The East comes to us

And it snowed on Sarajevo. It snowed on the beautiful old Ottoman mosques and bazaars, on the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot and the surrounding hills where Serb forces held the city siege back in the 90s. And it snowed on Finn and Nic as they fell madly in love with the city.

Sarajevo

I felt like our trip had found its natural beginning, a place where the East and the West lived side by side, where we drank steaming Turkish coffee and smoked shishas in a cosy Arabic hideaway and ate Viennese cakes in corner cafes (see Nic´s far more entertaining food blog here) . It wasn´t all picturesque however. The snow rather aptly turned to sleet as we toured the still half derelict building that houses a museum on the siege of Sarajevo and walked the streets where hundreds of civilians were gunned down on their way to the shops. It was a sobering, fascinating, beautiful city.

We bussed to Mostar past shelled-out buildings filling with snow, rebuilt mosques and snowy mountains. Mostar was the sight of key battles during the 1990s conflict and the home to the Old Bridge, an Ottoman construction that linked the Muslim and Christian sides of town. It was rather symbolically destroyed in the war but equally symbolically rebuilt in 2004. It is truly a thing of beauty, and we sat and admired it at length, seemingly the only tourists in town.

Mostar

The front line in Mostar and a very typical sight in BiH

As the time cam to leave BiH we took one last breath of its distinctive air (a mix of snow, woodsmoke, grilled meat and stale tobacco) and headed seaward. 

Leaving the cold and poverty behind we took a bus out of the mountains and into Croatia. Ablaze with glorious sunshine, we followed the Mediterranean coast south to Dubrovnik, the sea almost tackily turquoise.  I know this is getting rather predictable now but, as you may have guessed, Dubrovnik is also beautiful. Though it is currently pissing it down outside. Can't have it all I suppose...

Dubrovnik (before it started pissing it down)