A Day of Borders + Bridges

1 August 22

Took a tour bus from Dubrovnik to Mostar.  Crossing the border from Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina on a tour bus is an interesting experience.  Though we had all already provided our passports to the tour guide before boarding the bus in the morning, at the Croatia/Bosnia and Herzegovina border, we all piled off the bus, waited on queue to present our passports to border patrol, then walked across the border to reboard our waiting bus.

This is perhaps not a very notable border crossing, really.  I only include it to add a little context to this historically insignificant significant day.

So after reboarding our bus, we continued on to the tour’s first destination, the Mostar Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country I finally had to Google to understand what in the actual blazes our tour guide kept repeating at such a speed that it sounded like one word, but all I understood was the first part, Bosnia.  I’ll pause here to say that as much as I love learning history and geography while living and walking through it, before I actually get to a place to live and walk through it, I am an absolute ignoramus.  I love book learning, and I love history and geography.  But when you try to teach me history and geography from a book, my eyes glaze over and I couldn’t even tell you what planet we’re supposedly talking about.

Mostar Bridge

That said…

The Mostar Bridge (aka Stari Most ‘Old Bridge’) was an architectural marvel even when built as a limestone bridge to replace its wooden predecessor in 1557, completed in 1566.  It is speculated to have been the widest manmade arch in the world at the time at 4 meters (just over 13 feet) wide.  It stood an imposing 24 meters (nearly 79 feet) over the River Neretva, spanning 30 meters (just shy of 98 and a half feet) across.  The architectural significance then and now is that rather than built on foundations, as most bridges are, the arch instead arises directly from towering limestone abutments built into the city’s walls, which are built into the cliffs bordering the river.  The arch itself rises about 12 meters (almost 39 and a half feet).

It was destroyed in 1993 during the Croat-Bosniak war, known as the war within a war, as the two countries were allies and then enemies and then allies again (or maybe even subsequently) in convoluted wartime fashion during the span of the same short (relatively speaking) war.  

The bridge was rebuilt to replicate the original marvel and reopened in 2004.

All cool fun facts, to be sure.  But why, you ask, do we care about this particular bridge?  I asked myself the same thing as I carefully slid one shoe and then the next over the hyper-slippery worn limestone up one side of the arch and down the other.  Mercifully, there are three-inch raised rails about a foot and a half apart across the entire treacherous archway on which I could rest one toe before risking the next precarious step.  The guide asked if I was okay as I trepidatiously slid my last few steps down to rejoin the group, gesturing toward the copper sleeve I wear to protect a weak knee when I know I’ll be doing a lot of walking.  I had to laugh.  I was a whole lot more worried about slipping and cracking a tailbone than a perfectly healthy, if sometimes temperamental knee.

But. why. do. we. care?

Bear with me, if you will, and I will fast-forward us to near the end of this journey.  

Crossing from Bosnia and Herzegovina back into Croatia involved none of the pomp and circumstance of our cross into Bosnia and Herzegovina.  As we stopped at the Croatian border, our guide gathered all of our passports, stepped away for 10 or 15 minutes, then reboarded the bus and redistributed our passports as the bus driver drove us back across the border.  

We returned to Dubrovnik via a different path than we took to Mostar.  Our guide explained that our return would not have been possible via this particular route even one week ago without undergoing the hassle of crossing back into Bosnia and Herzegovina then back into Croatia over a tiny little 12-mile expanse of land belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina that dissects northern Croatia from Dubrovnik.  Wild!  And what allowed us to circumvent this minor annoyance?  The Pelješac Bridge, opened just five days ago after four years of construction, making it possible for Croatians to cross the channel connecting their own territory.

The Peljesac Bridge

So…if you’re still with me and not too dizzy to continue to follow me here…

In one day I crossed from Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina, very gingerly slipped and slid my way across the reconstruction of a circa 16th century bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina that the Croatian army destroyed during a war that occurred in my lifetime, crossed back into Croatia, and drove across a bridge less than a week old constructed to avoid the Bosnia and Herzegovina border.

Whew…  I am dizzy.  There is nothing at all like full immersion into history.  Bridges and borders and the magic of transportation, connection, the heft of division, even friendly (or at least cordial) division…  I’m not sure I’m able to or even trying to draw any meaningful conclusion today.  Today was simply an incredibly interesting jaunt through ancient and current history all at once.