The Side Trip

I’ll be the first to admit that we can be somewhat overzealous travelers, but the journey we attempted from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Mostar, Bosnia was nothing less than harrowing, even for us.

We’d enjoyed a magical few days in Venice and had taken a ferry from Venice to Northern Croatia.

Over several days, we made our way south along the Croatian coast to the city of Dubrovnik, where we could have just stayed.

Reasonable people would have stayed.

But no, we had it in our heads that we would take a side trip to Mostar, in Bosnia. Mostar is actually in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but we knew so little about what we were doing that it hardly mattered.

The only reason we were even interested in seeing Mostar was because we happened upon an episode of Rick Steves’ travel program on PBS, and Rick visited Mostar and enjoyed a lovely moonlit dinner with the famous Mostar bridge lit up behind him.

He looked sublimely contented.

Just like that, we knew that if we ever found ourselves in Croatia, we were going to Mostar to see that bridge! Hell’s unholy hounds could not stop us.

And, ironically, not so much later, we did find ourselves in Croatia.

The plan was to catch the 4:00 bus from Dubrovnik to Mostar. It was supposed to be a 3-hour bus ride, but I would soon be cursing the person who came up with that ridiculous calculation.

We need not have bothered adhering to our careful timetable. The 4:00 bus to Mostar turned out to be the 5:15 bus to Mostar.

We quietly seethed over the tardiness of the bus, not knowing that this gross inattention to the transit schedule would be the very least of our problems.

It turns out that to reach Mostar, we would have to cross no fewer than three strictly monitored national borders.

We would cross from Croatia to Bosnia (that one, at least, was expected). We would travel along a winding road for a while, but then we would encounter a stray sliver of Croatia (just a sliver!), so we would have to leave Bosnia and re-enter Croatia. But then after another hour or more of driving, we would leave that sliver of Croatia and re-enter Bosnia!

And once we were back in Bosnia, it was still a considerable distance to Mostar.

What we also could not have guessed (even under duress) was that at each border crossing, the situation would become more hair-raising and unmanageable.

At the first border crossing, leaving Croatia and entering Bosnia for the first time, we were allowed to get off the bus, get in line, and show our passports to the inspector. Then we all gamely filed back onto the waiting bus.

Okay, but that was the only straightforward crossing we had. We were still in a blissful fog of touristy ignorance.

At the next border crossing, leaving Bosnia and crossing into that sliver of Croatia, a dour-looking inspector boarded the bus, snatched up all of our passports without even a grunt, and left the bus!

He sauntered right off the bus!

In abject horror, we watched him wander away into the inky darkness and disappear into the mist (it seemed like there should have been mist, but I may have imagined it).

Not the bus driver, nor his sketchy friend (the guy sitting next to the driver), nor the inspector, felt any urge at all to offer us even a crumb of badly needed information.

In all of our travels, we had never had to completely relinquish our passports, and the sensation was akin to sinking for all eternity in a sludgy pit of quicksand.

That’s the only way I can describe it with any degree of accuracy.

As it turned out, the inspector disappeared into a building, scanned the passports (looking for villains posing as tourists, I suppose), and then re-boarded the bus and returned our passports.

But we didn’t know that at the time!

At the next crossing, our heart rates barely back to normal, we left Croatia again and re-entered Bosnia. The inspector (who looked like yet another unsavory Bond villain) took our passports and again left the bus.

We were almost used to the sweats and terror that followed, but were not prepared to feel the bus start to roll forward!

I, for one, stopped breathing. Were we leaving without our passports?? If the driver took off, were we within our rights to tackle him even as he maneuvered that unwieldy vehicle?

Without passports, we would clearly end up in a dank Bosnian prison with no way of identifying ourselves as, yes, naïve and foolish tourists, but innocent and free citizens of North America!

Most likely, I would be held in the female block of that crumbling and moldy prison, and my husband would be held in the male block. My new best friend would be Olga, and his would probably be Dirk or Lefty.

We might catch a glimpse of each other over the granite wall during our one daily hour of mandatory dodgeball in “the yard.”

As it turned out, the bus driver was merely re-positioning the bus, and the scar-faced inspector eventually re-materialized and redistributed our passports.

I felt the same sense of relief as when I pushed my first child into the world.

But our ordeal was not over yet.

Apparently, we had again clumsily but successfully crossed into Bosnia. Unfortunately, there were more complications to come.

We learned that we would have to pay cash for our room (!), and in local Bosnian currency, which was a bit of a problem since we had literally just entered the country (twice!).

It was very dark when we arrived in Mostar, my nerves on a razor’s edge, and all I could see out the bus window were narrow streets and an awful lot of graffiti. Plus we hadn’t eaten in a decade.

By some miracle, we found a functioning ATM at the bus station when we disembarked, so we were able to take out just enough local currency to pay for our room.

We were also ecstatic to see a taxi parked at the curb, and thankfully, the driver walked over to us.

He mentioned that we could walk the 45 minutes to the hotel or he would drive us.

