I was in Sarajevo for about two weeks. Durning that time she slowly revealed parts of herself to me (as I related here and here…read them to understand why I refer to the city as a woman.) As the second week was winding down I knew it was time to move on but I felt a longing to stay. To have another date. To explore more. To sit at a table in the corner of the caravanserai with atray of the ubiquitous bosnian coffee and the ritual to accompany it.

To be. To watch. To melt into a chair at Zlatna Ribica (Gold Fish) with a mug of thick creamy hot chocolate and listen to the intense conversations of the men and the animated conversations of the women, understanding about every 5th word and inserting my own narration for the rest

I am not glamorizing Sarajevo. That is really not possible. Spend one night with her and you will begin to see some of her issues. Say about midnight or 1 am, after you come in from a bar, restaurant or cafe and want to take a shower towash off the film of cigarette smoke. (Nearly everyone in the Balkans smokes…all the time.) Then you remember there is no water. It gets completely shut off every night from midnight to 5am. With no solid explanation why. It just is…like so many things in Sarajevo.

But even with her quirks, she is charming. Wounded but alluring.

Like a novel length book of poetry or volume of greek myths, she is saga, legend and treatise.

So then if Sarajevo is epic then Mostar is tragic.

I was scheduled to stay in Mostar for 4 or 5 days and ended up staying barely 3. From my first moments in town I could feel the energy was different. Unsettled. Unsettling. Unnerving. Half a dozen kids, some barely old enough to walk were begging at the train station. Insistent, beligerant, angry.

And, the destruction.

Mostar suffered major damage during the war and much of it is still visible. Sarajevo has managed to at least pick up some of the pieces, slap on a coat of paint and patch up some of the bullet and mortar holes. In Mostar the past is still very much present.

I took a walking tour led by Miran, the owner of the hostel where I was staying. He was barely in his teens when the fighting started and he may as well have been in his 40’s when it stopped … 3 years later … with all he had seen…and lost. He showed us his town and shared his story.

People in Bosnia relate to time in stages. Before the war. During the war. After the war.

Miran talked of all 3. How Mostar was a nice place to live. There was work and food and culture. He shared the idilic monumentalized memories of childhood, the streets where he played soccer with his brother and cousins, the rocks where he jumped off to go swiming in the river, a house where his friend lived. That house is now a pile of rubble and his friend is burried in a graveyard in a park in the center of town. He spoke of how now the city is not just divided but fractured.

The war was initially between the Bosnians and the Serbian controled Yugoslav Army, but by the end of the conflict alliances had changed, fronts shifted and forces from Croatia were the enemy. I am no historian and I do not purport to understand the nuances. I do know that without a doubt, everybody lost. An extraordinary number of lives, countless buildings, even the accumulated ephemera of history was destroyed.

It is as clear and simple as the river that runs through the center of the town. Regardless of the labels or names attached to the sides, it’s basically the Bosniaks to the east and the Croats to the west.

Much restoration has been undertaken in the parts of town nestled around Stari Most (Old Bridge). But venture outside the tight cordon of tourist sights and you’ll lose count of the number of bullet holes, mortar impact craters and destroyed monuments. People still live in buildings that in Western Europe or the US would be condemned. They carve out existence where none should have to.

There is a fierceness here different from what I felt in Sarajevo. Not better or worse. Not stronger or more compelling. Just different. Unsettleingly palpably different.