Bosnia and Hercegovina (I was repeatedly told off for just saying Bosnia, but will refer to it as B&H from now on because it’s too long) wasn’t in my original plan. On returning to Slovenia from Montenegro I wasn’t in a huge rush so it made sense to take a few days to see somewhere new. I’d visited B&H very briefly before, but only Trebinje which was interesting but nothing too special. I ended up spending 3 nights in Mostar, a town in the Hercegovina region, and 2 nights in Sarajevo, the capital, before catching an overnight bus back to Ljubljana. The week I spent in B&H felt very different to my previous weeks of travelling. It felt much heavier. Not exactly in a negative way though. I think there are three reasons for this: i) my personal mindset, I was running on 6 hours sleep in 2 days when I arrived in Mostar, and didn’t catch up on it for a few days, and was processing the end of Montenegro and that part of my trip, ii) it was really really hot, like 40 degrees hot, and iii) the history and reality is unbelievably heavy. A warning that this post is going to be quite history heavy as that’s mostly what I did here!
Mostar
As mentioned, Mostar is in the Hercegovina region of B&H in the south, close to Croatia. It was a really beautiful city, characterised by the Neretva river and the big arched old town bridge crossing it. It was very small, with the old town centre having narrow, cobbled streets that were lethal when wet due to their slippiness. The old town was pretty much destroyed in the siege that took place in 1993-4, but has been rebuilt exactly as it was, using the same techniques and everything. Sadly, not everything about Mostar could be rebuilt with such success. The city is still now divided, with the Croats (people originally from Croatia - in simple terms anyway) living in the west of the city, with some of them having never crossed the river in their lives, and the Bosniaks in the east. I learnt about this during a walking tour given by a 47 year old man who had fought in the siege. His insights on the war, and its impact on the community today, were so interesting, and reminded me of the thoughts I had in the Czech Republic about the lasting effects of war. This man isn’t very hopeful for B&H’s future, and thinks there will be more violence here because of how the war generation has passed their feelings of hate towards the other side to the younger generation. The ‘other side’ in Mostar is not the Serbians as I thought with my very limited knowledge of Yugoslavia and its breakdown. In Mostar, the Serbs did siege the city in 1992 but without much success, with the Croats and Bosniaks joining forces to defend it. In 1993 however, the Croats decided that they would like Mostar for themselves and fought against the Bosniaks. This is when the old town was destroyed, and this is where the resentment lies.
The walking tour itself was made more memorable by a huge rain shower half way through which saw all of us running to find cover in a cafe, all drenched to the bone. The tour guide bought us all coffees whilst we dried off and waited for the rain to stop. None of us minded so much, anything to cool us down in the 40 degree heat.
The old town bridge is definitely the heart of Mostar. Not least because it’s home to a group of divers who earn their living by jumping off the 23 metre high bridge into the river below, and helping visitors safely do the same. I saw one jump whilst eating dinner on a terrace overlooking the bridge one evening, it was insane!
Whilst in Mostar I was able to see more of the actual country of B&H by taking a little tour with the hostel. We visited a medieval house by a natural spring; a medieval town which was like being in Tatooine from Star Wars with its domed, sandstone buildings; and the biggest waterfalls in the country. We were also caught up in the pilgrimage from one town to another, as it was the anniversary of the Virgin Mary appearing in one of the towns (apparently…). On our walk down from the fort in the medieval town we enjoyed some fresh pomegranate juice - it was quite strange, not sweet at all but incredibly tort and almost drying in your mouth (can you tell I wasn’t a huge fan?).
Something else I wasn’t a huge fan of was the Bosnian coffee. I went to a traditional coffee house and the lady there gave me an explanation of how to drink it. First I was to add a few tea spoons of cold water to the pot (called an ibrik) which currently had hot water and coffee grounds inside. The cold water is heavier than the hot water so falls to the bottom, taking the coffee grounds with it. Then you take the creamy bit of coffee off the top and spoon it into the little cup. Then pour the coffee in. If you want sugar, you don’t add it to your cup but take a sugar cube and have a nibble of it with every sip. Something I was a huge fan of was the Hercegovinian wine! The red wine was called Blatina and it was honestly delicious. Like I’d genuinely choose it over other varieties. It was also cheap (2EUR for 250ml), like everything in B&H.
