CROATIA TRIP - DAY 20 - MOSTAR

Today we take a tour to Mostar, a city in Bosnia (the Hercegovina part) famous for its Stari Most (old bridge), and for the war that destroyed it. The bridge was built by the Turkish occupiers of Mostar in the 1500s, and has since then has been a magnet for tourists and photographers.

More recently its existence, destruction, and restoration symbolizes to the world that, literally and symbolically, bridges can be repaired. I learned later, that when war broke out in Mostar, the river literally divided the two sides -- the Bosnians stayed on the left band of the Neretva River, and the Croats on the right. If you were living on the wrong side of the river when the war broke out, your life was absolutely in danger.

I had imagined Mostar as a quaint mountain village with this bridge and not much else. But not so. This is, -- rather was and soon will be again -- a thriving industrial city of over 100,000. The war has taken a terrible toll on the city, and completely changed the demographics. It will take a long time to recover.