Leaving Dubrovnik, on the way to Mostar, in less than an hour we cross the tiny access to the sea for Bosnia/Herzegovina (B/H) with the two border crossings. The Croatians figured out how to avoid this by contracting a Chinese firm to build a one-and-a-half-mile bridge from a small Croatian peninsula to the other side of the gap. Finished in 2022, the €526 million project was mostly funded by the EU to improve connectivity and reduce border crossing issues.

Mostar is the historical center of Herzegovina and the fifth-largest city in the country. It was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva River during the Ottoman era beginning in mid-1400’s. Mostar was on the trade route between the Adriatic and the mineral-rich regions of central Bosnia even in Roman times (from 4^th century).

The Old Bridge we see today, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005, was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century and is considered an exemplary piece of Islamic architecture. In 1878 Austria-Hungary took control of the region until they lost it after WWI.

After World War II Mostar did well financially after the communist takeover and unification as Yugoslavia. However, in 1992 B/H declared independence from Yugoslavia. The wars for independence raged in all the affected countries; Slovenia, Croatia, B/H, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Numerous buildings in Mostar, and most of the city’s bridges, were destroyed during the fighting. The Bosnian war ended with the Dayton Agreement in 1995. Around 2,000 people died in Mostar during the war. The Old Bridge was destroyed and work to rebuild it to the original design began in 1999, ending in 2004.

Our bus parked in a lot near the Catholic church and Franciscan monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul. The bell tower is a landmark hard to miss.

 

 

After lunch, Craig and I had some free time to explore some back streets of the city.

Jablanica, not far from Mostar, is most famous for a pivotal WWII event: Battle of the Neretva River (also known as the Battle for the Wounded). In 1943 Yugoslav Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito blew up their own rail bridge over the river while a train was crossing, creating a major obstacle and diversion for the Axis forces. As the partisans were now trapped on the wrong side, they built a temporary foot bridge in 19 hours. Despite the attacking Axis forces, Tito and his men managed to escape with nearly 4,000 wounded. 

Next on the tour was Sarajevo, but that story is so major in the history of the Yugoslavian disintegration, I’m saving it for the next chapter. Leaving Sarajevo we stopped at a Lipizzaner stud farm.

The stud farm we visited was established in 1843. By 1906 a new owner of the estate took possession of twenty thoroughbred Lipizzaner’s mares, and three stallions.

 

At the beginning of the dissolution war, the stud farm was systematically destroyed, stables were burned and some horses were killed. The rest of the horses were seized and taken through the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia in November 1991. After years of negotiations, in October 2007, the surviving horses, 25 mares and 21 stallions, were returned.

Lipizzaner’s beautiful horses pulled the carriages of the queens of Vienna. The first breeding stock of Lipizzaner’s were imported to America at the end of the war in 1946. They are the national animal of Slovenia.

If you are interested in more Lipizzaner history read about a WWII rescue of these famous horses as told in “The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis” by Elizabeth Letts.

Next stop is the village of Karanac, a small, mostly agrarian village near the Hungarian and Serbian borders. Home stays are arranged by OAT as part of most of their tours. The tours help sustain families in the less populated areas. From the bus here is a little of what we saw.

We pass through a small portion of the “breadbasket of Central Europe”, the Great Pannonian plain…a huge area covering parts of Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, and Croatia. Long ago covered by an inland sea, the soil is rich and the area flat. Corn is used for animal feed, and for human consumption as corn bread and polenta.

Other big crops are wheat, barley, sunflowers, sugar beets, potatoes, soybeans, tobacco and livestock (dairy cows, pigs and chickens). Vineyards produce wine.

The Sava River is the border between Bosnia and the northern part of Croatia. Edges of the river are protected corridors for animals and flooding.

From the street, these farms look like a normal residential neighborhood. But the properties are narrow and very long, allowing many crops (like fruit orchards, and vegetable gardens, etc.) to be grown. Part of the reason for this arrangement is that property taxes are assessed by street frontage footage. Long and narrow makes a lot of sense.

We had dinner with a family in town. Our hosts, Anna and Dragon, told us the once prosperous town of 1500 had 3 busy churches. Now the population is 800. Young people are leaving because the EU offers better paying jobs and more opportunity for advancement. Budapest and Vienna are close.

Out and about the next morning, we toured the town. There still seem to be two functioning churches, probably Protestant and Catholic. No big mosques visible in this part of Croatia.

Next chapter I’ll delve into the Sarajevo saga. In the meantime, I leave you with this roadside warning sign that is common in the mountainous and forested areas. One that we would not see in the US.