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