15. Brilliant Bosnia

Day 85, July 7th.  Trogir, Croatia – Blagaj, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 30 - 40C, sunny

Five kilometres after we enter Bosnia, the motorway runs out.  It just stops; we can see where it’s meant to continue, based on some once-graded land ahead of us, but it just hasn’t been built yet. 

We’re diverted on to a country road with everyone else, and can begin to enjoy the homely, rustic scenery around us, as we drive through rolling hills, then down into a huge, wide canyon, whilst passing through welcoming, slightly scruffy little villages, all with well-tended vegetable patches and vineyards.

Our first stop in Bosnia is the little town of Blagaj (pronounced ‘Blagaye’), nestled around the banks of the clear, fast-flowing River Buna at the southern end of the Mostar plain, huddled up against the precipitous southern edge of the Dinaric Alps.  As we drive into this little, semi-rural, meandering town, we start noticing some significant differences from our other Balkan destinations.

First, there are mosques and minarets again.  And churches.  Nothing too fancy; simple, grey limestone affairs, the minarets pointy, with many sides.  Second, it’s impossible not to notice the bullet holes.  Whilst it’s evident that many buildings have been re-rendered, or even re-built, many haven’t.  The tell-tale circular pits in the mortar work and the occasional caved-in roof point to a very different recent history, a world away from the bucolic peacefulness that pervades now.

We find the River Camp Bara – our intended destination for the evening.  It’s a tiny campsite, shaded by fruit trees, and right on the banks of the Buna.  The gates are open, but it’s completely deserted.  There is a phone number on a sign; we call it (despite our phones having no data or internet since reaching Bosnia, we can still make very expensive phone calls…). 

Tarik answers: “Yes of course you can stay, no problem.  I’ll come down later.  Just go wherever you want”. 

The temperature under the trees is near 40C and humid, but as soon as we walk down to the river’s edge – barely five metres away – the temperature drops by a full 10C and there’s a cool, refreshing breeze.  Most welcome. 

Gallantly, I leave Nina and the boys to set up the roof tent in the blistering heat, whilst I jump in the car of a friendly local who speaks no English yet appears to know about fishing on the river, to go and procure a fishing licence for a couple of days.  I’ve got no idea where we’re going; it transpires we’re headed for a local bar on the banks of the river downstream.  Here, a series of equally hospitable locals, who are enjoying their Sunday afternoon over a few beers, welcome me – with varying degrees of English – to their country,  and rustle up a fishing licence.

Back at the campsite, Nina and the boys are cooked – so water and a dunking in the 10C waters of the Buna are called for.  Tarik turns up later, as friendly, informal and as laid back as everyone else we’ve met so far here.  By evening, we’re joined by a hippy Czech family, and some Bosnian ex-pats who turn up in a German-plated car and spend the evening smoking their shisha pipes.

Laurie and I try the fishing later, in the cool of the evening.  Elsewhere on the willow-shaded banks, local men in shorts and T-shirts are fishing too, whilst women in Islamic shawls and headdresses sit cross-legged in the grass, finishing their picnics and tucking into shisha-pipes as well.  It’s feels incongruous to us; it feels like we simultaneously have a foot in both Europe and Asia.  But over the next few days, we get used to it.

Day 86, July 8th.  Blagaj – Mostar - Blagaj, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 30 - 38C, sunny

We sleep soundly – lulled by the continual, gentle roar of the river, and the cool evening breeze that efficiently takes the heat out of our roof tent.

We’ve set an alarm for 6.30am, to enable us to catch the local bus to Mostar, which leaves the ‘high street’ at 7.15am.  Tarik has urged us to reach Mostar early, before the coach-loads of tour groups from Dubrovnik cruise ships arrive at 10am. 

People start their days early here, albeit in different ways.  At 7am, Blagaj’s shabby cafes are all full of local men – drinking coffee, smoking and chatting.  We board the 7.15am bus – which arrives nearly on time – along with about two dozen women (not a headscarf in sight), dressed for work and evidently headed for Mostar as well.

Tarik was right.  Arriving in Mostar before 8am, the place is largely deserted, barring the locals setting up shop for the day’s trade.

