Moving to Mostar (Temporarily)

A very early start for Sarah. I was up at 5:15 am and she was up at 5:45 am. It’s moving day again. The Uber picked us up at 6:30 and we head to the bus station in Split.

There are about 10 buses lined up, so best we get the right one. Ours is going to Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you’d heard of Mostar before this, well done — we hadn’t. Of course, we’d heard of Sarajevo (Winter Olympics) and Bosnia because of the wars.

Why are we going to Mostar?

To see a bridge! 😂

No seriously — that is the reason. It better be a really good bridge!

But also to visit a smaller city in a new country. We were so close, it seemed silly not to come for a few nights. Plus, it’s two non-Schengen days.

The bus hugs the coastline for the first hour or so — very pretty coastal towns. The roads are narrow. I’m glad I’m not driving the bus. It’s really windy today, which knocks the bus around a bit, and there are lots of whitecaps on the sea. Thankfully, we have air-conditioning that works, so we settle in comfortably to enjoy the views out the window.

There’s a border stop around halfway and passport control takes about 45 minutes. Bosnia and Herzegovina isn’t part of Schengen. Sarah is happy — at least one more stamp in her passport. The bus stopped at the Croatian side, then left… minus one woman! It stopped again on the BH side, and she eventually caught back up.

The total trip is supposed to be about 4 hours and 40 minutes, but that depends on how long border control takes. Our bus was only half full, so maybe we got through quickly?

In one of the Bosnian towns, we saw a shop called Kiwi Sport! Lots of vineyards in the countryside. About 40 minutes before we reach Mostar, we stop at a bus terminal and have to change buses — not sure why. 🤔 Then, not far down the road in a town, we have a 10-minute stop. Might as well have kept going! The joys of not driving a rental car. 😀

We get into Mostar about 20 minutes later than scheduled — 12:30 pm. Not too bad. It’s 1.6 km to our accommodation. There’s a big shopping mall about halfway, so we decide to walk and split up the trip with a break at the mall. It’s 31°C. It ends up being 900 m to the mall — quite doable. We find a seat and order a Coke Zero. The currency here isn’t the Euro — it’s the Convertible Mark (KM) — but the waiter lets us pay in Euro and gives us a mixture of Euro and KM in change. The FX conversion for the Mark is easy — it’s basically 1:1 with NZD.

Cooled and refreshed, we continue our walk, crossing the city river — but not the bridge yet. Gosh, the river is super pretty.

The apartment is a two-bedroom, so we have a room each. 😜 It also comes with four complimentary cans of cold beer in the fridge. 👍 We have three cans remaining!

We head to the supermarket to stock up. The closest one, 550 m away, is closed — on a Saturday!? And it’s closed tomorrow too. So we hike back to the mall, as there’s a big supermarket there and it’s open. But only today — it’s closed tomorrow! Welcome to the 1980s. Honestly, it’s actually a refreshingly good idea, but I’m guessing there’s no going back in NZ now.

Quite a shopping list this time, given the shops are closed tomorrow and we’re starting from zero supplies. Chicken was $13.85/kg and mince $19.95/kg — very similar to home. The mince was minced freshly on demand for us as we only wanted 400g and the prepacked ones were 700g. You don't get that service at home. Many other items are similar priced to home too. Still very hard to find a decent lettuce in any of the stores so far — lots of limp examples. We got a hydroponic one that didn’t look too bad for $2.10. Total spend: $46. The supermarket dockets make for interesting reading here. See if you can translate any of this.

Back at the apartment, I dialed up the Austrian GP qualifying session. Spoiler alert: Lawson doing well. 🎉 Funnily enough, a grass fire broke out on the trackside. Damn hot and dry everywhere in Europe. I always think of Austria as being wet and green all the time.

Dinner was nice. Chicken with a kebab spice added by us, potatoes, lettuce salad, and an egg. Pretty good with only two elements and no microwave. After dinner we finalised and booked our next accommodation stop.  The bus was booked while sitting on today's bus. Later in the evening we walked our local block and grabbed an ice cream for dessert.