Bosnia and Herzegovina-one country with two names

The Old Bridge in Mostar

We had an 88 mile bus trip from Dubrovnik to Mostar that took over 3 hours!  Some of the slow travel was due to coastal roads but most delays were from going back and forth across the Croatian and Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) borders three times which meant 6 passport checkpoints. The last one to enter BiH took 45 minutes! If they had computers they must have been pretty slow!  

Don't blink or you'll miss the coast of Bosnia & Herzegovina at only 12 miles-Neun is their only city on the Adriatic Sea

The lengthly check point upon entering Bosnia & Herzegovina.  The bus attendant collected all the passports and gave them to the border officer through the little window

We spent 3 days in Mostar which is a small city in the Herzegovina part with a wonderful old town straddling two banks of the Neretva River.  BiH, or sometimes just called Bosnia, has some of the most complex and fascinating history. 

A fairly new hotel but the decor was traditional Ottoman red woven carpets & old copper utensils

We took a private walking tour given by local resident Alma Elezović who is a highly educated, licensed tour guide with international relationships. She give us a condensed history of Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia and current BiH. Her family was intimately involved with the war and subsequent recovery and redevelopment. 

"Old Bridge" in Mostar dates back to 1459 and "connected" the Roman Catholic Croats on one side to the Bosniak Muslims on the other.  For four centuries, Croats, Bosniaks along with Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Sephardic Jews existed side-by-side.  But the 1990 conflict destroyed much of the Old Town and virtually all of the bridges.  Workers who rebuilt this bridge researched and learned the traditional methods and used the same tools and stone from the old quarries

The old Turkish Bazaar streets where copper smiths, leather and other trades worked.  There are still a few coppersmiths but mostly souveniers.  Alma remembers as a child going to some of the same artists that are there today.


Alma's son, Jaz, operates a successful coffee house roasting and grinding coffee for the best Bosnian coffee we have had. Interestingly, his coffee roaster was used by his parents prior to the war and survived to again offer Bosnian coffee to the world. Jaz gave us a personal "lesson" in how to savor the Bosnian coffee.

40 year old coffee roaster

Very similar to Turkish coffee but Bosnians will tell you it is very different!

Destroyed buildings from the 1990 war are abandoned

There was scaffolding but we never saw anyone working

The hundeds of people buried in this Bosniak cemetary all have the same dates of 1993 or 1994 of their deaths

Before coming here we knew virtually nothing about these countries. Our knowledge about Yugoslavia and its leader Tito was limited to what we learned from within the US. There are always more sides to a story and we’ve discovered that Tito was praised, honored and loved as he successfully unified these national groups into a modern Yugoslavia and people felt they had a good life.

In a nutshell, this small country was ruled by and influenced by four empires: Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, two kingdoms: Bosnian and Yugoslav, three world monotheistic religions: Christianity (Orthodoxy and Catholicism), Islam and Judaism, and different architectural styles.

The old Mostar train station still looked from the communist-era and clearly didn't get a lot of post-war funds to upgrade 

The train station still had these old "stand-up or/ squat-down" toilets and I even had to pay to use them.  I hate these!  If anyone knows how to use them successfully please let me know!

We next took a two-hour train following the river, through some beautiful mountains, and  into Sarajevo, the capital of BiH. 

"Pigeon Square" Main Marketsplace.  This is the last remaining Sebilj, a fountain available to all

Three times during the 20th century Sarajevo was the center of the world. 

1st-in the year 1914 when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand took place in Sarajevo (leading to the start of WWI).

2nd-the Bosnian capital reached the world’s headlines in the year 1984 by hosting the 14th Winter Olympic Games, and

3rd-just eight years later Sarajevo became a city under the longest siege in the modern history of Europe, and for the third time was the center of the whole world. The aggressors used force and weapons to destroy everything in the city, even the Olympic sites.

Sarajevo is a city the blends and merges buildings, cultures and religions. In a two mile stretch,  historic Ottoman-era Old Town smashes right into the grand Austro-Hungarian 19th century palaces and buildings and in another mile becomes high-rise glass urban centers.

Here are some random pictures of Sarajevo.

the Old Bazaar still selling their wares

The traditional "fast food" called Cevapcici-cheap, spicey, minced meat "sausage" & pita

the "bell" or lid that the burek is baked in

delicious Burek a Bosnian pie made from flaky filo dough with meat, cheese or potato filling.  This restaurant baked them in the old way under a metal lid over hot coals.

18th-19th century Hapsburg quarter when the Austro-Hungarian Empire brought Sarajevo into the modern world

outside cafes line this pedestrian street

Game Day for the Sarajevo Football (Soccer) team-they won 4-0 in the Premier League game

this was called "Sniper Alley" during the 1990s war where much of the relentless shelling and grenades occured

 

Most of these high rise buildings were already there before the Siege but were badly damaged-now repaired and beautiful

One of several large multi-level shopping malls we saw

Although Sarajevo is an upbeat, active city that promotes tolerance and diversity, there is rememberance of the terrible, unconventional medieval-style seige that cut off the city from food, water, electricity, telephone, medicine and other critical supplies.  This was in 1992-1995 and was the longest siege in modern European history.  There are many museums, memorials, evidence of motor and bullets and still many damaged and destroyed buildings.

As a reminder: "Sarajevo Rose" the impact of a grenade or blast that has been filled in with red resin and often framed.  These are all over the area and lots of smaller impacts too.

this one is in front of a church

bombed out skeletons of buildings and damaged exteriors with scattered blasts still there

Memorial on the bridge where the first victims of the Siege died- 2 young women-Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic
 

Memorial to the Children of Sarajevo-silver pillars than can be spun to see the names of the nearly 1,600 young victims of the fighting

Today people are hopeful about peace and trust that the younger generations will understand each other and learn to live together again.

Eastern Orthodox Cathedral

We had an extra day in Sarajevo after our flight to Budapest was cancelled and rescheduled 2 days later. We ended our stay in BiH staying in another historical hotel. The bright yellow Holiday Hotel was originally built for the ‘84 Olympics and later was the “ground zero” hotel housing journalists covering the 3-1/2 year long 1990’s Bosnian war. Today it’s a beautiful, modern hotel once again hosting tourists and business meetings-and it’s still bright yellow.