War, Reconstruction, and Ice Cream

Peach ice cream - the best!

I'm totally going to ping-pong around in my locations as I blog about last summer -- no need to go in chronological order, as far as I'm concerned.

I ended last time with ice cream, and I'm going to pick up the ice cream theme again, with the place I had the best ice cream. I ate a lot of pretty great ice cream, but the absolute most incredible was the fresh peach ice cream that I ate in the town of Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After I tried it I stopped trying other flavors and vendors, and just came back every day for more. Ronan was a convert, too.

Mostar was a late add to my travel list; I wasn't sure if it was going to work out, because it's a bit off the beaten path. I'd committed to travel to Croatia with a friend, but she could only stay about a week, and I had an extra week to figure out before I wanted to head back to Spain, so I doodled around online looking at accommodations, and trying to figure out whether I could afford to go to Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is definitely a popular summer tourist destination, and prices reflect it (but more on that later.) So I'd had Mostar on my list of places I'd eventually like to visit, and the more I looked at the map, the more I realized it wasn't really all that far from Split. So I doodled around looking at some more accommodations, and I found a homestay that looked reasonable. I looked at the price, and it was $50-something. My first thought: $50-something per night? (I'd been looking at places in Dubrovnik, so that looked cheap.) No, $50-something total. For 5 nights. I blinked. How was it possible? Well, they weren't charging me for Ronan, so that was part of it. But seriously? I looked at the reviews - was this a dump? No, the reviews were all good, and there were enough reviews that it probably was legit. So I gambled, and made the reservation.

As it turned out, Guesthouse A&O was a fantastic place to stay. The host kindly came and picked us up at the bus station, even though our bus was over an hour late, and it was probably after 10pm by the time we arrived. She was kind and helpful, she invited Ronan to play with her young children, and she dropped us back off at the bus station when we were heading out at the end of the week. Her house was clean and well-appointed -- our room had air conditioning (which was absolutely essential), a private bathroom with a washing machine, and access to a shared kitchenette and a balcony to enjoy the view (and dry our clothes.)

Mostar had been on my list for a while because I'd seen an article about its old bridge (that's where the name comes from: "stari most" is "old bridge" in Bosnian.) The bridge is a gorgeous arc over a blue-green river, and the article that I'd read talked about people jumping off the bridge -- for fun -- and that there's competitions each year where people jump off the bridge. The bridge itself was built in the 16th century, during the Ottoman empire. It was completed in 1566 or 1567. It's a gorgeous arc over the river Neretva, and connects the two halves of the town.

One side of the town is predominantly Christian, and the other side is predominantly Muslim. We were staying on the Muslim side of town, on roads sometimes not found on Google Maps. Or if they were, their connections to each other were sometimes dubious. Mostar is a hilly city. The old part of town is down in a slightly flat area built up on either side of the river. The Muslim side of town very quickly climbs up a hill; there's another hill on the Christian side, but a little further off, and the flat part of the land (of course) follows the course of the Neretva river.

It was the first city I'd been to where I heard the call to prayer - they broadcast it from speakers at the top of the towers at the mosques. I took the opportunity to visit a mosque while we were there -- it was the first time I'd ever been in one. We climbed to the top of the tower and got a great view of the whole area.

You may or may not be aware of it, but there was a pretty awful war all over Bosnia and Herzegovina during the early 1990's. I wasn't really aware of it when it happened -- I was in high school and then starting college, and didn't pay a lot of attention to the news. It was also a part of the world I'd never thought about, so the abstraction of war was made more abstract by my total lack of connection to the area.

Among the many fatalities from that war was the Mostar bridge. Human lives are absolutely precious to me, and many of them were lost, too; but it made me incredibly sad to think of this beautiful span standing for 427 years, only to be destroyed by tank shells in 1993. But humans are pretty neat, as it happens. A bunch of UN groups and nearby nations contributed funds and engineers to rebuild the bridge using local materials, and using the traditional techniques that would have been used in the 16th century. There's a great museum about the bridge and its reconstruction, and if you get a chance to visit Mostar, you should go.

