Dubrovnik (1), An Introduction to the Old City and its Medieval Walls: Part 4 of The Balkans

From Mostar by Bus, the Old City of Dubrovnik and the Curse of Cruise Ships

26-May-2012

Mostar to Dubrovnik

Croatia

Dubrovnik

South of Mostar the land becomes flatter and the Neretva gives up any pretence of being a mountain stream. Our route followed the river, leaving it only to visit the bus station at Čaplijna, a town apparently constructed from a cheap kit in the 1960s. Cleaning up the graffiti which covered every surface would have improved it, but it would still be dire. The villages became less war damaged as we headed towards Croatia and mosques gave way to catholic churches.

Castle and Cross, South of Mostar

Into Croatia and Back into Bosnia

At the border, a young guard walked along the bus checking passports and sent us on our way. Nearing the coast we re-crossed the border, another guard checking us out of Croatia, while Bosnian officialdom remained deeply uninterested. Croatia is shaped like an underfed, asymmetric pigeon. The tip of its southern wing was detached in 1699 when the Treaty of Karlowitz handed otherwise landlocked Bosnia a 25 km strip of Adriatic coast around the town of Neum.

Neum

As Bosnia’s only outlet to the sea Neum might be expected to be a naval or commercial port, but not so; it is a second rate seaside resort on a coast packed with first rate resorts. There are plans for commercial developments – and there have been since 1699.

We halted at a hotel on the by-pass. The driver ate an early lunch, the woman from the seat in front of us drank a huge slivovitz and we had a coffee before queuing up with our fellow passengers to spend the last of our Bosnian marks.

And Back into Croatia

The 65 km long Pelješac Peninsula runs parallel to the coast and belongs to Croatia. A little beyond Neum a large coat of arms with Croatia's distinctive red and white chequer-board is prominently displayed on the Pelješac hillside just in case anybody forgets. The bay between mainland and peninsula is crowded with oyster and mussel beds.

Shellfish beds in an inlet
Bistrina Bridge, Croatia

Arriving in Dubrovnik

We entered the Croatian exclave without further formalities. A pretty drive along the Dalmatian coast brought us to Dubrovnik bus station beside the deep water harbour, where two enormous cruise ships were tied up.

Rain had arrived as if from nowhere, so after visiting an ATM to stock up on Croatian kuna we made our way to the taxi rank. As in Sarajevo it was a fixed fare, but at least here there was an official sign saying so. Part of modern Dubrovnik clusters round the harbour while more sits on the wooded slopes of the Lapad peninsula where most of the hotels, including ours, are situated. The Old Town, the honey pot that attracts so many bees, squats on a small headland south of Lapad.

As we checked in the rain changed tentatively into sunshine, so we ventured out to a nearby restaurant, the Magellan, for a late lunch. The menu made it clear we had arrived somewhere new. Instead of grilled meats, burek and ćevapi we were offered pizzas, pastas and risottos. Most of this coast – though not actually Dubrovnik – was part of the Republic of Venice from the middle ages to the 18th century, so it is unsurprising that Dalmatian and Italian cuisine have many similarities. Had we been in Croatia’s Balkan ‘wing’ rather than its Mediterranean ‘wing’ we would still have been among the grilled meats and stuffed peppers.

Dubrovnik, the Old City

After lunch we walked down to the old town.

On the way down to the Old City, Dubrovnik

Old Dubrovnik is a perfectly preserved (or perfectly restored) 17th century city, its massive wall still completely intact. Yugoslavia became an increasingly popular holiday destination in the 1970s and 80s and Dubrovnik was its main attraction. War brought tourism to a shuddering halt but it has since regained and is now surpassing its previous level, which may explain why I could not find a gap in the crowd when trying to photograph Lynne at the Pile gate into the city.

Lynne outside the Pile Gate, Dubrovnik

The gate has an inner courtyard where a large map charts the impact point of every shell that landed on the old city during a seven month siege in 1991. It also points out, in very large letters, that it was the Serbs and Montenegrins who were to blame. Three buildings were completely destroyed, many sustained severe damage to their roofs and many more suffered more superficial damage. Dubrovnik had not at first been defended as Serbian leader Slobodan Milosević had given an undertaking to respect its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. About a hundred civilians were killed and a couple of hundred soldiers on both sides died before international pressure led to the lifting of the siege. Here, as with Mostar bridge, the loss of human life seems to concern us less than the loss of old buildings - ‘us’ being those members of the human race not directly involved in the conflict – and I find that puzzling.

Inside it was a little quieter and after admiring the Onofrio Fountain, built in 1438, we walked down the main drag, called either Placa or Stradun...

Placa (or Stradun),The main street of the Old City, Dubrovnik

...pausing at the church of St Blaise.....

The Church of St Blaise, Dubrovnik

....the patron saint of Dubrovnik.......