Mostar is home to the ‘Stari Most’ (‘Old Bridge’), built in the 1556 by the Ottomans, high above the Neretva River.  It’s slender, stone-built, slightly pointed arch was an engineering marvel of the time, and remained a key piece of infrastructure, as well as a cultural icon, until the Croat army fired over 50 shells at it during a deliberately targeted attack in 1993, causing it – eventually – to collapse. 

It's perhaps worth explaining (we found this complex enough despite being here) some of the basics of Mostar’s history during the Balkan conflict. 

Originally, Mostar’s populations of Bosniak Muslims and Croatian Catholics (who’d previously lived side-by-side, along with Serbs, for centuries and enjoyed an unusually high proportion of mixed marriages and families), presented a united front, fighting to defend the city – successfully – from the invading Serbian forces of the Yuogoslav People’s Army (JHA), who in 1992 had laid siege to the city.

But in 1993, the two allies fell out – largely due to diplomatic double-dealing by the Croatian government who were hedging their bets in the wider Balkan conflict.  This started the separate Croat-Bosniak war, which led to – amongst other things – a second siege of Mostar, mass civilian casualties, the fleeing of 90,000 civilians from the city, and the destruction of its famous bridge.  The Croats claimed it was a tactically important supply line and hence a legitimate target; local Bosniaks maintain it was an act of deliberate, sentimental destruction – given the Croats viewed it as a symbol of historic Islamic conquest.

Either way, between 2001 and 2004, the bridge was rebuilt, stone-by-stone, using identical materials and identical methods to the Ottomans.  The result is one of the great triumphs of post-war rebuilding, anywhere. 

Today, tourists flock to see this magnificent symbol of peace and unity; it’s symbolism more important and impressive than its (still awe-inspiring) aesthetics.  Today, Mostar’s population (roughly 49% Croat, 45% Bosniak and 5% Serb) once again live peacefully, side-by-side.  

Having admired the bridge from every angle and eaten a substantial breakfast of omelette and chips, we wander into Mostar’s backstreets.  It’s beginning to get busy; it’s only 9.30am.  As we’re looking into one shop selling Turkish-style lamps, we look round and realise Ralph is no longer with us.  But we immediately hear the tap-tap-tapping of a coppersmith; sure enough, when we reach the shop we find Ralph, making friends with the owner (a fourth generation smith) and being invited to have a go at tapping out a pattern on a bracelet.

The gentleman in question tells us he’s a Bosniak Muslim, he’s married to a Croat, and his daughter lives in Serbia.  He’s visibly and vocally proud of his family unity over the past forty years.  He’s the first of many such people we meet across this extraordinary country – where – despite the horrors of the early 1990’s, the same peoples are again living side-by-side, mostly in harmony.  We find it hard to get our heads round this.

As the sun gets hotter and the streets get busier, we retire to a shaded terrace, below the bridge and on the banks of the river, to watch some of the bridge’s famous – and brave – divers warming up on 5m, 10m and 20m diving platforms, and then watch one of them dive over 25 metres off the bridge itself, into the dangerously shallow waters of the Neretva River.

Heading back to our campsite on the bus, we reflect that we’ll only ever be able to scratch the surface of this remarkable country, in the five days we’ve allotted ourselves here.  We cannot begin to understand the complexities of its past, or fully appreciate the diversity and nuances of its present.  We’ll have to content ourselves with a taster, a reminder of just how much we don’t know.  

We spend the heat of the day not straying far from the cool breeze of our river.  Later, we walk the one kilometre or so upstream to the source of the Buna – the largest freshwater spring in Europe. 

From a low-arched cave in a sheer cliff-face, a fully-fledged, mature river emerges, flowing serenely at 40,000 litres per second.  The cave only goes 10 metres or so back into the mountain, but – as we find out on a subsequent visit into the cave on a dingy – the spring beneath these beautifully calm waters is over 100 metres deep – no diver has yet managed to dive below this depth and find the bottom.

Adjacent to the cave and perched over the river is the Blagaj Tekija – a Dervish monastery built hard-up against the cliff, in 1520.  It’s bright white walls and black-framed, square windows makes it look a little like a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas – and offset the aquamarine waters and grey cliffs perfectly. 

