then another agent tried French on me and we confirmed that we had to buy tickets here only to Dubrovnik and then buy the onward ticket to Montenegro in Dubrovnik. We’ll see how that goes as the intercity bus website (Globtour) has different times on their site and is all in Croatian. Either way, we have an early morning (7am) departure and should at least get to Dubrovnik by the late morning. No arrival times anywhere, so its all kind of a fun mystery.
We’re really starting to dig the travel life and all the minute wonders of every interaction, smile, vista, and smell. The call to prayers 5 times a day amplified across the cities will be ringing in my head for a long time.
We will post some photos when we get to an uploading friendly computer, so for now, you will just have to read the text. I have 5 minutes left on our cafe computer (which by the way, a laptop is really not needed) so that’s all for now. I’ll get back to all in a day or two either in Dubrovnik or Montenegro
Tags: Bosnia and Hercegovina, Eastern Europe, Travel, Tag Index
rich.coffin