Inside the Church of St Blaise, Dubrovnik

.....and then out to the old harbour (not to be confused with the deep water harbour by the bus station).

The harbour, old City, Dubrovnik

It was a Saturday afternoon and as we walked back, a wedding party processed up the main street, the man nearest the camera is waiving the flag of St Blaise, without which not much happens in Dubrovnik.

Wedding party, Dubrovnik

Despite the blue sky in the picture we were rained on as we walked the mostly uphill mile back to our hotel.

27-May-2012

Dubrovnik - Around the City Walls

In the morning the sky was blue and the air was warm, but the forecast sellotaped to the hotel reception desk promised rain for the afternoon. Back down in the old town we bought our tickets and climbed the steps up onto the city wall. There was plenty to see and no need to rush so the 2½ km circuit took us over 2 hours.

On the steps up to the city wall, Dubrovnik

I always like looking down on terra cotta tiled roofs. Normally there is a mix of colours, from the bright red of the newest tiles to the mellower colours that come with age and weathering. Here the vast majority of roofs sported shiny red tiles, a legacy of Serb shelling.

Following the walls anticlockwise, as directed, we walked first along the seaward side, pausing to photograph the city streets.....

Placa from the city wall, Dubrovnik

the roofs......

The roofs of Dubrovnik

...ourselves.....

Lynne on the wall, Dubrovnik

....and views of the coast.

The coast outside the walls, Dubrovnik

The Harbour

As we approached the harbour end we could see another cruise ship anchored beside an offshore island and a flotilla of small boast bringing the ‘cruisers’ ashore.

Cruise ship anchored off Dubrovnik

The wall is lower around the harbour then rises on the landward side.

The wall rounds the harbour, Dubrovnik

The Watchtower and My Emotional Intelligence

We had already climbed up and down many steps so when we reached the watchtower Lynne chose not to climb to the top. I left her in the shady entrance, climbed the stairs and took this photograph.

Across Dubrovnik from the watch tower

Lynne walked out along the wall so I could photograph her but I did not see her, indeed I did not look for her as I knew she was in the entrance and out of sight. I received an earful for that when I came down, I should apparently have known what she was going to do. I was almost certainly in the wrong and clearly demonstrated my lack of emotional intelligence by not looking for somebody I did not believe I could see.

Our lengthy circumambulation had largely been conducted in direct sunshine and although it was only eleven o’clock an administration of cold beer was deemed necessary. We found what we required in a shady terrace just outside the Pile Gate. We might have been embarrassed to be drinking beer when two other tables were occupied by people eating breakfast, but concluded they were at fault for getting up too late.

The Franciscan Church

Back inside the gate we intended to visit the Franciscan monastery. They had, according to the guide book, a magnificent cloister, Europe’s third oldest working pharmacy and a small museum of liturgical objects. There was a nominal fee for the (probably resistible) museum, but the rest was free. We soon discovered we had to pay 40 kuna (£5) each to see anything. As we had just spent 70 kuna each to walk round the walls we came over all mean and left. We had, after all, come to see Dubrovnik, not buy it.

Perhaps we were suffering from the ‘just arrived from Bosnia’ effect. Croatians, on average, have less than half the wealth of west Europeans, but the Dubrovnik exclave looks unusually prosperous and prices reflect that. Croatians, however, are three times wealthier than their Bosnian cousins and we found ourselves looking at Croatian prices through Bosnian eyes.

We did visit the Franciscan Church - that was free. Outside it was just another wall along the side of the main street, inside it was seriously ornate with statues of the Virgin Mary and paintings of saints in elaborate marble frames. We watched a Japanese couple staring at it all, clearly bemused.

Inside the Franciscan church

Walking slowly down through the town we found ourselves back at the harbour where a long queue of cruise passengers was waiting for the boats back to their floating hotel. Their visit had been meaninglessly brief.

Lunch in Dubrovnik

It was time to go in search of lunch, though given the quantity of restaurants in Dubrovnik ‘search’ is the wrong word. Several clustered around the harbour and more lined the square just the other side of the clock tower, but as we wanted to pay for the food not the view, we ventured into the backstreets. Some are so narrow it would be difficult for two laden donkeys to pass each other, though that precise problem went away some time ago. Any that are a little wider are lined with the chairs and tables of small restaurants.

We only wanted a light lunch, not the full works, and soon found a suitable place. Lynne ordered beef soup with crusty bread and I had some squid lightly dusted with flour and gently fried. My meal came with a substantial pile of chips, leading Lynne to question my commitment to a ‘light’ lunch. Maybe she was right.

In the narrow alley we could not see the morning’s blue sky being overtaken by thick clouds. Only when we emerged onto the wide main street an hour or more later did we realised that rain was imminent.

