Globtour Inn Medjugorje

We had a choice today of a complete free day or taking a trip into a place pronounced something like Ta-ah-eena to see a very famous statue of Mary and then look at some waterfalls on the way back. I chose to stay here. I chose a statue at the St. Francis bookstore after morning Mass, and they very kindly held it for me until I could get back, as it was the last one, and I'd already planned to go climb Apparition Hill. The group I expected turned out to ...

We started the day with a late breakfast and noon Mass. In between, I started pricing and mapping out my gift-buying strategy. After Mass, we had lunch at Viktor's, and visited the community of Cenacolo, which is pronounced Chin AH ku lo. It is a community started by Sister Elvira which takes in young men with drug addictions or other problems ...

... days. I went to a couple of bookstores. I love seeing the shelves full of books in foreign languages. Even Russian (if you're reading, Jeryl!) Following lunch, we climbed Cross Mountain. On this mountain, a cross was erected in 1933 in commemoration of Jesus' crucifixion. Embedded within it is a piece of the true Cross on which Jesus was crucified. The path is quite steep and rugged. Amazingly, some groups manage to carry people all the way ...

... somebody renting out some flats and converting it to a hostel. The three parking spaces out front hardly qualify it as a 'motel' in my opinion, so I feel justified with the quotation marks. Elvis soon splits, having done his thing, and despite the fact that besides him the staff speaks little or no English, the room is killer, just like downtown, even a shower stall that looks like science fiction, bells and whistles, massaging me in ...

... dinner. Though neither me or Marcin we not really hungry. Our stomachs must have shrunk within those 3 weeks of travelling. Not a long time after we left Mostar, we were driving through a canyon, by a river. The view was breathtaking. The whole country of Bosnia and Herzegovina is about mountains, mountains and again mountains. It`s beautiful. A shame that at the moment when we were passing the canyon, it started getting dark. I fell asleep and when I woke up, we already were in Sarajevo.

... have had a vision of Our Lady in 1981 and it has ruthlessly cashed in on. Everything is priced in Euros and there are tons of plastic religious articles for sale. We went into the church where Mass was being said in Italian (a different language every hour) and wandered round the gardens. We drove onto Mostar which was amazing! The town is a Croat town but ...

... picked us up from the bus station and now showed us to our room which was lovely. We dropped our bags and headed out in the last light of the day to check out the old town. Our motel is just about as close to the Stari Most, the Old Bridge, as you can possibly get. We wandered along the cobbled streets noticing the extent of the war damage that remains. Jasna had explained to us that things are being fixed up but it takes a ...

... often. Even now, some of the visionaries still receive apparitions on a regular basis and pray with Mary. Our tour guide told us the whole story about how the people of Medjugorje were consistently faithful and especially revered Mary, despite their extreme poverty and pains of life, and one day two little girls went out to collect the sheep in the hills and were scared away by the most beautiful lady they'd even seen beckoning to them to come to her. They ...

... they were only 2 or 3 pounds to start with) which seemed to be OK! Yet again though, I had no respect for the heat of the day, and found it veeery hot standing outside in the sun. Feeling a bit peckish, I stopped for cevapi, a traditional fast food over what appears to be the whole of the Balkans. They are all slightly different though- in Albania, they serve doner kebab, chips and salad all inside a pitta bread. Croatia seems to be mince with bread on the side, and in Bosnia ...

... all had our sleeping bags so we just stretched out on the floor. The ride was interesting because we hit bad weather and even though the boat was about the size of the ferries in Seattle, it was rocking back and forth like crazy. We got to Split in Croatia at about 7 am the next day. We took about a 4 hour bus ride to Medjugorje in Bosnia. Medjugorje, where we stayed for the weekend, is where the Virgin Mary appeared to 6 children in 1981. The ...