Just out of
Mostar, following the river Neretva, the bus passes through beautiful scenery.
It’s Sunday and whole families go out for dinner. The restaurants we pass have
goats and piglets on the spit. The valleys are small and steep hills up to more
than 2000 meter enfold in an Alpine landscape, if it wasn’t for the Mosques. At
13.00 hours you can hear the call for prayer.
The more we move inland the more
the colors become autumn-like. I find this over a distance of less than 180
kilometer from the coast quite remarkable.
Closer to
the Sarajevo, a city surrounded by hills, we pass through ugly high-rise ‘plattenbau’,
concrete ugliness. The siege lasted long and the killing of civilians by
snipers from the hills was a scandal and another sore spot on the blot on the
escutcheon of the national community.
Since 20 couchsurfers have not even
reacted, I decide to check into The Grand Hotel. Good choice, clean, friendly
and just a 300 meter walk to bus and train station. Some luxury is allowed,
because I know it will start and keep raining the whole day tomorrow.
The first
sight is the Latin bridge where Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sofia in
1914 were assassinated, which triggered WW1 (right). The Museum is unfortunately closed
and it’s not easy to see the resemblance today (photo left) of what happened back then.
The old town
with the souk is nice and the smells of fresh spices and restaurants give me a
strong flash back of my Gedaref visits. The
receptionist has given me the address of ‘the best’ traditional food
restaurant. I find it and can’t resist eating one piece of local bread with
sausages, yoghurt and a salad. We ‘ll see what tomorrow brings.
Sarajevo
does not make me happy. It’s not so vibrant as I expected and the atmosphere is
literally a lot greyer than Mostar’s. I have no idea why, but maybe the tourism
brings Mostar more per capita than it brings Sarajevo. Also life seems easier
and more relaxed in the smaller town of Mostar.
I have now
also discovered that connections are far from seamless. For my SYNAPTIC friends
and colleagues, this is a transport jungle! Just the information is already
hard to get and can never be fully trusted. So let’s not even think about
co-operation between modes. My careful planning goes up in flames, because the
planned bus Sarajevo – Herceg Novi only appears to run on Fridays. No way, I
will wait 5 days for it. But following the way back isn’t attractive either,
because the time-tables do not connect and I am fed up with border crossings. I
long for my private transport my bicycle!!
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