The Delights and Tragedies of Bosnia and Herzegovina

It was time to leave the gorgeous mountains of northern Montenegro and head into Bosnia and Herzegovina. We had a stunning drive down through the Montenegrin mountains to a huge reservoir at the bottom. The road along the reservoir was an engineering feat - there were oodles of tunnels as the road snaked its way along the steep gorge.

Crossing from Montenegro to Bosnia was interesting. The Montenegrin side was smooth sailing but the Bosnian border post was located immediately after a one-lane bridge. Traffic was bottled up everywhere as people blocked the bridge then nobody could go anywhere. What a mess!

We had sussed out how to use maps.me on John's phone and it was great to have such easy directions to follow. The voice was Australian and we decided that it was probably the same Aussie voice we had in the US years ago when we were travelling with the kids. That voice came with a name, Karen, so we called this one Karen too. (It helps to have a name to abuse when they give bad directions!) I was the navigator and I had to laugh when we sometimes didn't go the way she suggested and the arrow locator icon would spin round and round trying to get us to do a u-turn. It reminded me of the robot from "Lost in Space" waving his arms madly around saying "Danger Will Robinson!". Karen soon became Mad Karen and it stuck. (Sorry Pos!)

We confidently typed in our hotel address in Sarajevo and set off. The road was great to start with but we soon found ourselves on a far less busy road which wound its way up the side of a mountain. After a while we realised this didn't look like the main road to Sarajevo but we had come so far we decided to keep going. The road kept deteriorating until we were finally on a rough dirt road with not another car in sight. The road kept climbing with a sheer drop on the driver's side. It was spectacular but definitely not for the faint-hearted - and ideally not for our low-clearance car either! For an hour or so we crawled along the road, hoping that no car would come the other way because we had no idea how two cars could pass. Finally we hit bitumen and it was all smooth sailing from there.

It took a few more trips to work out that Karen just picks the route that looks the most direct on a map - which is not always the best option. Oh well - it was an adventure!

We saw a few of these road signs along the way and they had us puzzled - we still don't know what a dot on a sign means!

We parked at our hotel (which involved the car going up and down in a lift!) and set out to explore the town. It was a surprisingly interesting and exotic place. The oldest section dates from the Ottoman times and is full of domed-roofed, timber buildings. There were mosques (oh no - we thought we had finished with 5am wake-up calls!), cobblestoned streets and ancient caravanserais (inns where Ottoman traders would stable their horses and get a meal and a bed).

There was then a clear line (it was literally painted on the road) where the Austro-Hungarian section started. After that were the drab, boring buildings of the communist era. The Austro-Hungarian buildings were pretty amazing.

We saw this sign when we were out exploring and it was just after the Tiges lost to the Swans after leading through most of the game. John felt the Tigers must have been blind to lose that one!

We found a fantastic bar - it was full of antiques and funky things like lamps that rolled up and down on wheels and menus that were printed on packs of cards or old-fashioned books. It was very cool!

Heavy rains hit the town that night and we got absolutely drenched! It was fun though.

We don't often take tours but we only had 2 nights here and we knew there was a lot to learn so we joined in on a free walking tour of the city. We immediately met 3 Aussies which was a surprise - we had only met one Aussie so far in 2 1/2 months.

We had a very enthusiastic guide (he worked for tips) and we learned a lot. Apart from its beautiful buildings, Sarajevo is famous for its two big war stories. The first happened in 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on a street in Sarajevo. The assassination triggered World War 1. We were shown the spot where he was assassinated. In one of those cruel twists of fate, the assassin had initially failed in his attempt to kill the Archduke and had wandered into a suburban street in Sarajevo to buy a sandwich. Meanwhile, the Archduke was on his way to an appointment but decided at the last minute to visit a sick friend. He told the driver to turn down a street. The car pulled over and the Archduke got out - right outside the sandwich shop where the assassin was eating his lunch. The assassin saw his opportunity, walked out of the shop and gunned down the Archduke and his wife in broad daylight. And the rest is history.

The second story is the one many of you would have heard of - the Balkan war of the early 1990's. There was a lot of unrest in the Balkan countries and the Serbs attacked Sarajevo, assuming they would take over the city in a couple of days. They had the town completely surrounded - they had some form of weapon every 30 or 40 metres, pointing at the town. The Bosnians fought back and the subsequent war continued for an incredible four years. Thousands of people were killed - many were shot while trying to get water or trying to help others. On the streets of Sarajevo they have left some places where bombs were dropped, painting the damaged footpaths with red paint to symbolise the loss of life that occurred there.