Rain in Dubrovnik

As we plodded back up the long hill the threat became a reality as the hotel weather forecast was proved right almost to the minute. We soldiered on for a while, but as the rain changed from light to hard and threatened to become torrential we passed a bus shelter and decided it was a good place to stop. We were not alone.

If you wait in a bus shelter long enough a bus will come along, and as it was a No. 4, which we knew went past our hotel, we hopped on board. Dubrovnik buses have a flat fare and it is more expensive to pay on board than at a kiosk but we had no choice. As we had walked a good part of the way before the storm became serious we did not get the best value for our bus ride, and we still received a soaking running the fifty metres from the stop to the hotel. Such is life.

The Lapad District,Dubrovnik

Modern Dubrovnik from the Lapad Peninsula

The rain did not last long and in the late afternoon we took a walk through the streets of Lapad. It is a green and pleasant suburb, though we found little of great interest.

It was beautifully presented - before I messed it up with a knife and fork
Magellan Restaurant, Dubrovnik

We could not be bothered to walk down to the old town again in the evening, so we re-visited the Magellan Restaurant across the road from the hotel. Lynne enjoyed her seafood risotto while my pork in a white sauce with wild mushrooms and roasted vegetables was beautifully presented, perfectly cooked and packed with flavour. It was a dish that would have graced a much more expensive restaurant and made me reassess my earlier feelings about Croatian prices.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination
Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Seige
Part 3 Mostar

Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM
Part 8 Skopje
Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi
Part 10 Prilep and Bitola
Part 11The Mariovo and Lake Prespa
Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia
Part 13 Ohrid to Albania The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje

Mostar: Part 3 of The Balkans

A Magnificent Rebuilt Bridge, Chilling War Damage and Neretva Trout

24/05/2012

Sarajevo to Mostar

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Sarajevo to Mostar is only 120km, but the journey took all morning; mountain roads never make for fast travelling. We were on one of the fourteen daily services between the two cities, with frequent stops en route, but the fifty seat bus rarely had more than a dozen passengers.

From Sarajevo to Mostar

The journey was largely through green alpine meadows, small towns and smaller villages, the tall thin minarets of mosques incongruous amid the essentially European scenery. Less attractive were the occasional shattered and abandoned farmsteads and the burned out buildings on the outskirts of every village. There was new building too, new houses to replace those lost in a war which passed through over ten years ago, but whose marks were still too clearly visible.

From Sarajevo to Mostar

Road signs were in both Roman and Cyrillic characters. Unlike in Wales, where bilingual signs give towns different names in the same alphabet, these were the same names in different alphabets. Like Wales in the 1970s, though, activists had been busy with green paint, 'Мостар' having been almost universally painted out.

As we neared our destination the mountains opened out and we drove through an area of vineyards and fruit farms.

Mostar

Arriving in Mostar

We arrived in sunshine. Mostar can be hot, the temperature had been in the mid-thirties the week before and regularly tops forty in July and August, but for us the sun’s warmth was moderated by the rain which had just passed and would soon return.

The Central Balkans with Mostar ringed in red

We trundled our case into town, crossed the Tito Bridge and found our hotel. Our vast room overlooked the Neretva River – fast flowing, deep and green – and on the far side the burned out hulk of another hotel. It was a typical Mostar view.

The Tito bridge and the burned out hulk of another hotel - A typical Mostar view

Mostar is the capital of Herzegovina (pronounced with a stressed ‘go-veen’, not a short ‘govv-vinn’). Throughout the Sarajevo posts I have referred to the country as Bosnia, but it is, of course, Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH for short. Although Yugoslavia fractured into more parts than most people knew it had (7 in total, though Serbia has yet to recognise the independence of Kosovo) the one split that never happened (and was never suggested) was between Bosnia and Herzegovina. Herzegovina has been an integral part of Bosnia as long as there has been a Bosnia, or indeed a Herzegovina. BiH remains split between the two ‘entities’ of the 1995 Dayton accord (the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska) but there is no meaningful division between Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Old Bridge, the Crooked Bridge and a Neretva Trout

Mostar’s main attraction is the old bridge, indeed Mostar means ‘bridge keeper’. We walked down the pedestrian street on the left bank of the Neretva and into Kujundžiluk – Goldsmith’s Street – which is the heart of the old town and leads up to the bridge. Kujundžiluk no longer sells much gold, though if you need a fridge magnet, a Bosnian football shirt or a small model of the bridge, this is the place to be. Mostar is perfect day-trip distance from Dubrovnik which explains why Kujundžiluk becomes very crowded in the afternoons and why all prices are quoted in euros, Bosnian marks and Croatian kuna (in that order).

