Rain was threatening this morning when we woke, so we headed off to the train station early than we were going to, and that turned out to be a good thing as the rain set in not long after we got there.
Bedlam at the bus terminal, as expected, and no bus had Mostar displayed on the front, but we eventually guessed which one was ours and piled on board. Left right on time, which was obviously tempting the God of Bus Timetables, and he didn’t let us down.
Took the coastal route east towards Dubrovnik, and when I say the coastal road, I don’t mean the highway that runs somewhat near the coast in the general direction of Dubrovnik. No, I mean the one that causes us to get caught behind tractors as we inch our way between the cars parked on each side of the road in the middle of villages, and gives us an uninterrupted view of the crashing surf at the bottom of the sheer cliff, with only a flimsy guard rail to keep a 20 tonne bus on the road.
‘Nothing to worry about’, I thought. The driver must do it every day. ‘Stop worrying’. Next village, a guy in his eighties who was obviously a safe driver and had never caused an accident in his life, came through a Stop sign, and ploughed into the side of the bus. Now when I say ‘ploughed’ I should explain that a little, old tinny car doesn’t exactly make much impression on an interstate bus. It comes off second best, and on-board we were unaware of what had happened till the bystanders started pointing. Regardless, you can’t move until the police have finished their investigation, so the small town was rather at a standstill for a while.
Eventually the police turned up, extracted statements from all concerned, and took twenty seven 8’ x 10’ colour glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence, then let us go. By then we were over an hour late.
Border control was a little interesting. Previously, on the train, the police had checked the toilets, looked under every seat, and done a thorough check for uninvited guests. On the bus, the driver collected the passports and took them over to the booth. Goodness knows how the police could tell that the driver collected them all.
Finally arrived in Mostar over an hour late to the strangest apartment check in we’ve had this trip. We were told that we would be met at the train station by an old guy with a moustache on a bicycle, so we were sure to recognise him. Trouble is that there were lots of of old guys at the station on bicycles. The first one I went up to and greeted warmly must have had his impression of tourists roundly confirmed. Eventually, one came and greeted us, before throwing up his hands in despair and riding off, to return a few minutes later with a car for our luggage.
Spent the late afternoon walking through the historic area of Mostar, and being duly impressed by ‘the bridge’, properly known as Stari Most. Saw several divers throw themselves off the bridge into the icy river below, but not before the assembled crowds had contributed enough to make it worth his while. Given that he jumps over 20 metres into freezing water, I don’t blame him in the slightest.
The bridge came to be the enduring symbol of the Yugoslav Civil War. Built by the Ottomans in the 16th century, it was blown up by Croat forces in November 1993 for no real strategic reason, and then rebuilt with UNESCO funds.
We watched a documentary a little while ago, where a young Mostar woman explained that for over 400 year the predominantly Muslim Bosnians lived peacefully with the predominantly Catholic Croats and the predominantly Orthodox Serbs in Mostar, until the Civil War broke out, and the distrust caused neighbours to shoot at each other for almost 3 years. It was sobering tonight to reflect, as we walked down to the supermarket to buy tea, that anybody in the town older than our children would have once been the target of snipers as they attempted to do the same thing.
Mostar
Mostar
Not Enough Money Yet
Divers
Mostar
Mostar
Mostar
Mostar
One Of The Many Mosques
Mosque
Scars
Oops
Oops
Our Welcome
Our Apartment