Stari Most

What a weekend! Seriously.. I think I did more in this entire past weekend than I have in a really long time! Crazyness! So Bree and I caught a bus out of Tuzla this past Friday... holy jesus.. it took us 6 hrs to get to Mostar. And yes, that is the actual travel time. It took 3 hrs to get to Sarajevo, then we hopped on a bus after meeting up with Miss Emily and then it was just under 3 hrs to Mostar from there. But, it was totally worth it! We had such a blast!

As soon as we got there, we all got ready and headed out to this restaurant to have pizza. And I know what you're wondering.. it actually wasn't served with ketchup. However, if I am recalling correctly, I feel as though we were asked if it was wanted. After dinner we headed to the old town of Mostar and went to this bar/club called Ali-Baba. It was IN A CAVE!!!!!!!! How sweet is that!?! We didn't stay very long since it was packed with people, but long enough to have an awesome time! Also we had to get up super early the next morning. The reason, you ask.. well, one of the girls who resides in Mostar that is in my program booked a touristy type of thing for all of us through this local hostel. It was sooo cool! We had to be there by 9am and 3 tour guides took us in separate cars to all of these destinations surrounding the city of Mostar. It was beautiful.

The first place we went to was in a town called Blagaj. It had this fortress right near the river (seriously, the river flowed right outside the house!. A former Duke who once ruled Herzegovina had ordered that a Dervish Monastery be build at the source of the Buna River, which is where we were. Since we were entering a place of worship, all of the girls in the group had to wear head wraps and long skirts. It was so interesting to have to do something like that... it gave me a very very small understanding of the culture. The architecture of the house was beautiful. It had obviously been restored, but apparently was from the 16th century!Can you believe that??! From there we headed towards a famous town called Počitelj, where there were ancient ruins and a huge fortress that stood up a hill. It was quite a work out climbing all of the stairs that were once there. The mosque that sits midway on the hill had been destroyed during the war and recently restored. At the entrance of the mosque and to the side of it, they had some of the original stone work that was salvaged from the wreck. Unfortunately, we (meaning the girls) couldn't enter because we didn't have any head scarves. So we climbed to the top and were walking around the once upon a time fortress and there was such a beautiful view at the top....then... my camera died. what the hell?? ugh such unfortunate luck! anyway, it was somewhat good, because since I no longer had anything to take pictures with it made me realize that walking through neck-high grass may not be the best of ideas. Then the crazy person in me kicked in, and I was convinced I was going to have a tick on me.... I didn't though, so we're 'A-OK' in that department!

From there, we headed to Međigorje, which is somewhere I really wanted to go, and it just so happened that the tour was leading up to that destination. So I first heard of Međigorje through my Bosnia & Herzegovina book that I bought.. the story goes, that back in the 80's a couple of teenagers were up on the hill and the blessed mother appeared and spoke to them. No one at first believed these teens, but a priest did. Since that day, the little town of Međigorje has become the second largest pilgrimage site for Catholics.. apparently.. I had no idea. Nonetheless, it was really neat to see and witness. I went into the church that was there.. there was a mass going on, so I just decided to stay in the vestibule and a listen a bit. then I lit and candle and was on my way. Unfortunately, we weren't able to actually go up on the hill where the apparition was seen (I call it that because that's the actual name of the hill, Apparition Hill) because it is a 3hr hike one way to get up there. But they had the statue of Mary outside the church for those who are unable to trek all the way up. The also had this huge statue of Christ symbolizing his crucifixion, and water came out of his knees and there were a lot of people there collecting the water to bring it into the church to be blessed. There were some people there holding Jesus and praying. It was intense.

While we ate lunch, it unfortunately began to rain.. but it was just like the 4th of July spirit to do such a thing. And I don't care if I was in another country, I was celebrating July 4th damn it. So I continued to enjoy my American inspired meal of a hamburger and french fries, accompanied with a delicious beer. hahahha. Our next stop was supposed to be Kravice Waterfalls... but the tour guides were hoping that if we waited a bit it would the storm clouds would pass. So we stopped at this new Ethno Village, which was sort of weird and yet interesting at the same time. It was basically this resort type of place.. but I kind of felt like I was walking around on a compound, and was expecting to be asked to join some sort of freakish cult at any moment. And our tour guides prompted us to go here because there would be free wine.... they lied.

So we left that joint and headed to the falls. I was determined to jump off a cliff. However, I really didn't feel like breaking my leg, or you know, possibly my neck.. so I opted out of jumping off the slippery rocks and decided that I didn't travel 6hrs one way to just see these waterfalls... I was damn well going to jump in. It's once in a lifetime, right? So I did! IT WAS FREEZING! Neil, Abbie's friend who was visiting her jumped in too & then I talked Abbie in to doing it as well, by telling her I'd jump back in and quickly get out! That was a blast! Really cold, but totally worth it.

We were all pretty freakin tired from the days events so we headed back to the apartment and got ready to go to dinner.... 4 hrs later and we were out the door *(well, what do you expect with 7 girls, 1 guy, and 1 bathroom??)* Dinner was pretty freakin awesome. We had Italian at this little place and then we decided that we wanted to hit the Mostar scene once again... but after a very filling dinner and just from being tired we decided to have one drink and hit the road.

The next morning we woke up early because Bree and I had to catch an 11am bus back to Sarajevo. So we wanted to go have coffee and see more of Mostar and the Old Town. While having coffee, the girls totally talked us into staying until 3pm! Which we were really excited about... however, we decided against it after we found out that the last bus leaving Sarajevo for Tuzla left at 6pm and that only gave us a half hour to play with. Could you imagine if we had missed the last bus out of Sarajevo to come back! That would have sucked.

So to make my extremely already long story short (hush Mom, I have huge blisters on the bottoms of my feet from walking in my sandals but it was totally worth it!