Kujundžiluk, Mostar - busy in the early afternoon

The old bridge, (the Stari Most), was commissioned in 1557 by the Ottoman Emperor Suleyman the Magnificent to replace the wobbly suspension bridge that had been frightening Ottoman traders for over a century. Finished in 1566 it was a perfect arc of a circle, a ‘petrified moon’, gliding gracefully across the Neretva gorge between two medieval towers. An architectural and engineering masterpiece, the bridge survived over four hundred years and withstood two world wars before being destroyed in November 1993. The current bridge was built in 2004 to the same design, with stone from the same quarry and using Ottoman building techniques wherever practical. The new bridge is undoubtedly beautiful, but the stone lacks the mellow weathered look of the surrounding towers. In time it will become indistinguishable from the old one, but it can never be more than a replacement.

Mostar bridge

Beyond the bridge a side stream enters the Neretva down its own small gorge. The area around the confluence is much quieter than Kujundžiluk but is perhaps the most scenic part of the town.

Beyond the Stari Most

The Crooked Bridge (the Kriva Ćuprija) over the side stream is similar to the Stari Most but much smaller. It was built in 1558, allegedly as a practice for the bigger bridge. Weakened by war-time shelling it was washed away by floods in 1999. The government of small but wealthy Luxembourg financed the rebuilding of the small but beautiful bridge.

The Crooked bridge, Mostar

At night the day trippers return to Dubrovnik, those on Balkan Coach tours have meals provided in their hotels, which leaves the old town to the locals and the ‘independents’. We dined at Sadrvan, a restaurant between the two bridges. Sitting outside - it was just warm enough - I resorted to the Balkan staples of vegetables stuffed with minced beef, while Lynne went for the Mostar speciality, Neretva trout. She had two of them, simply grilled and served with chard (a popular vegetable in Bosnia) and boiled potatoes. They were, she said, excellent.

Neretva trout, Sadrvan Restaurant, Mostar

Mostar in the Bosnian War, 1992-5

Before the war the city’s population was, 20% Serb, 40% Bosniak and 40% Croat. Serb forces were repulsed after a siege during which the (Serbian dominated) Yugoslavian National army destroyed the Catholic Cathedral, the Franciscan monastery, the bishop’s palace with its valuable library, and 14 mosques. After they had gone the Croats responded with true Christian spirit, demolishing an Orthodox monastery and three churches, including the cathedral.

Although Bosniaks and Croats mostly co-operated, there were Croatian elements who favoured a Bosnian Croat republic along on the lines of the Republika Srpska. This idea never gained wide acceptance, but caused serious problems in Mostar. Bosniaks were expelled from Croat areas on the west bank of the Neretva, many fleeing to the Muslim east bank. The Bosniaks held onto a thin strip of land on the west bank and a front line developed to the west of that. From 1992 to the end of the war the two sides periodically lobbed shells at each other. All Mostar’s bridges were destroyed, the old bridge being targeted by Croatian artillery in November 1993 in an act of wanton vandalism*. All but one of the 13 Ottoman era mosques that survived the Serb onslaught were also destroyed.

The old town at night, Mostar

The old town was reduced to rubble and films of the time show bewildered looking people moving through a landscape that resembled Dresden in 1945.

25/05/2012

A Walk along Mostar's Front Line

In the morning we walked along the front line; the nearest point being only 50m from our hotel. The buildings were in many different states of repair. In one the ground floor had been fully restored and was serving as a fast food restaurant while above it was burnt out ruins.

A fast food restaurant on the ground floor. The former front line, Mostar

In a line of apartment blocks three had been restored (courtesy of the Danish government) while the fourth was still waiting.

Apartment blocks, some restored, some waiting. The former front line, Mostar

People were living in parts of the seriously damaged block.

Occupied war damaged apartment blocks, the former fron line, Mostar

Meanwhile, other buildings were being reclaimed by nature.

Buildings being reclaimed by nature, the former front line, Mostar

The Mepas Mall and Central High School

There were signs of a new Mostar rising from the ashes. The trouble with the Mepas Mall is that it could be anywhere. I suppose its existence is good for the local economy and it should therefore be welcomed, but neither of us felt the least desire to go in and have a look.

The Mepas Mall, Mostar

There are also signs of the best of the old Mostar recovering. The central high school had been badly damaged but the handsome building has now been fully restored. The school was holding an international dance festival while we there.

Central High School, Mostar

The Franciscan Church

We finished our front line walk at the rebuilt Franciscan church, its tall thin campanile an obvious challenge to the minarets across the river. The church is not open to the public but as we arrived the door opened and a party of Italian pilgrims emerged. We thought there was just a few, but like a tsunami they kept on coming until dozens of them were eddying around outside the church, each one sporting a red baseball cap and a badge of the Virgin Mary surrounded by clouds.

