Feeling "too much Bosnia, not enough Herzegovina", I went on to Mostar, which is in that region. The train not only exists, it's quite a new and good one, and the route is so scenic it ruins my plan of staring at my phone and maybe dozing off. Hydro dams, misty ridges, mountains overlooking highway interchanges, all flickering on and off as you pass through some nineteen thousand (approximately) tunnels. As in Romania, uniformed staff at tiny stations along the way stand watching as the train passes, but instead of saluting they eye it mistrustfully (it is a new train).
In Mostar, someone shouts my name and rushes towards me. Long before I can decide what to do about this, he identifies himself as the guest house proprietor; he looked up my picture on Facebook and has been lying in wait in a cafe. He takes off down the street, trailing facts about Mostar and the hospitality business. Here is where the street becomes UNESCO-recognized; his business handles 110 guests a day; the shell that damaged this bit of pavement killed someone, and there is a Youtube film about it. He bears right at a 16th century mosque and leads into a house, waving keys, unlocking gates, demonstrating fridges, giving apples. The place is a pair of rooms with five small beds and a balcony over the river, where we sit down and he talks about the sites while covering the map with what I've since had scholars identify as a shopping list in hieratic Ancient Egyptian. There's a dazed feeling as of having been cracked on the head with an encyclopedia. Only after I've left the city, for example, do I remember he explained that there is a Bruce Lee statue, and why, and where. For future visitors: there is a Bruce Lee statue in Mostar. Check it out, and don't say this blog never provides useful advice.
Mostar is surrounded by dry gray mountains and split by a fast green river (the Neretva). Its tourism industry is powered by the Old Bridge and a few short streets of slick river stones that radiate out from it. This bridge is a beautiful stone arch built in the 16th century, shelled to bits in 1993, and rebuilt with international help in the early 2000s. It's now younger than Kid A, but no one minds. In the summer, locals apparently dive off it for tips, but the internet, which has already saved my life so many times, warns that this is dangerous and should not be tried by tourists.
The tourist streets are lined with tourist shops selling tourist things. Behind glass at kiosks are comics and adventure novels with pulpy 1950s covers: cowbows and distressed ladies in ripped blouses. Signs in every alley say "Sobe Zimmer Rooms Camere". Across the river, trees and notice boards are covered in death notices (as they were in Athens, though I forgot to mention it): pictures, dates, and obituaries. Over on the west side of the river are parks and pleasant streets interrupted frequently by ghostly brick ruins. Mostar was heavily damaged in shifting warfare among Serb, Croat, and Bosniak armies. It's split now into Croat and Bosniak areas. Bosnia is full of invisible lines; the war broke it into two main pieces, and one of those into many smaller ones.
On one corner stands the naked concrete frame of a bank tower used by snipers during the war. The outside, and what can be seen of the interior from the street, is painted with graffiti murals and banal but poignant-in-context things about everyone getting along. (Across the river, the graffiti is mostly about Red Army 1981. What could the Red Army have been up to in 1981 that would concern then-Yugoslavia? It turns out that the "Red Army" is the supporters' group of a local football team that was established in 1981.)
To get into the "sniper tower", you wander around the back whistling with your hands in your pockets and then scramble over a 5' wall. Then you can climb to the top floor on exposed concrete staircases and take a rusty ladder onto the roof, along the way staring down the open elevator shafts, photographing the murals, and admiring the views that also interested the snipers. On the way up and again on the way down, I run into a little group of twentysomething tourists. I give them waves. Seems best to be friendly; it's a quiet, hidden place, and all we know about each other is that we're the sorts of people who hop walls to enter abandoned buildings. It's basically certain that we're all just curious idiots, probably with blogs, but still.
(Climbing the tower isn't particularly dangerous, as long as you can see where you're going. There's a slight feeling the whole thing might someday fold up like a concrete accordion, but also that this is unlikely to happen in the next twenty minutes. It's also not especially audacious. Some effort has been made to prevent people from doing it, but there are no signs of any kind, and the whole thing feels more mildly disapproved-of than forbidden.)
Across the way from the tower are quiet parks. In the nearest, there's a chaotic photo shoot: a girl, a gilt painting frame, some cushions, a yellow puppy that doesn't know it's a model, a little girl in a pink tutu who follows the dog around, and a photographer frustrated at the lack of commitment everyone else is showing to his vision. There are also new washrooms standing locked, presumably until certain mysterious conditions are met.
Some issues of concern to travelers in the Balkans:
The Croissant Issue
The thing to remember in Bosnian bakeries is that the Bosnian world-view lacks a concept of the croissant as a thing in itself. Pastries exist as delivery systems for other things, usually hot dogs. A useful Bosnian phrase is, "is there a hot dog in this?" Another is, "please bear in mind that even a small hot dog concerns me."
The Museum-Door Issue
Twice, I've tried to visit museums in the Balkans and failed to open the door. Many of the peninsula's museums are behind forbidding doorways. Behind this thing like a castle gate, you know, must be the museum, or at worst a garage, but it also has the look of something that might have been built to contain some great evil. You push and pull tentatively. You look for a latch or a giant iron wolf's-head knocker. Then you move off unconcernedly as though you've accomplished what you set out to do ("yes... yes, this door checks out").
(Underneath Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, someone came out and stared at me after I'd given up on one of these doors. I mimed, "is the exhibition of icons, in fact, through these doors, and, if so, is it open?" And he gestured "yes, absolutely, there are some exquisite 16th century pieces that I think you will particularly enjoy". And a woman inside, who spoke English, explained that the ticket seller wasn't there -- there is a galloping crisis of ticket-seller absenteeism in the Balkans -- so I should just go in, and then followed me about discreetly to make sure I didn't draw curled moustaches on anything.)
