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COUNTRY GUIDE / 2 cities and places
Bosnia & Herzegovina.
A little closer.
8 discovery ideas · 0 sourced stories. Choose a place, explore its details and find an experience to try.
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Mostar
See the tekke built against the cliff at Blagaj
A dervish lodge from around 1520 stands with its back to a two hundred metre cliff, at the exact point where the Buna comes out of a cave mouth as a full river rather than a spring. The water is loud and cold enough to feel from the terrace. Photograph the house against the rock.
Watch a diver go off the Old Bridge
The diving club here has been going since 1664 and you cannot join it without jumping once. It is twenty-four metres down into water that stays around ten degrees all summer, and the divers sit on the parapet collecting money until there is enough to make the jump worth it. Photograph the moment they leave the stone.
Find a coppersmith still hammering on Kujundziluk
The cobbled lane by the bridge is named after the coppersmiths, and a few of the workshops are still workshops rather than souvenir counters — you hear the hammer before you find the door. Ask to watch a piece being raised. Photograph the work in progress, not the finished shelf.
Visit Mostar Old Bridge
Built in 1566, destroyed in 1993, rebuilt in 2004 from the same quarry using the old techniques — original pieces recovered from the river went back in. Local young men still dive twenty-four metres from it. Photograph the bridge from river level.
Sarajevo
Walk the tunnel under the runway
During the siege the only way in or out of the city was a metre-wide tunnel dug by hand under the airport runway. A preserved section runs from the house where it surfaced. Photograph the tunnel mouth.
Stand on the line where two empires meet
A line is set into the pavement of Ferhadija street: on one side the Ottoman bazaar, low and wooden; on the other, Austro-Hungarian apartment blocks. Turn on the spot and the city changes century. Photograph both directions.
Stand at the corner where 1914 began
The Latin Bridge crossing is where the archduke's car took a wrong turn and stopped, and the shot fired at that corner started the First World War. It is an ordinary street corner. Photograph it.
Drink Bosnian coffee the long way
It comes as a tray, not a cup: the copper džezva, an empty fincan, a cube of sugar to hold in your teeth and a piece of rahat lokum. You pour it yourself and it is meant to take an hour. Photograph the tray.