Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Remember the Faithful Fabio waiting in the public parking garage? We still needed to reunite the bags with the car.

This time the concept of bringing the car to the bags was firmly rooted in my mind. What had changed is that this morning it is pissing down rain. We wheeled the bags to where the buses disgorge their masses of tourists (Sally's Western Civilization instructor recently dubbed them "Massterdons"). Sally would await me in a wide bus zone area under some shelter while I ascended Mt Dubrovnik to the Parking Garage thence to drive down and reunite us, bags and car.

The climb was easier without bags so after a bit of a slog I got to the parking garage. The hotel had said the garage took credit cards. I found a payment machine which did not accept a credit card and nothing larger than a 50 Kuna note. The smallest note I had was100 Kuna. Back to the exit area to find a human who took my ticket and informed me that 1) they didn't take credit cards and 2) I owed 645 Kuna which at 5 Kuna to the dollar is hefty parking charge for just over 48 hours. I did have enough cash on me to ransom Fabio (but left not understanding why it cost so much). Zip down the hill, spot Sally and bags, load up and off we go.

Much later I figured out what had happened with the parking. It still feels like a ripoff of tourists to me. Here is the deal. Daily parking rate is 160 Kunas so my bill should have been 320 Kunas. However, if you dig around on the web page in a PDF file you find that to get the daily rate, you must make prior arrangement with the garage operator -- presumably the man in the booth. Maybe I missed it, but I saw nothing about this and it is a pretty unusual arrangement. Don't get caught by this.

The drive took longer than expected. Hard rain and slow traffic took their toll. The border crossing into Bosnia took about 20 minutes -- there was longish backup. After the border, the drive was slow and tedious -- trucks and a fair bit of traffic that prevent much passing.

We had trouble finding our place in Mostar so, once again, we got close, parked the car and followed the GPS to an alley off a one-way street. We would have been very lucky to have gotten there directly with the car.

After checking in at the Villa Fortuna B&B (which turns out to be Galactic Headquarters of Fortuna Travel Agency), we dumped the bags (only one floor up this time) and hit the streets in search of cash (Konvertible Marks aka KM), late lunch and to get the feel of the place.

We had already seen large packs of tourists (heaven help us if they go feral) so we sucked it up and sought out the old bridge where they were likely to congregate. Lots of shops selling things along the way to the old bridge. The bridge is an impressive piece of construction. The original was the longest such span in the world when it was built. Sadly the 1991 war in the area destroyed the bridge with mortar fire -- locals say the old bridge bled as it fell. The new "Old Bridge" was rebuilt exactly as the old one using stone quarried from the very same place so it's as good as it can be given the circumstances. Downstream is another small one of similar design that was reconstructed as a warm-up exercise for the main one.

We sought out a restaurant that offered authentic Bosnian fare and found the restaurant "Balkan". Decidedly un-fancy. Boxing on the television but I got real Ćevapčići -- fairly similar to the dish I had in Croatia but sans french fries and a better flavor to the meat. A big beer made it all go down well. A swing by the Stari Most (Old Bridge) provided some night shooting.

The "call to prayer" woke us early and reminded us that we were in a Muslim country. Actually, it seems only a Muslim country in a casual way -- little head scarf wearing, for example. There also seems to be a contest between building the tallest minaret and building the tallest Christian church tower. Not sure who is winning this one.

We took a stroll around after breakfast for a little day shooting before the buses arrived. We couldn't take long though as we needed to get on the road for the looong haul to Zagreb.