The market was also bombed and a lot of innocent people were killed. There is now a large red wall with the names of those who were killed recorded on it. You can see the red wall in the background here.

Even though a lot of buildings had been repaired or renovated, there were still plenty around that were bombed or had bullet holes in them. We had dinner both nights at a fantastic restaurant where you just tell them what sort of food you like and they bring out a surprise sensational meal. Directly apposite us was an empty building with bullet holes all over the walls.

The Bosnians dug a famous tunnel underneath Sarajevo that allowed them to bring in essential supplies. It's now a museum and it was pretty amazing.

I guess the war was well over 20 years ago now, but it's great that the people have picked themselves up and carried on with life. The town was very alive, very beautiful and absolutely full of tourists. Our guide was at pains to stress that Sarajevo is now a very multicultural city. He showed us churches - both Catholic and Orthodox - plus mosques and Synagogues. He wanted to send the message that Sarejevo welcomes all people from all religions or beliefs.

From Sarajevo we headed to Mostar, famous for its 'old' stone bridge. The ancient bridge was bombed during the war, which was devastating to so many people. After the war finished, the bridge was faithfully reconstructed, stone by stone. It's now the thing for young people, (ie, only slightly younger than us!) to jump off the bridge. It's about 24 metres to the water and the water is only about 5 metres deep. Not for me I'm afraid!

The river was gorgeous although it wasn't too clean in places.

Many parts of the old town were stunning. Tourism may have its bad side (the town was very crowded) but the money tourism brings in certainly helps to maintain the gorgeous old buildings.

There were still signs of the war though - bullet holes still pock-marked some buildings.

Our hotel here was awesome! Bosnia was really cheap so our budget let us have a pretty fancy room. We loved it!

All of a sudden, the temperature got hotter and we were suddenly getting a taste of what summer is going to be like. We did a bit of a drive around the area and found another gorgeous old village. We sweated our way to the top of the old fort there.

Apart from a very brief dip in the ocean in Turkey once, I had not had a swim on this entire trip. We had read about a fabulous waterfall where people can swim so we headed out to it. It was beautiful (very much like those at Plitvice Courtney, Connor and Alanna) but again the water didn't look too  clean. We ate an ice-cream instead!

Sometimes things just can't be explained. We had no idea what this sign at the waterfalls was about!

We then crossed the border back into Montenegro and explored the gorgeous coast before heading back to our favourite apartment in Kotor. Zoja, the owner, treated us like long-lost friends and we caught up with both the toothless grill guy across the road and the happy cheese and prosciutto guy up the hill. It was like coming home!

It was great timing when we actually saw the cheese being made at the cheese and prosciutto guy's place.

We walked up a gorge where the river was drying up and found oodles of frogs in the stagnant water. I know this isn't terribly exciting but I love the photo!

Our last night view from our balcony....

We headed back to Podgorica where we had to return the car. We took the long and windy road option. The views were amazing, as were the hairpin bends on the GPS. I think Mad Karen was getting a bit of a headache continually showing us screens like this.

We then returned the car to Podgorica (with a scratch - costly but not surprising considering where we'd been) and checked back into our old hotel there as well. We're starting to feel at home in this country!

We did a wine tour the next day. The vineyard is the largest single-block vineyard in Europe. The wine is all stored in a huge cellar that used to be an underground aircraft hangar during the war! It was massive. Planes used to taxi out of the tunnel and drive straight onto an airstrip. The airstrip is now a very long, very straight road between the vines.

We then had to work out how to get John's bike to Croatia. We worked out that it wasn't much dearer to hire a private taxi to take us than it was to pay for two tickets plus the bike on a bus. All went well until we hit the border. "You want to take that brand new bike out of the country? That will cost you 100 euros in duties." Oh no! We hadn't even thought of this! John eventually negotiated a price of 20 euros. There was definitely a bit of scamming going on here but our lovely driver was quite concerned about it all so we didn't argue much. We then still had to get into Croatia which would probably be much harder. We sat in no-man's-land waiting in a queue to cross the border. We had plenty of time to work out how to approach the situation. Finally it was out turn. We handed over passports and waited. The guy eventually returned to our car, handed us our documents back and sent us on our way! He didn't even notice the enormous box in the back of the car! We all breathed a huge sigh of relief and had a lovely drive into Dubrovnik.

Two happy Aussies in Mostar....

 See you next time!

John and Heather xx