Mostar is about 3 hours from Sarajevo by car and the bridge there is by far its biggest attraction. The original bridge was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557 (although Brian Griffin knows thats not a real name) and it was finished in 1567. For quite some time it was the largest man-made arch in the world. Then in 1993 the Croatians came to Mostar.

The bridge had survived earthquakes and numerous wars. In an act of pure cultural vandalism the Croatians dropped it wth 60 well-aimed  shells. The bridge had absolutely no strategic value – a steel bridge is 100m downstream. Sometimes the recent history of the Bosniaks reads a bit like the kid in your primary school who everyone beats up for no particular reason.

The bridge was later rebuilt using the same materials recovered from the bottom of the river by NATO divers and with Turkish and Croatian money. It is an exact reconstruction of the original. The rest of Mostar was just a wee tad underwhelming.  The stalls leading to the bridge sold souvenirs made in China to tour groups visiting from China – bridge pencil sharpeners, bridge paperweights, mugs with engravings of the bridge.

Our drive home was made interesting by the blatant corruption of our driver. Din’s dad is high up in the police force. Din finished Yr 12 and has never worked, however he now owns 10 apartments in Bosnia. In the summer he and his dad host rich Arabs who rent Ferraris to drive around and buy property in town, dad greases the wheels and the visitors grease the palms. He would say that nobody pays traffic fines, it costs 10 BM (about $7.50) to avoid charges for most offences, 20BM for drink driving or accidents. He was proud of the fact that it costs him nothing because of dad. And by the way did we want to buy an apartment in Sarejevo?   Tax-free of course.

Australia is a much simpler place, or at least we lead vastly different lives. I would be willing to take any of my reading public on a tour of Rosewood AND visit the Seven Mile bridge over the Bremer. We could eat a counter meal at the Royal George Hotel. Rhuno’s Drapery may even have a tea towel with some local sights printed on it. However Ted would never have been able to save me from a speeding fine, introduce me to rich Arabs buying properties in Walloon, or ever let me charge visitors for a drive in the country. And what a good thing that is.

Enough from me,

Best let you go Farquar

Farley C-S

Scattered throughout Sarajevo are red splashes on the footpaths or roadways. Sarajevo was beseiged by the Serbs for 4 years, the longest seige in modern history. More than 5000 were killed by artillery or sniper fire.

Where a shell or mortar exploded on the streets and claimed lives, the concrete scars were painted red – the Sarajevo Rose.

Using leftovers to make children’s toys and pens?

The Latin Bridge

There is a line on a street in Sarajevo’s old town where East did actually meet West. To the east of the line are the old markets hugging the walls of a mosque. Everything there and beyond was built originally by the Ottoman Turks. Everything west of this line was built by the Austro-Hungarians – Catholic churches and apartment buildings that could be in Prague, Vienna or Budapest.

Sarajevo’s position on the globe has seen it flourish at times, at other times rupture – often drawing other nations into this divide. In the last 200 years we in Queensland have had the the State of Origin as our main internal conflict – Bosnia has had 23 wars or major insurrections. Our beaches have been invaded by Kiwis and Poms – Bosnia since Roman times has been invaded by the Alans, Huns, Goths, Avars, Slavs, and Franks.

An indication of how bad the Spanish inquisition was for Shephardic Jews, many of them sought sanctuary in Bosnia and established a community here,  just as some Syrians are doing now. Bosnia was its own country from 1377, but not for long and not again ’til the 1990’s.

The biggest fracture to be sparked by events in Bosnia was triggered by a young Serb near the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. Archduke Ferdinand was a reluctant and a bit unlucky heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. His cousin and direct the direct heir shot himself when he couldn’t marry his girlfriend, his dad died of typoid, that left him next in line. He really didn’t want to be next in line, let alone be next in line in Sarajevo, especially after someone threw a bomb at him earlier in the morning. Because of some confusion over the itinerary (and because cars had no reverse gears in those days) his convoy created their own traffic jam trying to turn around outside a cafe.

Gavrillo Princip was eating a sandwich at the cafe, saw Franz and Sophie, thought what the hell and shot them both. World War 1 resulted. Must have been a really bad sandwich.  

The cafe has been replaced by a museum. You can buy all sorts of memorabilia, but there is NO WAY they are ever going to sell anybody a plate of egg and lettuce sangers. Just can’t be sure what might happen if they did.

F C-S

Shot above and below taken from East/West line

The bridge is quite high, though nobody would tell me about Ali and his goat….

Thoght we were getting 3 Bosnian Marks for the Aussie Dollar, it’s actually 1.3 BAM to the AUD. No wonder the taxi driver wouldn’t stop crying and shaking my hand when I gave him that tip……

Despite the rapid rise in the value of their currency, we are enjoying Bosnia. And I am slowly deciphering the signs on their trams

This one reserves seats on trams for monkeys dressed as old women, white ladies with a black face, black men with white babies, and pregnant black, blonde-haired women wearing white gloves.  Much more open and progressive than Gatton or Rosewood I must say, we didn’t have signs like these on the rail-motor to Thagoona!

Some places inspire one to silence. Today we visited the Srebrenica museum and memorial – it is one such place.

