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Mostar Bridge
On a good day, it's hard not to just appreciate the place. Looks like we're back again, and I guess we'll pick up talking about Mostar. I'd picked Mostar over Sarajevo for logistical reasons more than anything. I was going to Croatia and Mostar was more on the way and would allow me to make the most out of a night bus. A separate railway, under reconstruction at the time, apparently offers one of the most breathtaking trips in Europe. A shame to miss it, but I can vouch for the landscape anyways. Traveling across the Balkans by rail or road generally is not to be missed. The landscape's cut sharply and beautifully between mountains, the sea, and valleys. Ruined castles dot the hilltops, and everything feels out of step with any time. An appropriate segue to Mostar itself.
History a-bridged. Mostar isn't a large place, but it is a deeply historic one. Walking down the streets is to see the literal scars of its past on full display. Situated as it is on the Neretva River in southern Herzegovina, Mostar's name is even derived from its historic function. The Neretva is a fairly large river, and Mostar was a historic place where people and goods could cross at a relatively narrow
Mostar destroyed
Let's just say its come a long way. portion. After the Ottomans tore into the region in the 15th Century, the Kingdom of Bosnia was swallowed up by the rising empire. This brought a lot of changes to the region, many that, like the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, became a bitter legacy held in the deep well of cultural memory. Other changes, like the coming of Islam sprinkled in more slowly. But most practically for Mostar, the Ottoman Empire brought an eye for sophisticated engineering and bureaucratic logistics. In the 16th Century the Ottomans replaced the older wooden bridge across the Neretva with a stone bridge to ease the flow of traffic and trade. And sometimes armies, as the need arrived.
But to call it just bridge is a bit of an understatement. This was an engineering marvel at the time. At its center Stari Most is 21 meters high, built from stones that had to be cut and transported from a stone quarry miles away. In the sunlight, it gleams a beautiful white that catches the arch as it rises over the turquoise waters of the Neretva. Going by at midday there is inevitably a local diver posturing for tourist money and photos at the top.
Less often a tourist decides to make the same plunge with fatal results.
Beyond the aesthetics, tourist revenues, or the practicalities of it, the bridge took on symbolic importance by linking the Catholic Croat and Muslim Bosniak communities of the city together. Even Mostar's name is a twist on the Turkic words for "Bridgekeeper".
History de-bridged. That symbolic linkage was exactly what a Croatian artillery commander was aiming at when he obliterated the bridge during the Bosnian Civil War of 1992-1995. The act of cultural destruction was deliberate, a vandal's assault on the Ottoman legacy in the region. For two bitter years the region's (somewhat weaker) Bosniak and (somewhat stronger) Croat forces fought each other and the Serbs in and around Mostar, with the Neretva river forming the frontlines. Atrocities on all sides, including mass killings, rapes, concentration camps, expulsions, and torture were all too common. After being told to sort their mess out by the United States, the Croat and Bosniak forces agreed to a truce and turned their combined energies against the Serbs. Mostar was never the same, but it is trying to move on anyways. In 2004 funding from UNESCO and the Netherlands especially bankrolled
the reconstruction of Stari Most, using the same stone and techniques as the original Ottoman bridge. The results speak for the intent, but also the history of it. In stone it now stands in for the old philosophical Ship of Theseus. If Stari Most is destroyed and replaced, is it the same bridge? Is the community of Mostar the same?
The city has come a long way since the war ended in 1995, but the evidence of it is on every block. A fair number of ruined buildings linger on like ghosts filled with hypodermic needles and debris. Some are bricked up at the ground level. Others are structurally unstable, and still others are now for sale and in the process of renovation. The once integrated communities now live on opposite banks of the Neretva, more or less in line with where the frontline ended. Curiously, folks from both communities volunteered this separation to me with little prompting.
But they also pointed me enthusiastically towards the rebuilt bridge, as well as to other legacies of the war that had turned into attractions. The biggest of the ruins is a seven story bank from the Yugoslav era, and a
Street art 2
Hard to argue it's not well done. sniper's nest in the war. Now for those willing to hop the bricked walls on the first floor it’s a street artist's paradise. The outside is covered in murals, the inside in still more art and amateur philosophizing. If anything, there was a sense of acceptance and persistence through it all. I bought my breakfasts from a bakery that remained open even as street work opened a six foot hole in the pavement before its front door. Getting there meant walking across a precarious wooden plank spanning the length. If anyone minded, it was far from apparent. In much the same way, shell casings had already been recovered and etched into souvenir trinkets to sell on to the small army of geriatric tourist groups passing through the old town.
I spent two days in Mostar lingering on the back streets, absorbing the atmosphere, drinking in the rakija offered by a suspect old man in a plastic bottle, and also working on my laptop in a hostel bed. Nice, while it lasted. All too quickly it was time to hop another morning bus on my way to Dubrovnik.
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