I thought we were all Yugoslavian. One day, I woke up and my friends were in the hills, shooting at me. I realized they were Serbs.
–Bata
I’ve spent almost two weeks in former Yugoslav territory (from Slovenia to here), and twice as long in Bosnia and Herzegovina as I initially intended. I’ve been learning a lot about this country and it’s recent history. The contrasts across the region are quite amazing – from Slovenia, an efficient, tiny Balkan Switzerland, which seems to have survived the fall of Yugoslavia relatively unscathed, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, which arguably has the deepest wounds, many of which are yet to heal.
On Saturday, there was a reunion of sorts as Barney, Paul, Tash and I booked into the same hostel in Mostar, Herzegovina. A few days later there was another reunion as Steph and Sarah joined us. The hostel in question was Majda’s Rooms, an amazingly friendly place run by a Bosniak family in their apartment. It’s the kind of place where you are served cake as part of the check-in procedure, where Majda’s mother makes countless pots of tea and coffee for everyone as they wake up each morning, where Majda cooked us all rice pudding as a surprise dessert one evening, and where Bata, Majda’s brother, drove us all to the train station at a quarter to seven in the morning. Truly fantastic – I don’t think a hostel proprietor has ever gone so far to make me feel like family.
On the advice of fellow guests, we took Bata’s tour around the countryside of Herzegovina, taking in ancient Bosnian and Ottoman fortresses and mosques, the site of a recent apparition of the Virgin Mary, a fantastic (if freezing) set of waterfalls, a decent local restaurant and finally a Dervish house – one of the holiest sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a symbol of the nation. Over the course of the twelve hour tour, Bata also explained about the ancient and recent history of the region and of the former Yugoslavia in general.
Mostar itself is in worse condition than Sarajevo. Whilst the Stari Grad (old town) and iconic Stari Most (old bridge) have been faithfully repaired and reconstructed respectively, just outside the Stari Grad are countless ruins, the roofless shells of apartment blocks that are absolutely riddled with bullet-holes and remain unoccupied. The former front line runs a block from the river, a few hundred metres from where we slept. Many of the buildings on either side seem to be in the same condition as when the war finished and Bosnia was divided, twelve years ago. The only real additions have been small signs reading “Dangerous ruins: Keep out.”
Yesterday, Paul, Tash, Barney and myself were joined by Sarah and Steph (whom I last saw in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, but have been keeping in contact with) and Blake and Joe (both Victorians) for a white-water rafting trip down the Neretva River, starting around thirty kilometres from Konjic. Whilst large portions of the three-hour downstream trip were spent floating along rather leisurely, gawking at the absolutely breathtaking scenery all around, there were enough rapids and splashes to justify the ‘white-water’ portion of the rafting. Despite water cold enough to necessitate our wetsuits, we entered the water voluntarily a few times for (very brief) swims. It almost seems a miracle we all survived without hypothermia, actually. Paul was heard muttering “It’s Ireland cold!” at least twice. Sarah uttered an expletive I’d never heard her use before, the first time she entered the water. We certainly appreciated the sunshine – on a cold day, it probably would have been unbearable. After each set of rapids, our skipper passed around a bottle of moonshine brandy, which was almost as foul as Lao-Lao rice whiskey. There were also a few plastic bottles of beer floating around in the frigid water at the bottom of the raft, which Barney and Paul managed to get through over the course of the trip.
“We’ve only had two pints each,” was how Paul put it. There was a bit of a pause before Sarah added, “On a raft.”
Probably wouldn’t happen in Australia.
One of the main attractions of Mostar is the Stari Most or Old Bridge, after which the town is named (I think Mostar means ‘Bridge-keeper’, but I’m not sure). The Ottoman-built bridge spans the narrow Neretva, which flows 21 metres below the bridge’s apex. Whilst I saw a few members of the Stari Most Diving Club posing as if to prepare for the leap, none of them actually did – they usually wait for a pot of at least €30 before jumping, or €100 for diving. Standing at the highest point of the bridge and looking down, I understand why.
Today I’m taking a Giant Leap myself – a twenty-nine hour journey from Mostar to Dresden, with connecting trains at Zagreb, Munich and Leipzig. Assuming I make all of my connections, I’ll arrive in Dresden sometime on Thursday afternoon. Anja (with whom I travelled through parts of Thailand) invited me to a street party which starts sometime on the weekend. I’m crossing quite a few countries to get there, so I hope it’s fun. All the way across the Federation, then through the Republika Srpska, where signs read things like ‘Сарајево’ instead of Sarajevo (for a moment I thought I’d accidentally got on a train back to Bulgaria), then across the border to Croatia, and then back through Slovenia and Austria before finally reaching Germany and another half-day’s travel to get to Dresden. This probably counts as abuse of my rail pass. It’s only about a thousand kilometres as the crow flies, but the Bosnian portion of the journey is anything but a straight line. Balkan trains in general are horribly slow, but the scenery makes up for it.
Mostar photoset is here.