Gallery 11/07/95 is a museum and memorial to the 8,373 men and boys who had sought refuge with their families in the UN enclave in Srebrenica. In July 1995 troops from the Army Rebublica Srpska (Sebian Bosnians supported by Serbia) ignored the Dutch UN contingent, separated men and boys from their families, bussed them to various sites in the surrounding forests and executed them.

Modern Europe had thought that genocide was never going to happen again after the Nurenburg Trials. The trials in the Hague showed this to be entirely wishful. It also allowed survivors to ask another pertinent question – why did did the West do nothing forceful to stop Srebrenica, nothing forceful to stop the four year seige of Sarajevo UNTIL two Danish soldiers and two French soldiers were killed?  A massive bombing campaign saw the Serbs sue for peace seven days later. Perhaps four western lives equal 200,000 primarily Muslim Bosnian lives?

’tis a very sombre  and thoughtful group of travellers here tonight….

Despite the horror they are not numbers, they still have names.

​To Sarajevo

We spent yesterday wandering around Vienna, including a visit to the Leopold Museum where a huge collection of their Egon Schiele paintings were on display. Such a prodigious talent and such a short life

Today we head to Sarajevo and despite the enormous pressure of modern travel, Linda seems to be coping reasonably well with the wait for our plane. Natalie left earlier, however with her sense of direction she may well be in Stockholm or similar. It will be interesting to see if she will be waiting for us at the airport as arranged.

Bosnia has had such a violent past, even before their most recent war. I remember reading about one such incident that occurred in Sarajevo some years ago. 

Two youngsters from different sectors of the city had a childish crush on each other, she was just thirteen years old and the boy was a couple of years older apparently. Because of some past insult or internecine, clan feud there were a series of honour killings. In just three days six people had lost their lives,  including the two children. Even the family priest was somehow implicated.

When I read this story about Sarajevo I remember thinking that it is no wonder that……hang on, sorry, that story actually came from Verona in Italy and was actually written by an Englisman I think.

But something like that could have happened in Bosnia in the last 400 years. Just we haven’t heard of it. 

I may just be the man to bring such a story to the attention of my legion of loyal followers.

F C-S

Yesterday we had lunch in a building that was completed in 1070.  Since then it has been a monastery and brewery  (700 years), barracks (50 years), restaurant 250 years with part of it being used as a picture theatre for 50 of those years. Boughen’s Electrical in Rosewood is in an old picture theatre but it isn’t quite the same.

Bratisalva’s old town was relatively unscathed by WW2 and is UNESCO listed. We took the one hour rail trip to Slovakia’s capital (Vienna and Bratislava are the two closest capital cities in Europe) Its railway station survived the Soviet era only to be invaded by homeless men who have enthusiastically taken up smoking and public urination as pastimes – a boy needs a hobby I suppose – from there it was a short trip into the centre.

The centre is stunning.  We loved the Christmas Markets – all locals and local products, we loved the buildings and we loved the fact that there seemed to be far fewer people like us.  And  we appreciated that all the homeless, urinating men were concentrated at the railway station rather than the old town.

We will come back to Bratislava.  Rosewood doesn’t have Christmas markets, Boughen’s Electrical isn’t that interesting except for its weirdly sloping floor from its movie theatre days, and the food from the King George Hotel doesn’t really compare with that of a 250 yr old restaurant in a 1000 year old building. Pity about the train station – there Rosewood beats Bratisalva hands down.

Now If this isnt the worst possible name for a shop that sells children’s  toys and does supervised play groups ….then my name’s not Farley Cunnington-Smythe! 

 Joyce would never allow this in Rosewood.

And this for a shop that sells paper – of all types ……….

Perhaps it’s just evidence of Austrian honesty?

A friend of mine has recently pointed out that I have failed to do the traditional welcome to country in my blog. Therefore I wish now to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the Rosewood district in which I was raised – the Armstrong and the Harding families.  

These pioneers moved here from Devon around 1840. They were primarily responsible for turning the Rosewood Scrub, as it was then called (a useless tangle of a wide range of plants) into productive farmland. Instead of dense bush and native wildlife, under their stewardship it became just 3 species to manage- lucern, pigs, and dairy cattle. (There had been some other peoples there earlier, who it seems, had been steadfastly ignoring the notion of terra nullis for 30,000 years and paid not a penny to the Crown!)

In this part of the world it was the Austrians not the Australians  who owned quite a stretch of Central Europe until they proved themselves to be quite defatigable (I love words where the opposite with a prefix or suffix are the most commonly used. Many of my friends are quite ruth and defatigable) . From Napoleon onwards they managed to be on the losing side of a number of wars including both world wars, and each time having the real estate savagely trimmed. Although things have been quite stable since the 1950’s if Austria gets in another stoush with anyone, even little Slovenia, I suspect there wouldn’t be anything left of the of the country outside, perhaps, Vienna.

Enough of the history lesson. – I’d best let you go Farquar.   It’s -5 ° outside. Time to don the woolies and go exploring.

Ps 

Our German friends have arrived, so i suspect we may be kept just a little busy!