EUROPE – PART 4 

It took us nine long hours to drive 660 km from Ljubljana, Slovenia, to Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina, on a combination of modern divided highways and twisty mountain roads. By the time we pulled into our hotel, we were pretty well bushed. Google Maps said it would take us six and a half hours to get here but it hadn’t accounted for a major highway closure that forced us to detour inland and drive through the middle of nowhere.

Bosnia-Hercegovina is a developing country. Its economy ranks far below that of its neighbour, Croatia, placing it 82^nd out of the 192 countries tracked by the International Monetary Fund. Although we saw evidence of new investment in factories and commercial establishments on our drive to Mostar, we also saw signs of poverty and of the war that racked the country in the early 1990s.

I don’t know much about the Bosnian War, but its impact seems still very fresh here. You see it in unfinished, abandoned buildings, and on exterior walls riddled with bullet holes. You see it in the faces of those of a certain age who no doubt suffered terribly. And, sadly, you see it in the faces of young people who just want to leave and get away from the never-ending tension. This bullet-riddled façade was less than a block from our downtown hotel.

According to some sources, Bosnia-Hercegovina has been experiencing intensified political and ethnic tensions of late which could potentially break the country apart and slide it back into war once again. Much of this is related to religion and ethnicity. The country is made up of three main ethnic groups: Bosniaks (Muslim), Croats (Roman Catholic), and Serbs (Orthodox Christian). It’s one of those multicultural melting pots that’s never cooled down, and probably never will.

The weather forecast for our one full day in Mostar was not very promising, so we headed out on foot as early as we could to see the famous Old Bridge, Stari Most, and the area surrounding it on both sides of the Neretva River. It being the end of the tourist season and early morning, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The street and buildings have a Turkish feel to them and the many shops along the narrow streets reminded us of Jerusalem. The mosque is said to be the country’s most important.

We heard the tell-tale sound of someone tap-tapping a pattern on copperware and walked into a shop operated by the same family since 1918. The man in the photo spoke perfect French and told us all about his trade. Elva bought some very nice jewelry from him at a very reasonable price.

The area near the old bridge is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and well worth a visit. The bridge had stood for over 500 years until the Bosnian War. Though the area had no strategic military value, the bridge and the old town were destroyed for, as my mother used to say, “pure devilry”. The UNESCO web page says this about the reconstruction: “The reconstructed Old Bridge and Old City of Mostar are symbols of reconciliation, international cooperation and the coexistence of diverse cultural, ethnic and religious communities.” We can only hope it will survive for at least another five centuries.

Our next stop was Blagaj Tekke, a short drive from Mostar. Here, the Buna River flows right out of a massive cliff. As with the Old Bridge in Mostar, we had the place almost to ourselves. A tekke or tekiya is a dervish monastery (the men with the white skirts and felt hats who twirl as part of their meditation) and the one at Blagaj serves as a place for them to gather for prayer. The dervish orders believe that the surrounding environment is part of the overall worship, not just the buildings themselves. It’s a spectacular location and we just sat there for awhile taking it all in.

From Blagaj, we drove to the Kravica waterfall complex south of Mostar. Again, except for three angry-looking Turkish soldiers who are part of a 600-member European Union peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Hercegovina, we were the only ones there. The falls are horseshoe-shaped and 25 meters high, and they offer a spectacular sensory experience of sound, sight, and mist. In the warmer months, people come to swim in the large pool below the falls. We arrived back at our hotel mid-afternoon, just before the skies opened.

The drive from Mostar to Sarajevo took us three hours. The first half of the route follows the Neretva River through a very mountainous region framed by steep cliffs on both sides. It reminded us of Tajikistan, a country we visited four years ago. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina, is a city of some 300,000 people and is the country’s political, financial, social, and cultural center. Due to its long history of religious and cultural diversity, Sarajevo is sometimes called the Jerusalem of Europe. It is one of just a few major European cities to have a mosque, Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, and synagogue within the same neighborhood.

