Category: Balkans

Lynne’s 2025 Travel Blog Day 4: What the Graves in Mostar Taught Me

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when we got to Mostar. Another long bus trip, another customs stop, and honestly, I thought: all this to see a bridge?

And sure enough, the first stop was the classic “Instagram” moment. Flowers framing Stari Most, each of us lining up for the photo. Blatantly staged. That is the world today, isn’t it? Experiences served up as photo ops.

But what stayed with me was not the bridge. It was what we saw driving in.

On the right were parks that had become cemeteries. Grave after grave after grave. All the headstones showing dates from the nineties. On the left was a building still in ruins, covered in red and white cloth, scaffolding rusting with time. The guide said the money to rebuild had been promised, but it never turned up. Corruption swallowed it.

At the time I just clocked it. Cemeteries here, ruins there. But after we met the woman who told us her story of living through the war, that image came back and hit me harder.

She explained how her home was destroyed. How she and her husband ended up with her mother-in-law, living off a vegetable garden and a few chickens. How coffee on the black market cost one hundred dollars a kilo. How she still jumps at lightning because it sounds like shelling. And she said you have to start again not just with jobs or houses, but in your head.

After hearing her, those graves and that broken building hit me hard. All those lives cut short, looking down on a stark reminder of corruption.

Money talks, money walks.

Promises made, promises broken.

And the graves look down on the ruins as silent witnesses.

That night at dinner, that is all we talked about. Most people on our bus had grown up with Nazi Germany as part of their world. “Never again” was not just a slogan, it was something they carried. And yet here we were, in a city ripped apart only thirty years ago.

Change your heart, look around you.

Change your heart, it will astound you …

Everybody’s got to learn sometime.” The Korgis (written by James Warren), performed by Beck

The Americans shook their heads at what is happening back home. I  did too. Everyone asking the same question in different ways: why don’t we ever learn?

So yes, Mostar has a bridge. But the real story is in the graves, the corruption, and the people who stayed.

#Mostar #Bosnia #TravelReflections #TravelAsWitness #HistoryMatters #LearningFromHistory #Corruption #NeverAgain #TravelBlog2025

Lynne’s 2025 Travel Blog. Day 1 Reflection on the Ridiculousness of the World (WTF-Ducks)

At times the old town feels less like a historic city and more like a funnel. You shuffle forward in a sea of bodies, a moving tide of hats, backpacks and cameras. It is like watching ants, each line following the other, all of us desperate to get our money’s worth. I kept asking myself what that really means. A photo of the same wall that thousands have already photographed? A tick on a list? Or simply the relief of not losing your tour group in the crush.

The shops along the way add to the absurdity. Entire storefronts are devoted to rubber ducks dressed as pirates, princesses or pop stars.

WTF- Ducks

Rows of plastic yellow smiles waiting for tourists to carry them home. It is easy to laugh, and maybe we should, yet part of me finds it harder to reconcile. While some corners of the world are drowning in conflict and grief, Gaza or the divisions in America, other corners are packaging plastic ducks for visitors like me.

A review from the website

It has become my little tradition to buy rubber ducks from every shop like that across the world……

Bear with me, I know I overthink. Maybe the answer is less thinking and more wine. Still, I keep circling back to the question of what to make of this. Perhaps it shows that even in a fractured, complicated world, people still crave joy, colour and silliness. Rubber ducks will not heal a divided America or bring peace to Gaza, but they do remind us that in the middle of chaos people reach for something small and cheerful to take home.

It may not be the memory I want to hold onto, but it is part of the picture, the ridiculous and the serious sitting side by side.

#DubrovnikDiaries #TouristCrush #TravelReflections #DuckShops #MassTourism #TravelWithHumour #SeeBeyondTheCrowds #TravelTexture #PeopleNotPlaces #JourneyWithHeart

Lynne’s 2025 Travel Blog. Day 1 – Every trip begins with a first impression.

This illuminated globe installation near the entrance to Dubrovnik’s Old Town spoke to me as a symbol of the journey ahead . Note how I chose to picture it with Australia front and centre

This is the start of my journey, though not quite the start I had planned. Qantas delays and missing luggage made sure of that. But as Monica Willis would say, it is all about how you reframe the flips. So instead of calling it a disaster, I am calling it the warm-up act. Life is like the river, wild and unpredictable, and I am choosing to treat this as my “amazing swim.”

I have learned that the things that linger are not usually the harbour cruises or the cable cars.

Those are fine, but they rarely reach the heart. What stays are the moments that make you pause, think, and see the world differently.

 I am travelling with Tauck, a company that prides itself on smoothing out the travel bumps. The logistics, the schedules, the tickets, all of it handled. That part is easy.

What matters to me, though, is something else. Will each day give me an experience that stays with me?

The first evening gave me something more than a welcome drink.   We met as a group of twenty-three.  I am the only Australian and the only solo traveller. Everyone else is American. This is the third time I have joined a group like this, and each time I have noticed the same thing. The first thing Americans do is apologise for being American. Then, often, they share their frustration that the world only hears one version of their story, Trump, the right, the extremes. What is missing, they tell me, is the voice of middle America, the lives of ordinary people who do not fit the headlines.

When voices in the middle are drowned out, a society begins to lose its balance. History shows us that when extremes dominate the story, it rarely ends well. What is happening in America has echoes in other places and other times, and too often it has led to deeper division, conflict, or even collapse. It rarely ends well.

Travel is not just about learning where you have come to, it is also about listening to the people beside you.

My favourite part of the evening was Dr Lovro Kunčević, a Dubrovnik historian. In fifteen minutes he gave us a clear, unsentimental preview of Balkan history, the kind of framing you need before you set foot in a place like this. Then, instead of leaving, he joined us for dinner, moving from table to table.

Each group had twenty minutes with him to ask questions. He made history personal and present. It was the perfect  reminder that travel is so much more than sightseeing. It can be understanding.

Take-Home Lesson

“The Balkans demonstrate how fragile peace and coexistence are. Prosperity, openness, and dialogue are essential to prevent old divisions from turning into new conflicts.”
— Dr Lovro Kunčević

#TauckTravel #Dubrovnik #TravelReflections #StoriesThatStay #PeopleAndPlaces #BalkansHistory #SoloTravel #TravelWithHeart #ListenToTheWorld #CulturalJourneys