Along the Neretva

I also explored the city of Mostar and Centry Meets The Music Family - Release The Chains came into my inner ear.

After the Bosnian war it was the most devastated town in Europe. The front line between Croatian and Bosnian forces divided the town into two parts along the Bulevar Road and this is unfortunately still the case. The part of the city east of the Bulevar is the old town where most of the houses have been rebuilt. The western part of the town is the newer part with some the usual big Yugoslavian concrete houses. Some of them are still ruins and are currently replaced by a big shopping malls and and a business complex in the typical US-american style. For a short overview about Mostar's architecture, I can recommend this article.

A ruin waiting to be reconstructed one day.

The former front line.

 

View from a bridge at the northern end of the city towards the old town.

There is a second river in Mostar, the Radobolja.

 


 





It is incredible to walk through the beautiful old town and to see later in images that almost everything was destroyed only a few years ago. They don't have the money to rebuild everything right now but they are in my opinion clever: They leave all ruined old houses as they are and reconstruct them whenever they have enough money. That is the same way as they did it in Freiburg after world war 2 so that it took 40 years until the last building could be reconstructed. Therefore Freiburg looks really beautiful while many larger cities in western Germany do not. I hope that the same will happen for Mostar. On some reconstructed houses there are plaques telling that a certain country sponsored its complete reconstruction.

The reconstruction of this building was sponsored by Italy.

The Gymnasium from 1902. This is not an elite school for the best pupils of the country. Some days later I met a guy in a train who learned there and is now studying in Miami. He explained me a lot how the country works and why he don't want to come back although he loves his country so much.

The old brige. It is protected by two small fortresses on its ends. They were rebuild together with the bridge.

View from the old bridge to the north.

The famous old bridge was reopened some years ago and along the river there are many nice restaurants where one has a nice view at it and the Neretva. There are always some local young men collecting money from the tourists and when the have got enough they jump from the bridge about 24 meters! into the Neretva. In principle everybody can jump and I even know someone who did this (Thompson, RESPECT!!!) but the river is dangerous. It has many underwater vortices and the flow speed is very different. Therefore swimming is not recommended and for example Thompson had troubles to find a way out of it after he jumped.

I wished so much that I had more time to spend in Mostar but I also wanted to go to Sarajevo. I always try to travel by train because this is more relaxing and one always meets local people and will have interesting conversations. Except of the western countries trains are also perfect to enjoy the landscape as they are running slowly and one can open every window. And the train ride from Mostar to Sarajevo is one of the most impressive ones one can do in Europe. Behind Mostar the Neretva valley gets very narrow and deep (its walls are up to 1000 meters high). After crossing the Jablanica lake the train starts to climb the mountain in serpentines so that one can enjoy the scenery from different positions. The ride takes two and a half hours which I also spent in a very mind-opening discussion with a guy from Hong Kong (not with locals as I expected). Therefore I made only a few photos although we were hanging the whole time at the windows being amazed. So to get am impression I recommend to use Google map's Panoramio function.

The large railway station is only opened for one hour per day - only the 30 minutes before one of the two daily trains arrive.

I want to go back there right now!

Close to the Jablanica lake.