We sit with our feet dangling in the refreshingly cold water, admiring the view.  We’re very much not alone here.  All around us – on little manicured paths and in a handful of river-fronting restaurants – are visitors.  Some tourists, but mainly Islamic pilgrims, many of the women dressed in full head-to-toe black burqas.  Again – the mix of peoples and clothing feels incongruous to us – like we’re in a 50:50 Muslim:Christian country – but of course, that is exactly what we’re in.

We don’t have quite enough food for supper this evening, so we walk back, past our campsite and further downstream, to the peaceful, river-fronting restaurant where I bought our fishing licences yesterday.  Overlooking this serene, clear river, drinking Lemon Sodas and Sarajevsko beers, we enjoy delicious, fresh trout from the nearby trout farm, grilled and beautifully unadulterated. 

For a princely 42 euros, we’ve enjoyed possibly the best – and best value – restaurant meal of the entire trip.  Around us, old men sit alone at the other tables, drinking coffee, rakia and smoking, gazing wistfully into the river.  

Day 87, July 9th.  Blagaj – Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 24 - 39C, sunny, rainstorms

Another 6.30am start this morning; Nina’s engaged Adin, a local guide, to take us up the Via Ferrata in the deep gorge that runs up the mountains behind the Blagaj Tekija monastery.

We meet Adin at 7.30am in the climbing centre (a single room, with a scruffy kitchen and ancient coffee machine) on Blagaj’s high street.  In his mid-30’s, he’s wiry, bearded and lithe, friendly and softly spoken, a little shy to start with, but this soon wears off.

We walk for an hour to the start of the climb; it’s already getting hot.  The start of the climb is more of a scramble / walk / scramble, until the gorge narrows and we’re presented with a 30 metre vertical wall in front of us.  From hereon, this becomes the most technically challenging Via Ferrata that either we or the boys have done; this first vertical section is followed by another, 40 metre high ‘beyond vertical’ (i.e. with an overhang) section, with a tricky traverse round a corner in the rock, precisely at the point of the overhang. 

Despite the rather lethal looking drop and the overhang, everyone holds their nerve.  When we scramble out of the gulley at the top and rest in a valley in the sunshine, Ralph is the first to admit he had a ‘wobble’ on the final section.  Nina comes clean next; truth be told, all of us feel quite proud to have made it intact.

Now at the top, we’ve another couple of hours walking with Adin, up through the remainder of the valley, to the 14th century fort which overlooks Blagaj and the Mostar plain beyond, and down a steep mountain path, back into the town.

En-route, he opens up about his childhood. He was born in Blagaj during the war; it was a key battleground.  He says it was “like living in the movies, but at that age I couldn’t process anything, I was much older when I finally processed all that stuff.”

Adin moved 27 times during his childhood.  “I was always wearing, like, four coats and three pairs of trousers, in case we had to move again.”  He explains that his father fought in the war and spent 18 months in a JHA concentration camp.  “When he came home at the end of the war, I didn’t recognise my dad. He’d lost like 25 kilos, had this big beard, just stared out of his eyes.”  His father – like most of the men in his generation – spent the rest of his life with PTSD.  We mention to Adin the old men we saw alone at the restaurant last night; he says they probably all have the same condition.

As we trek up to the fortress in the sweltering, now late morning heat, Adin explains that the fortress is in much better condition that it used to be – courtesy of being occupied by defending soldiers during the war.  The areas in the mountains beyond where we were climbing were all mined, he says, and the remote patches are still to be cleared – the government (rightly) having focussed on the more heavily used agricultural land in the plains.

Like every other Bosnian we meet, he’s positive, and forward-looking.  He says that politicians still like to drag up the past and remind everyone of the horrors of 30 years ago, to score political points – but his generation and below are building a more unified, tolerant co-existence.  He’s Bosniak, his girlfriend is Serbian and he works in Belgrade (Serbia’s capital) in the winter.

