Bosnia: The scars of Mostar
Why Mostar, Bosnia is a difficult place to visit.
As the bus rounds the bend and deposits us at Mostar’s coach station, I become filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. After the manicured beauty of Kotor and Dubrovnik, Mostar does not make a good first impression. The town appears alarmingly dilapidated at first glance; pockmarked low-rise buildings and pothole-ridden sidewalks adorn streets that are strangely desolate, even at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I mutely survey my surroundings and wonder if I made a mistake in convincing Liebling to spend two days here. Spiny fingers of guilt and self-doubt grip my stomach like a vise.
Mostar is rough looking for a reason — victim of an 18 month siege after Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, the city was almost completely destroyed by bombs. Even over 20 years later, the scars of war are visible, the gaping holes in the sides of the many buildings lying abandoned telling a very sad story. I’ve never seen anything like it.
But it turns out that I have incorrectly judged the proverbial book by its battered cover. The are pockets of beauty and excitement steps away in the old town. Here, the streets are full to the brim with tourists, mostly day-trippers from Dubrovnik who have come to see Bosnia’s most recognizable landmark, the Stari Most bridge, which crosses the sapphire waters of the Neretva River. There is market with booths selling brightly coloured handmade goods, and the restaurants in the area offer an array of delightful smelling fare at low prices. The atmosphere is actually cheery.
However, despite this happy scene, I’m unable to get past the buildings riddled by bullet-holes and massacred by bombs. They are haunting, a symbol of death, pain, and despair.
We stumble upon a graveyard one day and I feel even worse. An inordinate amount of the headstones show death dates between 1992 to 1995, right around the time of the Bosnian-Croat and Bosnian-Yugoslav conflicts.
