Mostar, BiH - Mon. June 4

James and I left Split, drove down the Dalmatian Coast and then headed East towards Hercegovina.

We made it into Mostar around noon. Mostar, and our whole trip so far, has been a beautiful as all the pictures, only a bit more green. I had thought that the Balkans would be very dry, but instead there are many trees, lots of gardens and it rains quite a lot. It is certainly as rocky as all the pictures though.

In Mostar we saw the Old Bridge. We also started to see the brutal affect of the war in 1993. The city was under a seige for 11 months. One out of every three or four houses is abandoned and falling down. There are bullet holes in every house and building (except the ones that have been fixed since then). It is as if gunmen walked up and down the streets making sure that there is a semi-uniform spray of bullets in all the buildings and houses. I imagine that every window in the town must have been shot out.

It is very confusing trying to figure out who was fighting who. James keeps explaining over and over, but then he ends with, "It was one of the most ethnically complex wars fought." So the Croation Catholic (West) side of town was shooting at the Bosian Muslim (East) side of town and vice versa. There were also Othodox Serbs on the mountain tops holding the seige and shooting down into the town. The three sides were siding with whomever would give them the advantage at that moment against whomever was the greatest threat. You take three different groups of people who have been taught to hate each other, put them in a confined area and it is a war of survival and to the death, unfortunately.

Such a beautiful and rich landscape though. These areas really have great economic opportunities now. There are so many resources and hopefully in a generation or two when tensions are forgotten these countries can be as strong and stable as the Western Euopean countries. It is unknown whether all sides will stick to the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords though. James and I get the feeling that everyone is very cautious of each other and ready to run down and dig up their buried guns from the gardens at a moments notice.