Franchu’s lair

Mostar is an amazing city that I had wanted to visit for a long time. It sadly became famous due to the bombing of its bridge during the Bosnian war and many spanish soldiers had been there under the UN mandate to keep the city safe.

At first I didn’t know what to expect. I guess I was expecting to see a war torn city with destruction everywhere and although I saw it, the feeling was not of despair but of a city that wants to stand up again and regain its place in the world.

One of the most curious things of this city is that it is ethnically divided by religion, the river Neretva defining the border between muslims and catholic quarters. It was specially surprising to see that the segregation is present even nowadays and that in the road that divides both quarters the walls of the buildings are full of bullet holes! It gives an eerie feeling when you realise that you are standing in a place that made the news a decade ago for its violent clashes during the war!

Nevertheless, when you get over that first impression and you walk into the muslim part you have the feeling that you have transcended time and space and you are in another world. The minarets take over the church towers that we are so used to see in non-muslim countries and the bustling shops make you think of some place in the middle-east and not in a city that a few minutes ago looked like so many other European cities.

We went up a minaret and the hike was rewarded by amazing views from atop the Neretva river overlooking the New Old Bridge. From there you have a privileged view of the city, and you can see how much the war affected the city and how it is getting reconstructed little by little. You will also notice that there is a disproportionately high church tower in the catholic side, and the reason is that it was reconstructed to be higher than the highest minaret of the old city. I guess human stupidity will never change, no matter what happens

After the nice time spent in the city, we went to Medjugorje, a pilgrimage site nearby Mostar, to the source of the river Buna and to Kravice falls.

The video above shows the Kravice falls. I didn’t have the camera with me, so I just found this video on YouTube. The video doesn’t convey the feeling of how great the place is, but with a little bit of imagination you can imagine how it is to swim by some waterfalls in a nice lake with cristal clear water And just 20 minutes from the city!!!

We were lucky to have Alenka and Goran to show us around the city and these nice places out of town as well as hosting us in Mostar.

Below you can see some pictures we took in Mostar and the surroundings

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed