Ero Mostar

... Bosniak. This is the same country we visited a few weeks ago when I was in Sarajevo if all this sounds familiar.

Mostar is a mix of Muslim and Christians who just want to live in peace and is slowly on the mend. One street will appear prefectly normal but round a corner and a block of ruins greets you. Why come here then? The city has a history interesting to me and I think it is important to see a side of Europe beyond Big Ben and the Eiffel ...

... if someone had drained the bay of water and you were able to drive through all the peaks... stunning!!
I had made a reservation at a hostel and I was lucky enough that my host was waiting at the bus station searching for other tennants, that he had a sign with my name on it and I was able to get a lift back to the hostel, without wandering around aimlessly (as I never would have found it otherwise...) hidden ...

... maybe call the number. She did and said the guy would be here in 10 minutes. I went up to wait in front of the store as we weren’t sure where he was going to go, the information booth or the hostel store.

When the guy arrived he didn’t speak English and the fact that Gabe and I had split up really confused him. He was expecting to pick up two people and we couldn’t get him to realize it was ...

... beautiful maze of flora and fauna, walking through the wilderness where geckos and lizards are found in abundance I'm sure, but that wasn't gonna stop me, I was mentally prepared to handle those ******* reptiles with the utmost aplomb, and hopefully the absolute minimum level of shrieking like a girl. There was a rope on a tree where the willing ones would swing like Tarzan to the middle of the stream, and then you drop. Brilliant eh?! You don't even know the half of it! We ...

... br>I ran into a local while on the walk back, and spoke to him for about a mile of walking, and he talked about the war. He was here, and he was about 25 years old then. He talked about the war with the emotion that only surfaces when you witness it first person. He said he saw the Old Bridge being bombed, he knew which building the bomb was fired from, and he remembered how he cried while he saw his bridge crumble. He said, "You know, war is war, I think war is OK, I'm ...

... during and after the war.
After an exhausting game of basketball in an old Ottoman water catcher Bata took us to a local woman's house who re-nourished us on home dried figs, tea and coffees, still warm pastries and intrigued us with her home made fruit and herb cordial, how could have thought sage cordial could be so nice.
Along the way we drove through Medugorje (as none of us wanted to stop), a dirt poor village that became famous and receives more visitors ...

... for crimes against humanity. Luckily the bridge has been rebuilt in a convincing fashion and appears to be almost as old as it once was. It was our first stop on our tour of the city. It is famous for local divers who will dive off it for money. Due to the cold and the lack of tourists though, the result when we were there consisted only of a old looking guy in a speedo standing on it's peak for hours at a time. The second most famous landmark would be ...

... shape of a box and had nothing I could lock my backpack against. I would have to rely on having decent human beings in my dorm room which was the case 99.99% of the time so I guess it wasnt much of a concern. After I checked in, I walked around Mostar's Old Town. It seems like every European city has a designated old town for tourists to spend their money in. It did not take me long to figure out I was going to like Mostar. It definitely had a European feel ...

... literally inches from the edge of a cliff - I think we were the non local people on our Glob bus, but the journey went well, with stops and bus changes where anticipated - a friendly Bosnian/Australian helped us out with the bus change though, as we had no Bosnian currency needed for putting bags under the bus (the first bus let us take them on board). Anyway, after Rat left his house at 2am, by 4pm we were in Majda's car being ...

... peaceful and is now quite normal and safe. So I had seen pictures and read the history of the bridge, but I didn't get it. it's a bridge. It goes across a river. That's what bridges do. Walking across the bridge my first night in town, though, it started to sink in. Not only is the bridge absolutely gorgeous, it connects two parts of Mostar's beautiful old town. Leaning over the side, I was filled with an odd respect for the men who hurl themselves off it each summer. The ...