The Foreignist

We’ve been into Bosnia a few times over past four years. We’ve been to Kupres to go play in the snow, and we’ve been to Neum to have lunch. You have to drive through Neum and about a 10km stip of Bosnia on your way from Split to Dubrovnik. But I had never been to the inner part of Bosnia. The parts we had been in were still the Roman Catholic religiously and Mediterranean climatically and looked similar to Croatia.

Last week I took a trip with my friend Boris (the engineer, not the player) to his hometown of VareÅ¡. He and his mom were going to see how their apartment renovation was coming along. Several EU groups had banded together to provide funding for a lot of the refugees in that town to repair their homes so that they could return. Boris’ family had left their home 10 years ago after fighting in the town had gotten really bad. Their apartment was set on fire by Croatians not wanting to leave anything nice for the Muslims or Serbs to enjoy.

Our plan was to go to Vareš on Monday, go up in the mountains on Tuesday, then head back to Split via Sarajeva and Mostar on Wednesday.

We took off on the normal route that we’ve taken to Kupres before. Then we kept going into uncharted territory. Our first stop was Bugojno, where we ate some sandwiches that Boris’ mom had brought and had coffee. We walked through the town just to see what was there.

• The high school in Bugojno

• The view from downtown with one of the minarets

Bugojno was an interesting place. I could tell we were entering an area with a more colorful cultural mix. You could see some churches in town, but mainly there were mosques. We ate our sandwiches and got drinks at the “Croatian House,” which I guess is for people of Croatian ethnicity only.

From Bugojno we drown on farther into the mountains. The road just kept going up. As you can see on my map above, I just had to draw a red line across from Bugojno to highway E73. What we were driving on after we left Bugojno was only a road in the technical sense. We hit a few places that weren’t even paved, and there were a few spots where the chunks of the road had slid down the side of the mountain. I would have liked to stop to take some pictures along that part of the highway, but there was really no place to stop. This road made the “Pig Trail” (AR Hwy 23) look like the Autobahn.

When we got to E73 it was under construction. The EU is building a road from Budapest to Sarajevo to help integrate Bosnia into the European economy and solve some of the bad economic problems in Bosnia. In the meantime, 20km/h is about as fast as you can go for a long stretch. Finally we made to Breza, and turned off onto an even worse road than the one from Bugojno. Again, I had to just mark the route with a red line because this road doesn’t show up on maps. It follows a beautiful stream up into the mountains where the road ends at VareÅ¡. Boris’ aunt had found an empty apartment for Boris and me to stay in. We dropped off our stuff, and then went to his aunt’s for dinner.

• The apartments near Boris’ apartment in VareÅ¡

On Tuesday, I could see the town itself was like a lot of other small towns in Bosnia and Croatia. Buildings are old looking, but not from age, but lack of maintenance. I think the apartments buildings there looked nicer than most just because they had tile roofs and wooden balconies. Most communist-built apartment complexes were high-rise lego-like block buildings. There they had at least taken the time to pay (or threaten) an architect. Some repairs to the town (sidewalks, roads, paint on the buildings, etc.), and it would look really nice. But it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

This video is from the spot where the people from VareÅ¡ drew their livelihood. The iron mine filled with water during the 90’s Balkan War because the workers stopped working the mine because they were just trying to survive. The water filling the mine has destabilized the sides of the mine, so the safest thing to do is to leave it full of water.

After looking at the mine, we went up into the mountains for lunch.

This restaurant (notice the little blue pools over to the right side of the building) serves trout. You can pick your side dishes, but you’re there to eat trout. I had two pan-seared trout, potatoes, and cabbage. After lunch, we kept going higher into the mountains to buy cheese.

The cows from this farm eat the flowers from these alpine meadows and drink from the springs that come up all around. The cheese that the farmer makes is really tasty and very light. I bought two whole cheeses to take back to Split.

Back in town, you could still see the agriculture that has remained even as the mine and industrialism has left this town.

What is strange about Bosnia is that I can’t tell the difference between a Croatian, a Serb, and Muslim just by looking at them - but they can. All three groups are represented in VareÅ¡, and it’s interesting to see how closely they live to each other.

The yellow building is the Roman Catholic church and the church across the street is the Serbian Orthodox church. If I had a just a bit of a wider angle lens, I could have included the minaret from the mosque in this same picture. This area really is an intersection of several different cultures. It makes it a really interesting place to visit.

On to Sarajevo in my next post.