The church of the Franciscan Monastery, Mostar

We smiled at the Franciscan monk by the door. He smiled back. ‘Cinque minuti,’ he said, standing aside for us. Whether he thought we were Italian too, or just addressed everybody in Italian as a matter of course we had no idea.

Five minutes was enough. Although the exterior is finished the church is a concrete shell. Inside, there is an altar at the front, the Stations of the Cross round the side, and a great deal of gloomy space.

Medjugorje Pilgims and Bridge Jumpers

We thanked the genial monk and walked on towards the bridge. We soon caught up with the Italians - it takes a while to get a group that size across a busy road. The object of their pilgrimage was Medjugorje, some 25 km away where, in 1981, the Virgin Mary appeared to six children. She allegedly appeared daily for several years and still communicates on a monthly basis with two of the visionaries. The Catholic Church is officially non-committal and unofficially sceptical, but that has not stopped Medjugorje becoming the third most visited apparition site in Europe (after Lourdes and Fatima) receiving over a million pilgrims a year. In the second Sarajevo post I admitted to not understanding the military mind, now I have to admit to similar problems with the religious mind. I find it difficult to comprehend how rational grown-ups can believe this.

When we reached the bridge a man was standing on the parapet threatening to jump. He was not, apparently, suicidal but a member of the Mostar bridge divers club. Since 1664 (the date of the first recorded plunge) the young men of Mostar have been demonstrating (and temporarily shrivelling) their manhood by diving or jumping from the bridge into the cold, fast flowing river 21m below. There is a diving competition in July, but generally the divers dive and jumpers jump when a sufficient quantity of marks have been placed in the plastic bucket carried by the diver’s mate. A large group of Italian pilgrims was just what was required to drum up the necessary cash. I dropped in our contribution and we watched as the man jumped from the bridge and plummeted downwards. The Neretva at Mostar is on the cusp between mountain stream and regular river. It is deep, which makes the jump safer, but looks extremely cold. Once he resurfaced, the jumper wasted no time in getting himself out of the water.

The jumper jumps, the new Old Bridge, Mostar

We popped into a small shop beside the bridge to buy some scented soap as gifts to take home. The shopkeeper asked where we came from, and then said, ‘I want to thank you so very, very much.’ We probably looked surprised, such heartfelt thanks seemed an over-reaction to a 6 euro purchase. ‘Great Britain was the first to open its doors to the Bosnian refugees, you helped us very, very much,’ he explained. I am glad we did though I was not aware of it at the time and can hardly claim any credit. It makes a change, though, from ‘you people put my grandfather in jail.’ I decline to take the blame for that, too.

The Eastern (Bozniak) Bank of the Nereteva

We wandered back down Kujundžiluk to the pedestrian street beyond and past Karađozbeg Mosque.

Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

Built in 1557, the war left it with a gaping hole in the dome and the stump of a minaret. It is now fully restored and open to worshippers and anyone else who wishes to pop in.

Inside the Karađozbeg Mosque, Mostar

From there we walked up to the main street of the Bozniak Muslim quarter, which had almost as many damaged buildings as the front line......

The main street on the east bank of the Neretva, Mostar

...and then to the Musilbegović House, now a boutique hotel, but in the 18th century the house of an important Ottoman family.

Inside the Musilbegović House, Mostar

We returned to the main street for lunch. A tiny café with a mainly local clientele served us burek, pellets of minced beef encased in a long tube of filo pastry wound round like a Cumberland sausage. It was pleasant enough, if a bit stodgy, but cost little and we washed it down with the cheapest half litre of beer we found in Bosnia. Pivo Točeno, draft beer, was one of the first (and few) phrases of Bosnian I mastered (who’d a thunk it?). The local language used to be called Serbo-Croat but these days they like to think of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian as being separate languages, though the differ as much as the English of London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Working steadily through a burek
Mostar

There is room for only a thin slice of town on the east bank between the river and the mountains. We walked uphill and under the by-pass before finding a footpath up to the site of the Orthodox Cathedral. There was, we had read, a fine view of Mostar from the ruins; what we did not know was that the reconstruction of the cathedral was in full swing.

Reconstructing the Orthodox Cathedral

Walking a little further up the hill we found a small Orthodox chapel, one of the few religious buildings in Mostar to be largely undamaged by the war – though some of the work on the tiny bell tower looks suspiciously new.

The small chapel above the cathedral

Dinner at the Bella Vista, in Sight of the Old Bridge

Several restaurants occupy the the sites of the old mills along the right bank of the river, and in the evening we allowed ourselves to be captured by a young lady touting for the Bella Vista Restaurant. Unoriginal as the name might be, it had the virtue of truth. After a day of sunshine and showers it was warm enough to sit on their terrace with fine views of the bridge....

A restaurant table with a view, Bella Vista, Mostar

...and the floodlit walls of the old town.

