A new day dawned to reveal bright sunshine in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, though I knew it
was not to last. My predetermined plan had been to travel south to Mostar, a
small city known for its iconic Stari most (Old Bridge), and also for its
involvement in the Bosnian war. Unfortunately, another big downpour was
scheduled for the afternoon, so I was in two minds about whether to proceed. To
ponder my options, and to have some breakfast whilst indulging in the local
culture, I headed for the Turkish quarter. There, I found a café in the
courtyard of an old stone building. I had a reasonably good omelette and
followed it with bosanska kafa –
Bosnian coffee.
Fundamentally almost indistinguishable from the related
Turkish variant, Bosnian coffee is brewed slightly differently, with the coffee
added to boiling water, where the Turkish version combines coffee and cold
water to be boiled together. The Bosnians naturally argue that this makes for a
superior drink, though no doubt the Turks would suggest otherwise. To avoid
being lynched by a local, it is advised to acknowledge that they are not the
same product.
Coffee in Bosnia is a social ritual and is intended not to
be gulped back, but to be savoured and consumed gradually. Mine was served with
several key components. One džezva contained
the viscous but foam-topped coffee and a second džezva was filled with boiling water. A dish of sugar cubes came too,
although I left these untouched. A single square of rahat lokum, essentially Turkish delight but possibly also distinct
in some way, accompanies the coffee. In Bosnia, one pours one’s own coffee
(apparently this is not the case in Turkey), which means that with a bit of
care, the coarse coffee grains don’t make it into the cup. The result was rich
and strong and perfectly complemented by the atmosphere of the plant-filled
garden. I was surrounded by fellow coffee consumers and local sevdah music completed the scene. Neno
Murić’s recording of Kad ja pođoh na
Benbašu, a song associated with Sarajevo in particular, is a good example
of the type of sound typical of the city’s old town.
Bosanska kafa
I chose to follow through with my plan to make it to Mostar
despite the weather. For one thing, I had no idea when I might return to
Bosnia, and for another I thought there was a chance the impending rain might
pass me on the way, as I headed south and it moved north. Staying dry was
certainly desirable, particularly having been drenched as I ran through the
streets towards my hostile during the previous night’s tempest of rain.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to retrace my steps to the Istočno bus station in
East Sarajevo, as most internal buses and routes to Croatia depart from a
different station in the centre of the city.
It was a two hour journey to Mostar, which involved a short
climb out of Sarajevo and then a long and very scenic descent along the
Trešanica valley to Konjic, the halfway point. Here the Trešanica flowed into
the Neretva and the road followed this river all the way to Mostar. There were
few cars on the roads today, and only a limited human presence outside the
towns I passed through. A few determined individuals, faces cloaked by the
hoods of their dripping waterproofs, stood loyally beside pop-up roadside
stalls selling an array of locally produced honey.
Countryside outside Sarajevo
A bi-alphabetic road sign in Konjic
Crossing the Neretva at Konjic
Despite the grey clouds that overshadowed the Bosnian
countryside, the views were sublime. Vast hillsides covered in swathes of
forest stood unblemished, the solitude interrupted occasionally by small
villages, their houses unevenly arranged across the hillside, the white towers
of minarets providing the only manmade landmarks. Konjic appeared a reasonable
sized settlement, punctuated by its arched Ottoman bridge over the Neretva. The
river itself was a wonderful sea green. A sunny day would have brought out a
gloriously rich colour from its shimmering surface. The Neretva was slow-moving
and wide here, an enormous reservoir formed by a dam further downstream. The
landscape was overwhelmingly beautiful. Jagged white cliffs rose out of the
river, their pristine reflections sharing up from the water, even on so dull a
day as this. At points, shrouds of white cloud lay like blankets over green
peaks. I would return to that valley in a heartbeat, even quicker if the sun
were out.
A small mountainside village between Sarajevo and Konjic
The Neretva valley
Limestone cliffs tower over the Neretva
Parts of the Neretva reservoir are dotted with little villages like this one
The outskirts of Mostar
The Neretva valley looking south from Mostar
My prediction that the rain and I might cross paths during
the journey failed to come to fruition, and as the bus pulled into Mostar, a
bright flash of lightning illuminated the broad valley, accompanied barely an
instant later by the crash of thunder. And then the heavens opened.
For neither the first time nor the last, I was angry at my
own optimism for believing that the day might cheer up and I would see the
wondrous Stari most in all its glory. The rain was now pelting down and the
thunder booming. I could tell I would soon be extremely wet and have little
opportunity to dry off. Faced with this or the option of being the sole visitor
to a charmless bus station café for several hours and wasting the trip to
Mostar, I placed everything that was dry into a large plastic bag within my
rucksack, pulled my waterproof’s hood down to my forehead and marched off into
the gloom.
