Mostar

We caught the bus to Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina yesterday morning. The three-hour trip took almost four (rule of thumb: add about an hour to the quoted bus journey time), but Eleanor and Leo were good and there was no sickness.

Stari Most

Mostar was badly damaged during the war in the 1990's. All of its bridges, including Stari Most the Ottoman bridge built in 1557, were destroyed and only one of its 27 mosques was left standing. The old city and bridges have now been rebuilt, but there are a number of ruined and shelled buildings in the new parts of the city.

On the bridge

It is hard to fathom what people of our age were experiencing in their late teens/early 20's while we were focusing on finishing school, starting university and having fun. It is easier now to have some appreciation of what Miss Pivac (my 7th form dean) meant when she used to say to us 'you girls think you have problems, my people are killing each other'.

We spent the afternoon walking through the bustling cobbled pedestrian streets of the Turkish quarter and across Stari Most (wow!) then had dinner in a little restaurant on the banks of the river overlooking the bridge, which is striking in its simplicity.

The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian influences have created a fascinating
mix of east and west. It is incredibly friendly here, and cheap after Dubrovnik.

It is bright and early and we are about to jump in a train (an 8am start for the second day in a row; I know it isn't early at all, but we've been very relaxed on this trip!) to Sarajevo.