We were up the hill about a kilometer from the old town, more or less straight up. OK, not really, but it always seemed like it on the way home, especially because it was 90+ F degrees out every day. It was hot in Mostar. Interestingly enough, the Neretva river was extremely cold. Sure, you say, it was cold. No, I mean it was cold. OK, I get it. No really. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, and we have the Pacific ocean nearby, and Puget Sound stays around 45 F year round and I sometimes stick my feet in both, and I'm telling you that the Neretva river was cold. When I read that online before we got there, I thought 'Yeah, cold for you, probably.' Nope. It's the kind of cold that makes your feet get numb after you've been standing in it for a little while. It's not the kind of cold that you get used to and decide, 'Oh, it's really not that bad' after a little while. Despite this, lots of people still jump into the river. Some even jump from the middle of the Mostar bridge. See, I'm not kidding:

I'm not going to be able to tell you everything about Mostar in this single post, so don't worry that you're missing something -- I'll tell you more specific stories later. This time, I'm just giving you an overview, so here's the overview "feel" that I want to convey. Mostar is this gorgeous mix of old and new, death and rebirth, Christian and Muslim, western and eastern, devastated by war, and yet friendly and energetic, and it has this poignancy that's hard to avoid. Most tourists only visit the old bridge, but there's a lot more to experience - as there is everywhere. We stayed five days, and I could happily have stayed longer.

My Crazy Summer

In this rainy, uncertain spring, I'm feeling more and more grateful for the crazy adventurous summer I had last year. It wasn't like I didn't feel grateful for it last summer -- I recognized even then how incredible it was, and was amazed that I was living it. But now I think it's even more important for me to cherish the adventure, reflect on it, and share it with my friends. 

For those who didn't tune in with me last summer, I spent two months traveling around Europe with my younger son, Ronan, and a couple of friends. Here's the overview: we started in Spain, in mid-June. One of my dance friends joined us for the first part of the adventure, since she'd never been to Europe before. After a few days in Madrid, we took the train to Oviedo, in Asturias, to check it out for a summer class that I still want to teach. I was hoping for this summer, but...maybe summer 2021 instead. While we were in the north, we took a short trip to Portugal, then returned to Oviedo. After a few more days, we flew to Vienna, Austria, but then we bussed directly to Bratislava, Slovakia. After a few days in Bratislava, we took the train to Budapest, Hungary, to visit some friends, and then continued by train to Szeged, Hungary, to see even more friends. We returned to Budapest briefly, then flew to Bologna, Italy, and took the train to Prato for a chemistry education conference. After that, we flew to Zagreb, Croatia, and met a friend there. After a few days, we took the train from Zagreb to Split. Our friend had to leave after a bit, but Ronan and I took a bus to Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From there we continued by bus to Dubrovnik, Croatia. At that point we flew back to northern Spain for another week, then back to Madrid to fly home to Seattle.

If that sounds exciting, it was! It was also exhausting - we visiting seven countries, and traveled through 10 including airport transfers. I admit that I was pretty done with airplanes by the time we got back! I really wish that the US had a good train system, though. I love trains. Anyway, I'm going to spend some time reflecting on my experiences as a way to honor how special they were. Looking at pictures of sunny beaches also helps me remember that the sun shines, and it gets hot out -- and will again pretty soon. I'm probably going to reflect on our adventures in random order, depending on what inspiration strikes. So let's get started!

Ronan at the MUJA sign

Probably one of the single most incredible experiences of the whole trip was when Ronan and I were in northern Spain, and we rented a car and went to MUJA -- the Jurassic Museum of Asturias. Or maybe Museum of Jurassic Asturias? It's both. It chronicles the discovery of dinosaur fossils found in Asturias -- the local area. Incredibly, there are a ton of dinosaur fossils in that area. The museum, while small, is nicely laid out, and quite fun. It has many displays with English as an option, but for others it's useful to have a little Spanish available to you. One of the displays showed "dinosaur beaches" - local beaches along the Asturian coast where it's possible to see dinosaur fossil footprints.  At low tide. If you're lucky. We had a car, so I looked at the maps, and realized that one of the dinosaur beaches was just down the hill from us. I had no idea what the tide level was just then, but figured it was worth a shot. 

I had confidently taken back roads on our drive to MUJA (they're more scenic, after all), so I managed to get myself slightly lost before we got to the museum. Consequently, it was already mid-afternoon when we got to the museum, and probably 5-ish by the time we arrived at the beach. 

