Here's to a fresh start...

Happy New Year (albeit 11 days in)... So, I've let myself get quite behind on the blog, and the sights and impressions that I'd like share from Budapest have piled up, but I do want to start the new year with a well-wish. I always used to think that while any given year may be good or bad for any given person, that on balance there aren’t really any differences in years for the world as a whole. An individual looks at their year through from their own perspective, but given the amount of individual perspectives there are out there, the quality of a year lived collectively by the world balances out, or neutralizes. To the extent I'm questioning this notion in light of an accumulation of destructive current events in the world, I wish everyone reading this a better year ahead.

Before I share the scraps recently gathered in Budapest, I’m going to return to where I left off on the blog before Christmas, and attempt to give an impression of Sarajevo. Honestly, I think I've been intimidated about how to approach descriptions of that place because we were so touched by it, and I've been concerned about adequately conveying what a special place it is using its own merits and without glorifying anything. Beginning with my next post I'll give it a try.

Before I go back to that trip from November, however, here’s an impression of the New Year's celebration in our part of Budapest. Andrássy út, closed to traffic and filled with people in party hats and carrying champagne bottles were kissing, hollering and dodging firecrackers. The fireworks were being launched from all directions and, as some of them landed among openings in the crowds, red and blue sparkles bounced in all directions causing thrilled shrieks all around. 

Scenes from Budapest at Christmas

Budapest has emerged from an ideally quiet Christmas. Almost all of the shops were closed and the streets were mostly deserted. After a month of crowded Christmas fairs, hot spiced wine and stores filled with beigli and candy, everyone seemed to go home for a few days. 

This contrast with the gaudy sales-pitch I've been getting used to in recent years highlighted for me how distorted the holiday is becoming from the sentimentality everyone has for it in their imaginations. Some of my favorite parts of the holiday were always in the brief silent moments when I'd be outside walking in the boring grey afternoons before dinner, or after the feast when everyone is full, tired, satisfied and together.

We spent the few quiet days here walking through the overcast city with our hands shoved into our coat pockets and scarves pulled up around our faces, seeing only an occasional family carrying packages down the street. Even our neighborhood homeless man was gone from his usual door vestibule Christmas night.

Neretva Gorge by Rail

As much as Bosnia and Herzegovina are still off the main tourist track, the train from Mostar to Sarajevo(the full length of which originates in Ploce, Croatia on the Adriatic Sea) could still be called a hidden gem. I understand that while the train's two rail cars were largely vacant only a few years ago, they are now full of local passengers and tourists in the summer. In most places I've been, a ride through terrain like that would be marketed as a special tourist day trip. Here it was simply transportation, but over the course of the two-and-a-half hour trip I could hardly look down at my book for fear I'd miss more scenery. 

 

 

The portion we rode leaves Mostar through a wide plain along the Neretva River. Heading north, it quickly winds into the deep Neretva River Gorge against the high rock walls that enclose the river. As the tracks climb higher into the gorge, they pass a dam behind which the river takes on a bright blue-green color. Towering jagged rock formations crown the gorge much of the way, revealing a new world around each bend. I didn't realize the Dinaric Alps were so dramatic.

After a lot of switch-backs, the route leaves the river and continues on to Sarajevo high over numerous valleys, passing through over a hundred tunnels along the way. Many of the valleys contain towns, and as we passed over and around them it felt like we were in an airplane preparing for landing. 

  

  

Mostar on the mend

Echos of the wars in the 90’s are seen in the burned-out shells of buildings still standing 15 years later, and in the extra-height church tower and cross on the Christian side of the city competing with the minarets on the Muslim side. But past the broken glass and EU police occasionally seen still on patrol, Mostar is also a shockingly pretty city.

Of course there is beauty in its namesake, the bright stone Stari Most, or Old Bridge, re-built several years ago in an identical form to its 400+ year-old original that was destroyed in 1993. There are also clusters of medieval stone buildings huddled on both sides of the bridge, and polished, multi-colored river stones making up the walking streets in these neighborhoods. There is the striking blue-green color of the Neretva River flowing through town, as well as high, rocky mountains rising on both sides of providing a wild, beautiful backdrop to the city in all directions.

 

  

The ottoman-style buildings and mosques sprinkled everywhere, the call to prayer occasionally echoing over the city from so many minarets pricking the sky, and the ever present smell of wood smoke and grilled meats, are reminders that the Turks were a little more successful here once upon a time than in much of Europe. Many Bosnians converted to Islam over several generations under the Ottoman empire, and as the easternmost remaining remnant of that culture, give the region a frontier feeling. 

The busy sidewalks and cafes we saw on a warm early November evening were an indication of how far Mostar has resuscitated from its recent past. Having fallen for the place so quickly, it was hard to return to our hotel room knowing our train left so early the next morning.