After checking into our modern and comfortable boutique hotel, we wandered down to the nearby old town. Sarajevo is not a world-class city by any measure, but it does have a similar café culture to what we saw in Ljubljana. People seem to love to meet one another in the square and hang around the cafés just passing the time. As with so many cities we’ve visited, the city-center pedestrian-only zone is the key to making this happen.

But you don’t have to go far beyond the touristy areas to see poverty and evidence of war in Sarajevo. The city was hit very hard by the Bosnian War. Its people suffered through the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare, 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996. Thousands lost their lives during the siege to constant bombing and sniper fire from Serbian troops. One of our more interesting visits was to the local library where we watched excerpts from For the Love of Books, a movie about how the librarian enlisted help from friends to save ancient books and manuscripts from fires that were destroying cultural treasures all around. The group braved snipers and thieves to carry the treasures to safety in cardboard boxes.

As with everywhere we’ve visited in our travels, there is beauty, sometimes in the simplest things, like this young girl surrounded by hungry pigeons in the aptly named Pigeon Square at the entrance to the old city. The other photos are of men playing chess in the park and of the imposing Eastern Orthodox church.

There’s only one road into Lukomir, the highest and most remote village in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The last thirteen kilometers are unpaved and fit only for trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles, so we weren’t sure whether our poor little Ford Fiesta would be tough enough to make it there and back. As it turned out, she passed with flying colours! “How did we end up there?”, you may ask. Well, because Jean-Paul likes going off the beaten track and getting away from the crowd!

Elva and I spend a lot of time looking at YouTube videos of the places we plan to visit. When we saw what little there was to do in Sarajevo, we figured we’d better find a day trip or two, and we stumbled onto the village of Lukomir. After a long and bumpy drive, we pulled up to a house that contained a small restaurant. The nice man told us we could park there, and off we headed to the viewpoint that overlooks the village. The view below was of one of the deepest canyons in Europe. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the air was crisp and pure. It was magical and bucket-list-worthy!

Back at the restaurant, as we drank our coffee and tea, the owner told us that the village is home to about fifty souls; they have electricity and internet (In the middle of nowhere!); and they live there only during the months when the road is passable. Residents either live off the tourist trade or herd sheep. We were thankful that we arrived early because we passed more than twenty cars on our way back to the paved road, many of them containing people who’d paid dearly for the road trip. On these photos, you can see the village laid out behind us and the very rough road, with some intimidating water holes and a shepherd’s cabin in the background.

I remember watching the 1984 Winter Olympics held in Sarajevo. On our way to Lukomir, we drove past the site of the downhill ski events, today an impressive winter resort. What really struck all Canadians that year was the record-setting performance of Gaétan Boucher. After winning bronze in the 500-meter long-track speed skating event, he won gold in the 1,000 and 1,500 meter events, the first Canadian man to win gold in an individual Winter Olympic event.

The war destroyed many of the Olympic facilities in and around the city. Others were simply abandoned and lie in ruins. The long-track speed skating oval where Boucher won his medals is now a cemetery for soldiers killed in the War. 

The abandoned bobsled-luge track has been reincarnated as a tourist attraction. We went there on our third day in Sarajevo. The place has a post-apocalyptic feel. We walked down the two-kilometer track and back up again. You can imagine that, in another thirty years, Mother Nature will have reclaimed more of it than she already has. 

As we went around curve after curve, I couldn’t help thinking how thrilling it must have been for our two Olympic bobsled champions, Heather Moyse and Dave “Eli” MacEachern. Myself, I’d have been exercising some serious sphincter control rocketing down there in one of those flimsy sleds, you can be sure of that!

We really enjoyed our stay in Sarajevo. While there wasn’t that much to do in the city itself, we did find a couple of adventures nearby that were well worth the drive. We learned more about the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics by walking up and down the bobsled run than we would have at a museum and got in a good workout in the process.

We dropped off the Ford Fiesta at Belgrade airport after a slow trip through northern Bosnia-Hercegovina where we drove through heavy rain and had our first taste of snow. It took us five hours to travel 250 kilometers, including crossing the border into Serbia. We’ve settled into our hotel and are ready to spend two days getting to know Belgrade, the capital. After that, we’ll be travelling by bus through four more countries, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro. Stay tuned!