Life is still far from easy in Bosnia, though. He says that around 150,000 18-25 years olds left during the pandemic (Bosnia total population: 3.2 million).  There are simply not enough jobs for them.  Even Adin can’t afford to live in Blagaj all year round, and he’s running three jobs. “Bosnians are very good at getting by on very little” he says.  He leads a frugal life, he says, and grows his own vegetables, like everyone else.  He rolls a rollie and smokes it as we head down the hill and back into the town.

After a very well-earned, two-trout-each lunch at a Buna-side restaurant overlooking the Blagaj Tekija, we head for our air conditioning and set off on the two-hour drive to Sarajevo. 

Past Mostar again, we leave the plain and follow the Neretva River upstream through a pretty valley, weaving amongst the southern Dinaric Alps.  We follow a series of beautiful rivers, gorges, lakes and dams for the next 140km, to Sarajevo.  Bosnia’s mountains are as spectacular as any we’ve seen across Europe – steep, lush, wooded, rocky, all at the same time.

We reach the outskirts of Sarajevo in late afternoon.  On the advice of the delightfully friendly Tarik at our campsite in Blagaj, we’re heading for a little campsite called ‘Olywood’, in the Trebević Hills, overlooking the city.  With no data connection and therefore no navigation, Nina is relying on screenshots taken before we left Blagaj to guide us in.  After a few extra turns through Sarajevo’s outskirts, and a quick stop at a local food market to buy some provisions, we find the campsite, thanks to her precision guidance.

‘Olywood’ is little more than the (large-ish) garden of a local called Oly, who quit his job in the entertainment industry 15 years ago and now lets his garden out to campers.  It’s got a laid-back, hippy vibe.  After our supper, a quartet of Turkish bikers who’d been camping next to us in Blagaj turn up; we share beers and juices with them and exchange stories, over an hour of Google Translate-enhanced banter and laughter.

Day 88, July 10th.  Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 32 - 39C, sunny

Today, we’ve arranged to meet Danijela (‘j’ pronounced ‘y’ per all Slavic languages) to give us a tour round Sarajevo.  She can’t meet us until after lunch, so having taken down the tent, driven in to the city centre and parked in an underground car park below ‘Aria’ – a brand new, multi-story shopping centre – we explore the city a little ourselves.

It’s hard not to love Sarajevo.  Despite the occasional bullet holes that are still scattered across some of its buildings, it’s a busy, relaxed city, brimming with energy and optimism.  Before doing anything else, we stop for a coffee in a busy plaza outside Aria, to take in the atmosphere.  Like every other part of this country we visit, everyone smokes.   

We still have a few things to replace following our theft in Rome, including a tripod for our camera and some more clothes for Nina and I.  Within half an hour and very little hassle, we find everything we need – including new linen trousers and shirts – in the Aria shopping centre.  I don’t think that’s ever happened to us in the UK before.

We walk through the Western end of the city and have lunch at ‘Klopa’, recommended by Danijela, next to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart – an imposing, twin towered stone edifice that wouldn’t look out of place in Vienna.  Lunch is outstanding – one of our best yet on the trip: grilled chicken topped with local Bosnian cheese, rare steak, lamb chops, grilled vegetables, and a most welcome pizza for Laurie.

Danijela meet us after lunch.  She’s cheerful, chatty and energetic, despite the heat.  We set off on a tour of some of the city’s sights.  We’ve only got three hours with her and this tour could take three days; given the age of the boys, Danijela sticks to the lighter sights. 

The first half of the tour – in the Western half of the city – takes us round Serbian Orthodox churches, through parks, the thoroughly Viennese Hotel Europe, down several Renaissance streets and finally to the spot where Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the ‘Latin Bridge’, providing the spark that lit the European tinderbox, precipitating the First World War. 

So far, it feels like we’re in a mixture of Vienna and Moscow – elegant Viennese architecture mingled with ugly Soviet-era concrete, and a bunch of shiny new malls and office buildings, erected in the past ten years.

After a much-needed cooling off in a mosque by the Miljacka River, we head into the Eastern, Ottoman half of the city – and feel like we’ve immediately walked into a caravanserai in Istanbul.  The streets – largely laid with cobbles or paving slabs and pedestrianised – are packed with locals and tourists, mostly wearing Islamic dress, headscarves or full burqas.  Coffee shops and shisha joints line the streets, and narrow alleyways lead off to covered bazaars.  Nothing is more than two stories high. 

