First night in Mostar. I was being a nice guest, just cooking to
my host and going out to a bar to dance in a kind of mainstream club in the
city. Place where there were smoky everywhere that I felt like to light out a
cigarette.
Cheap drinks, more cigarettes, some lights with
different colors bighting in our face and the grave of the speaker making our
skin vibrate. That's this kind of cool moment that even not being sober, we
were sure that we had a great time there. This was the moment that we could
feel the energy of each other and then starting to feel this great connection
between us.
Despite not having solid memories from some
details this night by the alcohol effect, as I said before, my first
experiences in Mostar made me want to be there for longer.
Ana accepted my re-request and even having
guests for the day after, she found out a space for me over there :)
There were going to start my second day. Ana
went to work and I just decided to walk around the city, this time going to the
old town, place that I didn't pass in the day before. In the way I could see
dozens building with this whole from bullets, but when I just arrived in the
old town. This was a completely different city with an impressive Islamic
architecture and by the first time I saw how a Mosque looks like from the
outside.
This is what makes Mostar special for me, the contrast
between the scars from a recent war and a medieval Islamic city. Something that
I've never seen in my life, this deep mixture where you could see a sad past,
but at the same time a past that show culture and history. That was what I
could see in my eyes walking around the old town, where there are so many bars,
restaurants and other shops, most of them having this medieval Islamic
architecture. So far where I've traveled around Europe normally the
architecture of cities has strong influence from the Roman Empire. In Brazil,
our oldest constructions have around 500 years old, when the Portuguese started
the period of colonization. The time when they sat down and decided to build
houses and churches.
In Brazil our old towns have the same
similarities. Small houses built next to each other with couple churches
around. I've been in the old town of Ouro Preto, Salvador (my hometown) and
Olinda. They share the same similarity of architecture that I could see in
Lisbon, at least for me in "Bairro Alto". The translation of the name
is about where the neighborhood is. "Bairro Alto" is located in a
hill around the city center. All of these three Brazilian cities that I
mentioned are really similar with our colonizer ones. They just reproduced
their way of architecture and construction in Brazil. Our native people were
nomads and they used to build houses that they wouldn't live there for longer
once that would move often. Unfortunately their houses wouldn't survive after
years of inclement weather and now we can't see any millenarian
construction. The new world, Brazil has just a little bit more than half
thousand years old and everything from before was destroyed.
Once I just traveled in Brazil, Europe and the
USA, the architectures had a line of similarities in these places. Most of the
times traveling in Europe I could just see the Roman style. The old part of the
USA would be similar with the British one, colonizer country.
In this moment in Mostar I just felt myself
being in another world. A city that was part of the Roman Empire, but occupied
by the Ottoman more than 500 years ago and by the first time I could see an
Islamic atmosphere in my life. The same feeling that I had when I visited the
Turkish Part of Cyprus recently. I was really fascinated with small Turkey
located in Bosnia. I really hope to have the chance to travel to Turkey soon,
their culture, their food, their energy and colors really inspire me. I'm sure
that I could learn a lot, traveling there and seeing a different architecture,
seeing a different world.
As I said in the beginning Mostar was magic
because had the mix with Islamic historic and Bosnian War. These are different
background in fact met each other in a moment of the historic. Basically Mostar
have these two parts, old one and the modern one. Both of them were affected by
the war. The city was destroyed and a relevant construction destroyed was
the Stari Most, also called as Old Bridge. This was a bridge for
pedestrians built by the Ottoman over 500 years ago. The bridge was considered
that time as one of the greatest construction in the Ottoman occupation in the
Balkans. Yep, as the city, the bridge was destroyed, erasing some ways that we
can remember visually the past.
After the Bosnian war in 1995 the European Union
was monitoring the city. About $15 Million dollars was donate by Spain, USA,
Turkey, Italy, The Netherlands and Croatia, just for the restoration of the old
town.
I could see this old area, just for this reason,
they restored it after the war and all of scars that I could see in the around
were closed with grout and painting, making they forget partially the recent
past. Do you remember the picture Old Bridge that you saw in the beginning of
this chapter? I'm going to show how it changed over time, before, during and
after the war.
I had the feeling that Mostar is a city with
completely different cities inside, but now I have the feeling that Mostar is
city with different faces and your perspective of environment is constantly
changing, but in the ending Mostar is just a unique city, a magic city.
References:
https://www.cyclingabout.com/a-mostly-missing-menagerie-about-mostar/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stari_Most
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar
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