Today I left the most touristed place in the balkans, to visit another fairly well touristed town, but nowhere near the popularity of Dubrovnik. I caught a bus to Mostar. To get to Mostar, the bus leaves Croatia and enters Bosnia-Herzegovina and then enters Croatia again, before entering Bosnia-Herzegovina to go along the road to Mostar and Sarajevo. Unfortunately my passport was not stamped once in this transition.
So Mostar is really famous for its bridge. The original was built in 1566 and survived all those years until the war in the 90’s eventually collapsed the bridge. It was shown on the news and photographed for the front of many papers. Thankfully, the old bridge or Stari Most was rebuilt around 6 years ago. Even since then its probably been the #1 tourist attraction in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Mostar
The other thing you notice when driving into town are the minuets of the city. Bosniaks are muslim. The Serbs are orthodox and Croats are catholic. I’m not going to say anything other than I know why there was a war. There are still many war torn buildings littered around town. The hostel i’m staying in was one such building but the owner Taso, bought the place and has slowly fixed it up turning it into a pretty decent guesthouse/hostel.
The other thing i should mention, that because its mostly muslims in this part of the world, the food is very middle eastern/turkish. This is great, because even though I ate too much today, it was much nicer than Dubrovniks bland Italian restaurants.
For lunch I had a mixed dish of stuffed vegetables and beef and potato, served in a broth. It was delicious.
Anyway another early rise tomorrow as I head for an unplanned side trip to Sarajevo. It was not on my radar before this trip, but it now is. Unfortunately only what I can see tomorrow afternoon, but its better than not visiting this small but wonderful city full of history.
Stari Most