Prior to this visit, I was watching a number of
documentaries on the Bosnian conflict, and some footage of Mostar, at one stage
a central setting for the war, stuck in my head. Accompanied by a local, a
British journalist wearing a black flak jacket sprints across Stari most,
gunfire sounding in the distance. Snipers and light artillery wrought havoc on
the town. Mostar had been proclaimed as the provisional capital of the Croatian
Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, a self-declared ethnically Croat territory occupying
much of the south and centre of Bosnia. Whilst generally speaking, the Bosnian
war pitted the combined forces of Bosnia and Croatia against those of
Yugoslavia (modern Serbia) and the Republika Srpska, a splinter conflict broke
out between Croatia and Bosnia from 1992-1994 and was also related to the
ongoing Croatian War of Independence. This changed with the signing of the
Washington Agreement in 1994, which created the jointly Bosniak and Croat
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a year and a half before peace was also
made with the Serbs. Mostar was embroiled in a three way struggle between
Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, resulting in a bitter siege. It may sound a little
disingenuous, but as I ran from building to bullet-scarred building looking for
cover, avoiding the huge puddles that were forming, and ducking under dry
porches to check my bearings, my senses heightened by the bellows of thunder, I
had the very slightest taste of what this place must have been like during the
siege. Mostar was more heavily bombed than any other city in Bosnia
and Herzegovina during the war, and the effects of the conflict, twenty years
on, abounded. As I had seen in Sarajevo, a lot of buildings showed small traces
of damage, with many having been indiscriminately peppered with bullet holes.
Something I had not encountered so much in the capital was the smattering of
buildings that had been reduced to empty shells, signs in Bosnian and English
warning not to enter because of the danger of unexploded ordnance. Lack of
funding is the most probable reason that these structures have not yet been
cleared of hazards and torn down; they now stand like macabre witnesses to
Mostar’s darkest days.
Some mosques moonlight as cafés
This building is still unsafe to enter, twenty years on from the war
Battle scars from the siege of Mostar
Another damaged building
The streets turned from tarmac to cobbles as I neared Stari most. The building on the left has a sign warning not to enter because of the danger of collapse
Stari most is the most enduring image of Bosnia, and one
that has captured the imaginations of visitors for centuries. It is Mostar’s
majestic centrepiece, and one of three UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country. The city is even named after the former gatekeepers of the
bridge, such is its importance to the town. (‘Most’ means ‘bridge’ in Bosnian,
as in many Slavic languages. It is pronounced with a short o, to rhyme with the
English ‘lost’, not ‘most’). Originally built by the Turks in 1566, Stari most
stood unblemished over the centuries until Mostar, the largest city in
Herzegovina, became embroiled in the war of the 1990s. No party has officially
accepted the blame for the destruction of the bridge, but it is commonly cited
that a sustained bombardment of Stari most by Bosnian Croats was the culprit. On
9 November 1993, one of the finest examples of Islamic architecture in
southeastern Europe crumbled into the Neretva.
Today, thankfully, it has been restored to its former glory.
Even on such a miserable day as my visit, it was difficult to peel my eyes away
from it. The view could scarcely have altered in three hundred years.
Old-looking stone houses, some in Ottoman style, rested above the dark trees
that lined the river bank, the bridge itself flanked by an angular grey tower,
minarets jutting into the sky in the background. On a better day, I would very
likely have seen legions of brave young divers flinging themselves from its 21
metres into the river below, as has become a tradition here. Crossing the
bridge, I realised that it is difficult to appreciate quite how steeply humped
it is from down below. Ridges of stone that rise from the smooth pavement act
like steps. Without them, it would have been difficult to get traction on the
slippery surface.
Stari most seen from the water level
The bridge rises steeply
Looking south from Stari most
The view north from the bridge, including the Karađozbegova Mosque
Stari most and the Tara tower, one of its mostari
Souvenirs for sale on the waterlogged streets of Mostar's old town
In the adjacent streets, the rain pooled on the cobblestones
and formed great lakes of water, preventing me from walking straight. These
streets were lined with souvenir shops, many clearly aimed at day trippers who
had come up the valley from the Croatian cities of Dubrovnik, 80 miles away by
road, and Ploče, just 40
miles distant. The same jumble
of shell casings, coffee making equipment and Turkish amulets was on display
under the shops’ dripping canopies.