I imagined myself struggling along the bumpy streets in the dark, trying to use the navigation system on my phone (not finding my reading glasses and squinting at a blurry image), half-starved, weeping openly, and yanking on my suitcase as it teetered on one wheel.

I asked that he drive us. 

Once at the historic Hotel Kriva Cuprija, the staff members were incredibly cheerful and very welcoming considering it was 10:00 at night. The hotel was nestled in the heart of the old town among ancient bridges, a winding creek, and cobblestone pathways.

It was very late, and we were starving and not quite in the mood to respond to their perky joviality. Our moods worsened when it dawned on us that we had stupidly booked ourselves on the 10:00 bus in the morning, headed back to Dubrovnik.

Remember, it was supposed to be a 3-hour bus trip, not a 6-hour bus trip to Mostar.

Still, we had to laugh at a couple of things. There was considerable confusion over our room number. Our room number was actually 601, but the nice young lady who walked us to the room kept trying the door at 109. It wouldn’t open.

It took us a while to realize that she was holding the key ring upside down.

We also noticed a sign in the corridor directing people to their rooms that read, “102 to 109.” We gamely wandered in that direction, even though our room number was 601, and we actually found our room.

Before collapsing, we had just enough energy to walk around the old town (in the dark), saw the famous bridge, which was a three-minute walk from the hotel, and ate a quick meal, which was long overdue. Loud music and raucous laughter emanated from several bars.

The music was really excruciatingly loud, and I noticed (my heart sinking) that a dog had been tied up outside one of those bars. I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable that poor dog was since my ears were ringing and I was much farther away than he was.

A man sat outside one of the bars singing Eric Clapton songs (in Bosnia!) and playing the guitar to a rapt audience of young people, all sitting on the bumpy cobblestones.

If we’d been in a different frame of mind, it would have been delightful, but it was time to call it a day.

At 5:00 the next morning, we woke to the mournful Muslim call to prayer emanating from the minarets of the nearest mosque. We both immediately thought of our time in Istanbul, and felt nostalgic for the days when we woke to that sound every morning.

After a quick breakfast on a patio overlooking the creek, we walked back to Rick Steves’ bridge, also known as the Stari Most bridge. It was the most famous spot in the old town, originally built by the Ottomans in the 1400s and spanning the Neretva River.

It was hard to believe that WWII tanks crossed that bridge during one of the many battles that ravaged Mostar through the ages. Then during the most recent conflict, the bridge was destroyed in 1993. It was then rebuilt in 2004.

Once we crossed the bridge, we found the “Copper Road,” which is an open-air market area that has been in the same spot for centuries. Like millions of people before us, we combed the stalls and shops, looking for exotic treasures.

I actually bought conditioner for my hair, and weeks later, would continue to use my “conditioner from Bosnia.”

We learned that the history of the area was mostly grim, and that people were struggling even in present day. Unemployment in Mostar was at 43%, and the annual income for the average person was about $7500. Bosniaks lived on the east side of the city, and Croats lived on the west side, and the two did not mix.

But incredibly, it was time to start making our way back to the bus station. Truly, we could not have planned this excursion any worse. We also had to spend the last of our Bosnian money because it would do us no good back in Croatia.

To top it all off, at the bus station, some (very) young and unkempt ruffians in a juvenile gang were hanging around looking for people to swindle (just like 15^th century England!). I felt terribly sad about that. I noticed that there was a ringleader, and that the children employees all looked jaded, dirty, and desperate.

But things were looking up. By some miracle, on the bus ride back to Dubrovnik, we only had one complicated border crossing.

I guess all the criminals would be on the 4:00 bus to Mostar.

The other two crossings consisted of a cursory glance at our passports as we sat in our seats.

When I could finally relax, I started to enjoy the scenery, which was spectacular the whole way back to Dubrovnik. We were in a breathtakingly beautiful part of the world, and one that relatively few people see. Through the window, lush green mountains and bubbling, emerald rivers gave way to a stunning coastline.

And in what seemed like record time, we were back in Dubrovnik, the Pearl of the Adriatic, and no worse for wear.

I eyed the people waiting for the 4:00 bus to Mostar and wondered if they knew what lay ahead.

But back in the ancient city, within the medieval walls, it was another clear and sunny afternoon as we rolled our suitcases down the Stradun (medieval Main Street) and turned right just before the imposing Church of St. Blaise.

We found our room on the Jesuit Steps, in a building that had stood in the same spot since the 15^th century.

Later, when we walked Dubrovnik’s medieval walls, we could see, strewn before us, the clay roof tiles in various shades of red. Darker red meant they were older and existed before the conflict, and lighter red meant the roof had been rebuilt because it was bombed in the 1990s (not so long ago).

But Dubrovnik was so vastly different from Mostar—elegant, clean, optimistic, less divided, less bombarded.

That little side trip had been too much, really far too much, and just to cross Rick Steves’ bridge and eat a tense and hasty meal nearby.

Maybe in the future we would find ourselves in a beautiful place and just stay put.

At the very least, we would research how many borders were involved!

Maybe.