After driving around and seeing the destruction, when we arrived in Mostar’s city center it felt surreal, like we’d been transported to Disney’s Epcot Center. With just a few remnants of shelling left, the central area was very charming with the highlight being the
Old Bridge, a historically symbolic point where East meets West. The original Turkish bridge was built in 1566, but was sadly completely destroyed in 1993. Under UNESCO’s guidance, the bridge was rebuilt in 2004 utilizing the original techniques and as much salvaged material as possible. Following an old tradition (the first diver was recorder in 1664), several tourists jumped the 69 feet into the river below. Needless to say, it never crossed my mind to jump, but Jimmy was tempted until we saw a fellow hit the water at the wrong angle and need rescuing.
While we’d only intended to spend 1 night in Mostar, it was so interesting and incredibly cheap (other than when the waiter tried overcharging for the house wine) that we stayed for 3 nights. We spent many hours sitting at a bar in the shadow of the bridge working on writing a novel about women fighting terrorism, the idea of which came to Jimmy in a dream. We also wandered around the Islamic section of town shown above to go into a few mosques. I climbed a minaret for the first time, but somehow I was still nervous despite knowing that the small spiral staircase had been renovated since opening in 1552.