In Mostar, someone shouts my name and rushes towards me. Long before I can decide what to do about this, he identifies himself as the guest house proprietor; he looked up my picture on Facebook and has been lying in wait in a cafe. He takes off down the street, trailing facts about Mostar and the hospitality business. Here is where the street becomes UNESCO-recognized; his business handles 110 guests a day; the shell that damaged this bit of pavement killed someone, and there is a Youtube film about it. He bears right at a 16th century mosque and leads into a house, waving keys, unlocking gates, demonstrating fridges, giving apples. The place is a pair of rooms with five small beds and a balcony over the river, where we sit down and he talks about the sites while covering the map with what I've since had scholars identify as a shopping list in hieratic Ancient Egyptian. There's a dazed feeling as of having been cracked on the head with an encyclopedia. Only after I've left the city, for example, do I remember he explained that there is a Bruce Lee statue, and why, and where. For future visitors: there is a Bruce Lee statue in Mostar. Check it out, and don't say this blog never provides useful advice.
Mostar is surrounded by dry gray mountains and split by a fast green river (the Neretva). Its tourism industry is powered by the Old Bridge and a few short streets of slick river stones that radiate out from it. This bridge is a beautiful stone arch built in the 16th century, shelled to bits in 1993, and rebuilt with international help in the early 2000s. It's now younger than Kid A, but no one minds. In the summer, locals apparently dive off it for tips, but the internet, which has already saved my life so many times, warns that this is dangerous and should not be tried by tourists.
The tourist streets are lined with tourist shops selling tourist things. Behind glass at kiosks are comics and adventure novels with pulpy 1950s covers: cowbows and distressed ladies in ripped blouses. Signs in every alley say "Sobe Zimmer Rooms Camere". Across the river, trees and notice boards are covered in death notices (as they were in Athens, though I forgot to mention it): pictures, dates, and obituaries. Over on the west side of the river are parks and pleasant streets interrupted frequently by ghostly brick ruins. Mostar was heavily damaged in shifting warfare among Serb, Croat, and Bosniak armies. It's split now into Croat and Bosniak areas. Bosnia is full of invisible lines; the war broke it into two main pieces, and one of those into many smaller ones.
On one corner stands the naked concrete frame of a bank tower used by snipers during the war. The outside, and what can be seen of the interior from the street, is painted with graffiti murals and banal but poignant-in-context things about everyone getting along. (Across the river, the graffiti is mostly about Red Army 1981. What could the Red Army have been up to in 1981 that would concern then-Yugoslavia? It turns out that the "Red Army" is the supporters' group of a local football team that was established in 1981.)
To get into the "sniper tower", you wander around the back whistling with your hands in your pockets and then scramble over a 5' wall. Then you can climb to the top floor on exposed concrete staircases and take a rusty ladder onto the roof, along the way staring down the open elevator shafts, photographing the murals, and admiring the views that also interested the snipers. On the way up and again on the way down, I run into a little group of twentysomething tourists. I give them waves. Seems best to be friendly; it's a quiet, hidden place, and all we know about each other is that we're the sorts of people who hop walls to enter abandoned buildings. It's basically certain that we're all just curious idiots, probably with blogs, but still.
(Climbing the tower isn't particularly dangerous, as long as you can see where you're going. There's a slight feeling the whole thing might someday fold up like a concrete accordion, but also that this is unlikely to happen in the next twenty minutes. It's also not especially audacious. Some effort has been made to prevent people from doing it, but there are no signs of any kind, and the whole thing feels more mildly disapproved-of than forbidden.)
Across the way from the tower are quiet parks. In the nearest, there's a chaotic photo shoot: a girl, a gilt painting frame, some cushions, a yellow puppy that doesn't know it's a model, a little girl in a pink tutu who follows the dog around, and a photographer frustrated at the lack of commitment everyone else is showing to his vision. There are also new washrooms standing locked, presumably until certain mysterious conditions are met.
Some issues of concern to travelers in the Balkans:
The Croissant Issue
The thing to remember in Bosnian bakeries is that the Bosnian world-view lacks a concept of the croissant as a thing in itself. Pastries exist as delivery systems for other things, usually hot dogs. A useful Bosnian phrase is, "is there a hot dog in this?" Another is, "please bear in mind that even a small hot dog concerns me."
The Museum-Door Issue
Twice, I've tried to visit museums in the Balkans and failed to open the door. Many of the peninsula's museums are behind forbidding doorways. Behind this thing like a castle gate, you know, must be the museum, or at worst a garage, but it also has the look of something that might have been built to contain some great evil. You push and pull tentatively. You look for a latch or a giant iron wolf's-head knocker. Then you move off unconcernedly as though you've accomplished what you set out to do ("yes... yes, this door checks out").
(Underneath Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, someone came out and stared at me after I'd given up on one of these doors. I mimed, "is the exhibition of icons, in fact, through these doors, and, if so, is it open?" And he gestured "yes, absolutely, there are some exquisite 16th century pieces that I think you will particularly enjoy". And a woman inside, who spoke English, explained that the ticket seller wasn't there -- there is a galloping crisis of ticket-seller absenteeism in the Balkans -- so I should just go in, and then followed me about discreetly to make sure I didn't draw curled moustaches on anything.)
