Bosnia & Herzegovina

On a 2012 tour to Slovenia, Croatia & Bosnia, once we left Dubrovnik, we drove to Bosnia. Bosnia traces its first human settlement back to the Neolithic Age. At that time, its population was mainly Illyrian and Celtic. Then the Slavic people populated the country from the 6^th century to the 9^th century. Bosnia was finally established in the 12^th century and became the Kingdom of Bosnia in the 14^th century. At this point, it was annexed into the Ottoman Empire and became a Muslim country with strong Turkish influences. Even after becoming part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bosnia remained Muslim.

It’s very difficult to summarize the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995), but the way it was explained on the tour was that Serbia wanted the territory that Bosnia occupied and felt that they were entitled to take it because Bosnia was Muslim. So Serbia waged several bombing campaigns and sieges against Bosnia, seriously devastating the entire country and attempted to carry out an ethnic cleansing.

Mostly mountainous, although the country’s formal name is Bosnia & Herzegovina, it is informally known as just plain Bosnia. The Neretva Gorges were the first part of the country we encountered. The Neretva is a major river running through the country.

Only a small part is on the Adriatic. It bisects Croatia, but gives Bosnia a tiny port. The rest of the country is landlocked and still had loads of landmines throughout as of 2012. There were signs all over the place warning people not to just go walking out into the countryside. There were still lots of properties that were abandoned. Not sure if the people just left for better parts and never returned or if they were killed.

The first larger settlement we encountered was Mostar in the region of Herzegovina. There were a lot of pockmarked and bombed out buildings in town. A public park had been turned into a cemetery when the city was under siege (normally cemeteries are outside of town). The year on most of the graves was 1993. This was so sad, as was the fact that so many of the people in the graves were relatively young.

We visited a Turkish house dating to the 1600s. The entrance was through a very plain, unassuming gate into a lovely courtyard. Some of the upstairs rooms were open to the elements and the courtyard. After leaving the house, we visited the Karagoz Bey Mosque – a relatively small mosque built in 1557.

The Stari Most, literally “old bridge”, also dates to 1557 (when it replaced an earlier wooden bridge). It looks like a smaller, plainer version of the Rialto Bridge in Venice. It was damaged during World War II and destroyed in the Bosnian War, but it had been fully restored by the time we saw it in 2012. People would dive from the middle. During free time, we had lunch in the area next to the bridge. I also explored a nearby bazaar.

On our way to Sarajevo (which means “palace in the park”), we saw a bridge that had been blown up in World War II and left as it was when it collapsed. We also saw several teepees made of hay. These were used by shepherds and/or farmers when they sometimes stayed overnight out in the fields.

We had a walking tour of the old town of Sarajevo, which was founded by the Ottoman Turks in the 1400s. The old town is dominated by a very large bazaar. I ended up getting a single-handed Turkish-style sword with a curved blade, a horse-head pommel on the handle, and a red tassel. It currently hangs above the built-in glassware cabinet in my dining room.

We visited the Emperor’s Mosque from the 1400s. It was the first mosque to be built in Bosnia after it was conquered by the Ottomans.

Although Muslim, Sarajevo became home to a number of Sephardic Jews who were invited to relocate there after being expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century. They had a thriving community in the part of town near where the bazaar is located up until the Nazis overran the city during World War II and sent 85% of the the Jewish population to their deaths in concentration camps.

We also visited the place where Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were killed by a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb in 1914, beginning World War I. There were a couple attempts with bombs by some of the other conspirators while the Archduke was on his way to the City Hall to give a speech. But one bomb didn’t even go off and the other damaged the wrong car. It was on the way back from City Hall that the car containing the Archduke and his wife stopped to turn around (it was going the wrong way) when the assassin stepped onto the running board of the open car and shot them both point blank.

The hotel we were staying in had been destroyed during the Bosnian War and rebuilt. At dinner time, we visited a “han”, which is the city version of a caravanserai (a Middle Eastern roadside inn), built in the 16th century. It could accommodate 300 people and 70 horses at one time back in its day. It had a restaurant where we had our dinner.

When leaving town the next morning, we went by the Olympic Park from the 1984 Winter Olympics. Very sadly, it had been turned into a massive cemetery during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Next time –we return to Croatia to see Plitvice National Park and Croatia’s capitol city, Zagreb.