Mostar and Jajce, Bosnia

We have traveled to many beautiful places over the year and have encountered a wide swath of their history, but our drive through Bosnia, however familiar the architecture and spacing of villages and towns, brought something new. First, almost every little town we passed in Bosnia had at least one minaret, and not like the old memorial I climbed in Eger, leftovers from an Ottoman empire gone by, but living, singing organs of vital communities. Second, demolished and bullet-ridden buildings were everywhere along our drive: curve around the bend of a river, and there would stand a lone farmhouse with three walls left, pocked like a frieze. Enter a city and every tenth house seemed caved under rotting timbers. Third, the faces. Maybe the recent past made me wary or maybe the blank spot on Google Maps bumped up my nerves, but I felt like the faces seemed hard.

We were nervous about Croatia too, because the Hague had just convicted one of its national heroes as a war criminal for atrocities against Serbians in 1995, and we would be passing the General's birthplace on the coast, one of many places the Croats were protesting and angry. But Bosnia and Herzogovina was the hot center of the conflict, and we didn't know what vestigial haunting of people or institutions remained.

We first visited Mostar, not too far from the Dalmatian Coast, to view its famous bridge. I had seen a picture from a traveling friend, and from the high, white arch to the bridge to the deep green of the river below and the folds of earth terraced beneath, I longed to go there. Our visit was highly rewarded. The river was stunning; we ate the best meal of our holiday vacation under a beautiful arbor and paid the least to do it; and we wandered the tourist shops with great interest in the Turkish copper, ceramic and textile crafts. But an 18 month siege during the Bosnian war was in evidence, too, and here, as elsewhere, I didn't know what to think or how to feel about the untidy mess that remained. 

We were approached by girl beggars clutching cones of ice cream. Sophie, Amelia and Maisie were also given coral bracelets and a beautifully mirrored pen after small purchases in the shops. 

That night, after following the dangerously beautiful road winding through the river canyons and hills towards Banja Luka, we stopped in Jajce, once the capital of Bosnia, and more recently the site where Yugoslavia was re-signed into existence in 1943. I was drawn there by pictures of a waterfall and ruins of a castle, but knew little else. As it turned out, our quiet visit to the fortress was more peaceful than our view of the waterfall, which involved bending over a fence or crossing the yellow tape with the word MINE repeated down its length. We stayed in its tourist center, where many chairs at many restaurants were laid out and unoccupied. The room we occupied was themed "The Tito Suite," Stephanie and I falling asleep to three of the dictator's faces staring down at us. And, as in some of our experiences in Hungary, the people in Jajce seemed attentive but quiet, almost to whisper in public interchange.

At dawn, the first call to prayer sounded on a loudspeaker in the distance, and then, a few moments later, on the minaret outside our window, melodies round, plaintive and rich.

MOSTAR

M16, Mostar to Banja Luka

JAJCE

Dubrovnik, Croatia

I don't know how long now I have wanted to go to Dubrovnik. Though it's far down the coast and no single day's journey from Barcs, this is a place I was itching to see. Pictures of the clustered fortress jutting out into the blue of the Adriatic are strange and magical and like nothing I had ever seen before. So I was thrilled to plan a stay. Although the city's juxtaposition to rock and water and history are easily as dramatic as observed in pictures, within the old town I had none of the elations I experienced in Split or Kotor; instead, this happened two kilometers south, in the house where we were staying, and in the cove where the neighborhood lazed.

We stayed in a villa with a family renting out other parts of the house to her extended family. With no guests, they numbered 15. The owner, Maja, was generous and warm, and throughout the stay talking with her was happy and easy. From the beginning she welcomed us with glasses of wild orange lemonades and settled us onto the grand terrace, the view of the city a near brilliant red over the edenic blue waters.

The girls were eager to get to the beach. Maja told us that the locals won't go swimming yet, but she often sees foreigners trying it even this early in the season. Once we saw the turquoise shores and candied depths, we were those foreigners, without a doubt.

The beach was broad and private. There were a dozen people here, most of them women in their twenties, and half of these topless. I'd like to be able to say that they didn't care and I didn't care, but I say instead that I was quite alert.

Sophie and Amelia waded and splashed until their hair weighed on their shoulders. Even Maisie, with none of the fear she once brought to the shore, laughed in the gentle waves. I paddled and swam to where the sea turned a royal blue, and then returned to stand over the white sand and dried.

On Easter, I spritzed water on Stephanie, trying to bring a little Hungary to our holiday (though I should have used a bucket, according to the custom). Later we walked the crowded city walls under the hot sun until the children were ready to tear them down altogether. The Easter Bunny managed to find our kids over the night and perhaps they were crashing from a chocolate breakfast. Maya gave us some beautiful dyed eggs maybe we should have eaten instead, but they were too pretty to crack. In any event, once the kids finally convinced us to exit the high walls of the city and get some lunch, we were given more dyed eggs, pictured, to commemorate the day.

  

 

In our final evening, we stayed on the terrace and watched the sun drowse under the clouds over the city. Maja brought us more wild orange lemonade and we talked about raising families while her youngest daughter ran with ours. Later Stephanie and I would play cards with the kids, using a Hungarian deck then Austrian, before our kids would put on a nighttime play of Alice and Gretel, within which I was the father who'd say to my wife, "We don't have enough food and I'm not about to get a job, so let's take the girls into the woods and leave them."