Via Pacis Medjugorje

... who told me a lot about Australia and was very interested in Minneapolis. At one point during the trip, I saw a plane flying next to us. Very interesting. I was on the north side of the plane, and could see a whole field of icebergs below us, but my camera didn't focus enough to capture them. We got home at 3:20 p.m. Minneapolis time. I gave the kids their gifts and went to sleep for the next 12 hours.

... The Sorrowful Mysteries wrap around behind the site and lead back to it from the other side. We stopped there on the way back down. And the Glorious Mysteries lead back to the bottom of the hill. We stopped at a store, which tried to charge significantly above the going exchange rate, and left without purchasing, had coffee, and headed back to the St. Francis store to collect my statue. They didn't have a box, so we headed home for dinner, joining ...

... who have visited here is well into the millions. The number I remember is 35,000,000, but I'd have to go double-check that. I was quite happy after more than 24 hours of travel, to crawl into bed and turn out the lights at 8:30. Tomorrow, the 25th, is the day of Mary's monthly apparition. I'm hoping we'll be taken to the Hill for that. We're also scheduled to meet two of the six visionaries.

... except to maybe dry the socks. I make plans for onward travel to Sarajevo. That may be my last option to kick back. If it's not suitable, then I may bail. Mostar is too small anyway. There's not much to do besides viewing the bridge, dining by the river, and wandering the streets. At least the coffee's good, rich espresso for less than a buck. Of course a single espresso doesn't do much more than chase away the withdrawal symptoms ...

... started paying closer attention to the buildings I walked by yesterday. It was only then that I realized that a significant amount of buildings not too far from the old town had no roof at all. The front of the buildings were all intact but there was no roof for many of them. Also, the interior to some of these buildings were all gutted out. Mostar was definitely hot hard during the war with the Serbs. It still amazes me that this ...

... be ruins. Mostar's real attraction is the beautiful Stari Most, the bridge that was destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004. As my Lonely Planet describes "If Paris has the Eiffel Tower then Mostar has Stari Most". The nearby Museum of Herzegovina had an interesting 15 minute movie on the bridge, including actual footage of the bridge's destruction during the war.

We spent the day wandering the streets of Mostar with no particular place to go. We visited the 'Turkish House'. You might think we'd seen enough of these in Turkey, but it was interesting to see an Ottoman style house from a Bosnian perspective. An American tour group was there on a day trip from Dubrovnik. Most visitors to Mostar are day trippers rather than overnight stayers ...

... groups to talk about cultural perceptions. They shared what their lives were like growing up in a war filled country in the nineties. Of the four students in my group, all but one moved out of the country during the war, most to Croatia. The one who stayed told us of the extreme poverty and fear, the normalcy of being woken up by explosions, and the eventual numbness to death and violence. These students chose English as their major because they have ...

... to him until I had to leave- he had come from Sarajevo, so was able to alleviate my fears of not having anywhere to stay- apparently there was a travel agency in the station who drive you to their hostel. When I was buying my ticket for the train, I started talking to an English couple in front of me in the queue. There were so many Brits going to Sarajevo- turns out I'm not being quite as adventerous as I once thought :) Anyway we got to the front of the queue, and they asked ...

... so you see what it looked like after the war. To see all the empty buildings and bullet holes still on some of the buildings is very eerie. For many of us, this was an important place to visit because we were old enough to remember hearing about the conflict in Bosnia. It is so hard to believe that something so horrible happened and we were able to see the aftermath first hand. Since we were not old enough to really understand the devastation ...