Balkans day 4: Bosnia

A day even brighter and earlier than before, as I get up first thing to start the two-hour journey to Sarajevo.

River dam and mountains north of Mostar

I’m no great fan of early starts and wouldn’t do this if I had another sensible choice, but there are only two trains in each direction per day from Mostar, which makes the enormous station building, with three spacious platforms, seem vaguely ridiculous.

Mostar station

The train itself is on point, though: a comfortable modern intercity, with power sockets at seats and loads of legroom. No better way to travel through the mountains, still half-asleep, above a sea of morning fog.

Bosnia has a bubble bath

On arrival in Sarajevo I’d hoped to get the tram into town, but the fact that the tram stop was a morass of mud and fences put paid to that idea, so I set off on foot. That area of the city has certainly had a lot of money poured into it; one wouldn’t know about the prolonged siege the city underwent during the war, unless by stopping to think about what was there before all these shiny high-rises. The centre itself is divided between Austro-Hungarian grandeur and the Baščaršija, an endearing maze of little wooden shops and cafés.

Coppersmiths’ alley

The museum of crimes against humanity was an option, but it’s the sister of the one I visited in Mostar, and besides I’d had enough of human awfulness. Instead I visited the grand, sleepy National Museum, where I was able to console myself with the thought that, like the rest of the world, this area – Illyria in antiquity – had once, long before that, been home to volcanoes and giant reptiles.

After I’d caught up on some sleep at my little hotel, the evening caught up with me, and I laboured up the hill to the Yellow Bastion, which is where I am now, in the dark.

Sarajevo at night, from the Žuta Tabija

Now my fingers are getting cold from all this typing, so it’s time to seek out some more of that fine Bosnian food to warm me up.