The old town, Mostar

It was my turn to eat trout – only one, but it was big - while Lynne chose grilled baby squids. Local open wine comes by the litre or half litre. We toyed with the idea of half a litre, but after several nanoseconds consideration decided on a whole one. Clean, fresh and well balanced, if not particularly fruity, it was a perfect accompaniment to the food. We finished with baklava. Given the quality of the food and the surroundings it should have been expensive, but Bosnia is generally cheap and the shortage of tourists in the evening helps keep the price down to a level our friend Hilary would call ‘bargainous’.

I was feeling mellow but the trout felt gutted

Good food and ample drink in beautiful surroundings give me a deep feeling of contentment and a rosy view of the world. I know I was sitting in a town that only fifteen years before had been largely rubble, but I desperately want to see that as an aberration. I really do want to believe that humans are essentially good; Mostar may have seen unimaginable horror, but now it is a city of hope..

Another view of that bridge

The following morning we made our way back to the bus station and set off for Dubrovnik. We were leaving a town that is beautiful, but where it is never possible to ignore the recent past. All three communities know that just a few years ago their neighbours were trying to kill them. It will take another decade to clear the war’s physical damage, it might take longer to heal the mental scars.

and one more, just to finish

The Bella Vista allowed this narrative to finish on a positive note, but two positive notes are better than one, so I will also mention the ice cream stall just across the bridge from Kujundžiluk. For the princely sum of 1 mark (40p), they sell some of the best ice-cream anywhere. We tried four flavours, I did not keep a note of them but I know I had pistachio because I always do, and each one was special. No one would go all the way to Mostar just to eat ice-cream, but having got there no one should leave without trying it.

*There was little strategic justification for the destruction. Harvard academic Andras Riedlmayer described it as an act of "killing memory", in which evidence of a shared cultural heritage and peaceful co-existence was deliberately destroyed.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination

Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Seige

Part 3 Mostar



Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM

Part 8 Skopje

Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi

  Part 10 Prilep and Bitola

Part 11 The Mariovo and Lake Prespa

Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia

Part 13 Ohrid to Albania, The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje

Sarajevo (2), The Siege 1992-95: Part 2 of The Balkans

A Life Saving Tunnel, Attrocities and the Vratnic Citadel

Bosnia and Heregovina

Sarajevo

After 'that assassination', the next time Sarajevo came to international notice was in 1984 when it hosted the Winter Olympics. The stadium where Torvill and Dean danced their Bolero is still there, but we did not visit it, we have seen ice rinks before and anyway my knowledge of and interest in ice-dancing are both vanishingly small.

Dinner at Kibe, Sarajevo

On the second evening we had dinner at Kibe, a restaurant high on the head of the valley overlooking the city. Despite the setting and the obvious upmarket décor it was not particular expensive, even by local standards. Again we started with šljivovica with cheese, freshly baked bread and olive oil. Lamb's liver with onions and veal with mushrooms in a sour cream sauce were both excellent, as was the Mostar Blatina we drank with it, a little lighter than the Vranac but full of character. Bosnian restaurants offer the full range of what we usually think of as Turkish sweets – and they are as good as they are in Turkey. We just had enough room left to share a portion of Kadayif.

Lamb's liver, veal with mushrooms and a bottle of Mostar Blatina

The Republica Srpska and the Start of the Seige of Sarajevo

In 1992, just over a year after Bosnia’s first multi-party elections, a referendum was held which led to the declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. In protest the Bosnian Serbs, who had largely boycotted the referendum, set about creating the Republika Srpska. They were initially aided by the rump of the Serb-dominated Yugoslavian National Army.

There were many Serb majority areas but creating a Bosnian Serb republic required the removal – or murder – of thousands of non-Serbian residents. The concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’ has existed since humans first formed themselves into tribes, but it was in Bosnia that the term was ‘popularised’. The main victims were undoubtedly the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and the main aggressors the Bosnian Serbs, but all three communities, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks were, at different times, both the victims and the perpetrators of atrocities.

Being both the Bosnian capital and on the edge of the proposed Republika Srpska, Sarajevo became a focal point of the struggle. Serbian artillery and snipers occupied the hills that dominate the city and Sarajevo was to endure the longest siege in modern history.

I admit to having little understanding of the military mind – my instincts tend to be pacifist – but it is usually possible to discern the internal logic of a military campaign. I am, though, at a loss to understand the military justification for the siege of Sarajevo. When Bosnia declared independence it had no army and the hastily assembled militia were seriously under-equipped; the Serbs could have taken the city whenever they wanted. The well tried medieval tactic of starving out the defenders was abandoned when the Serbs ceded control of the airport to the UN. A constant stream of relief flights ensured that whatever dangers and privations the citizens of Sarajevo had to face, they might be hungry, but they would not starve. Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb commander now on trial in The Hague, was reported as saying: ‘Shoot at slow intervals until I order you to stop. Shell them until they can’t sleep; don’t stop until they are on the edge of madness.’ What a nice man. [Update: He was found guilt on 22/11/2017 of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment].

