Our laundry showed up this morning, smelling fresh and nicely folded for 10M ($6- what a deal). Tomatoes, cheese, olives, melons and traditional sausage in a flakey pastry for breakfast, then we were off. We have decided to take the shorter, seven hour bus ride, rather than spend 12 hours on the train. Almost got on the wrong bus. We are going to Zagreb. The wrong bus said Sarajevo. Our bus says no destination. Sometimes this is really confusing, and I just have to figure they pointed us the right way.
Just out of Mostar we ride alongside a long green lake with the white mountains, now starting to green up a little, plunging down.
Now we are deeper in the mountains (town name Jablanicka, pretty area, nice town, less shot up buildings) and the canyon walls steepen and are covered with pine trees perhaps 50 feet tall, interspersed with something like oaks. Little cabins by the lake, woodpiles, layers of steep jagged (but not exceptionally tall) mountains fade one behind the other. We climb up the canyon wall, no guard rail, just scattered stone walls for the bus to flip over. Over the pass, the little town that used to be here is 90% destroyed and abandoned, maybe five restored homes are occupied.
The mountains are gentler, totally green, small farms with tall, skinny haystacks held in shape with sticks; cute isolated Bavarian style mountain homes, then a village half empty with a newer graveyard filled with not-yet-faded headstones.
Cute alpine town in the valley, all red roofed with a little mosque in the center. Another pretty mountain town, all fresh homes, red roofs, like in the French alps except for the white graves gathered around the mosque, and on the other side of town a little church protects its own flock of graves. More beautiful and very lush farms.
Up, up, way up and over a pass at Makljen where there is a nice chalet type restaurant-hotel, but also building skeletons. The view back down over the small towns in the broad bally a thousand feet below is fantastic. I bet this is where they set the guns up to shell them.
And this is the theme for the next four hours, winding along beautiful valleys and over passes, town to town, gorgeous countryside, but every town has between one-third to two-thirds of the houses abandoned, empty or ruined.
About an hour from the Croatian border the destruction was mostly gone and there were few abandoned houses.
When we started the trip at 9:00 the bus was fully loaded, riding on its springs and five people had to stand. But as we dropped people beside the road, or at the small towns, our number dwindled. Only three of us made the whole trip, the driver, and us. It was nice on the second half to have a whole row of seats to myself.
At 16:00, the scheduled arrival time in Zagreb, we still hadn't crossed the border and, on fact, took about a 20 minute break for snacks. This time we came to a real border crossing, our two passports were stamped out of BiH, then we drove up ten feet and they were collected and looked at, along with our luggage. A Bosnian or two was booted off the bus, their luggage thrown out... perhaps in retaliation for the Croats kicked out at the border two days ago? Do they keep score?
We are back in the Republic of Hrvatska (Croatia).
Moving in towards Zagreb, there are a lot of homes showing war damage, but no abandoned homes like in Bosnia. No more dramatic mountains, it is mostly flat, lake and rivers, lots of trees like cottonwoods. The towns get bigger.
So, we roll into Zagreb at 19:00, an eleven hour trip on breakfast alone. The upside is that the bus tickets were 43M, or about $22 USD for the full day's entertainment. We did get a great, scenic trip through rural Bosnia. So our bus trip, which we took to save five hours' time over the train trip, shaved a full hour off the trip. Wow.
I’d take the train next time. We could have eaten, walked the aisles and had a bathroom, so no worries about not drinking. This bus stuff is getting old.
We caught a taxi to our hotel, dropped bags and hit the town. Our hotel is small (three rooms) and nothing great. Wonder: it is ranked #14 of 25 in Zagreb. Uh... I don't think so. Dinner was mediocre at best but I ate every bite. Then we toured the city for a couple hours before grabbing a late night glass of wine and heading off to bed. The tram system here is really efficient so it it's snap to move around.