Hearts did the neccessary, keeping the 2-0 home advantage without converting any of the few chances they had. It was getting colder with the welcome warmth of Split a fairly distant memory. I met up with Tom, a sixtysomething Scot and his young son Robert, who had taken a coach from Edinburgh for the game, We were surrounded by loyal, if slightly barmy Hearts fans, who regaled us with such classic ditties as "My Old Man, said become a Hibs fan, I said f*** off, b******s, you're a c***". Well I wasn't really expecting Rabbie Burns...
A quiet walk through the old town before I headed back to bed. There's something magical about Sarajevo. The dead may line the hillsides but their spirits linger on.
The bridge is being "rehabilitated" as the signs say, and it will link the two sides of the old town; the
The towers at either side of the bridge are still decapitated skeletons, and there is much to reanimate in the architecture of the old town. And yet...as in Sarajevo, there is a feeling that the place is getting on its feet again. It helps that I have left yesterday's rain back in Sarajevo, and today was a warm, if rather breezy day.
It was a beautiful drive down throught the mountains of Herzegovina, although the motion of the bus kept making me nodd off- I woke up at every stop to ask an elderly beret-clad Bosnian sitting in front of me "Mostar?", but the name of another town that sounded familiar from the war was the usual response.
The former front line of the city was eerily quiet, although in places buildings proclaimed their refurbishment courtesy of one country or another. Many, however, remained untouched since the end of the fighting. A short wlk into the Croat- dominated part of Mostar however, now reveals a bustling tree-lined grid of shops and cafes topped by modern, soulless apartment blocks, which away from the historic centre escaped largely unscathed.
Tragedies in Bosnia-Herzegovina are indeed manifold, but here, as in Sarajevo, there is still a street named after Marshall Tito, which tells us something, don't you think?
right: artwork on a building expresses the hope the new bridge will heal the divide
Dubrovnik, Croatia