A little minivan picked up us and another group of four and shuttled us to the actual day bus, a full-size coach filled up with 50 tourists =/ We were hoping we'd get lucky and have less people for the day (we'd heard stories about only half-full buses and such) but no such luck for us. Apparently they were also running a French tour that day, which seemed slightly less crowded, but we were on the English one. Despite being bused with forty-eight other tourists, it turned out to be a pretty good day.
There were three stops on the way to Mostar.
1. For people to buy a snack and stretch their legs,
2. At the Bosnia and Herzegovina border so our passports could be examined by the border guards, and
3. At the small cute town of Pocitelj, where there were a few women (and one kid) holding baskets filled with cones of fresh [good-quality] fruits, dried fruits, and nuts.
We had two guides, one for the bus and another who took us around Mostar. Actually, we really appreciated the information; it's nice to have additional context to what you're seeing, and both guides were local residents, the bus guide being Croatian and the town guide being from an area near Mostar. On our way in, the Croatian bus guide told us many stories and a bit of Croatian history, but she said she would leave the story of the war for our way back.
Supposedly, of all the clashes during the split of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian War was the deadliest/bloodiest, and these traditionally-divided ethnicities are trying to co-exist peacefully in Mostar. Many buildings still had their unpatched bullet holes from the war. The strangest contrast was seeing these and other ruined buildings standing right across from (or next to) shiny, newly built ones.
Some older buildings...
The town itself is still relatively poor and the many beggars are a fact of life here. Our tour guide frequently greeted them and sometimes chatted with them as she passed them. This exchange was then followed by the rest of us passing them and them switching roles from friendly chatty local to beggar asking for money. It sometimes felt sort of odd.
After the few hours walking tour with our guide, we had an hour and a half to ourselves. K and I ate a really yummy cevapi (meatball-like things inside a pita-shaped fluffy bread) and explored a bit more. Aside from the ruined buildings, the next saddest sight was probably the cemetery. Everywhere we looked, we saw tombs with pictures of youths with a date of death in the early-to-mid 1990's, during the war.
Our bus tour guide told us her Croatian-biased story of the war, emphasizing the empire tendencies and wrongdoings of "big Serbia"/"bad Serbia". For someone so young (I think around our age), I was surprised by her statement that, "Of course we do business with Serbians but it will be at least twenty years or more before we can try to be friends." Regardless of how it looks on the surface, there are still many deep-rooted feelings resulting from the war.
After the big bus, we got picked up by our minivan driver from the morning to bring us back to the Old Town. The other group of four also got picked up. We were surprised because it was evident that only one of the group spoke some English, but they all attended the English tour. We ended up chatting with them for a bit after getting back to the old town. It turns out they were on the English tour because they're leaving tomorrow and weren't able to hit a day when a Spanish tour would be available (they're from Barcelona). They got a kick out of me trying to revive my Spanish. The happy medium was them speaking Spanish to me (and me translating to K) and us speaking English to them -- both parties got the most complete thoughts across this way.
The old port at night...
