The Gelato Index Part 2

First port of call today was the Museum of War and Genocide Victims in Mostar. We eventually made it inside after being blocked from entry by a large Turkish delegation of public officials (over achievers) who happened to be visiting Mostar today. This is a small museum, which can be found in a laneway near the centre of town. It's a privately run site established by a group of people who had direct experiences of the war in Bosnia. Perhaps it's this fact that makes the museum so powerful. It's been built up over a number of years as half a dozen Mostar residents have acquired more material relating to the events of the war. It provides personal insights into the conflict rather than the usual fare dished up by museums which can, at times, be a little depersonalised.

There's some really great information on the conflict, including a very simple and accurate explanation of how Yugoslavia came to fall apart in the early 1990s. Sometimes it's hard to fathom how quickly history moved in those 5 years between about 1989 and 1994. It's also easy to forget the scale of the war in the former Yugoslavia. The conflict left 2.2 million Bosnians displaced, that is almost half the population of the country. Most of these people became refugees. Added to this, between 1992 and 1995 nearly 35 000 people went missing in Bosnia Herzegovina. I remember coming in on a crowded train from Amsterdam's Schipol Airport in the mid 1990s. A young Kiwi was sitting next to me in military gear. We started a conversation and he told me had been working with the UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia. We probably chatted for no more than 15 minutes, but his description of what he had experienced still sits with me until this day. As we left the museum today we started talking to the woman on the entry desk. She told us she was 4 years old when the conflict started and her family were personally impacted by the war. I won't go into the details, except to say that her resilience and forgiveness were nothing short of extraordinary. She made a point of telling us that she wouldn't allow her young son to go to a segregated school. She was a Bosniak, but she felt it was important for him to grow up alongside Serbians and Croatians and to leave the sins of the past behind. A bit like when I met the young Kiwi peacekeeper, it's a conversation that will remain with me for the rest of my life.

After the museum we needed a little break from the memories of war so headed down to the famous Mostar bridge. The bridge had stood for 427 years, until it was destroyed in 1993 by Croat forces during the Croat-Bosniak war. The bridge was eventually rebuilt and opened in 2004. If that's not interesting enough there's a rather crazy tradition in the town that dates all the way back to 1664. Young men of the town jump from the 24 metre arch into the Neretva river below. There's a diving club near the bridge and there always seems to be a young local from the club hanging about, ready to take the jump, providing you give them 50 Euros. I believe they'll even let outsiders take the plunge for 25 Euros, providing they've done the appropriate training which I assume comes with some fees. I did chat to one of the divers for quite a while. He politely asked if I wanted to pay 50 Euros to watch him or one of his mates jump. Even when I told him I wasn't interested, he was still happy to chat about the experience and the training process.

We were booked on the 5pm train to Sarajevo, so we decided to grab a quick bite to eat for lunch before leaving Mostar. We found a small local restaurant out of the main drag and had an absolutely delicious lunch of bbq chicken and dolmades. With a beer thrown in the total cost was about 21 Bosnian Marks. The previous night we ate at Restoran Zeman, a great little place with a lovely courtyard in the centre of town, again just out of the tourist strip. Chicken kebabs, dolmades, baked vegetables and beautiful flatbread set us back about 50 Bosnian Marks. The food was plentiful and quality excellent.

All of this this brings me back to my previous days discussion of the Gelato Index. Mostar was full of tour groups again today. They could be found in restaurants in the old town and on the riverfront. However, they were nowhere in sight within the walls of the museum. To be honest, the last thing the museum needed was a horde of 50 people coming straight from a cruise ship, so I should be grateful for small mercies. It's quite possibly none of my business to pontificate on the choices that people make when they go on holiday. The fact that tour groups have such a long track record of success, suggests that it's perhaps me that's missing out on something! It just seems a shame that we travel to experience different cultures, but end up cocooned within a group of 'our own people' that protects us from the real experience that travel can provide.

We headed down to the station, past some more war ruins, to catch the 510pm train from Mostar to Sarajevo. It was nice to be back on trains after a week of bus travel. The railways in Bosnia were originally built by the Austro Hungarians in the 19th century. The network is not huge, largely due to the mountainous terrain. Our train this afternoon was a modern Spanish built Thalgo. I believe up until recently, most of the trains were old rattlers built in the USSR that dated back to the 1950s. They might have fixed up the trains, but the ticketing system is still pretty archaic; check the pic below for the evidence! And what's with the music being streamed through the train. It was a combination of bad 80s hair rock and traditional Bosnian music. Ouch. It wasn't the quickest trip into Sarajevo but we cut through some amazing scenery. The railway line had been cut into the edges of the mountains with views forever across huge valleys. In between the sweeping valley vistas were long tunnels that cut under the mountains rather than going around.
Just after 7.30pm the Thalgo pulled into Sarajevo station. In its heyday the building was probably quite a dramatic piece of brutalist architecture; but it's probably neither unfair or cruel to say that its heyday was quite some time ago.