View from the creek bridge at Playa la Griega, Asturias, Spain

It was clearly a popular beach - I had to circle around to find a parking spot, and eventually we parked on the grass where I hoped was a legal spot. From the car park we crossed a bridge over a creek flowing down to the ocean. The tide was already pretty far out, and (I figured out later) still going out. Perfect timing! It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the beach promised to be pretty special even if we didn't find dinosaur fossils. But at the end of the bridge, we found a helpful sign that looked encouraging.

Follow this path to dinosaur footprints!

The view back toward Playa la Griega, from the footpath.

We followed the indicated path, which skirted the east side of the sandy beach, and wound up a low hillside overlooking a mixed rocky/sandy beach. To the right (south) was a eucalyptus forest, with fern underbrush. 

Eucalyptus forest bordering the rocky/sandy beach.

It was mild and pretty much perfect weather out (as it was for most of the time we were in Asturias. Shhh -- don't tell anyone. If we don't tell anyone maybe it won't get too touristy and crowded.) We passed maybe one other couple on our way. We followed the path up and down for a little ways, and then came to an overlook. The overlook had an informational sign that pointed out various dinosaur footprint fossils that could be seen on the exposed rock just below, and there was a stair going down to the rock. You could just walk on the rock. With the dinosaur footprint fossils. I felt like I was doing something wrong - shouldn't there be guard rails? Shouldn't there be caution tape? Shouldn't there be something keeping people from damaging the artifacts? Maybe. Probably? But at the same time I didn't hold back. And from a certain perspective, what're you going to do? This is an open stretch of coastline, and the rocks are affected by the weather every day, every season. I went ahead and walked down onto the fossilized mud flat that held dinosaur footprints, and let myself bask in the incredible feeling of connecting with the distant past. 

Looking down from the overlook onto dinosaur footprints.

Visible fossils were from both sauropod (the giant, leaf-eating dinosaurs like diplodocus) and therapods (carnivorous dinosaurs.) Do you see the oval + crescent moon shape? Those are back foot (oval) + front foot (crescent moon) of a saurpod. I had no idea that their front foots were such an interesting shape! I had always imagined them rather like elephant feet, both front and back. These fossil footprints show a couple of different sizes of sauropod. Some prints were about the size of a basketball; others somewhat larger. Probably someone has identified what kind of sauropod left these footprints. 

Sauropod front and back footprint

Therapod footprints look pretty much like bird footprints. No surprise, right? I still find it incredible how recognizable that shape is. It looks like my chicken just left that footprint there - except that the footprint was quite a bit bigger -- probably bigger than my hand. Check it out -- just below Ronan's left hand in the photo. You can see its middle toe and the right toe, both with toenails. Pretty cool, right? So yeah, a lot bigger than a chicken -- probably something more ostrich-sized? Maybe a velociraptor? You can use your imagination. 

Therapod footprint next to the cute kid

I am amazed that what was probably a muddy riverbank millions of years ago could have something happen to preserve footprints. Maybe it was the last rainy day before a dry period, so the footprints had time to harden. And then maybe there was torrential rain that cause a landslide, burying the footprints with some other kind of dirt that didn't really mix with the dried mud underneath. And then...lots and lots and lots of time. Wow.

The art of wave-jumping was explored extensively.

We were having so much fun with dinosaurs, and the tide was perfect for tide pools, so we splashed around for a while. And then it was imperative that I teach Ronan wave-jumping. So pretty soon it worked out that we had spent the rest of the evening on the beach. After a while most of the other the beachgoers left, probably to go home and have dinner. We kept jumping waves, and enjoying the balmy water. A light overcast covered the sky, making the light misty and diffuse. We nibbled the snacks that I'd brought, and slowly meandered across the beach, jumping and kicking waves. Days are very long in Asturias in June. Closing in on 9pm I finally insisted that we make some progress toward our car (we were still an hour's drive from home.) We washed off our feet, and reluctantly put our shoes on. We bought chips and ice cream bars in the cafe next to the beach, and called that dinner. It was a pretty fabulous day. 

A healthy and nutritious dinner was had by all.