War. What is it good for?

It is always exciting to get to a new place and check into your room and then go out into a new city to discover.  We arrived in Mostar yesterday to a welcoming hostel that provides "welcome cake".  In fact, we have come to learn that the people here in Herzegovina are known for being exceptionally welcoming and hospitable.  It makes our friends from yesterday make a lot more sense.

The old town of Mostar is unbelievable.  When you first enter the city, you are shocked by the sight of bombed out buildings.  Then you start to notice the bullet marks everywhere.  On our walk to our hostel, we happened to walk down the front lines from the conflict.  It was fascinating and sad.  Many buildings have been rebuilt, but the ownership of some of the lots is in question, so no changes will be made. 
After Croatia and Slovenia declared Independence from Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH) tried to follow suit, but didn't have the backing of the Serbs (about 30% of the population) in the country.  The Yugoslavian army came in to stop the succession.  What ensued was a brutal war with the Bosniaks(Muslims) and Croats (Roman Catholic) fighting against the Serbs (Eastern Orthodox).  Once the Bosniaks and Croats won the conflict, they turned on each other.  About 200,000 people were killed in BiH, many civilians.   In Mostar, the fighting was right down the main street of town, with the Croats on the West, and the Bosniaks on the East.  It is interesting to note, that as you walk down the street, since they are from the same ethnic background, the two fighting sides are indistinguishable.  The majority of the Muslims here look as European as anyone else.  Rarely do they wear headscarves.

A major event here was when the old Ottoman bridge was intentionally brought down by the artillery in the hills surrounding the town.  In a real and a symbolic way the town was divided in two.  A cease fire was eventually negotiated in 1995.  But before that happened, parks were turned to cemeteries and much of the city was destroyed. 

Since then some major things have brought a good deal of reconciliation here.  A major turning point was when the stones from the bridge were pulled from the river.  Although the stone could no longer be used, they used the same material and technology to replace the old bridge.  It really is inspiring that such a horrible war could break out here, and the people left afterwards have found a way to live in peace. 

There really are two cultures colliding here.  Once you cross the "old" bridge to the Bosniak part of town, you could swear that you were actually in Turkey.  Everything looks very Eastern.  It is fascinating.  From one point in the town you can see about 6 minarets (towers at a mosque where people called to prayer).  We were able to go in a Mosque and take pictures.  It was really neat. 

Staircase leading to nowhere.  Always in mosques.  The top stair is for Mohamed.

View from the tradional place the women worship.  In reality, in most mosques here they aren't up here.

View from the Mosque minarette.  We overcame our minarette phobias from Egar, Hungary.  This one had much more breathing room (but was still ridicuously narrow.)

The Mosque WC (our first "squatter" on the trip) - ps. costs 50 cents Euro per person.

We also toured an old Turkish house.  The bottom of the house was were a family really lives now, but where the Turkish family would have lived during the winter.  During the summer, the family lived in what we would almost call an outdoor covered porch.  The furniture and decorations were amazing.

Janna REALLY seemed to enjoy Turkish couches, so why not try on some clothes?

Anyone looking for some pants?

In the midst of this new cultures, you look up and see where a bomb went right through a wall.  It is just an unbelievable juxtaposition.  After having seen all of the WWI sites in the Alps, and now the remnants of this more recent war, we struggle more than ever to make sense of this senselessness.  Parks turned into cemeteries.  Buildings turned into ruins.  Lives turned into ruins. . . . in the name of what?

It seems as though we travel from one country here to another, we see among the common threads of these people that they all loved Tito.  Tito was their ruler from WWII until just before the conflict broke out.  He held things in a delicate balance here, and he "was loved during his life and after his death".  He was a leader who held these different - yet similar - people together and they were building a great country.  Then they fell under some brutal leaders, and those leaders made these same people willing to kill their neighbors.  It really shows how powerful of a force hate can become. 

And so, as we wander this city, we are amazed at what Mostar is now.  It is old and it is new. It is East and it is West.  It is Christans and Muslims.  It is peaceful but poor (about 1 in 3 are unemployed).  It is growing but empty (lots of widows and orphans and bombed out building that will not be replaced any time soon), and it is putting the pieces back together without forgetting what it felt like when they fell apart.