This song came on during an amazing salsa dancing party in a city square on our last night in Split, the night before I left for Dubrovnik. A cafe just turned their speakers outward, and like moths to a flame, the salsa dancers showed up and blew me away.
Dobar dan!
I'm on a rainy busride from Mostar, in Hercegovina, to Sarajevo. What an awesome few days I've had! I had just arrived in Dubrovnik last time I posted, and I ended up spending three nights there - and it was really really hard to leave!
Dubrovnik is a costal city in the south of Croatia, and it was MADE for panorama photos. It was founded in the 6th and 7th century by communities of fleeing merchants and peasants from other coastal settlements as the Slavs began their piecemeal and brutal invasion of the Balkan peninsula. The settlers congregated and vowed to build a magnificent city-state. To that end, they needed protection, so they built what has to be the coolest wall I've ever seen.
An awesome corner tower on the wall, you can see the rest of the wall stretching away from it...
The wall completely surrounds the old city, and is as beautiful as is it badass. It's so big, and so solid that you can't help but feel the history of it. It practically speaks to you, saying "I will protect." The wall was so effective, in fact, that Dubrovnik remained an independant city-state even as the Slavs, then the Bulgarians, then the Venetians, then various combinations of Serbs, Hungarians, Croats, Crusaders and Bosnians all tried to capture it. Even the Ottomans couldn't do it. The city recognized various empires as being the leaders of the peninsula, but they remained independant for the most part because they were both well protected, and because they had become extremely wealthy by becoming a trade mecca. It was a bit terrifying thinking of how many people had died trying to breach those walls over 1500 years of history. Even as recent as the 1990s, the wall protected citizens inside from Serbian artillary fire, taking over 600 direct hits. The wall was painstakingly rebuilt using original materials and practices between 1995 and 2004. Walking the wall was a huge highight to my trip so far.
Besides the obvious beauty of the old town and the walls, the setting in the south of Croatia is pretty amazing. It was warm and sunny the whole time I was here, and we punctuated most historical visits with a trip to one of the amazing nearby beaches. The water in the Adriatic is so clear and blue it's like swimming in a huge bathtub. Thanks to the local geology of the area, Dubrovnik is also famous for cliff-jumping, something we did almost every day. You can find little holes in the wall on the seaside in old town and jump off the cliffs right into the ocean, everything from a paltry 3m, to a hair-raising 20m, with the huge wall looming behind you. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of pictures of it, but I managed to get some during a kayak ride out to the island of Lopud that we took on my second day.
Dubrovnik hosted the world cliff-jumping championships in 2009, so this is basically the height that a Croatian toddler would normally jump from
Kayaking around the islands was a great (and exhausting) way to see the natural beauty of the area. This whole part of the world is so full of history and beauty that its hard to take it all in, but I tried my darndest. I said goodbye to Croatia yeasterday evening. Really, I can only hope to come back here someday. Just like Slovenia, I didn't know what to expect, but I was totally blown away by it all: history, environment, culture - Croatia has it all.
The Croatian experience was one part adventure, one part history, one part beautiful surroundings, and ten parts sun
Last night, I hopped on a bus to Mostar in Bosnia and Hercegovina. This was a definite change of pace from the beach! Mostar is a little town on the Neretva River. It's name means "bridge keeper", and indeed it has one of the most celebrated bridges in all of Europe, Stari Most.
The bridge was built in the 1500s by an Ottoman sultan, who wanted to replace the creaky rope bridge that was terrifying merchants trying to get goods across the Balkan peninsula. It was undoubtedly one of the most amazing engineering accomplishments of the time - a massive single arch bridge of it's kind had never been built before. After standing for over 420 years, it was destroyed in 1993 by Bosnian Croat artillary fire. Like many things during the aggressions at the time, its destruction was senseless and tragic. Huge pieces of the bridge still lay at the base of the towers. It took over a decade to rebuild the bridge, using strict UNESCO guidelines, mining stone from the original quarry, and employing craftsman who still understood the building techniques of the original engineers and artisans. The bridge, although rebuilt, highlights the strange dichotomy in the area. Mostar is one part beautiful, quaint old town, one part haunting reminder of a terrible war not two decades gone.
Walks down the beautiful cobblestone pathways, between shops and cafes, are punctuated by hollow, bombed and burned out buildings. In fact, even the hostel that I stayed in had a terrifying history. It was owned by a 24 year old guy named Taso, whose grandparents owned the house before he inherited it. He showed me pictures of what it looked like after the aggressions.
Pictures of the hostel after the aggressions.
It was just a few walls really; completely burned out. Taso, after university, rebuilt the rooms and opened a hostel there, which he's been running for four years. It was really shocking to me to see this guy, younger than me, who didn't flee Mostar during the aggressions like so many families did, talking so bluntly about the destruction at the time. I couldn't help but feel lucky, as I have many times this trip so far, to be raised where I was. Despite his hardships, Taso explained he feels really fortunate to be where he is and to do what he does - the unemployment rate in Bosnia is over 40%, and even though he went to school for pharmacology, he doesn't see himself giving up the hospitality business anytime soon. Mostar really made me think, and I was really happy that I stopped here instead of going straight to Sarajevo.
Well, that's kind of a bummer note to leave you all on, but hey - life's not all beaches, right? I'll be spending a couple days in Sarajevo before deciding whether to move east to Belgrade or head down to Montenegro. Any suggestions? Much love, all.
-C
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