After my brief confinement to Sarajevo, I am back on the road heading south. First stop – and a much anticipated one – was Mostar, a Bosnian town about 120km inland from Dubrovnik. Mostar is famous for being one of the central areas of fighting during the recent civil war, and there is evidence to that effect everywhere you go. Ask any traveller or backpacker who has recently discovered the Dalmatian coastline, and they will tell you that a trip to Mostar is a must-do. Go there and you will discover why.
I booked myself into the local cult hostel run by Majdas and her son Bata. Every single one of my friends who has been to Mostar recently has stayed at the same place and all of them gave it rave reviews. Especially Bata’s day tour of Mostar and its surrounds. With such a reputation of course, comes the real possibility that it won’t live up to expectations, but I must say the place certainly did deliver.
When I arrived in Mostar I was pretty buggered, and unfortunately I had not written down the address of the hostel. Checking my emails stored on the laptop, nor was it included in the footer of their emails. Once again I was back to sleuthing it out the old fashioned way. I eventually roamed the streets for about an hour with no luck, then stumbled across the tourist information shop, and the girl there gave me some instructions and a map on how to get there. Unfortunately, even this wasn’t enough and an hour later I was still clueless, despite the fact that I knew the general location of the hostel. Eventually I struck gold and found some unsecured wireless network in the heart of the old town near the Stari Most bridge (more on the bridge later) and was able to look up their website. No wonder the instructions weren’t on the email footer, it would have doubled the size of each email. It was quite specific on how to get to the hostel and in the end I realised why the first piece of advice was always to ‘call us and we’ll come and get you’. Doesn’t help when you have not topped up your phone credit. Silly me. Two hours later I finally found it, only to discover that there were infact two locations for the hostel and I was staying in the other one, on the other side of town! Grrr. Anyway it wouldn’t have been so bad except that I had not stopped cycling the whole way into town. Normally I break a 5 hour trip for lunch but today I didn’t because the rotisserie I was going to stop at turned out to be very touristy and about four times the price I was willing to pay for lunch (despite it being still cheap). And so I soldiered on with a plan to grab a feed in Mostar. Now I was not only hungry, but thirsty, tired and desperately wanting to sort out my room.
I got chatting with two Aussie girls at the hostel whilst waiting for a girl to come pick me up with a station wagon for me and the bike. They were both from Victoria, Kate and Eliza, but were travelling and doing the whole London thing now just like I had. They had a friend Brigitte who was staying at the other hostel, and when I left, they said make sure to say hi. No worries I will.
Finally I arrived at the second hostel where I met the famous ‘Bata’ for the first time. And the first thing I said to him was “Bata, I’m hungry and thirsty. Can I get a beer?” I actually meant for him to tell me where the closest mini market store was, but he was a bit taken back by my directness, and kind of looked me up and down, and then a minute later had produced a beer for me from his own supply. The hostel didn’t sell beer. We got along pretty well, Bata liked the fact that I was madly cycling around the Balkans on my way to Egypt, and he also liked having a generally friendly, talkative Aussie around the guests. Australians in general were genuinely good, likeable people. My booking for his tour had been stuffed up through email translations, but by the end of the night, Bata had managed to ‘slot me in’ on the Mostar tour for the following day. Brilliant, I was desperately wanting to do the tour, it was the whole reason I was staying at his hostel. I really liked Bata and enjoyed the time at his ‘overflow’ hostel. It was arguably just as good, if not better than Majda’s across town.
