So beautiful it hurts

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And yet my computer does not have a USB port, so I cannot show you. I have been in Bosnia i Herzegovina less than 24 hours, and I love it. I am staying in Mostar, which is a little town with one tourism attraction: it's old bridge, the Stari Most (which, btw, is Croatian/Serbian/Slovenian/Bosnian/twenty other languages for: Old Bridge)

Actually, the brackets are a point. I just don't get it. They speak the same language (almost), they eat the same things, they have the same sense of humour (wicked), so why?

To hear the Official Bosnian/Hercegovan account, Milsoveic started it. No one else. Just him. I spoke to a Bosniak, though (that's someone who is ethnically as well as nationally Bosnian, and maybe Muslim). His take was that Croatia wanted to split half of Bosnia and Hercegovina with the Serbs, however, the Serbs wanted all of it, so ethnic Serb and Croat Bosnians just tried to kill each other as much as they could, and both of them tried to kill Bosniaks. Srebenica is inside Bosnia; that's the UN protected 'safe' zone that saw 7-8 thousand Muslim Bosnian refugees murdered.

Who knows what the truth is.

No, the truth was it was war, and it was wrong. They reduced the old town (including Stari Most) to rubble, in fact someone (I don't know which side, and I don't kow if I should care) targeted the Bridge itself.

Our Stari Most was rebuilt in 2004. It is the Novi Stari Most.

This is such a strange town. There are condemned buildings-- ˝Dangerous Ruin˝ it says, in Bosnian and in English-- everywhere, and people don't even look up at the sky through windows, the shell-marks. But everyone is friendly, everyone wants to talk, ask where you are from (˝We've had a lot of Australians through this month˝). My Shirt went down a treat, at least with the girls (yes, I am wearing the one which reads ˝I had a nightmare that I was a BRUNETTE˝), and my Hostel hosts drove me twenty minutes out of town to see another town (Blagaj) and it's Muslim Dervish-house (I kid you not. It's a type of Islamic order, called the Dervishes. I have *not* asked if they are whirling.) I will not speak of it, I wait until I can add photos, because it is too beautiful and amazing for words.

Gah! how to Blog without Gushing? If it is possible, I do not know how.

And how to blog without speaking in the particular brand of correct English/pidgin that is best understood by the country you are in? Again, I do not know.

But this is far too long for a post without photos, so I will let you all leave, and go back to your webcomics or whatever.

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Photos

Idijots!
Or young men with a neat moneymaking venture. At least it's something

But what?
Given what Bosnia was like, that is a pertinent question. Don't forget what was done? Don't forget what was done to us? or Don't forget what they did to us? That's the scary option.

Blagaj
Did I mention this was rather pretty?

Comments

[Brita the jealous]

I wanna see !!!
I was too curious so I googled it, i think i found the bridge "Novi Stari Most" that you refer to - beautiful!!! and wow Ailie everything sounds so exciting even the sunbathing. okay especially the CHOCOALTE!!! hehehe

[mum]

Finally found your address so I can look through all your photos. Beautiful, I am so jealous. I will spend some time going back through them when I have more time any way off to double year 11 now!