Today I’m less of a writing mood than I was yesterday, so instead I’m sharing lots of photos I took when I visited Bosnia back in 2018. For our summer holiday that year we did a circular road trip around Southern Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia.
Almost everyone who writes about Bosnia and Herzegovina writes about the 1990s war, and the tensions between the Serb and Muslim populations. Today I’m going to focus on happier times, but if you want to learn a bit more about these tensions, check out this documentary - Bosnia and Herzegovina: and ethnically divided country.
We stayed in the infamous city of Mostar. If you’ve not heard of it you’ve almost certainly seen the beautiful Stari Most bridge being blown up during the war in 1993. We stayed in the pristinely maintained Ottoman-era Muslibegović House right in the centre of Mostar. It’s both a wonderful hotel and also serves as a museum.
It was over breakfast here that we met our friends Petter and Aron, who later that day became our partners in crime exploring Mostar’s Sniper Tower. Despite being a tourist hotspot, Mostar is full of derelict buildings and reminders of the war. The Sniper tower is a former bank seized as a sniper vantage point during the Bosnian War is now a secret graffiti art gallery. Getting in involved quite a bit of clambering over fences and avoiding anti-climb paint - but it was worth it.
One final point about Bosnia and Herzegovina - the food is incredible. It’s a perfect mix of Balkan, Turkish and Mediterranean cuisines. Think delicious grilled meats, flatbreads, and mouthwatering salads. For this reason alone, I want to return one day!
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