In high school, history class was when I daydreamed about summer. There were a lot of battles, laws, and misunderstandings, but overall, the subject never felt relevant to my life. Like rigorous proofs of calculus, I didn’t think most of material would ever have any place in my adult life; however, history takes on a whole new meaning when you are standing in the middle of it.
During my trip to Eastern Europe, I took a day to visit the town of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The streets in Mostar were crowded with vendors selling Turkish coffee pots with copper bases and long handles. Hand-woven scarves and clothes lined the shops in cobalt blues, burnt reds, and sandy yellows. Aromas of the Bosnian food, rich in veal, lamb, and grilled vegetables, reflected the years of Turkish influence in the city. Unlike Croatia and Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina is sincerely a product of Ottoman rule.
But not everyone in Mostar agrees on what exactly the culture is today. While most people speak the same language, the mix of Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats who now live in the city creates more than a diversity of origin. The respectively Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic religions of the three distinct groups of people have established a complicated organization to Mostar, one that is almost incomprehensible to an American like me. My guide told us that the Serb and Bosniak neighborhoods in Mostar, the east and west, were practically divided by a long road. And while I did not see any tension between the different peoples while I was there, I know it must exist.
As I stood on the Mostar Bridge, the city’s most famous attraction, I could not help but feel I was standing on a turning point in a country’s history. The Ottoman bridge was destroyed by war violence in 1993, when the conflict between genetic groups and geographical organizations was at an all-time high. Even though Mostar is still home to several of these groups, the bridge was rebuilt as a symbol of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s pledge to move beyond the differences.