Adventures of Mark and Stu: Bosnia Herzegovina

Bosnia Herzegovina

Mostar Bridge

We drove east to Bosnia Herzegovina and decide to stop at Medjugorje, a shrine where it is believed the Virgin Mary appeared. If you are Catholic, you have heard of Medjugorje. No? Maybe you have heard of Fatima or Lourdes? OK. You are beyond “Catholic help”. Take my word, this is seriously valuable pilgrimage real estate for Catholics on the entire planet. What the hell, it was only five minutes off the beaten path. We took selfies in front of the Church and peeked in the windows. Someone was not allowed into the Church wearing his inappropriate shorts. Can you just believe some people? On the way back to the car, like a good pilgrim, I took pictures of the cheap rosaries and Franklin Mint plates with depictions of a smiling Mary. If you have seen the movie Pecker by John Waters, you can hear grandma's Mary say, "Full of grace!"

Stu's note: If the Klis Fortress WC had not shredded my convertible slacks, I might have gone into the shrine further. As it was, the meter was running on parking in downtown Medjugorje and I was wearing shorts.

St. James, Medjugorje

Local dress, Medjugorje

We were back in the car and off to Mostar. Mostar is an exotic and creepy town. Remember that war in the Balkans when Yugoslavia exploded? You might not since the US didn’t really want to get involved. It was only mass genocide and there were no WMD’s nor oil--just a lot of suffering people and war crimes of future convicted war criminals. I need to go back and read about the war and the politics. The setting. Some people were Muslim, some were Christian, some used the Cyrillic alphabet, others used the Roman Alphabet. They pretty much all spoke some flavor of the same language. Man were they different from each other, especially people like your next door neighbor. Croatia seemed to survive the war in pretty good shape. This was not the case in Bosnia Herzegovina. There are still pock marks all over the building and some are haunting unstable shells. We saw a man with one leg. You immediately thought, was he a survivor? The Neretva River running through the city was where neighbors dumped neighbors’ bodies off the cliff into the river. The river had a lot of neighbors floating in it. The bridge across the Mostar river was built by the Ottomans in the 16th Century. The structure was an architectural wonder for its time. In November 1993, Croat forces blew it up. After the war, 15 million dollars was quickly raised to rebuild the bridge. They did a great job rebuilding the bridge. Upon stepping on the slick stone, I nearly fell on my butt. The bridge would never pass accessibility muster.

On either side of the bridge were vendors selling more exotic goods with a Middle Eastern touch. Just about all of it was cheaper and high quality. Unlike Croatia, the Bosnians had no trouble taking Euros so we never needed to grab cash. We ate at a restaurant recommended by 3 bubbly blondes at the rental car agency. The restaurant has a kitschy Middle Eastern flair with everything but a genie. Their garb was a little over the Top. We ordered an exotic plate that had several items that were very familiar but different including stuffed peppers and grape leaves. The best part of the experience was the paparazzi. We had five kitties carefully watching us for nibbles. One of them was friendly enough to give a nice pet and nuzzle whereas the others, including a tiger kitten, were a little skittish. I would scrape my fork against the plate let the meat drop into my left hand. I would then feed my favorite, the hungriest, or one of the other cats. I was careful to eat only with my right hand since I had been petting strays. When you moved your legs under the table you could sense a kitty leaping out of the way. Stu told me not to name them because we didn’t have kitty passports and the whole thing could get messy. By the end of dinner we had named two of them. One was Guido and the other was called Sneezy. You hate to call a kitty less-than-cute, but Guido had a face made for kitty radio. We never call felines “cats”. They are all kitties to us. When my parents neighborhood was heading downhill, people were leaving their guys behind. (Personally, I think you make a promise to your pets that you will be there for them until the end). My parents kept a bag of cat food on the porch and when they would open the door announce how many cats had showed up for dinner. It made my dad happy. I think everyone should adopt a pet of the deceased since they were unable to fulfill on their promise. Wow, I’m off track again. It must be the kitties. (By the way, I love dogs too. They just require more work.)

Mostar

We walked down to the water to get a better view of the bridge. Along the way were your ever-present desperate women holding babies working on their Academy Awards as well as old ladies with no teeth shakings cups for coins. Their were also plenty of children frolicking in the water. Stu whispered to me, “Watch your wallet”. One step ahead of you big guy. It is not completely unlikely that a group of kids can distract you while one grabs your valuables. Another scam is “help the old lady while a second is watching to see which pocket the money is located”. My default when travelling is, I may look like an American (I love Red, Why, and Blue!) but the language English? Never heard of it. Upon moving back to the States, a panhandler in DC said, “man, yous cold” as we exited an escalator on the mall. My internal voice said, “Thank you, That’s right, I still got it”.

The market had interesting fabric (always an easy way to get Stu’s cultural attention) and artwork as well as Thinks like hanging lanterns and Turkish Coffee sets. I found shop/tent selling paintings of the bridge on planks of wood. The smaller ones (that weren’t too small!) were selling for 5 Euros (6$ USD). As we paid for one, all I could think about was the light, but sizable, mask from Venice. Stu had bought an embroidered tablecloth for 35 Euros. It was bulkier, bigger, and heavier. Yeah! Only how many more places to schlep these items to? We walked to the end of the market admiring the mosques and relaxes restaurants. My favorite locale had a musician playing and singing Sultans of Swing. OMG. Now that is surreal in a Muslim majority country.

Dinner over, we returned to the rental car. Let me step back to arriving in Bosnia. We went down a tight street to discover the end was blocked off for repairs. We turned right and went up the hill--to a dead end. The space was so tight I had to carefully help Stu turn the stick-shift car around. Stu can stress when driving stick. He turned the car around like a champ. Remember, the car was on a hill and barely had enough physical room to get through the parked cars to even turn back down the street. Leaving the street, a cab came at us and we made him back up to let us out. Good lord. We could have wrecked the car several times. Good think we took out insurance on the car costing more than the car’s rental price.

Riding back to Croatia, I blasted our favorite campy Eurovision Song from 2008 or so. It is a crazy lost-in-the-translation performance of ladies knitting and people doing laundry and some dancing and running around on stage. The lead woman looks like Magenta from Rocky Horror with a strange dress covered with massive strawberries and bow on the back. It is a love song. Seriously, it is a love song. Ask us to show it to you---we’d love to. You can sing any song in any language if you can create nonsense syllables to the beat in tune. The woman goes running crazily around the stage eventually throwing a bouquet to the crowd. In the car we pounded our feet on the floorboards like she runs around the stage as we drove up incredibly tight hairpin turns during a pleasant evening. We were having a ridiculously silly time on a memorable day. We can still show you the video, make up some words in time and pound our feet to the floor for you. Just ask. No really, just ask.