The crowd at Bata’s hostel was also fantastic. I’ve always thought that a hostel is only ever as good as the people you meet there. If it doesn’t have the right vibe or mix of people, it can be the difference between an average or an excellent stay, no matter how good the actual hostel is. There were only two people at the table when I arrived, one of them was the other Aussie Brigitte who I chatted with for a while. One by one groups of other backpackers came home from various dinners and night clubs. A group of Aussie blokes, a Dutch couple (that I had recommended the hostel to after they hired bikes from Amin’s shop in Sarajevo – they turned up staying in my room again in Mostar!) some Brits and Spanish also. I was very nearly tempted to head out to the ‘Cave’ bar which was a happening joint inside a natural cave by the river just in the centre of town, but thought better of it as I wanted to be in good form for Bata’s tour the next day. Thankfully I listened to my own sensible advice; at 4am the Aussie boys stumbled in, literally carrying one of their own who had gone out too hard and fast. They literally had to pick him up off the floor of the cave and carry his limp body home to the hostel. The next morning he was unable to present himself for the tour at 10am, and the boys said to give up his place to somebody on the waiting list, because he does this kind of thing all the time and there’s not a chance he’ll be able to make it. I know just the type of person. I’ve met a couple in London, and it never ceases to amaze me how they can go out and get blotto everytime they have something big planned the following day. They sleep right through it and don’t seem to care that they’ve just missed out on an awesome experience enjoyed by the rest of their friends who were actually sensible and got a good nights sleep.
Anyway, Bata’s tour kicked off in good style. A prep talk in front of the hostel for all present, and Bata’s near schizophrenic personality surfaced for all to see. Who knows how much of it was from living through the war, or what was purely for show. It was clear that he had learned from previous backpackers and had tweaked his tours to near perfection, or what you could at least call ‘his own brand’. I knew immediately that Bata was quite sharp, and the reason for that is something that you learn from the stories he tells during the tour.
In a nutshell, Bata piled us into the back of his minivan – his ‘girlfriend’. In the back, six seats were merely cushioned Ikea stools, sitting loosely next to a rack of 350 watt subwoofers, part of the amazing sound system and disco lighting he had installed for the tours. There were no seat belts, deliberately no air conditioning and we were squeezed in like sardines. It was brilliant.
Bata would stop the van at the most irregular times. Quite often you would drive merely 10 metres further down the road and he would pull over once again to explain something else that popped into his head. The first part of the tour obviously focused on the history of his country, and we drove past some of the places in town that had become significant in light of the recent civil war. The main street of town was an open-air museum from the war, and you understand why as soon as Bata explains that you are now driving along what was the front line between the Bosnian and Croatian armies. That explains why there are more wrecked and burned out buildings along this stretch than in any other part of town. Including the backpacker-famous bank tower and several once hotels and shopping centres. Further along the road as you cross the bridge, you pull up outside what was once the army barracks. I mentioned in a previous post that something like 80% of the former Yugoslav army was made up of Serbs, and this was no real accident. There were people in power that knew what was coming and many of the Serbs were preparing for the day when the inevitable conflict came. Ironically enough, the conflict was not started by the Serbs, but they were provoked into the inevitable when a gasoline truck was exploded outside these barracks in Mostar. You can still see the crater that was formed along with the hole in the wall. The rest as they say, is history.
Bata tells his side of the story with great emotion. He was 21 years old when the war broke out, but as he put it, had the mind of a 10 year old. One day he woke up to find that the majority of his friends had left him without warning; they had gone off to fight in the Serbian Army, and had never said a word of goodbye, muttered a warning or anything like that. They were simply gone, and the next time they met, by default they would be Bata’s enemy simply because of their upbringing, their heritage, their religion. Bata was totally unprepared for this, and was not a fanatic in any way. He was snuck out of the country by one of his Dad’s old friends, in the back of an ambulance. Had they been caught, the driver and everyone in the ambulance would have been caught, but with lights and sirens blaring, they managed to cross the borders into Croatia and board a ferry in Split. He ended up a refugee harbouring in Sweden, and only returned to Bosnia for the first time around four years ago. It was then that he realised the story he had to tell, after running into several groups of backpackers who were enthralled by his tale and flattered by his offer to show them a bit about his country.
We learned a great deal more about the conflict, but we also had a lot of fun. The first stop was to a Pekarna or bakery cafe, which Bata claimed, produced the best burek in all of Bosnia and potentially in all the world. Despite burek being of Turkish origin, I think he might have been right. It was by far the best burek I’ve ever tasted, though I have to admit, it was pretty good the first time I tried it on the island of Bol in Croatia a year ago. But then, I was blind drunk at the time and it was four in the morning after a big night. The burek we had was cheap and absolutely enormously sliced. We were able to enter the kitchen and see how it was made. Despite Bata’s protests, I believe all Aussies agreed that the meat burek would go very well with some dead horse. The potato burek was also sensational. I was stuffed after both slices.
