Note: Last week I cut my trip short and returned to Canada because of the coronavirus pandemic. The story of how that came about can be found here. This is the travelogue covering my final week overseas.
I knew Dubrovnik was going to be something special before I even got off the bus. I arrived at night, and most of the trip from the airport was in near pitch darkness. Then the bus took a turn, and suddenly we were passing under ancient buttresses. They glowed in the spotlights, creating a tunnel back in time.
I got off the bus and entered the Old City, crossing what had been an honest-to-goodness drawbridge over a moat, now transformed into a stone bridge over a park. The polished stone streets were deserted but brightly lit, gleaming in the night. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The city continued to amaze in the following days. I walked along the centuries-old stone walls forming a line between the brilliant turquoise sea and the copper-red roofs of the town, basked in the sun on the ragged rocks by the water, and climbed the hills surrounding to look out at the mountainous coast disappearing into the distance. The whole time I was almost completely alone.
I’m told that the big issue with Dubrovnik these days is that it’s becoming over-touristed, with cruise ships emptying swarms of people into the old city to fill the streets and drive up the prices. Which makes it particularly special that I had such a solitary experience of the place, thanks in part to it being mid-March but also, I suspect, due to the coronavirus scare starting to heat up. But more on that later.
After three days in Dubrovnik, I headed inland to Bosnia. One of the things I’ve learned on this trip is that when other travellers recommend a place, you should definitely make the time to visit it. So when a couple of backpackers in my hostel recommended making a stop in Bosnia at Mostar on the way to Sarajevo, I added it to my itinerary.
A funny thing about entering the Balkans through Dubrovnik is that it makes it very easy to forget how recently the region was torn apart by war. The influx of tourists may spoil the city’s atmosphere, but their money has washed away almost every trace of the tragedies in and around the area. Only two scars from the war remain: a Napoleonic fortress on the hill overlooking the city, and the abandoned Hotel Belvedere. The first has been converted into a museum, with a cable car station and scenic restaurant right next door, and the second was sold in 2014 to a Russian billionaire and will be rebuilt as a seaside resort.
Mostar, by contrast, feels like barely-healed scar tissue. Most of the houses have been rebuilt (in a grungy, post-Soviet style that doesn’t look as new as you’d expect) but every so often you walk past a ruined building that stands out like a broken tooth, the overgrown plants not quite hiding the bullet holes.
The ruins are a symptom of the country’s continuing divisions. In video games and sometimes movies, a destroyed structure disappears down to its foundations, creating a clear spot of land to be used for something else. In real life, buildings are a lot sturdier. After the conflict ends, someone has to tear it down before they can build something else on it. As our walking tour guide explained, many of the ruined buildings in Mostar are still standing because the local politicians can’t decide which ethnic group the unused land should go to. So the buildings continue to decay as they argue, stuck somewhere between the past and the future.
After Mostar I caught the train to Sarajevo, which was a very Bosnian experience. We waited in a run-down Soviet-looking train station for a train that turned out to be almost brand new, on par with commuter trains in France or Japan. Bosnian pop-rock played quietly over the speakers as we weaved through the mountains, past lakes and through tunnels until we arrived at Sarajevo’s similarly run-down and deserted train station.
Like Dubrovnik, money has buffed out much of the war damage in Sarajevo, although a ruined Austro-Hungarian mansion still prominently overlooks the city and memorials and museums are quietly scattered throughout. I don’t know how much of the old town survived the wars, but it certainly looks like people could have been walking the same alleys in Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman times, and there are plenty of options for bars and lounges at very cheap prices.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a chance to explore the city. The coronavirus response worldwide had started to accelerate when I arrived, and suddenly my main priority was getting back to Canada before too many borders and airports closed. But that’s a topic for another post.
And so I’m back in Canada – but I’m not done with Sarajevo, or the Balkans. Someday after the pandemic has abated and travel restrictions loosen I plan to pick up where I left off, moving north through the Balkans and deeper into Europe.
For now, though, this adventure is at an end. It lasted 3 months and 20 days and took me through 24 cities in 8 countries. I’m still figuring out what happens next – helpfully, I have 14 days of self-isolation to think about it – but it’s been the trip of a lifetime. No regrets.
Harmon Moon 