Leaving Split, Croatia we drove due east across the mountains making a brief detour to Medugorjie, a dusty Roman Catholic pilgrimage site, and then on to Mostar. I immediately regretted our time in Mostar was limited, as the city fascinated me. Evidence of the 1990s civil war which tore Bosnia and Serbia apart was everywhere. One of the more disturbing lingering effects of the civil war was the lack of street names, numbers and street signs. Depending upon one’s religion and ethnicity, most streets had several names: Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim. Our Air B&B was identified as “near the orange school building.” That was the full address. At the heart of Mostar is the magnificent Ottoman bridge, destroyed during the civil war and rebuilt in 2004 from stones pulled from the bed of the Nerva River. On our way south to Montenegro we passed through a fragment of the Serbian Republic and roamed through a Bogomil cemetery.