Surrounded by enemy controlled hills the only way in or out of the city was across the airport. This route not only compromised UN neutrality but was also dangerous - the open ground being a shooting gallery for snipers.

Sarajevo under siege. For reasons known only to themselves the publishers of this map decided to put South at the top!

The Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

In January 1993 volunteers started digging a tunnel under the airport from the village of Butmir. The 960m long ‘Tunnel of Hope’ was completed in 6 months and allowed armaments and humanitarian aid to be carried into the city. It has been largely filled in, but the Butmir end is now a museum and that was where we headed on Tuesday morning.

We had planned to take the tram to the end of the line and then a taxi to Butmir. Unsure where to buy tram tickets we asked at the hotel and discovered there were no trams, or more exactly, no trams running the full length of the line. Sarajevo’s venerable tram system was undergoing major refurbishment.

It was suggested we took a bus to the Dobrinja district and then seek further directions. In true Hotel Ada fashion the girl from reception walked down to the old town with us, showed us the (unmarked) bus stop, and when the bus arrived instructed the driver to tell us where to get off and then give us directions.

Dobrinja is a post-war (WW2 that is) suburb at the mouth of the valley, built at right angles to the rest of the city. The road heads south from the main drag hugging the mountains from where Serb snipers could shoot into Dobrinja at will. The Lonely Planet describes the suburb as ‘dreary’ with ‘dismal ranks of bullet-scarred apartment blocks’. Dobrinja has been largely patched up, but the place was built dismal and all the patching up in the world is not going to change that. Just before we reached the border of the Republika Srpska the bus turned right into the estate. We stopped on a wide, though largely deserted, road among the apartment blocks and the driver turned and gestured to us. As we got off he pointed down the road ahead and then indicated a vague right, as though he was showing us the emergency exits on a plane. It was not the most helpful of directions, but what more could we have expected?

We were close to where the eastern end of the tunnel had been. The museum and the surviving part at the western end were only a kilometre away, but were on the far side of the airport. The hills may no longer be alive with snipers, but wandering across an international airport was still not a realistic option.

Fortunately we had been dropped off right beside the Dobrinja taxi rank. We woke the driver in the first car, said ‘tunnel’ in fluent Bosnian and he drove us round the airport, past the tram terminus and into the countryside, dropping us off outside a very ordinary, if bullet scarred, house beside a narrow lane.

The rather ordinary, if bullet scarred, house that stands over the entrance to the 'Tunnel of Hope', Butmir

There is little of the tunnel left, but anybody who is anybody - Morgan Freeman, Michael Palin and Paddy Ashdown to name but three - has paid a visit, as their photograph collection shows.

A brief film tells the story of the tunnel. Over a million people passed through it bringing 20 million tonnes of food into the city; there is even film of a man leading a goat through the tunnel. Armaments were brought in as well and eventually rails were laid to allow the movement of heavier equipment. Telephone lines reconnected Sarajevo with the outside world and a power cable supplied electricity.

Lynne inside the Tunnel of Hope, Sarajevo

There was other footage from the siege; people hiding from sniper fire, a car driving down a road and being narrowly missed by a mortar shell. All this happened so recently and to people who look like us, dress like us, drive cars down streets like we do that it feels very immediate and deeply shocking. Perhaps we are more used to victims looking different from us because such events happen far away or long ago. Intellectually I know it makes no difference, human beings are human beings, but my response to the pictures came from somewhere which did not involve intellect.

Novo Sarajevo, The War Museum and 'Snipers' Alley'

After we had walked through the remains of the tunnel, the museum owner phoned us a taxi. The cab took us back round the airport and down the same main road as on our arrival. We stopped in Novo Sarajevo, the area east of the Austro-Hungarian town, to visit the Sarajevo war museum.

The War Museum, Sarajevo

The museum is in a war damaged building deliberately left unrepaired. It tells the story of the siege in photographs and in the artefacts people cobbled together to make life possible. Six weeks earlier we had seen photographs of the worst that human beings can do to each other at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. The photographs of the siege involved different people with a different backdrop but the same horrors. 11,500 civilians – including 1500 children – died. Snipers and random shelling killed and maimed indiscriminately. Not a single building remained undamaged. Food was available, but fuel for cooking and heating during Sarajevo’s savage winters was hard to find. People smashed up their furniture, took off the doors of their rooms and went out into the city’s parks to chop down trees.

Makeshift wood burning stoves, Sarajevo War Museum

A photographer working for Colors magazine was shooting the wartime artefacts. I was pressed into service to hold the end of a makeshift shopping trolley. He said he would remove my hand from the photo later – so there goes my bid for fame.