It's hard to imagine we’re in the same city.  Danijela takes us to a coppersmith’s workshop, where our baked and slightly flagging children can shelter from the heat and are allowed to stamp their names onto engraved bookmarks, by the kindly owner.  We then find an ice-cream stall, then a family-owned baclava house where we’re given a demonstration and a tasting.  After a long afternoon for them, our tour ends on a series of highs.

But again, what’s most interesting is our conversations with Danijela.  She lived in Sarajevo during the 1,425 days of the siege, from April 1992 to February 1996.  Two of her children were born in the city during the Siege.  She’s Serbian; her husband is a Bosniak Muslim.  Like virtually everyone else we meet here, hers is a mixed-race marriage.   “But we shouldn’t call them mixed-race marriages, we are all the same race” she says.

For her, the hardest part of the siege – when the city was almost entirely surrounded by Serb JHA forces, who shelled it an average of 300 times a day – was the constant questioning and mistrust.  She says in the Balkans, your first and second name, plus where you were born, gives away everything about your ethnicity.  During the war, especially as loyalties ebbed and flowed, this was especially dangerous.

She’s disinclined to talk too much about the war.  She’s much more focussed on the future, on looking forward.  She says the three ethnic groups of Bosnia – Serb, Bosniak and Croat – are once again living happily, side by side.  Again, her sentiments chime with everyone else we speak to in this country.

She does explain the governing system, though.  As part of the Dayton Agreement, signed in December 1995, the warring parties agreed to peace, and the creation of a single sovereign state called Bosnia and Herzegovina.  The new state would have three co-presidents – one each representing the country’s Serb, Croat and Bosniak populations – and they would rotate the chair of this co-presidency every eight months. 

We ask Danijela if this has proved effective.  She laughs.  “Let me give you some examples” she says.  “Our national anthem has no words, because our leaders cannot agree on a set of words.  You’ve seen our flag, right?  It’s a mess!  We couldn’t agree on the design, so the UN designed it for us.  And any time we can’t agree anything, we go back to the EU and they settle the matter for us.” 

As we’re finishing our tour, we chat to Danijela about our plans for tomorrow.  We’d considered driving through Srebrenica but as it happens, tomorrow is 11th July: Srebrenica Memorial Day.  We’ve seen the banners, flags and white Bosnian lilies throughout Sarajevo today, in anticipation.  We collectively decide it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Later, back at Olywood campsite, I double-check with the owner, Oly, about the same matter.  He replies, in his crisp, uber-dry manner: “Why the f**k would you want to do that?  You can see all better and more information about Srebrenica here.  And don’t upset your kids.  Look forwards, not backwards.” 

That’s Bosnia through and through: “Look forwards.”

Day 89, July 11th.  Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina – nr. Uvice, Serbia, 28 - 41C, sunny

Our night’s sleep is disturbed (1) by howling wolves – which set the goodly guard dogs of Sarajevo off several times during the night; and (2) a couple of random gunshots from somewhere in the city below.  “Just locals having a party somewhere” chuckles Oly.

Before leaving Sarajevo this morning, we visit the ‘Tunnel of Hope’ – built in 1993 underneath the UN controlled runway at Sarajevo airport, to secretly connect besieged Sarajevo with the rest of ‘free’ (but still fighting) Bosnia. 

The tunnel – constructed under extreme pressure and danger in just four months – enabled vital military (and some civilian) supplies to reach the city, enabling it to hold out against the Serbian JHA army that had encircled the rest of it. 

This visit represents our single war-based museum visit here.  We’ve decided to leave the other – more shocking and emotive – museums and exhibitions (perhaps for another visit) and follow the local attitude: “acknowledge and understand, but don’t dwell in the past, look forward.”

This museum, however, is just right for the boys – it really captures their imagination.  We can walk through a stretch of the tunnel (about 1.6 metres high and very cramped), and visit one of the two, ordinary residential houses that the tunnel started and ended in. 

