If you don't jump, you are not... Bosnian?

Some jump with their legs crosses, some jump on their heads, others jump in pairs, or in groups of three, so they can luckily climb back on the shore by the cliffs, so they can receive their gifts from the viziers and rulers.

Evliya Çelebi, Ottoman explorer, XVII. Century

 

 

I visited Mostar a few times… Actually, so many times that I actually forgot what year my first visit was, but I think it was somewhere around my years in university in Yugoslavia and its times of “brotherhood and unity”. I remember the tatted rocks on the famously impressive Stari most (literally meaning old bridge), the small stands around it and the taste of baklava with a strong coffee to accompany them – the real coffee, we call “Turkish” coffee, and in Turkey just plain coffee.  Well, I actually remember my visit to Stari most a few years later all too better, just a few days after the Croatian independency showdown shootings, where the bridge itself collapse into the river flowing beneath. In those times I travelled the poor Bosnian lands with my trusty Golf II, which was known for its better times then, where I bought it from the company TAS in Vogošća, not too far away from Sarajevo, and I bought it then with pride. I can also clearly remember the last road sign at the Metkovič road, where there was clearly written: “Caution! You are entering a combat zone, where civil laws are no longer valid!” But I still entered and somehow managed to get through to the Muslim part of Mostar, the part of the town which suffered the most in the independence wars. The suffering, which I carried from then on, be it conscious or unconscious, is like a heavy suitcase, which nobody wants to carry around with him. But, that’s the way it goes…

 

 

My last visit to Mostar, in the middle of summer, was more pleasant, because I saw some of my old friends and colleagues from those times, but luckily in completely different circumstances. For the first time I also made my way to the new Stari most, which will wait there for another 100 years to come, when they will finally be able to rebuild it to its once know formal glory it had years before the collapse of the original one. But that is not so important… just as long as it will stand for at least another 451 years, as the old version stood before, and as long as we “learn” something from this story, enough to not let something like that ever happen again…

 

 

So, why did I actually return to Mostar? A few days ago we concluded our gathering of the group rescue mission from the sewers, called Buna 2017, which was organized in collaboration with Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a member of the ETP, the special unit for technical diving, I took part in that and also took some photos along the way, which are now displayed before you. Some of them are from 25 years ago, some of them from now… I myself see the difference all too clearly, but this helps me carry around one or 2 of my many heavy suitcases I have to bear.