I become the assistant to a real photographer, Sarajevo War Museum

The museum is opposite the Holiday Inn, which was the only functioning hotel in Sarajevo during the siege and the base for all the foreign correspondents. The road between the museum and the hotel, the main thoroughfare into the city, was the notorious 'Snipers' Alley'; to cross it was to invite death. It has six lanes and a tramway in the middle, hardly anybody’s idea of an ‘alley’, but few journalists would let the truth spoil a memorable phrase.

The Holiday Inn across 'Sniper's Alley', Sarajevo

We dropped into the Holiday Inn, partly out of curiosity, partly in search of an ATM. It was basic and battle scarred during the war but is now a luxury hotel again. It has, though, always been this gruesome colour midway between custard and hepatitis; apparently people had choices and someone chose this!

Behind the Holiday Inn are Sarajevo’s twin towers. Much smaller than New York’s, they were set ablaze by artillery fire. They were burnt out shells for many years after the war but have now been rebuilt exactly as they once were.

Sarajevo's twin towers

We walked in the drizzle from Novo Sarajevo past the Alipašina Mosque, built in 1561……

The Alipašina Mosque, Sarajevo

….and into the Austro-Hungarian quarter.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Markale is Sarajevo’s main food market. It is not one of the world’s great markets, but with strawberries at 3 Marks (£1.20) a kilo – and excellent strawberries they were too – a little dowdiness can be forgiven. On the 5th of February 1994 a mortar attack on the crowded market killed 68 and wounded 144. The siege had slipped from the front pages of the world’s newspapers but the massacre put it right back. International outrage was, however, not sufficient to stop it happening again. In August 1995 five more mortar shells hit the market killing 37 people.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The second massacre brought an immediate military response from NATO. After Belgrade was bombed the Serbs forced their Bosnian cousins to the negotiating table and the resulting Dayton Accord, signed in December 1995, ended the Bosnian War.

The Markale, Sarajevo

The Accord acknowledged the existence of two ‘entities’ within Bosnia-Herzegovina – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. With many of its former leaders on trial in The Hague, the Republika Srpska has followed a more moderate path. There are no longer check points between the two entities, they now have the same currency and a unified army. All of which makes Bosnia more normal and blurs the distinction the war was fought to create. So why was it fought in the first place?

The Vratnic Citadel and the Grave of Alia Izetbegović

On our last evening we walked up to the wall round the Vratnic Citadel. The two restored towers are now a museum to the memory of Alia Izetbegović, independent Bosnia’s first president, war leader and afterwards Bosniak representative in the tripartite presidency. He died of heart disease in 2003. Unlike some of the Serbian leaders, Izetbegović was not a war criminal but I find it hard to believe he was as saintly as the museum makes out. Few (if any) national leaders are without faults and attempts to present them as such make me uncomfortable.

Restored tower on the Vratnic Citadel, Sarajevo

Alia Izetbegović is buried in the vast Muslim war cemetery below the citadel. After his death there were suggestions that the airport should be renamed in his honour. The Serbs objected and Paddy Ashdown, the international High Representative, decided the move would be divisive, so the airport remains plain Sarajevo International.

The grave of Alia Izetbegović, Kovači Martyr’s Cemetery, Sarajevo

On Wednesday morning we left Sarajevo for Mostar. The destination boards in the bus station - Banja Luka, Tuzla, Goražde, Srebrenica - were a roll call of 1990s headlines.

For most of its 550 years Sarajevo pottered along as the small, quiet capital of an obscure province of a distant empire. Twice, though, in the 20th century it became the focus of international attention, and the second time brought the city close to annihilation. It is now well into the process of recovery and there is no sign that any side wants to reopen the old wounds. It is a small, cosy city as capitals go, with a beautiful setting. The setting though is a curse as well as a blessing; it brought the Winter Olympics and it also brought the siege. What Sarajevo needs now is a prolonged period of peace and growing prosperity, and there are grounds to be optimistic that it is getting exactly that.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Part 1 Sarajevo (1): The Old Town, The New Town and That Assassination

Part 2 Sarajevo (2): The Siege 

Part 3 Mostar

Croatia (May 2012)

Part 4 Dubrovnik (1): Around the City Walls
Part 5 Korčula
Part 6 Dubrovnik (2): Inside the Walls

Macedonia (May 2015)

Part 7 Flying into FYRoM

Part 8 Skopje

Part 9 The Matka Canyon and Stobi
Part 10 Prilep and Bitola
Part 11 The Mariovo and Lake Prespa
Part 12 Ohrid, the Heart of Slavic Macedonia
Part 13 Ohrid to Albania, The East Coast of the Lake
Part 14 Struga and Ohrid Trout
Part 15 Debar and back to Skopje