(Re)building bridges
Trip Start
Apr 08, 2007
1
65
144
Trip End
Oct 01, 2007
Mostar,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
I got in at Mostar's blandly Communist station just a few minutes after the intended arrival time
01: Bosnian countryside from the train
. Not bad for the Balkans. The hostel that arranged my homestay in Sarajevo lined something up for me here as well, so a guy was waiting on the platform to meet me right when I stepped off the train. Same deal as before: private room on the edge of the old town for €15 a night, this time with private bath. No AC, unfortunately, which is actually a slightly sore point. It's friggin' HOT here. I've spent the better part of the day wiping sweat off my face and back and even had to take a siesta after it got a little overwhelming in the afternoon. For someone that practically never takes naps, that's saying something.Mostar is a captivating place, but it sure took a battering in the war. Jajce looked pretty roughed-up in parts; here though, there are ruins nearly everywhere you look. The only exceptions are most of the old town - which has been restored for tourism - and the western, Croat area of town. Makes sense, really . . . Mostar's economy was totally shot after the war and the logical way to get things kick-started again was to get the tourists back and thus create jobs locally. As for the west, well, the Croatians were the ones leading the assault against the Muslims on the east bank after the Serbs were driven off, and they had better weapons and more money. Apart from structures close to the front line, few buildings over there have anything more than a spattering of pockmarks
02: More Bosnian countryside
.The old town looks really good now, at least those areas closest to the Old Bridge. Rebuilding the latter took the better part of ten years and it was finally completed in 2004, to much fanfare. The reconstruction was actually quite impressive, retaining the elegance of the original structure and done with such care that it almost blends in perfectly with the old rocks. And the tourists have definitely arrived - the numbers here are a lot more noticeable than in Sarajevo, even if only because Mostar is so much smaller. Restaurant and souvenir prices seem higher as well, but then again that could just be because they're concentrated around such a small, touristy core.
If you step outside of that core though, everything changes. So many buildings lie in utter ruin along the main streets of town, many marked with signs warning people to stay out. There are numerous EU-funded reconstruction projects going on around town, but there's still a lot that needs repairing. Once elegant Austro-Hungarian buildings and later, less attractive Communist-era blocks sit completely shattered and gutted. I made sure to include a walk down the former front line (which, in fact, still divides the town between Croats and Muslims) in my day's itinerary. A few buildings here and there have been rebuilt or restored, but the vast majority are completely wrecked and fragmented
03: Scenery along the Neretva river
. The most interesting thing though was probably the new Catholic Cathedral just on the front line's edge, purposefully made overly grandiose and imposing. The bell tower is so ridiculously out of proportion, built as a sort of provocation by the Croats to show how much "taller" and stronger their religion is, evidently. Meanwhile, graffiti on a building down the street glorifies a convicted war criminal as a hero. No lessons learned here, I guess.It's going to take some time for wounds here to heal and probably an equally long time for the physical scars to disappear. The worrying thing is that nationalism still runs very strong, but at least people can cross from one end of town to the other. And tourism is revitalizing the old town and bringing some money back into the city. Hopefully that will keep things from ever returning to how they were in the early 90s.
Mostar's been an intriguing end to my visit in Bosnia. The old town has been fascinating to wander around and the Old Bridge is just as majestic as its reputation suggests. The backstreets have been equally fascinating, even if for a much different reason. I got to take in a couple of the outer "sights" as well that fewer tourists visit, namely the remnants of the Orthodox Cathedral and the Socialist-era Partisan Cemetery, commemorating the efforts of the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II
04: The wide Neretva
. Both were sobering to see. The former looms over the city in the eastern hills, completely and utterly in ruin. By appearances, there doesn't seem to be any plan to have it rebuilt either. Then the Partisan Cemetery gave a good insight into the opinion local Croats hold towards Tito; the place is littered with broken bottles, trash and beer cans, with the walls graffitied and even the grave markers broken up. Meanwhile, on the other end of town, Muslim vendors sell t-shirts of ol' Josip Broz - the one man that was able to keep the people from killing each other.I say goodbye to Mostar in the morning and catch a bus out of the mountains to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The old city has quite a fine reputation, so I'm much looking forward to it.