We overhear a guide talking to a group of tourists about his experiences.  He says that civilians couldn’t use the tunnel, unless they had the right contacts with the army – it was a military tunnel first and foremost.  He and his mother used it once, to fetch 20 kilos of supplies, and had to endure an 11-hour wait to get back – waiting for the army to finish their manoeuvres – all the while crouched in a trench in the blazing summer heat, with no water, being strafed by enemy artillery.

He goes on to say that, whilst the tunnel did supply some food to the city, in this regard it was largely symbolic – an emblem of hope.  Most food was flown in via UN supply planes, and most of it was left-over offerings that no-one else wanted (including American ration packs from the Vietnam War…).

A man in the group asks a question about landmines.  Are there still landmines in Bosnia?  Is it safe to walk about?  He laughs and says “We’ve got no more or less landmines left here than Croatia has.  We don’t have a landmine problem; we have an image problem!”  Very true words, indeed.

Ralph and Laurie are properly engaged by his stories – it’s hard not to be.  We wonder whether they’ll visit Ukraine in 25 years’ time, and view that through the same lens as we are viewing Sarajevo now?  

By late morning we’re done, and load up, heading towards the Serbian border.  Based on everything we’ve seen and heard about the invading Serb forces and their behaviour in Bosnia – especially at Srebrenica and other such places – we’ve got mixed feelings about going there. 

Our final stop, after a very slow, winding and beautiful drive on effectively a back road over the Dinaric Alps, is the town of Gorazde, sprawled along the River Drina.  It’s unbelievably hot as we park up in a spacious car park next to the river, and there’s little shade.  We make for the Riverside Café and Restaurant, it being (1) next to us and (2) overlooking the appealing, clear waters of the Drina.

Amina, the owner, welcomes us and suggests we sit inside, to make use of the air conditioning.  We don’t need to be asked twice, and dive into the cool.  Inside, there’s a motley collection of locals, including a couple of policeman having a drink and a smoke at the bar. 

Having ordered, Amina comes back to chat to us.  White-blonde and in her mid-30’s, she’s bubbly, enthusiastic and smartly dressed, in a business-like grey blouse and skirt.  “Can I tell you a little bit about our town?” she asks.

It’s amazing that so many people are so willing to open up to us – unrequested – here.  Amina explains that she was born in the woods, near Gorazde, whilst her mother was on the run during the war.  “She just stopped, went into labour, had me, and carried on.  But there’s like a million stories like mine here.”  She tells us that Gorazde was under siege for over 1,200 days during the war – albeit it went largely unreported outside the country.

She explains that Gorazde was like Srebrenica and other towns in this area, full of Bosniak Muslims from the town itself, plus refugees seeking safe haven from other little villages. It was surrounded by Serb forces, intent on massacring the Muslim population. 

But here – unlike at Srebrenica – in May 1995, when Serbs forces attacked and the UN peacekeeping force was overpowered and captured, a small number of troops (from the Royal Welsh Fusilliers, as it happens) managed to slip away and join up with local defending Bosniaks, preventing the Bosnian Serbs from taking a key hill overlooking the town. 

This single action, she says, saved the town from suffering the same fate as Srebrenica.  It was – perhaps – one of the UN peacekeeping force’s finer moments, in an otherwise largely disastrous role throughout the war.

After an excellent lunch of pizzas and fried chicken fillets with chips, we walk across the bridge connecting the two sides of the town, to admire the cherished remains of the town’s home-made siege defences – including a jerry-built armoured car to cross the bridge in, and water-powered electricity generators, built using car and washing machine parts, which powered radios for communication, and light and equipment in the town’s hospital.

We reach the border with Serbia in late afternoon – it’s an effortless crossing, just ten minutes of queuing and a couple of passport stamps.

As we leave, we find ourselves marvelling at this beautiful, calm, friendly and exceptionally hospitable country.   We can’t really believe that the same ethnic groups are again living side by side – mostly without issue.  We marvel at the evident power of human forgiveness and positivity.  We can’t believe the efforts of local people to be optimistic, to put the past behind them, and to look forward.  We also acknowledge just how much we don’t know – or probably ever will know – about the deeper nuances of these complex states.

The guide at the Tunnel of Hope was right: Bosnia just has an image problem.