Moving on to Mostar, moved in to a museum

Croatia is in the distance for a while now that I've moved on to Mostar in Bosnia-Hercegonina. I'm actually staying in a museum tonight, so hope the things in movies don't really come true. I haven't seen any skeletons in this formerly upscale Muslim house, but one never knows, especially when the cities here are centuries and centuries old. I was told the furniture is original. I learned today that pictures of people are not hung in Muslim homes. Nothing with eyes hangs on these walls. Lots of pictures of plants and nature in homes and mosques.

I traveled by bus from Dubrovnik this morning after spending the weekend there. Some of the 'boat' people stayed a few days after our charter ended (and it ended uneventfully), so we took a tour of Dubrovnik, walked the city walls, heard some 'intriguing stories' on another tour, and gosh darn if we didn't run into each other when we weren't together. The old city isn't that big, or maybe it was all those ice cream cones slowing us all down. We even ran into the guy we referred to as Jayway (the Jay who made our arrangements in Dubrovnik, not the Jay who arranged for the sailing) who was showing his parents around.

One thing everyone should know about Dubrovnik is that there are lots of steps. We were warned that there were a 'few' steps to our apartment. I'd say more than a few. It was 90 from the street to the apartment, 340 from the top of Stari Grad, known as Old Town in Croatian. You really don't want to make a wrong turn like I did last night. Oh well, it made up for all that sitting on the sailboat.

We lazed around on Sunday, got some laundry done, which we were then able to act like locals when we hung it outside our balcony. We then tried to find the apartment based on our laundry when we went down to old town, and going and coming back from the island of Lokrum just across the bay from Dubrovnik. How relaxing to swim, sit on the rocks, hike to a spectacular fort in terms of architecture and come back to cobbled streets in search of a place for dinner. Now we were hoping that the sounds of a classical music concert would once again greet our ears when sitting out on the deck before turning in for the night. That worked on Saturday night, but not Sunday night. Instead, we were all packing, me to move to a smaller apartment.

I took a tour of a few towns in Montenegro on Monday. Another relaxing day. I enjoyed the countryside, though missed being on the water we were hurrying by, not all that fast given the switchbacks up and down the mountains. The devastation of the 1979 earthquake could be seen way into Montenegro. The new buildings are testament to the rebuilding by the locals, both as a result of the earthquake and the 1991-1995 war in Croatia, that hit Dubrovnik very hard, including Lukrum. Most residents had evacuated, to Italy and further. Stories make it sound like what happened in Pearl Harbor and during WWII. Luckily the younger generation has no memory of it, so are more optimistic about the future than their parents.

Mostar has also been through a war at the same time (1992-1994). Troops from other countries were here up until last year. Some buildings have been repaired, others are still vacant, have holes through them, or are in piles of stones. In both countries, the locals now have to pay for any reconstruction so it's going much slower than the first few years.

I did get an understanding about why a Croatian documentary was made of New Orleans volunteerism. Croatians take care of their own after such a disaster. It seems they were appalled at how Americans didn't do the same thing. One Croatian tradition is that when people visit friends at home for the first time, they bring a gift. Guess you could say this is how housewarming presents started. We also learned that dating in Croatia is more traditional--where the man pays for everything, even if they both are earning salaries.

Croatia has a history of aristocracy and infidelity. Orphanages were created to house the illegitimate children of aristocrats. They also took in babies of others less fortunate. There was a revolving door which was used to transport the babies from their mothers to the orphanage. If the mother wanted the baby to know who she was, she left so me token, a handkerchief or half of a coin, which would match the half she kept. The boys and girls were kept together until age 6. At 16, the girls would go on to be nuns, the boys to work on ships. After all, this was one of the biggest ports for imports and exports in the world in the past.

Of note are the roofs in Croatia, and so far in Bosnia-Herc. In Croatia, they were virtually all tile. About 90% of the tile roofs had to be replaced after the recent civil war. In Mostar, the roofs are stone. They are beautiful, but I don't know how they are held up. It seems they'd be even heavier than the tiles.

The mosques are active now, especially since it's Ramadan from 13 Sept. to 13 Oct. Prayers are announced over loud speakers 5 times a day. Having heard this before in Malaysia, Turkey and other countries, I kinda like it. Maybe I should go to some services myself, but as a woman here, I'd be in the balcony, so now one could see up my . . . pants.

Off to Sarajevo by train in the morning for the scenic views.