We headed out near the Croatian border where we went swimming in some of the most delightful waterfalls I’ve ever seen. Rivalling those of Plitvice (because you could actually swim in them!) we spent hours around the lake, the river and Bata took small groups of us climbing up seemingly impossible to climb rocks, through, under and behind the waterfalls. We then went cliff jumping into the rivers off some precariously high jump. Bata shouted a beer for everyone who was brave enough to give it a go. Funnily enough, I had been unable to jump of a smaller cliff in Croatia a year before, but then I had been sober. A shot of rakija and half a litre of beer for lunch changed that, and I jumped off the cliff into the whitewash of water below at the base of one of the larger waterfalls. Awesome!
Getting on for night time, we visited one of the most holy sites for Muslims in the whole country, a place called Blagaj. It was situated at the base of a huge cliff face in the mountains to the east of Mostar. It has been considered a holy place for centuries, partly due to the fact that emerging out of the cliff is a gushing river, the source of which is still unknown. Despite many efforts to scuba dive into the caves, or using sonar and radar devices the best information available is that it is at least many kilometres inside the mountains. Only a couple of years ago, two scuba divers went in with rope guides to try to find out more about the river source. Only one ever came out again. When we visited Blagaj it was getting on for 9pm at night and the lights illuminating the cliff face were pretty spectacular. We went up into a house that was constructed by monks centuries ago. Not quite a monastery, not quite a house, it is considered still to be an invaluable place of worship and every year they have a Muslim gathering here. In 2010 some 45,000 pilgrims gathered along the river. It must have been chaotically busy! We weren’t supposed to enter the house with singlet tops or knees showing, so even the blokes who broke the rules had to cover up and wear a sarong like shirt thingy, including myself. I’m sure I looked just as handsome as ever.
By the time we returned from Bata’s tour to the hostel, it was well after midnight. Bata had delivered a fantastic tour which was also very good value for money, especially since we had been on the go for about 14 hours!
The next day, before departing Mostar, I hit the town with Brigitte and another Dutch fella. None of us had yet explored Mostar itself due to the time taken up by Bata’s tour. We all wanted to revisit the former frontline, see some ruins and of course walk via the famous Stari Most. I’ll start with the bridge, because it’s probably the most famous landmark that Mostar is known for. The roughly 420 year old bridge was spectacularly destroyed during the civil war in (I think) 1994. It was destroyed by the Croatians, not because of any strategic value – it is after all only a pedestrian bridge – but simply to provoke the Bosnians and get a reaction from them. Despite the heart and soul being ripped out of the city, the citizens did not let on their emotions at the loss of the bridge. When the war finished, the Stari Most was rebuilt even better and stronger than the original. The locals now justify the destruction of the original by boasting that ‘the new bridge will last even longer than the original’. We will know in another 400 years…
I know a Kiwi mate who jumped off the Stari Most and there’s photo evidence to prove it. Local men who have trained for years to do the jump, will regularly leap for money from tourists, and they will give warnings and advice to any tourist who is stupidly insistent enough to attempt the same. My friend Karla and her boy were in Mostar last year having a coffee at the cafe on the riverbank beow the bridge. By pure chance, they noticed a tourist preparing to jump. Though it looked like he might cave in on a few occasions, eventually he did jump, and that’s when they realised they knew him – Nick that crazy Kiwi bugger I mentioned. Emerging from the water with part-concussion, he was dazed and confused from the 27 metre leap into the icy water. He’s absolutely stark raving mad if you ask me. Cliff jumping into broken water into a waterfall from about 11 metres is nothing compared to the jump off this bridge. Credit to all who survive, but heights have never been my strong point.