    

    

Mostar after the shock

After the easy and rich surroundings on the coast in Dubrovnik, arriving at the desolate bus and train stations in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina was a bit of a confrontation. Sheets of opaque plastic covered missing panes of glass and the concrete walls were covered with pits left from bullets. Outside paced a scruffy man and two young dreadlocked daughters eating ice cream. It's safe to assume the dreads were not the family's effort to romanticize themselves as hippies, since we saw the father starting their campfire behind partial building remains early the next morning. 

There isn't a block throughout the city that doesn't have a blunt reminder of the war that took place there in the 90's, from bullet-pitted walls, shell-scars in the sidewalk pavement, and entire burned-out buildings, to graveyards filled with gravestones all sharing the same years. As our senses acclimated over our 24 hours in town, this sad backdrop gave way to thriving street life and we realized a day wasn't going to be enough time to spend in this surprisingly beautiful city. 

  

  

Inland to Mostar by bus

The few people around us on the bus slept through most of our early morning ride to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I wasn't sure how they could. Heading north out of Dubrovnik, the road quickly zig-zagged up the steep coastal ridge until we were high up over the Adriatic Sea. From our point of view on the inland side of the bus, there was nothing between us and the distant Croatian islands but the clouds and the birds.

A narrow strip of Bosnian land cuts through Croatia to the coast there, so we crossed the border three times that morning before entering Bosnia and Herzegovina for good. The third time he was 

tapped awake on the bus by a border guard, the man across from me muttered under his breath in English, "Jesus, pick a country!"

Once our bus turned inland toward Mostar, the 

landscape changed dramatically. It was a rainy morning, so the silvery sage covered hills all around reminded me of the arid high-plains of Wyoming at its greenest. 

The spine of Šipan

Leaving the village of Sudurad for our hike back to Sipanska Luka, we wandered between quiet stone houses with their wooden shutters closed. A lone white pair of panties hung on a clothesline outside waving in the breeze (a signal to someone?). As our road climbed the hill outside of town past the remains of several stone villas, decaying since the renaissance, it became closed in by rosemary bushes and olive trees. 

After a picnic on a hillside tiered with olive groves we continued up the pathway, surprising a few people lost in quiet conversations while they picked the olives. Our road, now a rocky mule trail, climbed the ridge that formed the island's spine until we could see the Adriatic in all directions. A narrow sweep of farm fields filled the valley below us and a tiny church sat on top of another of the island's distant peaks.

A rudimentary map posted at the dock that I'd taken a picture of that morning showed our lane looping back down to the main road in the middle of the island's valley, but as we pushed further the thick brush closed in. Finally stopped by an alert, tense dog next to a stone house, we gave up on our route and found our way through overgrown orchards back to the valley floor, and the main road to Sipanska Luka.

Approaching the town in time for the evening ferry, we passed graveyards that had been bare that morning. Now they overflowed with fresh flowers and many of the same people from the morning's ride over. Back at the waterfront, among those waiting for the ferry back to Dubrovnik were chatting locals and cats roaming the piles of fish nets. Amidst the hustle that surrounded the ferry's arrival, a young island girl stopped her cat from boarding by grabbing it awkwardly under her arm. Without protest, the cat fell limp. 

  

  

  

Šipan Island changes gears

There were a few families loaded with bags of gushing flower bouquets on the 45-minute ferry to Sipan Island. It was the eve of All Saint's Day, so apparently there are a lot of ancestors buried there. I'd read that the Elaphiti Islands are the least developed of the islands along the Croatian coast. We chose Sipan for a day trip based on the relative frequency of the ferry this time of year (two trips per day). The flowers and passengers unloaded quickly in Sipanska Luka, one of two small villages on the island, before the ferry departed for the day. A few empty boats bobbed in the sun as the ferry passengers dispersed. The shops around the bay had all closed for the season except for a small store selling ice cream, fishing tackle, and some bottles of wine.

While we waited for the hourly bus to Sudurad on the other end of the island, the end of a movie played out across a gravel parking lot. One by one the main characters, four women in their twenties, dragged a summer's worth of suitcases and duffel bags from a hotel with its curtains and wooden shutters closed. Soon the local heartthrob pulled up on a moped, and they were joined by the wise father figure -a squat hotel manager, who helped them load a car until it sank. They all turned to each other for a long round of farewell hugs and kisses. With the hotel now shut for winter it was easy to see that its staff was now departing after a long summer together. A couple of group photos later and their car scooted off, followed by the moped. Our bus pulled into Sudurad in time to see them all embracing again before one girl dragged her bags onto the waiting ferry there, bound for points further up the coast.

While some locals milled around the dock saying good-byes to the few others getting on the ferry, we found the only open bar/cafe to sit down and catch up with our journals over cappuccinos. Over the next couple of hours, the only activity in Sudurad seemed to be the group of men gossiping in front of the only other store, our waitress who'd get up to change songs on the jukebox, and a busy little cat. This adolescent size-cat went through cycles of climbing onto our laps to take a nap, pushing its nose onto our table, running off to chase something, and clawing its way back onto our laps again to crash.