Mostar - Sarajevo [16-06-08]

A blur photo of the hotel room jeremy and i stayed in Mostar. I kept hitting my head on the ceiling even though i'm much more shorter than Jeremy. Grrr...
Let's turn our attention on the sign. I mean its pretty obvious its a sign on no loud noises but apparently the kiwi of our group didn't realise that. So she engaged in a pretty amusing conversation with our ever so humourous guide Mustafa.

Esther: What is that sign Mustafa?
Mustafa: It means you can't play the trombone here.
Esther: That's cool.
The rest of us: ... ...
We spent the morning visiting a political museum in Mostar. From Mustafa, he always looks back to the Yugoslavia days and hope that Bosnia and Hercegovina could regain its past prosperity. Yugoslavia under Tito's rule was the best period of Bosnian history. The lives of the Bosnians were so good that 70 percent of the locals could afford to travel to the coast for holidays. Right now, less than 20 percent of the locals could afford that. Mustafa told us that even though during the Communism rule, they can't speak freely, they can sleep freely. But right now they can speak freely, they can't sleep freely. Even in present time, it is dangerous to call him by his Muslim name in Serbia or Croatia but this has never happened in Tito's Yugoslavia.
And its in regards to the famous prime minister during Tito's rule of Yugoslavia. Sadly, he died in a plane crash.
In the museum, we watched a video on the history of Mostar. It was indeed heart wrenching to see the old bridge being blown into pieces and collapsed into the river. It was like seeing centuries of identity crashed into the river in just few seconds. But yet at the same time i admire the resilience of the people in rebuilding the bridge to its former glory.

Next we continued on to this place called Jablanica. There is a broken bridge at the spot where we had a short break of coffee and tea. To give a brief history of the place...

Jablanica was where the strongest resistance against the Nazis in WWII occurred. The battle is called "Battle of the Wounded People" and literally the Partisans who were rescuing the wounded soldiers were completely surrounded by the Nazis at that time. It was a fight to get the wounded people out of the place. It was one of the 7 biggest resistance war that has happened in Bosnia. At that time, the marshall Tito (who became president of Yugoslavia later) saved the lives of 4000 wounded people. He ordered destruction of the bridge as a decoy to make the Nazis think that they did not cross the river but fled elsewhere. However, they built a small bridge and cross over to the other bank barracks and ambushed the Chetneys. In the end, the wounded were saved and travelled to the free territory of Montenegro.

We visited a WWII museum on the war. I was totally intrigued by the history of the resistance war and I had this inner urge to find out more about the history of Yugoslavia. But i guess that will come a bit later.

Medical stretcher used during that period. Seriously, to carry that stretcher during wartime is madness lah. And i'm still complaining that our SAF stretcher is heavy... this one can't even be folded.
A Motar like thing

Photographs of the Partisans who has participated in the heroic feat
Some personal belonging left behind... looking at these things really got me deep in thought
Next, we embarked on a winding trip to a lake to swim. Although the sky was gloomy, it did not dampen our desire to take a plunge into the lake. C;mon... it's not like we always have opportunities to swim in lakes right? On the way, the road was blocked by a herd of sheep.
Can you spot the lake?
There were no toilets or changing rooms around so we had to go to secluded spots to change. I walked to this deserted building to change. Frankly, i would believe we were the only people around.

Sallie, Jeremy and I then plunged into the lake and boy was it freezing cold. However, the deeper part of the lake was warm. It was nice to have the little fishies sucking your toes in the water, eating up the dead skin cells. Sallie was so funny when she exclaimed "Oh the fishies kissed me!" --> that sounded pretty bimbotic haha.

THen it was all the way onward to Sarajevo. Sarajevo was nothing like what i have imagined it to be. We passed by a few high-rise flats and they have such uncanny resemblance to the HDB estates in Singapore. See for yourselves in the photo below... except for the holes made by shellings, it has little difference with a HDB flat here.
A plane carrying a message...
Our hotel (or should i say residence) was up on a hill which overlooked the whole of Sarajevo's Old Town. I had a whole room to myself that night..

Dinner was this 'pita' filled with sausages and sour cream. It was so so so so so good. You can trust me on that. We met Mustafa's best pal, Dragan. It's really amazing (and weird) to see how close Mustafa (a Bosniak Muslim) being so close to his best friend Dragan (a Serbian Orthodox Christian). That just shows that the enmity is not against all Serbs but only those extremists. Anyway, Dragan was a cool guy who couldn't stop talking to me about Singapore.

Then we had beer at this brewery nearby. The night walk up the hill to our residence was gorgeous. The orange lights from the city reflects the starry night. Sorry for my incoherence. =P