On the walk back from the wine bar on my last night the skies turned red. It was the anniversary of the Mostar football team doing something but I couldn’t find out what. Pretty cool though.
From Mostar I caught the 6:30am train to Sarajevo from the most abandoned looking train station I’ve ever seen. Apparently it’s one of the most scenic train journeys in Europe, but I was only able to stay awake for the first 30 minutes so I sadly can’t confirm that.
Sarajevo
The history in Mostar was still present in the division of the city, but the siege and violence didn’t shock me too much, just how recent it was. In Sarajevo the violence of its siege, lasting from 1992 - 1996 (over 1,400 days!), shocked me. Around 11,000 people died, over 1,500 of them being children. Over 3,500 grenades were dropped on the city. The assault was worse on the weekends, as Serbs would come on their days off to join the snipers in the mountains and shoot at the city. I went to the gallery 11/07/95, this is an exhibition of photographs taken in Srebrenica with an audioguide to accompany them. Srebrenica is the location of one of the genocides against Bosnian muslims. Here over 8,000 Bosnian muslims were executed by the Bosnian Serbs, mostly men but also some women and children. It was the first time I’ve ever teared up in a museum, but honestly it was such an emotional exhibition. The most shocking part is that the UN had designated Srebrenica as a safe area for Bosnian muslims, and the dutch division of the peacekeeping troops was placed there to protect them. What resulted wasn’t protection but the dutch troops watching from the safety of their base as Bosnian muslims were rounded up from outside and taken to buildings such as schools to be systematically executed. They didn’t intervene because they did not have the numbers to fight off the Serbs, and no back up from other countries had arrived. The graffiti left behind in the base by the troops suggests that there was also a dislike towards the Bosnian muslims. The Serbs buried the bodies in mass graves, and then moved them to secondary or even tertiary graves in an attempt to hide the event. This means that still now mass graves and bodies of missing people are being found and identified. In 2004 this event was ruled as being a war crime.
On the walking tour of Sarajevo we saw a different, much more positive side to the city. It serves as a great example of how one city can be home to several religions without any issues. I think it’s because they have all always been here, it doesn’t belong to one more than any other. There were lots of stories that showed how happily the different groups coexisted. For example, Roman Catholics building the main mosque for the muslims, and the muslims paying for them to first build a chapel on the site for them to use whilst building the mosque. So although there is historical tension between the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian muslims, there is also historical harmony between muslims and catholics. This sums up B&H quite well - the religions and ethnicities mixed up are super confusing, but the problems are from the ethnicities and want of territory not religion. But some ethnicities are vaguely based on religion… I won’t even try and cover it here, but it is very interesting if you want to look into it!
A general observation about travelling and history - they’re inseparable! The past 6 weeks I’ve learnt more about history than I have since I studied it at A level, and perhaps ever. And I haven’t even been trying to. I also feel like I’ve retained the information way more than I could ever from just reading about it. Something about being in a place and seeing the history in front of you makes it a completely different experience. And I love it! This is a big reason why I want to travel before starting my job and doing all that stuff, to actually learn more about the world.
After all the heavy history I spent my last day in B&H doing something a bit different. I caught the cable car up to the mountain right by Sarajevo and hiked up to its summit, a further 500m in altitude, with two hikers from the hostel. I was initially a bit worried about being able to keep up with them, as they both have done a lot of big hikes, but it was all fine. On our descent we stopped by the abandoned bob sledge track. In 1984 Sarajevo hosted the winter Olympics, kind of crazy when you think 8 years later it was a war zone. It was covered in graffiti but in quite good shape considering. You could walk down it for quite a way.
After Sarajevo I caught an overnight bus from a very dodgy looking bus station back to Ljubljana. And so my brief detour into B&H was over. It was interesting and I learnt a lot. But wow it was heavy! A week and a half in nature in Slovenia is just what I need to balance it out.