Here is a brief video of Mostar.

I’m working on my videos from Mostar so I’m jumping a little bit back.  The video below contains some examples of the different sounds we heard during the evening in Mostar from our balcony.  The first one is the call to prayer and shortly after you hear church bells.

The walls of Ston are considered to be the “European Wall of China”.  They are 4.3 miles long.  I don’t know how we missed the wall when we drove to Orebić, but you couldn’t miss it on the way back.  We parked, and since there was a break in the weather, we decided to check out what the wall was about.  They were built to help protect the salt pans that helped contribute to Dubrovnik’s wealth.  It originally was built with 40 towers, but today only 20 still remain.  We hiked up a portion of the wall.  It was pretty steep, but neat to walk around.  We cut our walk short as there were some dark clouds coming.  By the time we got back to the car, it was pouring rain.  It was worth the stop, but only because it wasn’t raining.

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Korčula is directly across from Orebić.  It is rumored that Marco Polo was born in Korčula in 1254.  We took a quick water taxi across the sea and walked around the town.  To be honest, the weather started getting worse and worse so we walked pretty quickly around the town.  Then it started to rain, and it was windy.  The umbrella didn’t really do much good since the rain was coming down sideways.  We hurried back to the water taxi to see that it was no longer running.

The next ferry came in almost two hours.  We felt trapped with no good place to hide from the bad weather.  We found a pizza restaurant and got one of the last tables under the umbrella area.  We ordered some drinking chocolate and a pizza to share since we were going to have a big dinner back in Orebić.  Once we finished that, we still had an hour and half.  I walked to the information office and asked if there was a quicker way to get back.  They said the car ferry, but we would need to take a taxi to get there.  It was worth the money to me to get a taxi to the car ferry just to get back earlier and stay a little more dry.

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We drove from Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina to Orebić, Croatia.  Orebić is a coastal town on the peninsula of the Dalmatian coast.  The road is windy and mainly up and down but there were a lot of vineyards to look at a long the way.  I even saw one wolf cross my path.

We had a nice place to stay in Orebić.  We had a beautiful view of the sea from our room.  The town was very sleepy though, and the weather wasn’t the greatest.  There was one German couple that was staying there for a couple of weeks.

We decided to have dinner at the hotel because it was pouring rain.  The guy who carried our luggage to our room also worked in the kitchen.  He was a very friendly guy and said we had to try the fish because it comes right out of the sea.  He convinced me that he could cook a fish that I like.  I agreed to order fish, I believe it was sea bass.  Little did I know that I ordered a whole fish including the head and tail.  It was just us and the German couple eating dinner.  We had an appetizer on the house which included a sardine.  For the main course, my fish was supposed to be small but it was big with a huge amount of vegetables and a mussel.  I tried the mussel and then tried to figure out what to do with the fish.  The friendly guy who worked at the hotel came over and asked how it was and I said it was good but I have no idea how to stop eating bones.  He then returned from the kitchen with another knife and plate.  He then removed the bones from my fish and told me to continue eating and that I should eat all the skin.

I tried my best to eat as much as possible but it really looked like I ate nothing.  I couldn’t eat that much and he was shocked that so much was left on the plate.  As soon as we thought we were done with our already long dinner he proceeds to bring out the house schnapps.  The German couple and we give a toast and then I take one gulp of this burning alcohol.  Burning all the way down I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to get the next gulp down.  I see that the man has returned to the outside portion of the restaurant (in the thunder and lighting) and I begin to wonder when we will ever get out of this place.  Around 2 hours after dinner started we finally asked another waiter if we could charge the dinner to our room leave.  It may have been one of the longest dinners ever.

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The lodging in Mostar was absolutely one of the best places I have stayed at.  Not because the room was new and perfect, but because the couple running the Pension were just the greatest hosts.  They have 4 rooms in their house (that is only 50 meters from the Old Bridge) that they rent out.  We picked one with a balcony that had a great view with out a lot of people going by very often.  The pension was down a very steep hill that I was not going to attempt to drive down.  The husband, Nedved, drives everyone’s car down to his driveway and parks it for you.  Then he takes your lugggage to your room all while the wife, Suzanna, gives you a very warm welcome.  She brought a nice lemon juice and a sweet treat to our balcony so we could take a nice break.  She said that we are on vacation, and she will do everything she can to make sure we feel like we are on vacation.  Anytime we walked out the door she would always make sure to say have a nice visit or if it looked like rain she would offer an umbrella.  Although the place had a kitchen that you could prepare food we opted for a little place she recommended for breakfast.  On our second morning she came over and said that because we stayed two nights she wanted to buy our breakfast.  They made it hard to want to leave.  They both came out to wish us well on our way.  Then Ned drove us back up the steep hill and we left Mostar with a happy memory.

Here is a picture of the balcony that I was able to write some of these blog posts from.

People actually dive off the bridge in Mostar.  I listened in on an English tour, and they were explaining the bridge.  As if it wasn’t dangerous enough to jump off a bridge, you only have about 3 meters to land in the water and survive due to the shallow water and rocks.  Not to mention the very cold water.  You have to be trained to jump off the bridge and they actually have tv shows every year in Mostar to determine who is the best diver.  The people that dive off the bridge actually make it their job.  Tourists come up to them and pay them 50 Euros and they will jump.  Then they have a person walk around and collect tips.  Or you could pay 75 Euros and they will train you to jump.

Mostar has some beautiful architecture and scenery.  The Neretva river runs through the town and you have beautiful mountains that surround the city.  Mostar sits down in the valley.  The Old Bridge that was rebuilt is very slippery and difficult to walk up and down.

We had two nights in Mostar so we had some time to relax and take in the city at a slower pace.  The city is very sleepy in the morning and evenings.  I think they are busiest during the middle of the day when people make day trips from Dubrovnik or Split to visit the city.

I’m very used to church bells in Europe but this is the first city I have ever been in that had a Muslim call to prayer.  At certain times of day, the call to prayer would come over the loud speaker.

It seemed like all the restaurants served the same food.  I found the sausages that I had in Plitvice so I treated myself to more of those.  They were served with this huge piece of bread.  I’m pretty sure after two nights of sausage, I don’t need anymore for awhile.

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It has been a long time since I have crossed a border and had to stop and show my passport in Europe.  We left Croatia and drove to Mostar in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  I didn’t know much about Bosnia & Herzegovina before my arrival, but driving through the countryside you can see it was hit pretty hard in the war.  Many villages were demolished by rockets.  The war ended almost twenty years ago but most people have not returned.  Mostar was one of the most damaged cities in the war.

Mostar is most famous for it’s old bridge.  It was originally built in the 16th century.  One side of the bridge was the Muslim side and the other side was the Croat side.  Even after the war, it used to be that nobody would cross the bridge.  Buses only drove on one side of the river.  The Muslim side was almost completely destroyed in the war.  The bridge was destroyed in 1993 and not rebuilt until 2004.  Today, there are stones that lay close to each side that say Don’t Forget 93.

I took some photos to show the war scars that are still evident.  They are still rebuilding the city but a lot of houses still have artillery damage to the exterior.  People still live in the some of the houses with damage.  Mostar really opened my eyes to view a city in a different way.  I have been to cities that have experienced war, but those wars were many years ago.  This was the first time that I could walk down a street and see the evidence of the sad reality of what I heard about in elementary and middle school.

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Here is our little white Chevy that is getting us around Croatia.  My first manual and it is still running 🙂