The three of us finished our tour of the town by exploring the old bombed out bank tower near the Spanish square. The seven story tower is now nothing more than a concrete tower with all the windows and doors blown out and the insides pretty much stripped and gutted. During the war it became the home for international guerrilla snipers, who could camp out on the top floors and pretty much take shot at anything that moved along the front line. Walking through the first floor of the bank, it’s amazing to see that old bank files and personal documents are still littering the floor. Everywhere, filing cabinets have been pulled over, desks overturned and the contents emptied out on the floor. Piles and piles of documents and files remain for anyone to look through. They are now completely worthless of course, as so much local money, property and wealth was lost during the war and never recovered. This is a good example of why. As you climb the tower, you notice that every single window has been blown out, and since the war the upper floors of the building have also been ransacked by thieves cashing in on scrap metal, stealing the furniture and tearing the building apart for materials. As you reach the top floor, you find the exact spots where snipers had camped out. Rusting bullet casings still litter the floor in piles. You really can imagine just how recent this conflict was, because the evidence is all right there in front of you. In a morbid sort of way, there’s never been a better time to backpack around Bosnia and Mostar in particular. Because whilst the bank building may still be standing as a reminder to the war, in its current state it is still a very interesting museum of the conflict. Who knows, in 20 years time what will be standing on the corner? A new shopping centre or hotel with residential tower block above perhaps? Even if the bank still stands, tourists will have souvenired all the remaining sniper bullets and the paper documents will eventually rot away in exposure to the elements and it won’t be the same experience as it is now. In a way we are lucky to be visiting a region so recently in conflict. Don’t get me wrong of course, you never wish war upon any country. But it has to be said that some of the best places to travel or backpack around, are countries that are recovering from war. Nothing is quite as raw.
And so I left Mostar for Dubrovnik. Having already visited Dubrovnik last year on my sailing trip around the Dalmatian coastline, I didn’t hang around and headed further south to camp for the night in a Croatian resort town. There were probably about 8 ‘auto-camp’ sights along a single stretch so it was good value from the competition and I had an enjoyable dinner at a lovely, still relatively cheap restaurant.
I’ll quickly touch on Montenegro now, because there’s not a lot to write about. I was going to spend two nights in the country to the south of the Croatian border, but I only spent one. It was very small and I was easily able to cycle along the coastline in just over one and a half days. Montenegro is in essence just a cheaper extension of Croatia. The same hills, the same kind of food and culture. Arguably the beaches are a little less crowded but go to the wrong one and you will still get the wrong kind of experience – a beach full of endless umbrellas and deck chairs. I can’t stand those setups, it’s just so foreign to an Australian to clutter a lovely beach with all that crap. If somebody really wants to sit in a chair or in the shade of an umbrella, why can’t they bring their own? To me it just gives the feeling that you are ‘trespassing’ on some beach that might be privately owned. A concept that is again entirely foreign to an Aussie.
I cycled through the port city of Bar, full of Italians who have caught the ferry from Bari in Italy. You can feel the Italian influence in the culture in all the coastal towns to the south of Croatia, in Montenegro and even down to Albania. IT was also in Bar that I realised for the first time just how cheap you can travel in the Balkans. I found a cafe in the centre of Bar next to a major shopping centre and supermarket, advertising 1€ hamburgers for lunch. I wasn’t exactly hungry, but I couldn’t resist the price, and it was an enormous hamburger with the works. It was delicious, and I almost had two, but thought better when I realised that one hamburger sitting in the guts is bad enough, let alone two considering I still had to cycle to the Albanian border that day.
And so I’m entering an exciting part of the trip. Undiscovered country, unchartered territory. A little bit more exciting, a little bit more scary simply for the unknown factor. I’m liking each day more and more, and a lot of that also has to do with the fact that I’m back on the coast again, of course. Each day usually starts with an ocean swim if I can help it. If not, then there’s always a swim at the place I choose to camp at. So far, it’s been bloody good fun and the weather forecast for the next week shows nothing but sunshine and temps in the mid 30’s. Excellent. Hope you aren’t all suffering too much in the cold back in Oz, or even London for that matter. I know there are readers in London, and no doubt your summer is also well and truly over, I suspect.
FC out.
