The Gelato Index

After the long trip from Shkoder we decided to stretch our legs before bedtime with a wander around the old town of Dubrovnik. It was close to 9,30 by the time we headed out. I had never been to Dubrovnik and, in the relative quiet of the evening, it was hard not to be struck by the beauty of the city. Whilst the physical presence of Dubrovnik was overwhelming, equally disturbing was the sense that this city has had its soul sucked dry by overtourism. I saw a few Michelin starred restaurants in the old town, plenty of greasy spoon joints, places serving the ubiquitous 'international menu', at least one Irish pub and lots of gelato joints (more on them later). However, I didn't see too many restaurants, if any, that sold real Croatian fare. It's almost like this city with a complex and, at times, tragic history has been turned into a sterile museum for passengers on cruise ships and bus tours.

Just before 8am we boarded our bus to Mostar in Bosnia. The trip took a bit under 4 hours. I won't bore you with the exact details, but we did 3 border crossings and went through 6 immigration/emigration checkpoints in the space of about two hours. Check out a map of Bosnia and Croatia and you'll see how this might be possible.
Close to midday we came into Mostar. It's a beautiful city that was pretty much flattened in the Yugoslavian wars of the early 90s. In short, the Croatians and Bosnians fought alongside one another to keep the Serbs at bay. Then the Croatians and Bosnians ended up at war with one another. There's still plenty of physical evidence of the hammering this small city took in 1992 and 1993.

In the last 20 years or so there's been a concerted effort to return Mostar to its former glory. There's still lots of evidence of Ottoman occupation, a little bit of the very unwelcome Austro Hungarian overlordship and unfortunately no shortage of Tito era brutalism. I actually like brutalism, but this stuff is too brutal for me!
The old centre of the city is stunningly beautiful. It's been rebuilt since the wars of the 1990s and various sites around town give you some idea of the extent of the rebuilding process.

Now I'm kind of loathe to say the next bit, (actually, if I'm being honest I'm probably not loathe to say it) but I think it needs to be said. Like Dubrovnik, this city is being destroyed by tourism. No doubt tourism has helped the city recover from the horrors of the 1990s, but our experience today was kind of disturbing. The city was literally overrun, and it's not even near peak season, by hordes of really large tour groups. It's feasible to come up here from Dubrovnik on one of those day trips they offer from cruise ships and it also seemed that there were lots of bus tours full of punters wanting a taste of the 'real Balkans'.
Now at this point I want to introduce my idea of a gelato index. I've observed on this trip, that where there's an over representation of gelato shops, there's likely to be too many tourists from cruise ships and buses. In ancient times, the Romans did a mighty fine job of conquering most of the known world. Now it seems they are on a cultural conquest to overrun tourist hot spots all over the world with gelato of varying qualities. Late on a Wednesday night, gelato stands were occupying large parts of the old town in Dubrovnik. There were Gelato colonisers spotted all over Mostar today and I expect their numbers will get larger in both cities as summer approaches.