Balkans Day 9 - Mostar

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This morning getting up is not easy. My legs are stiff from all the steps they climbed yesterday. After a breakfast of cherry and sour cream croissants we head back down the steps (247 to be precise) to the car park.

Today we are crossing into Bosnia to visit Mostar. I know 3 things about Mostar; (1) it has a famous Old Bridge (2) the front line in the civil war ran through Mostar and (3) the Old Bridge was destroyed during the war so isn’t old at all.

The border crossing is in the hills on the outskirts of Dubrovnik. Once through, we are in a remote mountainous area. If we’d realised quite how remote it was, we’d have filled up with petrol beforehand. We start to get a bit worried. Then suddenly, like a mirage, a pristine petrol station in the middle of nowhere. I go to the toilet. It is my first experience of a toilet seat cleaner. It’s a bit alarming; I thought I had pressed the flush so wasn’t expecting an arm to shoot out of the cistern and the toilet seat to rotate though 360 degrees.

Shortly after the petrol mirage, Google maps takes us 3.6 miles along what looks like a goat track. Not surprisingly, it is totally deserted. The old man is unimpressed and starts to mutter about land mines.

Eventually we rejoin the road and continue our drive through an area which consists of mountains, trees, bombed out buildings and cemeteries.

With 37 miles to go, we get a new warning light on the dashboard to add to the one that the man in Montenegro told us to ignore. We decide to carry on. There isn’t much choice; in 50 miles the only signs of civilisation we have seen are a dead wolf and an old man throwing stones at a cow that is stuck in a hedge.

We reach our hotel which is both a surprise and a relief. After a short break to destress and Google warning lights (it turns out to be a tyre pressure drop) we take a wander round Mostar. We cross the Old Bridge and find a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the bridge for lunch. It’s such a beautiful place with the turquoise river running through the stone buildings of the ancient town. It’s sad to think that such a lovely, tranquil place was once, not so long ago, the front line in a brutal war.

We walk back along the river past a mosque where nearly every gravestone dates from 1993 and into Spanski Trug with its walls sprayed with bulletholes and its graffiti covered sniper tower.

We round the day off at the Franciscan Church where you can climb 370 steps to the top of the bell tower for a view over Mostar and the surrounding mountains.

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