"Mostar, City of Life" a Mostar Travel Page by RockTadgers

Mostar lies three hours inland by coach from the seductive tourist trap of Dubrovnik, across the border into mountainous Bosnia-Herzegovina. Both cities suffered devastating sieges a decade ago, but since then, their fates have been so different.

Dubrovnik basks on the Adriatic coast, smug as only a chic tourist haven can be. After the war, the world fell over itself restoring the city to it's former glory. Tourists soon flooded back into the country.

The people of Mostar have only recently been able to re-open their famous old bridge. A marvel of medieval ingenuity, it was senselessly blown up in 1993. The country had a day of mourning - the bridge symbolised the harmony between volatile religions - the Catholics on one bank, the Muslims on the other.

Guidebooks warn of the half a million still unexploded landmines scattered around the country, and the prospect of crossing over the border into what people generally percieve as a warzone can be daunting.

I'm glad we did. Mostar left me with so many indelible images, more than a whole week in Dubrovnik. Apart from the bridge, the rest of the city looks post-apocalyptic. For every renovated building, there are two or three bombed out shells. There are bullet holes in every wall, windows framing sky, palm fronds where curtains should be. Even in the very center, where the coach drops you, there are trees growing through the missing roofs and windows of public buildings.

But here is the paradox - although Dubrovnik has been so lovingly restored, it has no life to it. It feels like a museum, a ghost town. It's difficult to find anything genuinely Croatian within the walls of Dubrovnik's old town. Sure, it throngs with life, but it's imported life - the tourists.

By contrast, Mostar is vivid, overpowering, and more dramatic. It looks straight from the pages of Tolkien, nestling between stormcloud grey mountains, piled up either side of the fast-flowing, jade green Neretva river. It would be stunning even without the scars of war.

The feeling of the place is exuberant. Near where the coach drops you, there is a small cemetary, dedicated to the young defenders of the city. Lads as young as twelve took up guns to defend Mostar during the siege. The feeling of the city seems to be - yes, some of our loved ones are dead, and we won't forget them, but we're very much alive.

Other images - a house that seemed perfectly fine, apart from one half of it simply wasn't there. An old lady shrouded in black, sitting on the step of a house that looked as if it would fall down if she slammed the door too hard. High rise panelaky, just like you'd see anywhere else in Eastern Europe, except completely raddled with bullet holes. Bullet holes everywhere, millions of bullet holes - how the hell did anyone survive with so many bullets flying around?

The sounds. Within a few minutes of each other, you'll hear the wail of the minarets on the muslim side, followed by the peal of church bells on the Catholic side. Chatter on the streets and roadside cafes. Several bars situated around a little square revving up for the night ahead, trying to outblast each other with music. A city of the dead outsung by the living.

Vivid colours - people always expect places of tragedy to be cold and grey. Red painted buildings, the deepest blue sky, the jade of the river. Even the mountains look the brightest grey you could imagine. It makes you realise, unless you hadn't already, that the day you die could be the most perfect you've experienced - and of course, bombs still fall and guns still fire even when the sun shines brightly.

Add to all this the added danger of stepping off a path and onto one of those half-million landmines, and you've got some idea of the sensory overload that is a sad, exhilarating, beautiful, enigmatic trip to Bosnia.

I don't regret seeing those tales of woe scattered across the Bosnian mountains. A piece of my heart remains in Mostar, because the people who suffered it were those walking around me, and they were smiling through it.