Bosnia: The Perfect Day Trip

You know those travel experiences that are pure perfection?  You plan out your ideal experience, and it goes off without a hitch – and it’s even better than expected?!  When traveling, no matter how experienced the traveler, those experiences are rare.  But when they happen, they are something that you look back on with such fondness that you just want to share this experience with everyone.  That’s how I feel about my day trip to Bosnia back in August of 2022.

Before visiting Bosnia for myself, the only thing I knew about it was its war-filled past.  However, since I have a sick internal drive to visit as many countries as possible, when I saw that a quaint town with a UNESCO world heritage site was a mere 3-hour drive away from our ‘home base’ in Zadar, Croatia for several days, I couldn’t resist.  A quick google search told me that Bosnia is now 50% Muslim, so I figured that this was a great way to dip my toe into branching out into visiting Islamic countries.  And really, I was only going an hour over the border, so how different could it be from Croatia?!

THIS is what I love about travel.  It exposes ignorance and prejudice – because the answer is – it’s VERY different than Croatia.  A way-too-early rise in the morning preceded a long ride to the land crossing in our cramped, tiny rental car that was smooth and scenic.  Our first stop over the border at a gas station for a quick bathroom break with Blake, my 9-year-old son, told me that this was going to be a unique experience.  I was greeted from the sliding glass doors to a room full of middle-aged men that were all smoking and appeared to be enjoying conversation and local gossip amid many open newspapers and countless cups of coffee.  The way that they all stopped what they were doing to turn and look at me like an alien that had been dropped onto earth is a sight that still makes me giggle to this day.  We continued from there over a mountain pass with roads that turn my stomach into ball of anxiety-filled knots before finally arriving at our destination for the day – Mostar, Bosnia.

It’s dusty, cobblestone streets were packed in the summer heat, and we could not wait to grab an early lunch at a place that I heard was a great place for traditional food.  We grabbed an outside table along the streetside and took in everything – the sights, the smells, the sounds – it was all foreign.  I’ve never been able to figure out why, but being out of my daily life and surrounded by so much newness, it’s a complete endorphin rush for me in the most epic way.  I feel like I am more alive and more content within myself when I’m somewhere that I’ve never been before.  Maybe it’s an eternal quest for knowledge, maybe it’s that I just appreciate the immense diversity that exists in the world, maybe it’s all of it – whatever it is, I can’t get enough.

After gorging ourselves in more greasy meat and potatoes than one should ever consider eating in one setting, we continued our walk to the famous “Old bridge”, which in its irony is not really all that old at all.  You see, this bridge is Instagram famous <and yes, I find it ironic that I, too, am posting about this on instaworld itself>.  But what you don’t see from the pictures of men jumping from death-defying heights is what this bridge represents.  Stari Most is its official name, and while it was originally built in 1557 by a famous Islamic architect, it was completely destroyed during the Croat-Bosniak war in 1993.  The sides of the bridge arch up towards the middle and connect the two sections of town, one side predominantly Muslim and the other predominantly Christian.  The bridge’s architecture was meant to represent that both sides could live together peacefully as one.  It was rebuilt in 2001 to its current form and inducted as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2004. It’s an absolute marvel to admire with turrets on each end, looking like something from medieval times – but what it represents gives me both goosebumps and a smile.  What I experienced walking around that day was a mix of cultures and languages and general kindness that rarely exists nowadays anywhere.  We took the time to walk around and visit the famous mosque along with many local shops where I bought local wine, a handmade leather purse, and a pure silk scarf, while enjoying views of the imposing bridge from all angles.  

But the final moments before we left town, I had a top 5 experience of my life that is the only way I can describe Mostar – in feelings.  It was 100 degrees in the shade early in the afternoon, but since we wanted to experience a traditional Bosnian coffee before we left, we figured there was no time like the present.  The owner of the Cafe de Alma brought out all of the various ingredients to assemble a traditional coffee (trust me, it’s more than grounds and hot water), and as we were sitting on the Christian side of the city enjoying a coffee the way it has been made for centuries with the owner himself, we were enveloped by the call to prayer from the mosque across the river.  I could not believe that I was halfway around the world, experiencing a place as magical as this, and that everything had lined up so perfectly in that one moment that the only thing I could feel was gratitude.  For being able to have that experience, for opening my eyes to how wonderful new places and new people are, and that in that moment – of all of the places in the world that I could be – there was nowhere else that I wanted to be more than right there.