A.

Mostar is a divided city. It’s divided by a river – the Neretva – but also by post-war nationalism. The West side of the river is the Croat side – which flies Croatian flags, sells only Croatian beer, and has renamed all its streets after Croatian places. The East is the Muslim side.

The city is united by a bridge – Stari Most, ‘The Old Bridge’.  Construction on the original started in 1557 and finished nine years later. The man who designed it, Mimar Hajruddin, is renowned for being a genius; The Bridge defies physics, and yet the single tenelija arch over the Neretva stood solid for 427 years.

It took intense shelling from the Bosnian-Croat army to bring it down in 1993. No matter how many times I see footage of that moment, it never fails to break my heart.

‘Stari’ means ‘Old’, says Bata, but in a grandfatherly way. Everyone in Mostar lost their grandfather the day the bridge fell into the river.

Reconstruction of the bridge started in 2001, finished in 2004. Because it was a UNESCO world heritage site, the architects had to recreate it exactly – using the same materials and with precisely the same dimensions. The mortar that holds the bridge together had to be of the same consistency. Hajruddin had no computers to design the arch – at that time the biggest in existence – only intuition. As the modern builders recreated the Old Bridge, they had to recreate the designer’s mistakes – they were what made the bridge what it was.

Now, as they did for hundreds of years before the destruction of the original, men flock to the arch to fling themselves off the bridge into the water 22 metres below. There is a jumping-off-the-bridge competition at the end of July each year, but every day you can see members of the Mostar diving club, or just random tourists, plunging into the Neretva.

Several times this week I’ve missed calls from Majda on my mobile, and each time I call her back she says ‘Please, Aasa, I thought you’d jumped off the bridge’, or ‘Please, Aasa, get out of the river’.

For Bata, the reconstruction of Stari Most is representative of the Bosnian spirit. To the people who destroyed the bridge, Bosnians say ‘Ha ha! We rebuilt it! And this one will be even OLDER!’.

Up on a hill on the Muslim side of Mostar is a white outline of the Old Bridge, and the words ‘BiH, Volimo Te’ or ‘Bosnia and Hercegovina, We Love You’. Bata describes this as a message to Bosnia’s ‘enemies’, or to those who seek to provoke conflict: “You hate us? Oh yeah? Well we love you. Take THAT.”

I asked Majda where she gets her hair cut, and asked if she could make me an appointment. She said I didn’t need to book in advance, there’s a lady with a salon attached to her house, she’d just call right before I headed over to tell her I was coming. I asked if she could tell her I need a trim and if she could colour my hair also – I’d heard it was cheap here.

Just go to DM and pick up a box, Majda said. The Lady would do it for me. Alright then.

Majda drew me a map to get to The Lady’s house, and wrote down what I wanted done to my hair on another slip of paper. (The Lady doesn’t speak English). I headed there this morning, after stopping to by pharmacy hair dye.

The salon is a small room with creamsicle-coloured accents. The Lady’s hair matches the motif. When I arrived, she and her older, slightly-toothless friend, were chatting, smoking. I handed her the instructions, hoping Majda hadn’t decided to play a prank on me by writing ‘Shave her head’ in Bosnian. The Lady nodded at the note, and again when I handed her the box of dye.

She put the dye in for me, scrubbed it out vigorously 10 minutes later. She gave me the quickest haircut ever – I’m unconvinced she could have gotten it all – while constantly chatting to her smoking friend. I thought I caught a few words I could understand, became convinced  they were talking about eating potatoes.  My hair, from what I could see, was much darker than ‘Caramel Brown’; in fact it looked a bit…purple. Dark purple.

The Lady spent much longer drying, smoothing, twirling, braiding and unbraiding my hair than she had cutting it. Dry, it looked a little less purplely; and in all, ended up being exactly what I wanted. I smiled and nodded at her, got up to leave, asked the price. 20 KM, or €10.

Dobro, dobro. Hvala, hvala.

THIS IS AN ICE CREAM SHOP. Yes.

I may drink too much Bosnian coffee.

There’s only one thing that can warm you up after jumping into the pool beneath the Kravice waterfalls, and it’s rakija.

My new favourite colour is the colour of the Neretva river. Capturing it with my camera is proving difficult.

Remember how hard it was for me to leave the last time? Well, I’m back. I’m working(ish) at Majda and Bata’s hostel, greeting travellers and showing them around, drinking coffee and getting a sunburn. I’m here for a month. It’s going to be glorious.

Perhaps a photo-post per day is in order? Yes. Someone hold me to that.

I miss you. I know I’ve left you before, and I know I’ve gone back to a cool place that I also like very much, but this time is different. This time I can’t come back. (Alright, I CAN come back and I WILL for a few days, but you know what I mean. I can’t live there anymore. It’s killing me.)

In the days before I had to leave you, my friend, I sat a few times at the top of Arthur’s Seat and looked. (Once, with a friend and a bottle of wine in the sun, it was lovely). It’s what I liked to do. From Arthur’s Seat, from Calton Hill, from Princes Street Gardens, from the North Bridge – for almost two years I spent a lot of time just looking at you. I never tired of it. I never stopped being in love with how damn beautiful you are.

I lucked out, when I first arrived. I wandered the streets with my CV after only a few days, and almost immediately found myself working at a glorious little pub; family-owned, cozy, and yet in the middle of the Royal Mile. The people there became my family, the pub my home. (My boss Marie once felt she had to tell me I couldn’t actually live there.)

You’re the biggest small town I’ve ever seen. Though a city of almost 500,000, I could walk everywhere I wanted to go. I could decide I wanted to meet a friend at a pub and be there with them in 10 minutes. I would constantly run into people I knew on the street. I got to know the guy who sold me newspapers, the guy who cleaned the windows, the boys who sold us breakfast and coffee at our favourite, uh, breakfast and coffee place. I usually had at least one friend who lived just across the street from me, or around the corner.

No offence, Canada, I do really miss my family and friends of course, but for Edinburgh I feel homesick. When I’m there I feel like I belong somewhere.

So I’m wracking my brain now. I’ve used up my 2-year visa and can’t apply for another one. I could go back as a student but can’t afford the tuition fees. I don’t fall into the ‘highly-skilled’ category (apparently an ability to pour pints, or to construct grammatically-correct sentences, won’t earn me special visa privileges). Several people offered to marry me, but unfortunately none of them really meant it.

Edinburgh, you’ve ruined me. Though I want to keep travelling (gawd, there’s so much of the world left to see), I don’t really want to live anywhere else.

So I guess that’s me, for now. I’m barred from my favourite place. Don’t ever expect me, though, to stop planning my return.

Aasa.