Thirteen Years Later...

Once a popular cafe. Chess games still occur here on a regular basis.
































































Sarajevska Bank
























Hotel Neretva, formerly the classiest hotel in Mostar.






















Formerly the elegant building of the third elementary school in Mostar.

A Poetic Coincidence

The cultural center where I work is on a street named after a poet, Aleksa Santica Street.

The building where I attend church, I discovered recently, is the birth house of this same poet.

Thus the two places where I spend the most time in Mostar are connected by this same thread...

Plaque (note war damage) indicating that this building is the poet's birthplace...

Old photos of the poet (inside the building) on either side of a painting of the Old Bridge in Mostar.

Aleksa Santica (1868-1924) is a much-beloved poet from Mostar, whose most famous love poem, "Emina",became the lyrics of a popular song in the sevdalinka style, which is still sung wherever and whenever homemade brandy is consumed. The poem describes his love for the beautiful Emina, as he watched her watering the flowers in her garden. They were from different religious traditions-- she was Muslim and he Serbian Orthodox--and the love affair never blossomed.

Sretan Uskrs! (Happy Easter)

The traditional way to color eggs for Easter here is to press celery leaves to them with a nylon stocking and then boil the eggs in red onion skins, resulting in a deep red color, interspersed with lacy leaf patterns. An eggcellent idea.