Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

I'm still trying to catch up on my mail after coming back from Finland a couple of weeks ago. I've written two letters this weekend, one to my new penpal Snjezana in Bosnia & Herzegovina. She's sent me some postcards so I thought I'd post about a couple of them.



Snjezana tells me that Mostar is the most beautiful city in the whole region. It has a history and the Old Bridge. The Bridge used to divide people of different nationalities and how it serves to bring them together.

The bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian war in the 90's, but it has been rebuilt again since then. Other monuments destroyed included a Franciscan monastery, the Catholic cathedral and the bishop's palace (with a library of 50,000 books), a number of secular institutions as well as the Karadžoz-bey mosque, and thirteen other mosques. Snjezana told me that the country hasn't really picked up after the war.. it makes me feel so bad, my heart goes out for people living there. Just thinking what they've had to go through...



The stamp on the right makes me feel pretty awful, too... It was issued in 2005 to commemorate the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. I don't think I'll ever be able to understand how people can be so cruel to each other, it really makes me feel sick. Anyway... The other stamp, unless I'm very much mistaken, was issued in 2006 in a set of 6 definitives representing vegetables, this one here being potato.