Belgrade, Serbia AND Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina

From Budapest we took a train to Belgrade, Serbia – this was not part of the original plan but it would’ve been too far to travel to Bosnia in 1 day. It ended up working out superb though as we really enjoyed Belgrade. It’s a really nice city, quite modern and plenty of parks. On the other hand we also saw bomb sites from the last fighting in 1996, this was really scary to see, it’s just completely munted buildings in the middle of busy streets and bullet holes everywhere, we had never seen any evidence of war before so it was pretty major for us. We also saw slums on the outskirts.

We took a bus from Belgrade to Sarajevo, Bosnia and then a train to Mostar. This was probably my favourite stop of the trip. We stayed in a fantastic hostel (Majda’s Rooms) which is actually based in a family’s apartment, run by a brother and sister (in their mid-30’s) and their mum lives there too. The brother, Bata, took us and 3 others out on a van tour of surrounding areas, we left at 10:30 and didn’t get back ‘til 9pm, seriously it was amazing all the things we saw and did in a day, and he only charged €15 ea – this is VERY cheap. We had the opportunity to climb up inside a massive tall cross on top of a hill and see amazing views (I don’t do heights so stayed at the bottom!), we saw beautiful waterfalls, old ruins, bomb sites, fortress, landmine signage (scary), a monastery, and had an awesome Bosnian mixed grill for lunch in the most picturesque setting. I also did a 10min horse ride (ie a man lead me around the farm, haha) it went a lot better than the previous time I tried so I don’t hate horses as much now =)

The next day we had a couple of hours exploring the old town which is lovely. It’s quite touristy so a lot of small souvenir stores and restaurants, all in narrow cobblestoned streets. There’s also a graveyard in the middle of the old town which is very sad as all the gravestones are dated 1993 – which is when the war was on. Bata told us a few war stories - he had to hide in the basement and later managed to escape hidden in an ambulance and went to Switzerland (who happened to be taking refugees at the time) – where he lived for 10 years and had a really good life. The high school he attended is still a bombed out building today and you just walk down the street and always see bullet holes everywhere. You just can’t imagine having to go through something like that, 1996 was my first year of high school…not that long ago really…haha well sort of!