Mostar - Religious Sites and Lunch at the Lido

I don't do well in extreme heat. Or any heat really. In fact, I do so poorly in what normal humans refer to as "beautiful weather", I break out into hives when exposed to direct sunlight.

It's possible that I am a Vampire. 

So of course, on the day we are to scour an entire city for religious sites as part of our assignment, golden rays of "beautiful" sunshine rained down upon us all day long, turning my generally delicate self into a sweating, sunburned, nauseated mess. 

I would have also been itchy and covered in hives, however when we were in Slovakia, after almost going crazy from itchiness, I went and spoke to the pharmacist at Tesco and he gave me some super strength SPF100 sunscreen that has been combatting the hives pretty well! I mean, it's so thick that when I put it on my already pale skin I go a bit blue/translucent, but I'll take that over itching like a fiend any day!

LOVING this heat.

There was a fairly large group of us that went around together today - Ashley, Eleonore, Savannah, Ashnola and myself - and we found 15 religious sites before the hot weather eventually broke us and we went in search of a shade, cool drinks, and delicious foods.

By the time we decided that we could no longer trek through the hot dusty streets, we were fairly close to the Stari Most Bridge and we ended up finding this lovely restaurant called the Lido where we parked under an umbrella on the patio. The proprietor of this place brought us our drinks and after a few pleasantries, Savannah commented on his excellent english. To our great surprise he said that in 1994, before the war had ended, he escaped to Canada, where he lived in Calgary for 8 years driving a taxi. We, of course, exclaimed our delight that he had been to our home country!

Lunch at the Lido.

Throughout our lunch, as he brought us our food and replenished our drinks, we asked him a multitude of questions about what he thought of Calgary, how did he end up there, was he happy to be back in Mostar etc.

I will never forget listening to him speak his answers, because he was very forthcoming about everything - how, though he was happy to be home, it's bittersweet because the Bosnian people still don't trust each other and until they learned to trust, nothing will ever be truly fixed.

He said all of this standing in front of an old brick wall covered in bullet holes.

I know I've talked about the bullet holes a lot so far, but I have never seen one before in my life and now they are everywhere. And to hear a man talk about what it was like when these holes were made was just so unbelievably real. He was very calm as he spoke, like even though he was talking about what it was like when the Old Bridge was destroyed, it was just another thing that happened and things are a bit better now so that's alright.

It was one of those "holy shit" moments where you really feel someplace else. The weight of how far from home you are settles over you like a heavy blanket and all of a sudden your vision is hyper focused and you are taking in all the details of what is happening around you and you just know you will remember everything about this moment for the rest of your life.

So far our time in Mostar has been incredible - walking around looking for religious sites has given us the opportunity to go to parts of the city that, if we were just here in a tourist capacity, we probably wouldn't go. Though, we are spending quite a lot of time in the bazaar and the surrounding areas around the Stari Most, but still I think that these assignments are having their intended effect: getting us out of our comfort zone, sending us places we might not think to go, and interacting with the people who live here.

We still have two more days in Mostar before we move on to Montenegro, and I look forward to spending more time in this beautiful city.