The best lookout point for a bird’s eye view of the bridge
is the minaret of the Karađozbegova
Mosque. Finding it closed, presumably because of Ramadan, I pressed on. My
intended goal was the Muslibegović House, a well-preserved example of an
Ottoman residence, with ornate architecture and separate quarters for men and
women, linked by a common courtyard. I was looking forward to discovering more
about this building, its design, Ottoman culture, and its historical importance
over time. Approaching the building, I noticed that it was rather
low-key, with no obvious entrance. A small sign indicated that one was to ring
a bell at the gate and wait to be let in. (It turned out that the house is
still being lived in). This done, I was escorted inside and greeted by a
friendly man who apologised for his poor English but then explained with little
difficulty that he was busy with a tour and that I was welcome to wait for him for
five to ten minutes. I thanked him, and was planning to leave the premises
until he was ready, but he showed me to a room where I could wait. I had to
take my shoes off to actually enter the house, but was then compelled to sit in
the first room as I had been told in no uncertain terms that there would be no
viewing of the house without a guided tour. Five minutes passed, then ten, then
fifteen. A woman, many years younger than the first man, came in and asked what
I was doing there. I explained, and she then told me I could go upstairs as the
above room was empty and it would be more interesting for me to wait up there
than down below. This was more an instruction than an invitation. When I got
upstairs, the room was not in fact empty, and around twenty middle aged French
people and their French-speaking guide looked up at me inquisitively, clearly
wondering who I was or why I had come up here.
Torn between following the command of the woman downstairs
to wait here, and the embarrassment of loitering awkwardly as the French group
learnt all about the wonders of this room, I chose to loiter awkwardly. Some
time later, and now feeling chuffed at knowing I was in unemaison ottomane, the
French party left and I was again alone. More time passed. Unsure of how long
the promised tour would take, and increasingly doubtful that the first man
would be back – it had now been well over half an hour – I decided that I ought
to find something else to do. I took a quick look around at what was a kind of
living space for socialising in, and a bedroom, admired les tapis traditionnels, put my shoes back on, loitered in the
porch a little longer, and left.
The upstairs room of the Muslibegović House
A sleeping area
These mannequins were also waiting to be shown around the house
No sooner had I reached the large wooden gate at the
entrance and was figuring out how to open it than the proprietor, the first man
I had met, ambushed me. Having ignored me and left me to wait four times longer
than he had said, he now caught up with me at the very point I had had enough.
The language barrier stood in the way of me fully explaining that I no longer
had the time or the patience to wait to find out what the itinerary of his
elusive tour was. The French group had surely given him plenty of custom that
afternoon anyway. As I turned my back on the Muslibegović House, it occurred to me
that the two rooms in which I had waited might have actually been the entire tour. The house still being lived in, many of the other rooms could have
remained closed to the public, and there may have been nothing more to see. I
had enjoyed a lengthy stay, complete with a plethora of information in French.
What more could I have asked for? I still don’t know whether I saw everything
or not. In hindsight, I am almost certain that there must have been more to see.
Only a repeat visit will give me the answer. Cold and no longer immune to the elements, I returned to the
bus station. The rain was now leaching through my failing waterproof, and my sodden
shoes had taken on water like sponges. Once onboard, I was grateful for the
opportunity to remove my saturated coat and give my damp t-shirt shoulders a
chance to dry out. The return journey to Sarajevo once again revealed
jaw-dropping countryside. I was desperately sad to move on from this beautiful
land, but now had the prospect of six warm and sunny days in Croatia, a world
away from the steady rain hanging over the Bosnian valleys. Back in Sarajevo, I
concluded that my saturated shoes, beginning to give off a putrescent smell,
were beyond saving. At the Sarajevo City Center mall, I found a sports shop and
got a pair of cheap trainers. They certainly weren’t the best, but they would
serve the purpose. Tomorrow I would meet my friend and travelling companion
Andrew anyway; he was bringing the bag I had pre-packed with extra clothes and
a spare pair of shoes so from now on, I would be able to alternate my footwear.
At 0055 the following day, when my bus stopped to refuel at the small village
of Donji Vakuf, I got out and discarded my ruined shoes in a skip behind a
garage. Bosnia had killed them; it seemed only right that they remain here
rather than receiving a glamorous funeral on the Croatian riviera. I like to
imagine that they are still there, probably being munched upon by the slobbery
jaws of a stray dog. I like to imagine that more than just a pair of rotten shoes,
that there is a part of me that has remained in Bosnia, that beautiful,
diverse, complicated country. There is a certainly a part of Bosnia that has
remained in me.
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